Albums that are owning you right now

That's a great album.

I've been hooked on this album by some band called Senor Coconut, the album is nothing but mariachi Kraftwerk covers that have an ambient/electronic bent from time to time. Unlike any album I've ever heard, but it's fucking good.

I bought Dear Science a few weeks ago. It's owning me!

One of the about 6 CD's that never leaves my truck.

I picked up a couple Flaming Lips CD's this weekend, after not listening to them since about 1999. Yoshimi is brilliant. I've also been listening to Nirvana - Nevermind an inordinate amount lately. With the weather getting better I've also been listening to The Tragically Hip - Fully Completely. Probably my favorite album to listen to when the weather is perfect.

The Sebadoh by Sebadoh. Fabulous stuff.

Albums that have been in constant rotation for years:
Dream Theater: 'Scenes from a Memory'
Joe Satriani: 'Crystal Planet'
Rush: 'Signals'
OSI: 'Office of Strategic Influence'

Hate to agree on a Hip album but damn if that isn't one of the greatest summer albums ever. At The Hundredth Meridian and Fifty Mission Cap are great roll down the window and crank it tunes.

808s & Heartbreak the over-reliance on pitch correction makes this album both one of Kanye's coldest and his most personal. There's something interesting in that juxtaposition. Also, sonically pretty brave. Whatever you say about his ego, the guy loves all kinds of music and it shows. Bad News is weird enough to be a Radiohead rip, not a Coldplay rip.

That one never moved me. Perhaps another chance is due.

Right now I'm kind of boring:

Emmylou Harris-Pieces of the Sky & Elite Hotel-Cosmic-American goodness; she really pours her soul out on these records and carries Gram's torch proudly.

Creedence Clearwater Revival-Chronicles vol. I & II-What a great band! "Hey Tonight", "Someday Never Comes" "Cotton Fields" "Wrote A Song For Everyone" are my fave new discoveries.

Fat Elvis: I'm the same way on 'Down on the Upside'. I beat the shit out of 'Badmotorfinger' and especially 'Superunknown', but 'Down on the Upside' didn't grab me. I'll give it another shot as well.

I'm with Fat Elvis and Judas Booth. If all three of us now revisit and fall for "Down on the Upside," Soundgarden will owe Ray some royalties.

On the flipside, Kathleen Edwards' "Failer" is amazing (if you like that Lucinda Williams thing).

Kilimanjaro by The Teardrop Explodes. Just a great pop album. In the 'good' sense, like The Smiths were.

What does that mean? They sound like the Smiths? What would a great pop album in the bad sense sound like?

Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast, it's Maiden so not much needs to be said. My favorite song on it has to be "The Prisoner" though.

I've been listening to On Avery Island and In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral back to back on repeat all day long. I feel like I'm going to collapse.

I should have elaborated. Kilimanjaro has hooks and melodies and tight song structures with songs about fucking and not fucking - basically, all the pop music elements, but is unique overall as were The Smiths. As in, Morrissey is a pop artist, but a reference point of his is the New York Dolls - not his contemporaries The Police, one of the biggest pop bands of the time. The Police and the Dolls both record pop music, but only one of them is honest. Or, at least, creative within the usually totalitarian pop song structure...

And believe me, it takes much for me not to become bored by the 4/4 beat and typical sounds...Kilimanjaro is an 80s psych album to be enjoyed alongside The Stone Roses' debut.

Rilo Kiley's "Under the Blacklight". It's utterly different from their other albums, but i really think they pull it off. It's got an almost Steely Dan vibe to it, which I love.


Also, Loudness "Thunder in the East". Always, and forever.

Hmm...OK. I'm guessing you consider The New York Dolls "honest," but I'm not sure what you mean by "honest" by way of "creative within the usually totalitarian pop song structure." Because they're cooler to like, right? What does that mean? The Dolls basically were a drag version of classic 50's rock and the Stones with beefier guitar hooks. And I don't think the Smiths sound anything like them or the Police. I guess Morrissey could list the Dolls as an influence, but I don't think that really translates to his music that much.

In short, I still have no idea what you're talking about. But if you say they sound like early Stone Roses, that's cool I guess...

Well, perhaps being a critic isn't in the cards for myself. All those words like 'honest' are just code for "I think this is good".

The only thing that makes the Police more stereotypically "pop" than The Smiths is that they got more radio play. Period.

In terms of the actual music played, the Police were no more or less likely than the Smiths to attain popular attention in their time. Stewart Copeland (one of the most identifiable, creative drummers to ever hit top 40 radio) incorporated off-time rhythmic flourishes that he picked up while learning to play in the Middle East, and Andy Summers' spiky, jazz-inflected playing was every bit as idiosyncratic as Johnny Marr's. Morrissey may have it up on Sting in the lyric department, but, at one time, Sting was doing some profoundly weird things in terms of pop songwriting. The Smiths were pretty conservative by comparison, actually.

The Police may sound more "pop" now, but that's only because the landscape has changed somewhat since they were making music (and they contributed to this change, at least in some small part).

This one and 'Piece of Mind' never leave my iPod.

The Smiths were a counterpoint to lavish New Wave music. Reactionary as was punk in that sense.

The Police played well, but they didn't have It. That creative force. A vision. And yes, they aren't cool. Surely you aren't an elitist, believing yourself above reacting to or defying or embracing the culture around you. Every pop band wears a costume, like a doctor wears a lab coat, except, hopefully, they have fun with the illusion.

The New York Dolls aren't important or cool for no reason, they reached that point because of the clash between who they were and who they pretended to be, becoming increasingly blurred like any good pop group. I think that what inspired them to do what they did is far more interesting than simply listing the records they probably enjoyed, like listing a family genealogy to try to determine why a person is who they are. You're only looking at the scientific element, like I pointed out in the Ebert and Elation thread to somebody.

"New wave" was a marketing device. Surely, you realize that it's just a label that the industry applied and had little bearing on the actual creativity behind the music, right? Even Television, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and your much-admired Gary Numan were, at some time or another, called "new wave." And, actually, even in comparison with most of the artists I just mentioned, the Police's first few albums are the very opposite of "lavish."

I wasn't arguing that they played well. Lots of bands played well. I'm saying that they were innovative and smart. Either you haven't listened to enough of their music in comparison with that of their contemporaries or you don't understand enough about how music works to fully appreciate this.

They're not even one of my favorite bands from that era, but you're just super-wrong on this.

They aren't cool if you're in 1981 and trying to be edgy. Most of us in 2009 are able to evaluate the music on its own merits, not what it says about us for listening to it.

How is "what inspired them to do what they did" significantly different from "the records they probably enjoyed" when we're talking about the New York Dolls? Do you think Johnny Thunders was basing his riffs on dense Heidegger texts or something? They wanted to be a kickass rock'n'roll band, and that was informed entirely by what they listened to.

It sounds like you've bought into an awful lot of old, easily disproven myths about the history of modern popular music.

So many of your posts on music come across like you've read a shitload of music criticism from the last four decades but have never actually listened to the music.

EDIT: Or what DaveB said in his last statement.

And to go back on topic, lately it's been Torche's 'Meanderthal' that I can't get away from.

The band plays all the time in Atlanta, and I think I'd seen them do a lousy show a while back or something, because I've ignored them, and I passed on this record at first. Huge mistake -- this thing is so heavy, so catchy. It's not a big important record by any means, but something that makes me look forward to spring and summer, because it's an ideal bunch of songs to blast during a road trip.

'Healer': http://youtube.com/watch?v=Hxi_elo3BFc

'Across the Shields': http://youtube.com/watch?v=mwSiE4AyQxM

New Wave = poorly aged, plastic synth music that brings to mind images of royalty and decadence. The label was just applied too liberally, to all new music, by hacks. It's a term invented by marketers, but after some bands were successful, others came around and imitated this style for success, and suddenly New Wave became an actual genre. It's a cycle, not some grand conspiracy by marketing departments. It can just be difficult to discern where the artist's invention began and where the marketer's savvy capitalized upon it (perhaps it's even the other way around at times). People bought New Wave records with a certain sound, so others sprung up sounding like them. Supply and demand.

I see that you were saying you think they're innovative and smart, I just think they merely play well. I dunno, I just can't be very passionate about The Police in any direction, negative or positive...

You express this like anti-conformity is pretentious. How ironic.

What I believe is that what pop music we listen to does say something about ourselves. Hell, I've already proven my point by being called a cred-seeking arse for talking about my love of Factory Records bands. But I'm not saying you're a BAD PERSON for being able to appreciate The Police.

I can't listen to polka music at all, but to be a lover of polka music today would be an endearing eccentric trait.

When embraced for it's own sake, it is. And terribly, terribly tiresome.

I'll argue that what you're referring to isn't actually rebellion...it had just gotten so confused because there is such a market for it out there.

You can say the same about any genre, less commercially successful shit included. There were bands aping Joy Division and the Smiths in their time, too. That's how influence works, regardless of financial success.

Be this as it may, the Police, whose first album came out in 78, predate the use of the term "new wave" by a few years. Plus, there's nothing synthy, plastic, or "decadent" about their music until about four albums in. And, again... let's talk Gary Numan - creating plastic, synth music is sometimes the point.

Then you probably shouldn't be using them as a convenient comparison point. You really don't seem to know what you're talking about.

Anti-conformity for its own sake is wildly pretentious, especially when you don't know anything about what you're ostensibly rebelling against. Taking a stand against mainstream music simply because it's mainstream is like taking a stand against pizza.

I agree - our taste does have a lot to say about us. But if this is the case, I'd rather my taste have something to say about the actual me, not a "me" that I've carefully constructed to impress others. When you self-consciously omit things on the basis of mainstream status (due to something not being popular enough or being too popular), you're not being true to your actual taste.

Yeah, but would you have to like polka and not Kelly Clarkson?

What are you talking about? Don't hot-swap definitions. You referred to DaveB's statement about appreciation of pop music as anti-conformity. I'm responding specifically to that snippet of conversation, not to any other use of rebellion or anti-conformity.

Okay.

I need to thank DaveB for mentioning Difranco's Living in Clip in an older thread. I've now become borderline obsessed with pretty much everything she put out in the 90's. That and Not a Pretty Girl have been in constant rotation. Aside from that:

The Frames - "Burn the Maps"
Grizzly Bear - "Yellow House"
Infectious Grooves - "The Plague..."
Local H - "Whatever Happened to PJ Soles"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Gish"

Ani Difranco is one of my absolute favorites, thanks to my wife.

Anyway, I got a bunch of CDs for Christmas, and I think I've given them a fair enough shake to make a judgement. Most of them I've known to some degree, but I never felt I appreciated them to the extent I needed to... so that's why I asked for them.

Here they are:

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie - This album owns me right now. I love it cover to cover and I've fallen in love with Moonage Daydream.

Sticky Fingers - The Sontes - Alright, I knew a lot of these, and I only really wanted it for Can't You Hear Me Knocking, but wow... Sister Morphine kicked my ass along with a bunch of others that weren't as well known.

Born to Run - The Boss - For some reason, I got into a Springsteen kick. Haven't heard the newest yet, but I've been giving this some love. I'm a fan. He's been sorely lacking in my appreciation department.

Pet Sounds - Beach Boys - It's not doing it for me. Not at all. Other than Hang On to Your Ego (a bonus track!!!), I'm really bored and kinda annoyed by the sound. Does this make me a bad person? I've given it a listen about once or twice a week since I got it at Christmas, but I don't have any desire to ever listen to this again. Brian Wilson was inspired by Rubber Soul to make this? Not even the same sport as Rubber Soul.

London Calling - Clash - Fun. Really fun. It's not some of my favorite Clash like Know Your Rights or English Civil War, but I can put this in any time and be amazed how diverse the album is. Long overdue to my collection.

If you're up for a field trip to Milwaukee, my band's covering this whole album on Feb. 21 (to be followed by a second set of all 70s glam covers).

Surprised to hear that Pet Sounds doesn't work for you, but I can see why it might be the hardest to get into out of the albums you listed (which are all so absurdly good that I wouldn't even know how to rank them). Maybe try it again in warmer weather?

Iron Maiden: Killers and Van Halen: 5150 are in rotation in my car at the moment.

Seconding this one. This one just came off as sludgier than their previous two (thank you, Kim Thayil) yet still rocked hard.

I'm stuck on the new one from Sigur Ros - "Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust" especially the first two tracks. I listen to them on the drive home from the train station after really wretched days at work. They make me happy.

The 90's were very kind to Ms. Difranco. My goodness, she was a busy (and consistently enjoyable) little beaver. Then she hit a wall. Y2K might not have fucked up computers like some folks dreaded, but Ani wasn't as lucky.

I have been devastated in this argument through my own generalization to start, trying to defend it but the issue only snowballed, as I needed to struggle to defend that inane post....sure enough, I have read a lot of music criticism over the years. The sentence that began all of this would have accurately read, "Kilimanjaro is one of my favorite eighties pop albums, alongside The Smiths'."

I'm only pissed at the insinuation that I'm trying to impress people. I mentioned that record in hopes somebody else would pick it up and be able to enjoy it as well.

It's quite rich of you, DaveB, to take my statement about music you enjoy saying something about yourself and retorting like my own personal image is more phony than yours' is, especially when we're discussing pop music, which is about fantasy and illusion. My tastes aren't any more honest than somebody else's, and perhaps he or she is in goth make-up listening to Bauhaus. It's cliche, but they could feel that music as much as I do something by the Albert Ayler Trio like Spiritual Unity.

Oh, I referenced something 'obscure' or 'difficult'! And by mentioning this record that can end parties I'm trying to impress people! Not to turn others onto new things as they do for myself! It's a dialogue. I don't have to know everything about The Police before attacking or defending them. But you can answer my questions as you did here, though angry I was uninformed they weren't just predictable radio staples. I fucking loathe Nickelback, but I haven't heard much of their albums except to say the album tracks are a bit more bearable than the singles. But maybe they did something interesting, jazz drumming they did or something...someone goes, "Hey! Check this out! This isn't so much like what you hate about them..."

Genesis - Duke. The singles make me smile and the stuff I'd never heard before, like Duchess or Duke's Travels, are very solid Genesis, not quite the light pop band they'd soon become.

But you can hear it coming.

I hope there will be some Barry Blue (Dancing On A Saturday Night!) or Sweet (Wig Wam Bam!) in that second set.

I've been obsessed with John Barry's The Lion in Winter soundtrack for a couple weeks now.
I also have been playing Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter" a lot. I wouldn't say I enjoy it all or am a huge fan but I keep going back to it. It's slowly growing on me.

I recall reading the Alternative Press review of it, but never tracked it down.

I've always been curious about how minimalism and salsa mix.

NM.

No Barry (I'm not sure how he'd bump up against the more rockin' vibe), and we went way more obvious with The Sweet ("Ballroom Blitz," naturally). I was pushing for "Fox on the Run," but no one could hit the high part.

Otherwise, T. Rex, some Roxy Music, Eno, Mott, New York Dolls, Slade, more Bowie, and various glam-related influences (Stooges, early solo Lou Reed), and later additions to the canon (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, etc.).

But you're boring us instead. Why not tell us something about Ayler instead of name-dropping him?

Tallahassee has very sneakily become my favorite Mountain Goats album. The thematic string tying all the songs together is a staple of The Mountain Goat's "hi-fi era" albums (Tallahasse (2002) through Heretic Pride (2008)) but I think Tallahassee's is the strongest. It helps that Darnielle has been writing about the fictional couple (he calls them the "Alpha Couple") that the album's based around for a long time, because he writes in their voices effortlessly.

The songs are pretty strong throughout (though not as much as The Sunset Tree), but I think I'm more fascinated by the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" aspect, set in an old Tennessee plantation home they purchased with winnings from Las Vegas. It feels like the perfect location for the marriage to make it's last stand. It's isolated, huge, empty, and decaying.

I especially love the eponymous opening track:

Window facing an ill-kept front yard
Plums on the tree heavy with nectar
Prayers to summon the destroying angel
Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector
And you
You

Twin prop airplanes passing loudly overhead
Road to the airport two lanes clear
Half the whole town gone for the summer
Terrible silence coming down here
And you
You

There is no deadline
There is no schedule
There is no plan we can fall back on
The road this far can't be retraced
There is no punch line anybody can tack on
There are loose ends by the score
What did I come down here for?
You
You

Throughout the whole album, the couple fights and screams (best represented by the unforgettable chorus of "No Children": I hope you die/I hope we both die) but they also have quiet tender moments. And in the end, they choose to embrace it. For better or for worse, they're stuck with each other.

Musically, Tallahassee's nothing groundbreaking. The songs are well-written, but they aren't the kind of songs that get stuck in your head or explore new sonic territory. Instead, it's the lyrics that get under your skin. I've never heard an album that told a story as well as Tallahassee.

HIGHLY reccomended.

I'm a fan of "No Children" myself, there's something about it that I can't articulate right now for some reason.

Also, I've grooving a lot to Black Sabbath's Sabotage, which I think is pretty much the last really good Ozzy era Sabbath album. I'm not a big fan of Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die!, though Heaven and Hell with Dio is quite an underrated album.

If you ever do a cover of the Kinks' "Celluloid Heroes", I hope you dedicate it to all your friends on the C.H.U.D. messageboards!



Last night I fell asleep to Eric Clapton's Self-Titled solo debut. "Don't Know Why", "Let It Rain" are stand out tracks.

I've been trying to get into The Band for years. They're finally clicking for me. Rock of Ages is a great live album. I haven't taken it out of my car in weeks.

Willie Nelson-LIVE AT THE TEXAS OPRY HOUSE-is a blistering live set. He has a bonus version of "Bloody Mary Morning" that rocks out with a funky electric guitar solo. Also "Truck Drivin' Man" is hilarious.

Are you drunk? Let it go, dude.

A) The New York Dolls are not obscure.

B) You need to know what you 're talking about before you open your mouth. You don't know shit about The Police other than the fact that they're popular. Sometimes there's a reason for a band to be popular. I'm not saying the Police is my favorite band or anything, but to write them off only as radio-friendly pap is ignorant. You get that, right? Every time you post you sound incredibly ignorant.

And comparing The Police to Nickelback is beyond stupid. That's the problem with all of your comparisons. They're weak and make you sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

You have a tendency to buck the popular in your posts (you're oh-so-edgy "Fuck Billy Joel" in the concert thread). You come off sounding like an eighteen year old boy who just read his first copy of Spin.