Listen to an album you've never heard by an artist you never listen to and then tell us about it!

Haha no I know some King Crimson. I know Court and the second one. I know Red and Discipline and weirdly Thrak. I like Belew as a singer. I haven’t listened to Aspic or Perfect Pair or Islands or whatever. Maybe I should. I’m not an immense fan.

In the Court, Red, and Discipline are the main ones IMO - once you've heard those three I think you get most of what the band has to offer. I like Larks' Tongues a lot, IMO it's their most interesting record, though it's not as metal as Red (except for certain sections which are incredibly metal). I dig Lizard too but it's not exactly a record I like recommending to people. Three of a Perfect Pair has some excellent pop songs on Side 1 but they're kinda like Belew solo material.

Personally when it comes to prog I like to recommend Gentle Giant and Van der Graaf Generator. GG I think is a good starting point because they appeal to people's inner band geek and their songs are generally short. They're not trying to summon demons or invoke fantasy landscapes they're just trying to put wonky melodies together in odd ways. VdGG on the other hand are pretty dark and theatrical and in Hammill they've got a true rockstar persona which the other bands don't really have. At prog night (which coincidentally I am DJing tonight) that's the band that gets the uninitiated to pay attention, for better or worse.

Pavement are two bands to me. Westing and S&E, then the latter albums. I like both modes. There’s something smarmy about SM’s songwriting voice that keeps me from loving them, but I like them, I like him.

It’s funny, when I was young (20? 21?) I recorded with my friend James. He had IAAOTS and Moon Pix out, on CD. He talked to me about how much he loved both albums. I borrowed them both and listened to them on the same day. Moon Pix became a landmark album for me, I always want drums and guitar to sound like that. One time I recorded with Shahzad, he brought Jim White’s snare with him, I was so excited. NMH left little impression in comparison, good band good album tho. It felt in retrospect like a moment of choice, “choose NMH or choose Cat Power to define your young brain” and I chose Cat Power.

gentle giant are so awesome. van der graaf i would think might be a challenge or a chore depending on someone's tolerance for a LOT of words. so many words. but they were awesome.

depends which track you play - I find "Arrow" and "La Rossa" get a lot of "what the fuck was that" reactions, which I think is what you want

i love Nektar. both early and late. i would recommend them to anyone. they rocked so hard. i'm a big Barclay James Harvest fan - and a big fan of that pastoral/rural Harvest prog stuff - but for some reason i never push them on people. they might be underwhelming if you aren't into them. but also a band i like early and late. i feel like people see them as an afterthought. 3rd tier. whatever. but they could be so beautiful.

I'm listening to Slanted & Enchanted because it's the shortest Pavement album. I don't hate the vocals. They don't make me feel anything at all. Fucking Lou Reed. He and his enablers in the rock press (and at the three major labels that subsidized his lame ass for 40 years) convinced multiple generations of white dudes that if they couldn't sing they could just recite their lyrics and it would be fine. It's not fine. My biggest fear with this record, honestly, was that the drumming would be as limp and dead as 99% of "indie" "rock," but this guy actually seems to be awake and aware that he's playing a song and that it should have energy and dynamics. The songs are unmemorable, but at least they're alive while they're happening, which is more than I can say for Radiohead post-2001, to pick one example.

Aw man that’s not fair. I listened to In Rainbows again after years away from it, literally yesterday, and it’s even better than I remember. I get what you mean about Lou Reed though. I think with Malkmus it’s more about The Fall. “Two States” he’s even doing the MES thing

"I like Belew as a singer."

my tolerance is pretty low. and he makes things into his own image and it doesn't sit right with me. too bad fred frith didn't join KC. or derek bailey! hahaha!

i know for a lot of people S&E is the best but i think they got way better as they went from album to album. i love that last album. i like them all though.

omg the thought of Bailey and Fripp working together

i love Nektar. both early and late. i would recommend them to anyone

curious what the good late-period Nektar albums are. I've gone up to Recycled.

my tolerance is pretty low. and he makes things into his own image and it doesn't sit right with me. too bad fred frith didn't join KC. or derek bailey! hahaha!

I get what you're saying but on the other hand he's kind of the only guy who could've made it work, both in that he could keep up with Fripp and also write songs which you kinda needed by the 80s. I don't think Frith or Bailey could've done that. the downside is 80s KC sounds absolutely nothing like they used to, outside of maybe parts of Side 2 of ToaPP. Yes and Genesis at least retained *some* aspects of their prior sound.

someone listen to a City Boy album. i love them. the poor man's 10cc.

What's wrong with reciting lyrics, Lou Reed (or MES) style? Anyway, who taught all those metal dudes who can't sing that it's "fine" to tunelessly bark or growl lyrics? It's not fine! (lol)

if they couldn't sing they could just recite their lyrics and it would be fine

we're talking about pavement? melodies are kind of their thing.

Yeah, "Zurich Is Stained" is playing right now as I type this... great tune

Great thread idea

I'd love to do an 80s or 90s country record that is considered a classic, if anyone wants to recommend one

Dwight Yoakam, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.

Sold! I'll get started on the way home.

i was gonna say garth brooks but dwight is cool.

I am going to listen to The Thievery Corporation - Sounds From The Thievery Hi Fi. I was suspicious of them at the time, I wanted all my trip hop/blunted beats people to wear puffy parkas etc

i never listen to whole country albums. i like comps. i see country like techno. singles rule. but i should try out an album too. it might be a bit much though. i listen to a lot of 50s stuff. hillbillies. the hillbillier than betterer. but i could go 80s probably. i like shania i a lot.

ooh yeah forgotten trip hop. that would be fun. probably.

you guys should bold your titles. i should have done that. so that we can see what people actually listened to. makes sense, no?

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

My knock against them has always been that they're rhythmically slack and overly busy (isn't there a weird crossover with Pavement fans and jam band fans? My theory is that's why). I can hear why this never would have been my band at the time, I wouldn't have cared about the lyrics or the semi-detached aesthetic.

But this is sounding pretty good to me today, now that I have a lot more reference points for stuff that came before (Lou Reed and VU for sure, which is a recent thing for me) and after. The time is allll over the place, I still kinda hate the drums, but in 2024 it's refreshing to hear a big record that's this loose and live-sounding. The vocals don't bother me (was Thurston a big influence?). The guitars are nice. Tbh it all makes me want to listen to Sonic Youth, they have a great drummer.

I like the second half of Stop Breathin, kinda Radiohead-y for a bit? Gold Soundz is cool, I've heard that. 5-4=Unity is funny, for a band whose weak point is rhythm to do an instrumental where the rhythm is the whole bit. "I need to sleep" is a great lyric.

country does seem more like a singles music for the most part. Certainly with older country I'm more about songs. I love George Jones but I couldn't tell you about any specific George Jones "album" really. I assume by the 80s/90s it was a bit more album-oriented though?

I made it all the way through the Pavement album. There was some actual singing on it. Some of it was even OK. I understand why people thought he was imitating Mark E. Smith, but that was only one song out of 14 or 15 so I don't know why people fixate on it. The particular type of distortion on the guitars occasionally reminded me of the first Stooges album, which was a good choice, and as I said before the drummer was better than I expected him to be. I think ultimately metal has ruined this kind of music for me, because I just don't understand why anyone would write and perform songs that feel so...uncommitted, would be the best word. Like, Rob Halford and Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickinson (and their respective bands) gave fully committed performances at all times. And that kind of boneheaded theatricality is the minimum acceptable standard for rock performance, in my opinion. You don't even have to look to metal for comparisons, either. Think of Bad Brains. H.R. was fully committed, 100% from start to stop. This "indie" "rock" idea of acting cooler than the thing you're doing (singing a song), of mumbling and strumming and swaying slowly back and forth (whether they are or not, they sound like they are) is abhorrent to me. It sounded unprofessional in a deliberate way — like, it was sometimes mixed so that the vocals were buried, but not on every track, so the ones where they were seemed like mistakes that they didn't care enough to fix. I will never listen to Pavement again; they are Not For Me.

Dwight Yoakam is playing near me (in Montana "near" means a two-hour drive) in July and I am thinking about going. Tickets go on sale this week. I've always wanted to see him.

def curious what hearing Thievery Corporation for the first time in 2024 is like (xp)

I would participate here — agreed on it being a good idea — but a friend of mine have been doing basically this same thing for the past 6 years (I've got him listening to Aquemini for the first time this week, while I listen to Sinatra's Watertown)

my big one in the coming month or so is to dive into the Bob Marley & The Wailers catalog. that's one of those artists where the people i knew repping it during my younger days had me put that on the shelf.

do yourself a favour and start at the beginning with Marley: the Studio One comp then the Scratch-produced stuff before you do the Island albums

Finally doing a deep dive into Marley a few years ago, after long putting it off, was something I found so rewarding. There is an entire alternate career that could be carved out of his body of work without touching a single fucking song on Legend (which isn't to say all of the songs on Legend are terrible, far from it, but my god he has so many incredible songs in his catalog that you never need to hear those overplayed warhorses again).

i dig the Pavement thoughts. even the negative stuff i get. for me it really is about the guitar sounds. they just hit on something that connects with me in a huge way. and i really like how their albums are produced. especially later. and there is very definite effort when it comes to their presentation and production. the slacker thing almost seems like a front to me from people who really do dig rock deeply and wanted to create something lasting. as far as Matador guitar rock goes, Pavement/Come/Unsane are my pinnacles. they always sound good to me no matter what.

I am obsessed with Mark Leckey’s sets on NTS. I have been listening to one a week and then investigating all this new music I’d never heard of. Everyone should listen to Mark Leckey’s sets on NTS. He is amazing

FGTI I dunno if you've heard it or not but would totally recommend listening to his guest appearance on the Digging With Flo podcast, wherein he plants potatoes and chats about his life. Really good and wholesome stuff:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4UzCXiJuZhloApBPpWX1jM?si=K_nyLn7HRv6QlyyjGoTlJg

Flo has lots of other great guests on that too from the London music/arts scene, i love it!

*end of thread hijack*

I did this when someone ran a poll on the Libertines' self-titled album. I thought it was a self-indulgent mess. Did the same thing with Alice Coltrane's Ptah, the El-Daoud, thought it was tremendous. I would like to have more of the latter experience.

unperson – what do you think of the Germs, or Circle Jerks, or various other punk bands not fronted by H.R., which take some approach to performance (maybe involving a certain detachment, or irony) other than "fully committed" "theatricality"?

Moon Pix became a landmark album for me, I always want drums and guitar to sound like that.

imho Jim White is the greatest living drummer working within the rock and rock-adjacent field

trying to think abt what I should start with here and those Jane Siberry albums are tempting, otoh I already know I would prob like them

i think (GI) is as good as...hmm...name some art that came out in 1979. The Black Stallion? Apocalypse Now? a Cindy Sherman untitled film still? in that realm.

when Jim White came in my store the day after a Xylouris White show around the corner all i did was grill him about Nina Nastasia. he was cool with it. he loves her too.

I made it all the way through the Pavement album. There was some actual singing on it. Some of it was even OK. I understand why people thought he was imitating Mark E. Smith, but that was only one song out of 14 or 15 so I don't know why people fixate on it. The particular type of distortion on the guitars occasionally reminded me of the first Stooges album, which was a good choice, and as I said before the drummer was better than I expected him to be. I think ultimately metal has ruined this kind of music for me, because I just don't understand why anyone would write and perform songs that feel so...uncommitted, would be the best word. Like, Rob Halford and Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickinson (and their respective bands) gave fully committed performances at all times. And that kind of boneheaded theatricality is the minimum acceptable standard for rock performance, in my opinion. You don't even have to look to metal for comparisons, either. Think of Bad Brains. H.R. was fully committed, 100% from start to stop. This "indie" "rock" idea of acting cooler than the thing you're doing (singing a song), of mumbling and strumming and swaying slowly back and forth (whether they are or not, they sound like they are) is abhorrent to me. It sounded unprofessional in a deliberate way — like, it was sometimes mixed so that the vocals were buried, but not on every track, so the ones where they were seemed like mistakes that they didn't care enough to fix. I will never listen to Pavement again; they are Not For Me.

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Thursday, 7 March 2024 19:14 (seven minutes ago) link

I feel like a lot of these reflections on indie rock as a whole are 80% an uncharitable caricature and 20% true, but I'm not going to be the guy to drag you kicking and screaming through indie recommendations. Also there are so many sounds underneath the vague "indie rock" umbrella that it's easy to make it mean whatever you want it to.

I've never listened to Moon Pix or a Cat Power album so maybe I will do that next.

xp Yeah I feel like unperson is taking “indie rock sucks” as a starting point, and then trying to retrofit based on that (which is part of what my earlier comment was getting at).

I used to hate Pavement but I came around on them a while ago. You have to let go of what you want them to be and let them be what they are. They don't "groove hard." That's not what they're about. Their rhythmic approach is more like a piece of driftwood on a creek, just lazing along.

unperson – what do you think of the Germs, or Circle Jerks, or various other punk bands not fronted by H.R., which take some approach to performance (maybe involving a certain detachment, or irony) other than "fully committed" "theatricality"?

I hate the Germs. I love the Circle Jerks (saw them on their 10th anniversary tour, which I feel like was billed as a farewell, ha ha). I have also seen Keith Morris with OFF! and would never describe him as uncommitted or ironically detached/distanced from what he's doing. He's a flamethrower.

Do the Pavement dudes come from money? Because I feel like there's a class-based element to my hatred of "indie" "rock", like the music lacks energy because the musicians can just go get jobs at their dads' investment banks if it doesn't take off. Whereas metal bands mostly come from nothing (yes, Lars Ulrich was a rich kid, but James Hetfield absolutely was not) and need the band to succeed if they're going to eat that month. And that tension is audible in the music.

i don't know if i'll talk about it here but i definitely want to listen to more 20th century classical that i haven't heard. i think i appreciate it more now. i used to think a lot of it was too tedious but now that i am old and tedious its just right for me. i've been listening to Elliott Carter all day. i just got some great stuff in. your berg and your webern and your wolpe. tons of those cats.

but i'll totally talk about taylor swift here. maybe.

I think Malkmus was pretty much ordinary middle class. Not sure about the other guys.

one of them was a bartender after pavement.

re Neutral Milk Hotel

I guess I can’t blame this band for the future inane campfire indie to come.

ha tbh I have only listened to that album once, hated it, and I did think "so it's all this guy's fault"

xxxp I mean, what do you think of Bo Diddley? He's pretty slack & relaxed sounding... (and he rules)

I guess if you're using metal as your gold standard of what rock music should sound like, then you're not gonna like a lot of it... but I think you're pointing to qualities in "indie rock" that are present in tons of rock music generally.

Yesterday I got three albums (bought two, downloaded a third from someplace else) by the Leaders, a jazz group from the late 80s with Lester Bowie on trumpet, Arthur Blythe on alto sax, Chico Freeman on tenor sax, Kirk Lightsey on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, and Famoudou Don Moye on drums. I listened to the third album, Unforeseen Blessings, first, and it's great. Much more straightahead than you'd expect from that lineup, though there are some short, somewhat avant-ish interludes (solo pieces by Lightsey and Moye, and a Blythe/Moye duo) punctuating the compositions. Good stuff.

currently spinning The Everly Brothers' Roots LP, it's... OK? I was expecting more overt psych moves.

I quite like some Weather Report but I've studiously avoided solo Jaco for reasons (mostly fretless bass related). Well, I listened to (most of) *Word of Mouth* and it's bonkers. It has an insane line-up (Herbie, Shorter, DeJohnette, Toots Thielemans etc) but I wasn't expecting third-stream big band fusion.

First track is kind of ugly and has lots of Jaco wibble. Track two made me think of Gil Evans in places, which is never a bad thing. It's the closing track that I liked the most. I'm not mad on the soprano sax, but Shorter is fire here. There are lots of steel drums and some quality handclaps towards the end.

I can see why Jim O'Rourke loves it: there are passages that big Jim nods to on Bad Timing and Eureka.

I love his s/t album

Listened to Deacon Blue's Raintown after Trevor Horn included it in an old Baker's Dozen column on Quietus. Surprised that WXRT didn't pick this up at the time. Could see the band playing Park West to a reasonably well-groomed late 80s Lincoln Park crowd. (update: Confirmed before posted) But then again, the songs aren't all that catchy, are they? I see this band inspires a fair amount of hate. Pleasant enough to my ears, though. Doesn't seem worth getting worked up over either way. Makes me want to listen to Prefab Sprout, which is fine.

I listened to Drukqs yesterday. I found it holds together really well for a supposedly overlong sprawling release (even if it is a little long), it has vision and variations, the gymnopédies tracks are genuinely good, there's a techno urge that is more palpable than in say Autechre, and for all its frenzy it coalesces into a placating whole.

Today they were playing pan-genre Latin covers of Kraftwerk while I was eating my lunch. I Shazam'd! It is Señor Coconut, the alias of a German guy who got into cha-cha and cumbia and made... an album of Kraftwerk covers, in 1999. This was the period when I was at my most musically omnivorous, so I'm surprised I hadn't heard it before-- I was listening to Louis Philippe and Darla compilations and shit so this should've been on my radar? I vaguely recall reading an article (prob in Vice magazine) wherein they shit on Señor Coconut and called it corny. It is corny! But hearing unfamiliar versions of Kraftwerk songs realllllly made me appreciate the brilliance of the musical material... usually I'm just lost in the production and the sounds of it. "The Robots" is an amazing song, every component part is so wonderful. Anyway. In 1999 this might've been considered some corny genre experiment but it was super-great to hear it in 2024, just driving home the classic nature of all these Kraftwerk tracks

yeah, i really wish i had picked up that album on cd when i had the chance.
was always in the racks of my local Fopp.
but i could not reconcile the fact that it was by the same fella behind some of my fave FAX releases as Atom Heart.
oh, and it was before i fell hard for library/corny grooves.

I'm going to pull that album out and listen to it right now!

Today I read this interview with drummer/composer Andrya Ambro in my friend's newsletter. I'd never heard of her, so I pulled up her most recent album, No More Blue Skies, released under the name Gold Dime, on Tidal. It's really good! Postpunk-ish arty vocals and angry guitars and synths, some really interesting rhythmic stuff going on, plus a few free jazz sax solos. It's on Bandcamp.

that senor Coconut record is an absolute blast!

His YMO covers album is pretty good too and he did 'Smoke On The Water', 'Riders On The Storm' and some other rock classics at some point. One trick pony but a consistently fun trick.

if you like that you may wanna check out this collection of steel drum Kraftwerk covers, it's really fun as well

https://www.discogs.com/master/1609899-Ebony-Steel-Band-Pan-Machine

lol i bought that Señor Coconut album in 1999 and sometimes i can still hear it in my head even when Kraftwerk is playing