Albums that made you get off the 'bus...

But I liked it. What a messed-up world this is.

just restrain from mocking above answer

'driver! (ding ding)'

When I heared he'd rediscovered his love of Small FAces, I got back on for a couple of stops. But I'm off now and I can't remember which stop I got off...

Pavement -- i signed off their station upon Wowee Zowee only to later get talked into Terror Twilight; which was worth the look, and as it turns out, so was BTC.

_What Sound_ almost made me get off the Lamb bus but the new one is RIDICULOUSLY FANTASTIC and makes me love them even more.

I think it is categorically impossible for The Cure, Prince, Orbital, The Prodigy, Meat Beat Manifesto, or De La Soul to do anything that would make me get off of the bus short of beating up my family members.

Cure - wish, Prince - DiamPearls, Dela Dead, others never on t'bus...

That said, Sea Change. Jesus hell, he wrote "Truck Drivin' Neighbors Downstairs", and then this?

yipyip! it's allll about "Trimm Trabb", which I will take great delight in playing very loudly at the ICA next Tuesday.

Re: don's pick of Tricky's "Angels With Dirty Faces", that's the album that got me back on the bus. For a couple of months anyhow, by the time his next record came out I didn't care anymore.

i actually really like Vespertine but it does have a "start of the decline" vibe about it.

if only!

I've been hearing that for the past three years and the only evidence I have is the original pre-Pink version of "Feel Good Time" (which = great) and that song from Eternal Sunshine. I dunno mane.

OH oh oh oh: Beastie Boys, "Alive". Took me longer than most, but I'm not all that geeked about their next LP believe you me.

funnily enough.. i think i was too hard on that album.. listening to it now i think it's pretty good. but it did "throw me off the bus" at the time.

Sadly gave up on the Art of Noise after "Below the Waste."

And I realized last year that, although I'm happy to buy any new Fall studio albums that come out, I simply do not need any more of their post-1985 live albums.

nice x-post dude

Be Here Now - Oasis
Don't tell a Soul - Replacements
Is a woman - Lambchop
Broadcast's first ep for the new record
Poses by rufus
and the first BRMC record

after i saw Him live in 2000... my interest in anything chicago tortoise family related kinda poofed... deflayshawn,
m.

nickalish otm about Ben Folds Five though. That last album was a stinka.

One group I got thrown offa earlier than listed above was Depeche; it was Songs of Faith and Devotion for me.

Most heartbreaking was The Church's Magician Among the Spirits.

I miss the guitars.

You have missed Hologram of Baal, A Box of Birds, After Everything Now This and Forget Yourself = you've been huffing back-bacon fumes too much up there.

After the honeymoon, most of the songs on this album left me cold and bored. I'm not a Wilco basher, really. I've been a fan of Jeff Tweedy's songwriting since 1990, and think he's gotten better and better over the years...until YHF. "I don't believe in touchdowns" ?!! What the fuck does this mean?!! That he's a Bears fan? The music is only slightly better, save for Heavy Metal Drummer, which is flat out brilliant. I'll always be curious about what Tweedy's up to, but I wouldn't touch the poetry book with a 10 ft hippie.

band: CARDIACS
album: Sing to God Pts. I & II

I'd been so blown away by Heaven Born & Ever Bright for its frantic spot-welding of proggy chops and adrenalized punky velocity that I predicted that they'd swiftly become my third favorite band (after Killing Joke and Cop $hoot Cop, of course). Wrong. Had a friend pick up both editions of the hotly-awaited (by me and no one else, apparently) Sing To God album and *OOF* was I let down. Melody jettisoned in favour of furiously masturbatory time signatures (seemingly more restrained on their earlier work). Where once the band attacked, now they played with themselves to no one's benefit.

(i mean, Guns is probably better, but the Sing to God albums are good)

I will probably never buy "North."

Wish by The Cure pretty much turned me off to them, and I have not bought/heard anything Smith has done since then.

Same with Stereolab and Dots and Loops, hate that record with a passion. Fuck John McEntire for ruining Stereolab.

Stoned and Dethroned by Marychain completely threw me off as well. I was expecting more feedback drenched goodness a la Honey's Dead, but that isn't what I got. I remember buying that record the day it came out after waiting for months. I listened to it twice and then threw it into the crappy cd's box in my closet. It stayed there for years.

Aphex Twin -- Drukqs (some good tracks, but still...yawn)

The Flaming Lips -- The Soft Bulletin (I don't know if I was ever exactly on the bus, but once I realized they weren't kidding, this one made me want to get off.)

Public Enemy -- Apocalypse '91 (still pretty strong, but enough of a drop-off to make further pursuit seem unnecessary. I keep wondering if I'm missing anything with their later stuff.)

I got off the Paul Westerberg wagon at Eventually, but I foolishly keep falling back on it.

What a wise wise wise wise wise wise wise wise wise man you are. The new album is actually quite good, though, and I will be seeing them tomorrow.

I'd been so blown away by Heaven Born & Ever Bright for its frantic spot-welding of proggy chops and adrenalized punky velocity that I predicted that they'd swiftly become my third favorite band (after Killing Joke and Cop $hoot Cop, of course). Wrong. Had a friend pick up both editions of the hotly-awaited (by me and no one else, apparently) Sing To God album and *OOF* was I let down. Melody jettisoned in favour of furiously masturbatory time signatures (seemingly more restrained on their earlier work). Where once the band attacked, now they played with themselves to no one's benefit.

this might be the most off-the-money post in the history of ILX. dude probably got as far as halfway through 'Eat It Up Worms Hero' and gave up there and then.

this album is FAR more varied than ANY other Cardiacs album, is INFINITELY more listenable, has melodies to DIE for, DOESN'T rely upon 'masturbatory time signatures' (it's mostly in 4/4), and it's by a country MILE their best work (along with being one of the better albums of the 90s).

i mean, just LISTEN to the album properly, from start to finish, and you'll realise what I'm on about.

Uh-oh.

I see I'm a couple of years too late to answer Kate, but I will anyway: I don't really see how 7&TRT could have possibly let anyone down and I maintain to this very day that those people who didn't get into Notorious or Big Thing during their releases really missed out on some incredibly high quality stuff. But my faith in the band was tested after 2001's "reunion" and after I found that Astronaut's repeatability factor is seriously damaged by the album's overproduction, the ties that bind started to weaken. But what's really turned me off is the Timberlake bullshit attached to the upcoming album, which will be the first album by this band that I swear on everything I own I will NEVER, EVER purchase, not even if I find it for $1 in the bargain bin. And I own both CD versions of Rio, 7&TRT, and the debut album, as well as owning both Decade and Greatest and the Essential Night Versions CD AND Strange Behaviour (i.e. I r mad completist).

I know this is a good maybe great album and maybe even their best (and i did buy it), but after years of Gedge fandom and all those expensive import CDs, I just found that that particular itch had already sufficiently been scratched and reached for the exit cord.

The staggeringly abundant series of Weddoes releases that followed just made me realize that this was a sound fiscal decision. I rarely listen to the Gedger anymore.

I was also going absolutely broke trying to keep up with everything that Lou Barlow was putting out back then so at some point I gave up on that obsession too, I forget at what point that was. Seemed like every week there was a new $10 I owed the guy for something. It was like a bully at school taking my lunch money! (And no sign of it letting up I might add). Oh, also, after about 25 deep on each the Fall and Wire CD's, I decided to take it easy on them too.

These were mainly financial decisions though, not knocks against the artists. The one common thread being the relative or presumed samey-ness of their stuff after buying it for so long. (Like, shell out $15 or maybe just put Shift Work on yet again...)

I would indeed happily fill in my collections now from a $1 bin though.

Up was the last R.E.M. album I bought. I received a review copy of Reveal (and, well, reviewed it)… but I never checked out any of their albums after that, at least not until long after the fact (as a postmortem).

Yeah Up was it for me too. I liked some of it, but was just bored of them by then.

"Up" is the last REM album I loved, it's like they became an ambient band! After that, off the bus but really I got off the bus with "Green". Shiny happy shite!

Green was when R.E.M. started to include lyrics in the booklets and when I rapidly departed the bus.

I know this is going to seem like challops, but the latest Big Thief album really made me lose my taste for them, other than Time Escaping, which is a jam.

yoshimi battles the pink robots

xp time escaping was, at first, my favorite song from that album! and now, somehow, my least favorite.

i got into r.e.m. in high school, and reveal and up were obsessions of me and my friends. in the interim between reveal and Around the Sun, i became familiar with r.e.m. in the 80s, and a lot more 80s music in general. as a result, when Around the Sun came out i gave it two thumbs down, way down, and that was it

i also checked out after yoshimi, although i need to go back to it. there's no way a band that wrote Feeling Yourself Disintegrate doesn't have at least a few moments of brilliance on their next album

i like this brief moment of being familiar with three bands in a row

Lips were a v rare case for me of getting off the bus w/Yoshimi, getting fully back on the bus with Embryonic, and then getting off the bus a 2nd time when they immediately squandered all the potential of their cool new sound with years worth of halfassed collabs and collectable toys and stunts

millions of people disagree with me but not only does Green Day's American Idiot fail as social commentary and entertaining music but it also seemed to wreck their ability to be fun ever again, even when they tried

Divine Comedy - Bang Goes The Knighthood
Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress
Magnetic Fields - I
Kanye West - MBTDF
Basement Jaxx - Scars
Teenage Fanclub - Man-made
Lawrence/Go-Kart Mozart - Hot Dog Streets
Damon Albarn - Somewhere between The Fall and The Magic Whip

I completely agree regarding American Idiot. Warning is their last worthwhile album, with some truly wonderful songs on it. It spawned some great music videos, too.

David Bowie – Let's Dance
Lucinda Williams – Little Honey
Dead Can Dance – Spiritchaser
Leonard Cohen – Dear Heather
Genesis – Abacab
OMD – Junk Culture
Simple Minds – New Gold Dream
Human League – Dare
Peter Gabriel – So
Radiohead – Kid A

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Oh, and Electric Café by Kraftwerk. Probably the most egregious example of an artist pissing all over their glorious legacy I can think of.

xp

gosh.
i love the whole zoolook vocal cut up aspect of electric cafe.
different strokes and all that ..

I lost interest in REM after Up but I was dragged back by Accelerate. Maybe not the best sounding record but it felt like they woke up, slapped each other’s faces and made a 90 yard touchdown run.

The SING TO GOD records are still pretty unlistenable, and I continue to love Cardiacs.

CRALER by IDLES didn't have me getting off the bus, just maybe sitting closer to the exit..

whoops, CRAWLER

I completely agree regarding American Idiot. Warning is their last worthwhile album, with some truly wonderful songs on it. It spawned some great music videos, too.

― beamish13, Thursday, January 12, 2023 3:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

for me it was the album after, AI was more "omg cheesy songwriting, a portent of things to come" amidst some good tracks.

Morrissey - Southpaw Grammar. In retrospect I'd already stayed on way past my stop.

NIN - With Teeth
Autechre - Untilted (but then I got back on the bus with Oversteps and revisited Untilted and liked it?)
M83 - Junk
Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Kanye - Life of Pablo
Flaming Lips - The Fear

Still Crazy After All These Years

missing Hearts and Bones? Seems a waste even if you don’t like the Graceland phase

lol was making a dumb joke based on one of the lyrics of one of the songs on the album

sorry Gus

Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream is a great pick. My god, they were on FIRE between 1980 and 1984

Dear Catastrophe Waitress = "albums that made you get back on the bus" afaic

Bad Religion had that for me with uhh...No Substance, only to get back on for The Process of Belief.

I'd expect more got off the Simple Minds bus later than New Gold Dream. Was that considered a sell-out by anyone, at the time?

I popped back on t'bus for "Girls in Peacetime", even went the box box. Was just like old times.

But, that's it now.

big box

Dino Jr lost me around Without a Sound. It just sounded to me like J Mascis was going through the motions. I hate that their biggest "hit" was my least favorite song on the whole thing. Even the cover art was a turn-off. I got back onboard for a little while when Lou came back, but I haven't really listened to anything since Farm.

^ Same! I don't even seem capable of *remembering* any of WaS beyond the first two tracks. And those two only fare better because of casual broadcast exposure rather than personal enthusiasm. The (relative) MOR sheen of Where You Been? had already been somewhat confronting but pretty much all of the individual songs still managed to assert themselves regardless.

Weezer’s Green Album pissed me off so much that I’ve never heard any of their subsequent works

I’m not particularly fond of Dinosaur Jr.’s reunion albums

but . . . farm is incredible

never paid much attention to green day after dookie but some while back i heard 'boulevard of broken dreams' on a car radio and wow it is just awful

Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now
After an unimpeachable 3-album run, a couple of sideways slips, and the peaks-n-valleys half-masterpiece of Transcendental Blues, this was the record where I knew he’d never make anything essential ever again.

Elvis Costello - North
I could always find something of merit in even his fuckups to this point, but holy shit, what a steaming turd. Things were never the same again between us.

I'd say a couple of the groups way back in the earlier ILM days I found through the site was Porcupine Tree and Mastodon.

For as much as I really loved Porcupine Tree, I have not checked out anything Wilson has done since "The Incident". I struggled to even listen to that one a couple of times.

"The Hunter" was just EHHHHGGGHH do not like how that sounds at all. I still listen to the other earlier Mastodon records, but I have not checked out much other than a video of their later records. I was thinking to myself it was kind of wild Mastodon has been around now like 20 years. Time flies.

The Hunter is a major speed bump in the Mastodon discography. Give the albums after it a listen — Crack The Skye is amazing, and the most recent one, Hushed & Grim, is great, too. I like the albums in between, too, but CTS and H&G are real peaks.

h.dill: North is probably the most boring album I ever purchased (and that is saying a lot, because I have bought some very bad albums)

Prodigy - Fat Of The Land
Pearl Jam - Yield

Enjoyed both of these a lot at the time but just couldn't be arsed after that

The SING TO GOD records are still pretty unlistenable, and I continue to love Cardiacs.

― Alex in NYC, Thursday, January 12, 2023 2:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is such an odd take that I'm actually really impressed by it. its like someone saying "I love Yes but man did they lose the plot when Close to the Edge came out"

Drive By Truckers: The Big To Do
Lucero: All A Man Should Do
Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil
Reigning Sound: Love and Curses

Green was when R.E.M. started to include lyrics in the booklets and when I rapidly departed the bus.

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, January 11, 2023 8:24 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was only "world leader pretend"! and they didn't include full lyrics on an album until up!

For as much as I really loved Porcupine Tree, I have not checked out anything Wilson has done since "The Incident". I struggled to even listen to that one a couple of times.

yeah same, I think there's something about these albums which are generally pretty good but nevertheless lean pretty hard into the aspects of the band you're not crazy about. I can tolerate bad albums if they at least try something new, but yeah this one was just too far down the wrong road. though it was the last PT album for a long time. anyway the albums that came to mind for me are like that. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse was the big one. MM was such a big part of my teenage/early 20s years, all their songs still have massive play counts on my iTunes, would seem unfathomable that they'd do an album that I thought was "decent" but nevertheless would just still my enthusiasm for the band. and yet there it was. "Dashboard" still rules though

Possibly I am too young to have many examples. I rarely also truly 'get off the bus' as I find it necessary to hear all new albums by acts I have really liked at some point at least once. However two examples that come straight to mind (if only because they were once all-time favourite bands):

I fell out with Green Day after the trilogy. American Idiot was my favourite album as a child and they were still my favourite band when 21CB was released (still think that's a very good album). There were some nice songs on the 2012 albums and an incredible amount of stuff I never cared for haven't listened to since. I have heard the two records since but think little of them.

I haven't listened to any Muse album since the 2nd Law more than twice although Simulation Theory was quite good.

Miss Anthropocene

I find when my mum got off the bus more interesting. She had every R.E.M. album up to and including Monster, which she loved, so it seems a bit strange to me she'd leave it there.

She also loved U2 all through the 80s but was baffled by The Fly so didn't buy anything by them again until Beautiful Day was on the radio and she was like oh yes they're back.

Green was when R.E.M. started to include lyrics in the booklets and when I rapidly departed the bus.

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, January 11, 2023 8:24 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was only "world leader pretend"! and they didn't include full lyrics on an album until up!

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, January 13, 2023 2:44 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I found this odd too. They'd also been "flashing" their lyrics in their videos for a few years before that!

I stopped following New Order after Republic (whch I loved at the time and still love). Then saw them on the Music Complete tour and went back to the albums I missed (and like them too, not as much as Republic and before).

She had every R.E.M. album up to and including Monster, which she loved, so it seems a bit strange to me she'd leave it there.

Great place to stop, IMO! It’s downhill fast after that…

I stopped following New Order after Republic (whch I loved at the time and still love). Then saw them on the Music Complete tour and went back to the albums I missed (and like them too, not as much as Republic and before).

This was where my wife gave up, too. I stopped after Technique.

I got of the bus with The Cure when 'Wish' was released. I hated 'Friday I´m in love'.

Also, I was a big Morrissey fan up until 'You are the quarry', after that I lose interest. It also didn't help that he became to have awful opinions (Maybe he always had, but I wasn't aware until then, I live in Mexico).

*started to have