POLL: The Lion and The Cobra

PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON ME

MC Lyte remix, plz

Just Like U Said It Would B

This was one of the first albums I ever bought that didn't come from the local Wal-Mart, and it really freaked out my parents.

Holy fuck, 21 years ago?

Going with "Jackie." Way underrated, perfect introduction to the album and the artist.

Every single of these songs is scary, weird, and thrilling.

*one

Going with "Jackie." Way underrated, perfect introduction to the album and the artist.

Yes to all that.

This is really hard. I'm tempted to choose "Just Like U Said It Would B" but really it could be any of them.

This feels like the first album of that late 80s/early 90s interzone.

The album is like a tour through the sounds of the eighties as heard by a post-adolescent with a great ear and a big heart.

that late 80s/early 90s interzone

Hahah, I know what you mean -- that's the best term I've heard for it yet.

I thought everyone wanted to have "Jackie"'s spectral babies?

i think her voice then could actually eat a heart out. picked jackie, but love the whole thing.

troy

Mandinka.

Sigh. Another "interzone" messiah who failed to take us into the millennium (it's no surprise she a. interpreted Nirvana b. chose "All Apologies" and c. captured it so perfectly). At this remove, I'm going for "Mandinka." It delivers much more than it promises.

god what an album!

i chose mandinka too but it's impossible, really

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeIHZvZTJTg&feature=related

love this.. "Drink Before the War"

"troy" for the crazy scary epicness

Woah- nostalgia.

Remember buying this in the same haul as Husker Du's 'Warehouse;Songs and Stories'

Then I saw a picture of her. Slightly more aesthetic than Bob Mould.

Bet 'Mandinka' still sounds good?

Gotta be "Troy".

Why has this never been re-mastered/re-released?

Because it still sounds great? (CD is mastered "low" by current standards but , y'know, turn it up..)

MC Lyte remix, plz

LOOK/LOOK/LOOK I"M IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

You know, I liked this album well enough at the time, but for reasons I don't really understand, I don't feel the slightest urge to go to the trouble of hearing it again. I think someone would have to take me on a road trip and make me listen to it again and I'd probably still like it. *shrugs*

Noted.

I voted for "Mandinka" (still remember that Grammy performance!) but I listened to the record yesterday and aside from "Drink Before the War" I think it's consistently great. "Jackie" does take my breath away.

In my mind this album has always been filed alongside The The's Mind Bomb. I suppose it's mainly because they came out about a year of so apart and, well, y'know...

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/sinead-gentle-716405.jpghttp://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/B0000026U001_SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V3642.jpg

i have a hard time listening to "troy" for mostly personal reasons. my instinct says to vote for it on that basis but instead i'll tick another one for "jackie" which is one of the most astonishing album openers i've ever heard

my first teenage crush was on a girl who wore a jean jacket with "JERUSALEM" written across the back IN RUNES

who will vote for "joe"? Not me

don't call me baby just vote for joe

"Every single one of these songs is scary, weird, and thrilling."

Yes, and what is most notable for me is that they're all scary/weird/thrilling in thoroughly different ways. Can "Jackie" prepare you for "Mandinka"? Can "Mandinka" prepare you for "Troy"?

Listening to this again today, apart from being blown away all over again by it's brilliance, it struck me how frequently shocking this album is - in the sense of Sinead providing all these shocks that unsettle you even you know they're coming. Could anyone go from sweet to growling so naturally, so free of artifice, so threateningly. Like in "Jackie" when, after singing so spectrally, she suddenly lashes out: "'You're all WRONG!' I said..."

Or in "Just Like U Said It B": "Would you be my... loverrrrr?"

And there's something so massively cutting about the line "WHY DON'T YOU GO OUT THERE AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL!?!?" in "Drink Before The War", like Sinead is suddenly possessed by a Chorus of women throughout history.

I'm almost scared to listen to this again. Not because I'm afraid I wouldn't like it (I know I would) but because of what I know is waiting for me there.

Part of what makes the album such a thrill is the try-anything-once spirit in which she recorded it. It's a such mishmash of styles; she's trying to figure out what she wants this great clutch of songs to sound like.

Anyone notice how the outro to "Jackie" is vaguely reminiscent of Roxy Music's "Chance Meeting"?

"I Want Your (Hands on Me)"

which was the track that was dead popular with the balearic kids once upon a time?

In my mind this album has always been filed alongside The The's Mind Bomb. I suppose it's mainly because they came out about a year of so apart and, well, y'know...

Sinead also appeared on Mind Bomb...that song about a couple going through the motions...

which was the track that was dead popular with the balearic kids once upon a time?

Hah, I think I discovered that song in a Nightmare on Elm st. film

what an amazing album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

TROY for mad Irish WB Yeats fetish made transcendent. But everything else was this close.

Also b/c when I saw her circa Do Not Want (lulz) she just straight crushed it.

Roger - are you the Wrens man?
Apologies if i have skewed off agin

heh - nope just a pynchon fan with a former prof'l association with stats

Also b/c when I saw her circa Do Not Want (lulz) she just straight crushed it.

yeah it was the final (possibly only) encore the show i saw on that tour. hair-standing-on-end fury. (my hair, not hers.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

NO votes for "Jerusalem"!?!

Argh "Jackie" too low. (Yeah, tough competition but even so.)

Fuck everyone who didn't vote for "Jerusalem" and "Just Call me Joe." Including me.

Didn't see this, would've given "Jackie" another vote!

(So fuck me.)

Yeah WTF. "Jerusalem" by miles.

I missed this poll last time so I just voted in the new poll to set things right.

Oh shit. I just put in a mod req to delete the other poll since it has been done already (after all, this is Sinead O'Connor here, not Steely Dan). Now we've got two of these things floating around in new answers.

this is Sinead O'Connor here, not Steely Dan

Hilarious!

Fuck, didn't see this poll. Would've added to the chorus about Jerusalem, Troy, Jackie, Drink Before the War. I watched a live video of her when I was 15, and I was transfixed. I both wanted to be with her (with no idea how that would work), and feared her (those ideas came more naturally). Fantastic album.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=A-kd5QO8fyE

Honey I just don't give a shit. I've got some good goth stuff in my basket, but this is something else altogether.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JugUQJv9YlY

Mandinka.

Alfred are you there?

wow, where'd ya find this?

I dunno, man.

Ask me later.

man this album kills

Yikes. Bimble.

that is not what i meant! shit.

no no! I noticed he was one of the last posters is all.

oh okay, i freaked out for a second.

it seems wrong to pick one track but it is crazy that "Jerusalem" didn't get a vote.

no seriously this is the best album

seriously!

So stop talking of war
Cause you know we've heard it all before
WHY DON'T YOU GO OUT THERE
AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL

goosebump city

YES.

i have been listening to this album for a month straight and "drink before the war" keeps unfolding like a terrifying flower

ANEBODEE WANNA DRINK BEFOOOOORE THE WARRRRR
HAHAHAHAHA

would love to have her demonic laugh

and your parents paid you through
you got a nice big car nothing bothers yooooouuuuu
SOMEBODY CUT OUT YOUR EYES YOU REFUSE TO SEEEEEEE
OWWWWHHHHH
somebody cut out your heart you refuse to feel

I love that tinypic reassigned the url to a happy whale gif.

i love this album but i can only listen to it every so often because it's exhausting

sinead snarls in that happy whale's general direction

i know what you mean, amanda. i guess i've kind of been in a state.

THAT MAN KNOWS THAT SEA LIKE THE BACK OF HIS HAND!

HE'LL BE BACK SOMETIME....LAUGHING AT YOOOOU

PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON PUT'EM ON ME

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, May 1, 2008 8:53 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I can see too many mouths open
Too many eyes closed, ears closed
Not enough minds open
Too many legs open

why why

I SAID WILL YOU BE MY... LOVERRRRRRRR?
I SAID WILL YOU BE MY... BAAAAAAAAABE?

It's astonishing that she was allowed to produce this thing herself; that's why it sounds like a mixtape of all the genres a teenaged girl would have on a tape of Top 40 songs recorded from the radio.

I can see too many mouths open
Too many eyes closed, ears closed
Not enough minds open
Too many legs open

― Tim F, Monday, October 10, 2011 7:18 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

YES

like "too many legs open" what are you even talking about lady? i can't even figure out where she's coming from half the time.

btw:

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAAAAAN'T SEE THE FLAME

yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu should've left the light on
then i'd never have tried, you'd never have known

^^ i really liked these lines in high school because (to me) they were about the deep embarrassment of trying and failing at seduction
and then she comes back and burns everyone to bits with her incandescent anger
it's like carrie for those who weren't openly reviled, just deeply shamed

a little too much for the average monday, really

we would so have been friends in high school. file under "duh"

Re Troy, I think I was saying this in another thread at some point but it only recently occurred to me that she's basically singing from the perspective of a woman who had an affair with a married (or otherwise committed) man and then has been spurned, right?

What else could it be? I always thought that was the situation, and then he spurned/shamed her, and then she called him out (I know you wanted me to be there, etc)

I wish I still had a copy of this. "Mandinka" fwiw.

No I'm not saying my interpretation is novel or anything, just that I'd listened to it for years and years and never really picked up the specifics. I think Sinead's general drama crowded out any need I had for narrative consistency so I didn't bother looking, and then one day it suddenly snapped into focus like a magic eye.

Ahhh I see.

Also xp -- duh!!

listening to "Troy" communing with 16-year-old Amanda. this song is badass. she sounds so strangled.

this album is AMAZING

this thread has inspired me to pull this out tonight and play it loud

has this been remastered? i remember having to turn it up really loud to get the full desired effect.
i always think of this album when i hear someone described as a "force of nature"

<3 "I Want Your (Hands on Me)"

has this been remastered?

this still stands:

POLL: The Lion and The Cobra

lol at new thread opening image

it's impossible to get tired of this album.

PUT 'EM ON PUT 'EM ON PUT 'EM ON ME

after all these years, I still associate "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" with Nightmare on Elm Street

MC Lyte remix, plz

― Oilyrags, Thursday, May 1, 2008 9:01 AM (7 years ago)

I went back and listened to this edit for the first time in forever and...it's pretty terrible. I somehow remembered it being so much better.

btw, just re-read this entire thread. So much positivity!

fantastic album

mandinka is the greatest song ever written

btw:

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAAAAAN'T SEE THE FLAME

― horseshoe, Monday, October 10, 2011 4:24 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Brad, stop invading my car playlists.

went back and listened to this edit for the first time in forever and...it's pretty terrible. I somehow remembered it being so much better.

FP'd you for this

lol I like MC Lyte a lot, but not on that.

Lyte's rap might not be her best but there's some fun dub-lite effects in those mixes

also what this guy said:

LOOK/LOOK/LOOK I'M IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

― energy flash gordon, Friday, May 2, 2008 7:01 AM (nine years ago)

also:

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAAAAAN'T SEE THE FLAME

― horseshoe, Monday, October 10, 2011 4:24 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAAAAAN'T SEE THE FLAME

― horseshoe, Monday, October 10, 2011 4:24 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

PUT 'EM ON PUT 'EM ON PUT 'EM ON ME

― horseshoe, Tuesday, October 11, 2011

1) this album is the best album ever made

2) did I inadvertently invent the concept of the interzone upthread and, if so, how many cocktails does Alfred owe me

1. otm

2. are we gonna count those cocktails

"Troy" is the clear choice here, but "Jerusalem" should have garnered at least a few votes.

The guitars overall are fierce.

I was fortunate enough to see her on this tour. She was fierce. I was in the front row and almost had to take a step back.

Would've loved to have seen her on this tour, I saw her on the next one in 1990 after her fame had exploded. She was drunk/high off her ass and slurred most of the lyrics, prompting boos from the audience.