bands you were wrong about

I think up until the age of 25 I was actively opposed to Abba. Now I love them so much. Think I must have 180'd on them overnight. What acts have you changed your mind about, for better or worse?

gay dad

i thought medeski martin and wood were worth listening to

all of them.

rihanna, fergie

Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan.
Dad's hatred of the former and love of the latter infiltrating my younger self.

i quite liked the Beatles when i was a kid

I suspect I was wrong about Beach House.

Same here with ABBA. Hated them, but now I love them more than I ever hated them.

More recently, I hated the Hold Steady on first listen. I just couldn't get around Craig Finn's vocals on Almost Killed Me, which sounded brash and arrogant. I thought the same thing about Separation Sunday, too. I guess it was my third listen when the band just floored me.

i used to rmde at springsteen as a youth, despite actively loving all the songs of his that i knew---it was like the ~idea~ of springsteen was offensive to me or something. i realize now that i was rong.

I suspect I was wrong about Beach House.

― chupacabra - a delicious burrito (DJP), Sunday, June 19, 2011 3:27 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

in what sense?

okay now I am second-guessing, I thought it was Beach House that I did the 180 on but apparently they don't do a song titled "Boyfriend" or "Girlfriend" or something similar?

basically there's some "dream pop" group from last year that I thought sucked that I heard a different song by and was all "woah this is actually awesome" but now I don't know who it was

Sonic Youth.

AC/DC - didn't like Bon Scott era for years, said it all 'sounded the same'. RONG
W.A.S.P. - thought they were generic hard rock at first. RONG. love em, at least the classic albums.

i remember writing about this when i first joined ILX, but Talk Talk. "Spirit of Eden" sounded like sparse easy listening mixed with Adam Duritz vocals or something to me, for maybe a few months. then one day, ilxor elan was playing them around sunset and i got it all of a sudden. for months after that was the most played thing on my itunes.

Jay-Z - just flat out hated him, thought he was a mediocre rhymer

I spent far too much time liking indie rock.

Wasted years.

I hated Judas Priest when I was younger. I think initially I didn't like The Mars Volta, I liked the other ex-At The Drive-In band.

I also remember insulting Blind Guardian and calling them a buncha dorks who read Tolkien to people on stage.

I hated Neutral Milk Hotel at first, thought Mangum's voice was horrible and the music was blah campfire folk. I listened to Into the Aeroplane, Over the Sea over and over on the last long road trip I took.

I also 180'd on Pavement.

Most shamefully, I didn't get anything out of electric Miles the first time I listened to it.

I hated The Fall until I was almost 30 at which point I listened to "Palace Of Swords Reversed" and heard it completely differently.

I couldn't stand James Brown's ubiquitous funky drummer beat in the early 90s. Ten years later I heard a singles comp and flipped for him.

I was always luke-warm to 60s garage rock and hated psych until this year.

It happens, that's why I learned never to say never about any music, and will revisit things to see if my perception has changed.

xpost to kraudive. Amen!

The Grateful Dead. Everyone I knew who tried to find a good entry point for me (knowing that my benchmarks are the Who and Miles Davis) would say the same thing: "The studio albums aren't that great; you have to hear their live stuff!" Fair enough; which ones? "Oh, ALL of them, man!" So I assumed that the aimless half-asleep noodling of the 80s/90s Dead was how they always were (and that the FM radio hits were the result of a herculean effort at cohesiveness). Thanks to one Scott Seward, I realized that the Dead have good eras and bad eras (like any band); and the Dead's good era (roughly '67-'72) is far better than I ever thought possible. Live/Dead got me hooked, and I've listened to nothing but the Dead for the last two months (haven't made it past '72, though). This is the most extreme and unexpected 180 I've done on any band, ever.

Now that I think about it, I just listened to a random ambient Eno track the other day and loved it. The last time I listened to his ambient box I was uninterested, so I'll give it another review and expect to like it much more this time.

Actually, all reggae was the really big one for me. Hated literally anything I heard in the 1980s with a passion. When I went to university I got into On U Sound via the tenuous industrial connection and got into bands like African Headcharge and Dub Syndicate but it wasn't until about ten years later when I heard the 100% Dynamite compilation on Soul Jazz that I realised fully how insanely wrong I'd been. It's a great compilation but that's probably not the whole story. I was pretty uptight when I was a teenager.

tbh up until this v moment i didn't think there was a single person on the planet that actually ~hated~ reggae

Morrissey?

But yeah, I fucking loathed it. Admittedly I'd only heard mainly things like Bob Marley and the Wailers (who I still hate), UB40 and then the kind of top 40 pop cross over stuff. But I hated the sound of it.

Like I say, love it now. It was a massive lesson for me never to write a genre off.

Ask Markers is making me listen to nu-metal with fresh ears

don't.

i went to college and they made me listen to neutral milk hotel and i was like this sounds like better than ezra where are my death records but that band turned out to be pretty good

I never used to be able to feel dub, and that's changed a lot in the past year. I used to feel the way gbx did about Bruce Springsteen as well, hated the idea of him but liked all the songs. (Same with Fleetwood Mac, really, but that changed looong ago.) It took me ages to get the Fall, too. Derrick May. So much stuff... I love that about listening.

I associates reggae with hippie toering shite until I heard Horace andy and the soul jazz comps as a student. I blame a gcse music module where they made us count all the bars in an Aswad song for some stupid reason. I'd say my fondness for reggae is now on a par with my most favourite styles of music now. Can take or leave marley.

Yeah, I hated Aswad but now there are a few records by them that I'd hold up as fucking smoking, their live album being one of them.

i used to think aswad was a crust band i was wrong

I pretty much hated Led Zeppelin up until a couple of years ago.

Ask Markers is making me listen to nu-metal with fresh ears

― vmic damone (rip van wanko), Sunday, June 19, 2011 5:58 PM

*like*

I pretty much hated the grateful dead until a few years ago

ditto, for basically the same reasons i disparaged springsteen

I still haven't come around on them but I also haven't tried to either.

Tom Waits and Talking Heads were two groups I used to really loathe hearing. Then I discovered 'Closing Time' by Waits and fell in love with the song Martha. Slowly I've started to like a few songs off other records of his. When I heard 'Remain In Light' everything by the Talking Heads suddenly made sense and I felt foolish for disliking them for so long.

OTOH that PM Dawn album I "awarded" 5 stars in 1992 (& compared to Brian Wilson!) sounded pretty boring when I played it in the 21st century

the negative reaction to some of the pavement poll results makes me think i'm "wrong" about them. i mean, i'm a big fan, but for the wrong reasons i guess.

i keep trying over and over again to like a KISS album every year. no luck so far.

I loved Aesop Rock when they were new, kinda meh on it now

KISS wasn't very good outside Destroyer imo. Love Gun was mostly filler.

ZZ Top

Had no love for them since all I knew growing up was the 80s stuff. Just recently got into their first 3 LP's and have completely flipped on them. The song that did it was Brown Sugar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVxMB6w8PU

Love how he holds that note until the drop, love the guitar throughout, love the groove. ZZ Top have swing, that elusive "it" that all bands strive for, just some cool-ass dudes imo.

If I ever change my mind about Sublime, one you ilxors come and beat me up. Deal?

deal

r.e.m. in that i couldn't stand stipe's voice, then got pretty heavily into them.

i wouldn't say that i *disliked* them, but as i've grown older i've become much fonder of springsteen and macca. paul > john.

the biggest switch will happen if i ever accept steely dan. as it is i respect them, but don't want to listen.

Your last line reminds me of Derek Zoolander on Sting:

"Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that"

haha fair enough

there must be another thread for this, but i have made a complete 180 on Sufjan in the past month. i feel terrible that i spoke ill of him and his music.

i guess i was wrong about yes

Animal Collective. Although I think I still understand why I found them really annoying the several times I tried to get into them years ago (especially when Peacebone was always the song I would start with)

Fe-Mail

Joanna Newsom

+1 on Animal Collective, though my trajectory was more "they're cool"> "they're obnoxious"> "no, they're actually cool"

i guess i was wrong about yes

"they're cool"> "they're obnoxious"> "no, they're actually cool"

tbf this can happen over the course of a single album side of theirs!

same here. I remember all the hoopla surrounding MPP, I listened to "My Girls" and thought it sounded like Dan Deacon but less exciting and more annoying. everyone was losing their minds over it so I took a contrarian stance. when the music media started to turn against them I actually felt a little bad. Painting With got savaged and I read those reviews like "how is this any different?". so I listened to the album thinking maybe it would be so bad it was good and...it was like, legitimately good? like okay, it's hyperactive and exhausting but the songs themselves were great! went back and listened to MPP and found "My Girls" was probably the song I liked the least!

Animal Collective:

This is weird, not sure > This is the best thing ever > Not sure about this > Nope, they're super annoying > Huh This is okay > Yes actually I love it > I am at peace with this band and they have my blessing

I was fortunate enough to hear them early--I had a friend who was a regular at Other Music and nabbed those early duo CDs--and I liked everything up to Sung Tongs, at which point I will admit that the hype brought out the contrarian in me, but only somewhat, because I also thought everything I heard that coincided with their popularity was cloying and jittery and decidedly not for me. It was an unlikely side project that brought me back around: the very under-loved and reportedly Lynch-inspired album Avey Tare made with his wife that was iirc intentionally pressed to play in reverse. I thought that record was cool and cautiously got back on the bus. I'm excited for the upcoming Geologist album of him remixing Doug Shaw's guitar miniatures - the samples sound great

I love My Girls now but at the time I just thought "is that it?!" with all the fuss. I think Avey's voice and the BONKERS sounds of Strawberry Jam I just couldn't get with. I resented them quite a lot, because they were so adjacent to all the other stuff I was into, and everyone was throwing Beach Boys comparisons around, which I could barely hear at all. I got that with the Panda albums though, which was my eventual way in.

Yeah. To this day the only song of theirs I have time for is “what would I want sky”

I also sort of like the slightly contrary nature of appreciating they've gone through a huge stage where many lapsed fans think what they have done SUCKED since Fall Be Kind, yet everything I've heard seems perfectly fine to my ears

their last two have been pretty good and as far as I can see were well-received. maybe they've just shaken the casuals. I do maintain that Centipede and Painting were massively underappreciated, they feel like albums that would be rated much higher if another band did them.

i also think they're a band where it helps to read an interview or two with the guys, they're pretty down to earth and friendly, they're definitely self-aware about what they do. for whatever reason I'd assumed they might have that Ariel Pink vibe to them, like reveling in their own weirdness and being proud of how they put people off, but they aren't like that at all, they come across like guys you'd want to be friends with. so I guess that made me like them a lot too.

I’d bet they could make some killer vapor if they wanted to

I've only heard Centipede for the first time a few weeks ago and to me it sound like the ideal follow-up to MPP. Painting With I think is fine but I think its ultra bouncy bouncy fun fun fun vibe might be considered unchill to some bros

I mean the second half of “sky” is basically that

It's fair to say everything up to Prospect Hummer was unassailable and then it started going a bit wobbly

Sufjan went very quickly from “this is really not my thing” (Illinoise) to “this is wonderful, generous, essential” (Adz onward, although I already started turning around w BQE, which rules)

yea I think the songs on Painting With work well on playlists or in small doses but it's one of those that winds up being a test of endurance despite only being a single LP. if they'd cut a couple songs and left it as a 30 minute album it might've been received better.

Baja men — who let the dogs out is brilliant.

I remember when it came out, 98 or 99, I was out for happy hour with work friends, singing this song walking down the street to the bar, replacing “dogs” with the surname of a surly co-worker

Liking AnCo seems to be equal parts how you feel about the music and how you feel about liking AnCo.

I think I mainly just hated the fact people called them AnCo

lol otm

i have struggled with Animal Collective. they have a kind of maximalist, hyper-affective sound that rubs me the wrong way and even feels somewhat manipulative to me, in a similar way that Taylor Swift does, if that makes sense

Listening back to them and kind of getting it for the first time - their 2000s stuff, did they low-key kickstart the entire millennial whoop thing? They seemed to drop it like a hot potato once it got popular though

Also, having enjoyed the first two Yeasayer albums, I now realise that the second is especially post-AnCo and was oblivious to this at the time

Fe-Mail
― sleeve, Saturday, January 25, 2025 8:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Joanna Newsom
― sleeve, Saturday, January 25, 2025 8:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Intriguing! From hot to not, or vice versa? I love me a Syklubb fra Hælvete, so I'm biased.

both were ones I actively disliked on first listen, and then later realized were awesome

i don't know what happened to me but i can't listen to sun city girls or related anymore. maybe some of the alvarius b i could listen to. i still like that split alvarius b/cerberus shoal EP. i even started a drunken lovefest thread once for them! at some point it just started to seem too...smarmy/smirky/zappanthropic and if i wanted african surf i would listen to african music. the writing should have been on the wall if i thought about how much of their stuff i used to own and how easy it was for me to sell ALL of it a la acid mothers temple. just didn't miss it. would almost rather listen to...ween? at one point on ilm this would be 1st degree heresy but i don't know about now. maybe i'll change my mind again when i'm 80.
so i think i might have been rong about SCG. i might have actually enjoyed their aesthetic/overabundance/wackiness more than the music. i'm keeping my Godz records on ESP though.

Oo I love that Cerberus Shoal split, and the one they did w Herman Dune. My favourite Cerberus Shoal!

I think the whole AnCo-maximalism thing only kicked in aroud Strawberry Jam and before that they were a better and less obvious band

And I will say again that Prospect Hummer is one of the best bits of 2000s art

i folded on AnCo after seeing most of ‘Feels’ performed live— in a basement of a dormitory, with ~100 people there max— and being blown away, and then having the record fall totally flat for me afterwards. i have tried since, but can’t get back to what i saw in them
at that show and prior to that show— they were certainly my favorite band for a few years there

I liked “Hey Light” when it came out and went to see them— they were a two piece, this was likely 2002? It was easily the worst show I’ve ever seen in my life. They were getting jeered at; one audience member broke a window as he was leaving, the show was so enraging.

I've only seen them once and it was fairly recently, they played "Defeat" which hadn't actually come out yet and I'll always remember how silent the room was during the end part, like you can always hear conversations and people shuffling around during quiet bits in shows but not here. Everyone was transfixed. Nothing against the studio recording which is fine but its just something you can't replicate in a home listening environment

i think i would cry if i ever had to see animal collective live. oh god i don't even want to think about it. i think you'd have to be whatever age you had to be back then to be really into them. 19 in 2006? that age? when you were at your most annoying.
do millennials listen to sun city girls? its probably all old people who listen to them.

First time I heard YMO was one of the live albums and I thought it was cheesy electro-rock with all the fusion guitar going on. In fact I still don't like that guy's playing. Anyway I was encouraged to persevere by a noted ilxor, and the next album I heard was Solid State Survivor which set me onto a path from which there was no turning back.

PS Can you all stop saying 'AnCo'? It's setting my teeth on edge. Thanks!

I'll always remember how silent the room was during the end part, like you can always hear conversations and people shuffling around during quiet bits in shows but not here.

this happened at the Joanna Newsom show I saw!

I’ve tried over and over with YMO and there is nothing in it for me

there is something in their version of "tighten up" for me. it speaks to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE7RHkosHs0

do millennials listen to sun city girls? its probably all old people who listen to them.

I'm in the millennial bracket and had a huge SCG phase a few years ago, well nearly a decade at this point. And I remember coming across plenty of other fans on RYM and last fm back then, millennial and younger. I think it's worth noting that the band's back catalogue was almost completely unavailable by legal means up until relatively recently, so they were relatively hard to "discover".

nice to hear. I am ground zero for SCG fandom, saw them at age 17 on their 1st US tour in June 1984. I miss Charlie, gonna leave it at that.

I loved Animal Collective in 2006 at age 40! went to see the post-Feels tour in a big venue but my friends had seen the smaller club tour with Black Dice a couple years back, I'm still jealous

still keeping all my SCG raers for now, and have even rebought a few, altho I can part with my og Torch since I genuinely believe the remaster is superior.

but they are a real mixed bag and I get where scott is coming from, I think about that "do I have too many AMT records" thread a lot!

Have sold a few of my AMTs because i needed the money. Never going to part with La Novia though

that is a great album for real. i would buy that cd if i came across it.

I did sell that one, but it's great. My fave is still the CD-only bonus track "In D"

(that was on a different album than La Novia, to be clear)

the la novia cd has more music, right? more songs. then the vinyl.

First time I heard YMO was one of the live albums and I thought it was cheesy electro-rock with all the fusion guitar going on.

I have a lot of respect for Kazumi Watanabe but I do question how much his style really fit in with the band. The live album Public Pressure overdubs all his parts with synths (apparently his label wanted way too much for his appearance) and honestly I think it works better.

I loved YMO from the moment I heard them, but it did take me a while to get into Hosono's solo work. I didn't really get what people were hearing in it. It just sorta clicked all the sudden and I thought he was one of the greatest musicians on the planet pretty much overnight

Yeah. To this day the only song of theirs I have time for is “what would I want sky”

― calstars, Saturday, January 25, 2025 3:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Same.

Good to hear millennials are into a bit of SCG. I am listening to them a lot lately. So many treasures.

the la novia cd has more music, right? more songs. then the vinyl.

― scott seward

yah I think so, just like In C

SCG’s best moments are incredible— I got into them around 2005, around the time when I was “at my most annoying” according to scott.

(ever wonder why we have trouble getting younger users on here?)

as far as AnCo, I saw them on that Black Dice tour, and while they were good, Black Dice had to miss a few shows and Gang Gang Dance took their spot—they basically played the Revival of the Shittest record and it was so insane and overwhelming that I had to lay down at the back of the venue. excellent show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVNN21ue6Os

i still have that tour poster somewhere.

interesting, my friends who saw the show in PDX were way more impressed with AC than Black Dice (Berbati's Pan was the venue, guessing 2004?)

I was saying that Gang Gang were more impressive— they were! (and imho their records are better too)

I was saying that Gang Gang were more impressive— they were! (and imho their records are better too)

In a perfect world, GGD would have been as popular as Animal Collective. I've never understood why they didn't blow up. Very underrated band imo

i'm guessing the stupid fucking name didn't help

it's better than "Animal Collective"

I think the whole AnCo-maximalism thing only kicked in aroud Strawberry Jam and before that they were a better and less obvious band

― the wedding preset (dog latin)

Yeah that’s how I feel about them. Feels is still my favorite thing they’ve done and have trouble getting into much of what they made afterwards. I think their EPs are better than their albums: Fall Be Kind, Prospect Hummer, Meeting of the Waters, Water Curses…)

I was wrong about Lana Del Rey.

wait now you like her or now you don't? i think i became more impressed with her as time went on. i took her more seriously.

I like her!

xxp yes I agree - Fall Be Kind and Prospect Hummer are probably my favourite things by them. I don't HATE Strawberry Jam or Merriweather, they're just very hit-and-miss and were the start of the band becoming actively cloying and making some indefensible musical choices. Moka did you listen to Isn't It Now? It's actually very very good, especially 'Defeat' which really feels like a return-to-form

Animal Collective has put a bunch of live shows on bandcamp, and I'll recommend listening to some. Even the songs from Painting With make sense when they become live noise/drone/psych jams. And the earlier live shows pretty much all sound incredible.

always found it a bit odd that they don't have a big community of people trading boots the way bands like Ween do. their live shows are often way different than the studio records - when I saw them sometimes it would take me a minute or two to recognize what song they were even playing. in particular "Wide Eyed" was just so much different live than on Centipede. they're not always good of course but at least they're willing to fall on their faces.

Now that I think about it, I just listened to a random ambient Eno track the other day and loved it. The last time I listened to his ambient box I was uninterested, so I'll give it another review and expect to like it much more this time.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sunday, June 19, 2011 5:38 PM

I did like it much more, in fact I went out and bought the box and got much deeper into ambient after that.

always found it a bit odd that they don't have a big community of people trading boots the way bands like Ween do. their live shows are often way different than the studio records - when I saw them sometimes it would take me a minute or two to recognize what song they were even playing. in particular "Wide Eyed" was just so much different live than on Centipede. they're not always good of course but at least they're willing to fall on their faces.

― frogbs, 27. januar 2025 23:06 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, a lot of the talk was about them always playing the next album on tour, never playing the songs just as they were. When I saw them after Strawberry Jam, they must have played MPP tracks (can't recall what they sounded like, never liked that album), and I think the only recent 'hit' they played was the Fireworks/Essplode medley. It would make sense with a lot of bootlegging.

The recent Sung Tongs anniversary live version is pretty great. Really goes in on the 'early Kompakt played on acoustic guitars' vibe.

they did! pre-Feels, they had their own message board. that’s how former ilxor lfam got them to hear the live at Haverford College show that he recorded in April 2005, and how some tracks from it were included on the Japanese version of that record.

this version of Banshee Beat made me cry when they were playing it and it still does, probably more from nostalgia now tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kU-_l-7Jds

Not so much wrong as deeply neglected Skinny Puppy for years after a brief intense obsession with Last Rights until I revisited their 1987-92 period and realized wow, what they're doing is so clear actually, such a unique band, they hit more times than not, and I want them as a daily companion. Who else is going to give me this mix of fluid dark textures, threatening ambiances, cool samples, machine rhythms, melodic hooks, sense of intimacy, mastery in layering and trippiness.

Also makes me realize there is a genre music VS general canon fight to carry on, like there is in literature.

Never liked The Cure that much. But hearing some of their output in the tracks thread is making me think again.

Not so much wrong as deeply neglected Skinny Puppy for years after a brief intense obsession with Last Rights until I revisited their 1987-92 period and realized wow, what they're doing is so clear actually, such a unique band, they hit more times than not, and I want them as a daily companion. Who else is going to give me this mix of fluid dark textures, threatening ambiances, cool samples, machine rhythms, melodic hooks, sense of intimacy, mastery in layering and trippiness.

Had this same experience a few years ago but the one album I knew was Rabies and I became deeply absorbed in everything from 1984-1992. (I saw them on the Last Rights tour, but was mostly there accompanying my wife, who was a much bigger fan. I had been hoping to see Godflesh, but they couldn't get their visas sorted to enter the country and had to cancel.)

This morning I heard the instrumental "Theme for Great Cities" on a compilation and now I'm wondering if I might have been wrong about Simple Minds all this time, since other than this I only knew the Breakfast Club song...

It all went wrong on Sparkle In The Rain for Simple Minds, everything before that is gold.

^^^ very much so

Och, we already knew that.

yeah, i had my Simple Minds wake up call when they released the X5 boxset of all the early albums and 12" versions etc.
had ignored them up until then due to having no interest in what came later.

Hey xyzzzz my generalized level of enjoyment of The Cure is tepid at best but the new album is really, really incredible

Yeah, its really caught me by surprise.

Took me a while to get early Simple Minds, as I kept going to the first album and being a bit 'meh' (understandably)

I recall Jim half-dismissed their debut by saying it was "a bit Boomtown Rats" which did not impress Geldof

i like it more than any boomtown rats album and i am a tonic for the troops fan. SM debut always reminded me a little of the Japan debut. i think simple minds are one of the greatest post-punk/80s bands whose reputation was sadly tarnished by their later success. i love everything they did up until once upon a time. and they did a LOT before that. like 7 albums and a zillion singles. in 4 years or so! unbelievable.

New album by the Cure hasn't changed my mind, sadly, since I kinda wanna like them and was hoping this would be the one. I just find their general sound to be ploddy and their attempts at atmosphere fail to transport me with these droney held keys. So many of their songs seem to be based on fairly predictable (but unhooky) chord progressions and I'm not really getting any sense of funk or syncopation or experimentation that I want from this kind of music. I know there are probably loads of exceptions, of course, and i do like a good few of their songs, but overall they just don't hold my interest. Also those intros go on for way too long and I find myself playing a game in my head where I'm like "Okay is Robert gonna start singing now? Nope! How about now?"

Maybe it'll all click one day. I have Seventeen Seconds on vinyl.

listen to The Head On The Door.

Okay, will do. I love Close To Me, actually- that's a great song

The Top is cool too. feel like it gets lost in the shuffle.

and its varied. and weird. because acid.

The Top goes with Hyaena. they should come together as a double CD.

I heard there's a virus going round that makes people forget the names of eighties bands and no one knows the cure

after being a huge deal for me in my teens i'm rarely in the mood for them now tbh. the 'japanese whispers' comp is the one i would reach for though if you were to make me listen to them right this minute (could do without ever hearing lovecats again though)

I'm not really getting any sense of funk or syncopation or experimentation that I want from this kind of music

hey now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6vVP91C3Iw

i was surprised how much i enjoyed kissmekissmekissme recently. i haven't listened to it in years and years. i played it a ton when it came out and then never really played it after that. it was more diverse and the songs were way better than i remembered. it has a lot going on.

1979 to 1989 cure is all good with me pretty much. there is so much there. 10 years of goodness. i don't really listen to them beyond that. i'm sure there is lots of good stuff for the faithful. i just don't for some reason. i fell for them in 1982 and was all in. (happily ever after...was so huge in the early 80s if you were a suburban u.s. cure fan because i could not find those albums by themselves anywhere.)

Also those intros go on for way too long

a feature, not a bug

i was surprised how much i enjoyed kissmekissmekissme recently. i haven't listened to it in years and years. i played it a ton when it came out and then never really played it after that. it was more diverse and the songs were way better than i remembered. it has a lot going on.

_Also those intros go on for way too long_

a feature, not a bug

The Cure are my all-time favorite band and surprised dog latin doesn't get them. I too was going to suggest KM3 as it's off the wall and is so varied that it might work. Head on the Door is sort of the perfect choice tho. But i actually think Pornography should be the one as it's quintessential Cure, it's so heavy that it's almost Metel. But it seems to be the stuff that he is complaining about, so maybe not the right fit.

Or just do what almost everyone in 1986 did and listen to Standing on a Beach.

The "Staring at the Sea" side of the cassette was my favorite Cure listen for a long time.

The Cure is my by friends best band, so I've heard it so many times without being the one who put it on. We got into music around 2000, so his gateway record was Bloodflowers, which is still probably the one I know the best. And this might be my favourite Cure song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuoCTPmaiPU

Other than that, I'm team Head On The Door all the way.

The Cure are my all-time favorite band and surprised dog latin doesn't get them

Right? And that's why I want (hoho) to like them more, because they absolutely should be my thing*. I'll give the classic albums another shot, starting with HOTD, then KM3.

*Do we have a thread for this? Acts who absolutely should be your thing but don't click at all? Nick Cave is the other big one for me, and Joy Division/New Order - I have a love of flamboyance and noir. I'm a huge fan of artsy crooners like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Scott Walker; of loads and loads of new wave and post-punk bands too, but those acts do nothing for me

The Cure have never done it for me either, fwiwi

A great series of singles from "Killing an Arab" to "Friday I'm In Love"

Do we have a thread for this? Acts who absolutely should be your thing but don't click at all?

We do! It's right here

And The Cure are on that list for me, I like the odd single but Bob's voice is just too whiny after a while. And I've tried repeatedly to revisit.

With any artist/band there are decisions/aesthetics/tendencies that work for some listeners and don't work for others. Funnily enough, DL, (although I love New Order beyond belief) I've never opened my heart to either Nick Cave or The Cure. With Nick it's something weird about "place" I guess, I can't deny songs like "The Mercy Seat" but it generally feels like he's doing Americana the same way Drake does rap. With The Cure, it's always just me feeling like "OK that's the decision that was made, here?" whether it's the first 90 seconds of "The Holy Hour" making me want to turn it off (this is not a bass riff I enjoy to listen to, and I'm allergic to flange) and rendering me unable to enjoy "Faith" (The Cure album); or the endless smudge of an endless slog of an endless intro to "Plainsong" always making me reticent to attempt once again to enjoy "Disintegration" (The Cure album) after so, so, so many failed attempts. God, "Plainsong". I've heard three different masters of it by now? I think? hoping for 'a way in' to this supposedly classic album, different volumes, moods, speaker combinations, headphones, times of day, and not once have I felt anything less than repulsed by the sonics of it, the ponderousness of it, the meander of the melodies. I'm unable to enjoy The Cure just as some diners are unable to enjoy cilantro, I guess! Doesn't mean I think they're a bad band by any stretch, they've written five-to-ten songs I adore, but there is no album of theirs I've enjoyed... until the most recent one!

Idk why the new one clicked for me, it's even MORE ponderous and dense and ridiculous, but I think it just took it so far in its density that it became incredibly charming. And "A Fragile Thing" is gorgeous. My only complaint on it really is that Reeves (my favourite Bowie guitarist, love his cameo on "Wrong Number") kinda drops the ball on record, I'm used to feeling transported by his solos but heard nothing especially elevating here.

I don't understand saying you're "unable to enjoy" a band who've "written five-to-ten songs you adore". Wouldn't you just call that inconsistency?

I think with The Cure there is a stark divide between their pop single side and their more gothy dirgey side. My introduction to them was the Standing on a Beach singles collection, which I loved, and I also loved Kiss Me x3, but most of their other albums didn't really connect and I jumped off at Disintegration.

Idk why the new one clicked for me, it's even MORE ponderous and dense and ridiculous, but I think it just took it so far in its density that it became incredibly charming.

This happened to me with Celtic Frost and the work of Tom G. Warrior more broadly. I liked the early, ultra-primitive proto-black-metal of Hellhammer and the first CF album, but as they got artier and weirder I liked them less and less. Then, the final CF album, Monotheist, absolutely blew me away: they had become this crushingly heavy doom band, and it was great. And then CF broke up and TGW started a new band, Triptykon, who pushed even further in the doom direction - their first album has a 19-minute song called "The Prolonging," ha ha. I love Triptykon more than I ever liked CF, because they are/were just so impossibly slow and heavy that it feels like the end of an aesthetic line, like there's nowhere else he can take it without them just turning into Sunn O))).

tom is the best. he's so ancient and so awesome. i was proud to write the monotheist review for decibel. i came to CF via Into The Pandemonium when it came out. i loved it. and then loved the previous albums after the fact. i never numbered the albums i reviewed but i think they gave it a 9 or a 10.

(my editor had to guess my score by my review, i guess. might have been tricky sometimes...)

@ Halfway: when The Cure can claim to have five classic albums and I find all five of them “a chore” at best I can safely claim to be “not a fan” despite knowing every word to “Friday” and “Lovesong” and “Close To You”, that’s what I mean I guess

i don't think any cure album is really that great except disintegration (and even that's a bit bloated) but they were an incredible singles band for quite a while

the new one was just a solid, more concise (though with worse production) disintegration retread that plays to a lot of their strengths and that's enough to put it in their top 3. it's definitely not more ponderous and dense than disintegration though - there's nothing like that "prayers for rain"/"the same deep water as you" stretch on it which i regularly fell asleep to as a teen

Oh ya, like fgti there are Cure pop songs I will absolutely vibe to and sing along to every word. Close To Me is an A-grade single, Mint Car was mine and my long-term ex partner's "song", I'd sing Friday I'm In Love at karaoke; Love Cats is ace; and also I had "Want" on a free cassette and really liked it. But apart from Want, all those feel like the outlier A-sides compared to a lot of what I've heard of their more album-oriented work. I'm giving HOTD a go though. Might just need a bit of familiarity

hotd is good but doesn't really hold together as an album very well, it's quite a stylistic grab bag

I love stylistic grab bags though. I think my main issue with The Cure is that I find a lot of their stuff a bit samey. I grew up with 90s indie bands going "let's do a disco song! let's do a punk track!", I think I gave Disintegration a go once and couldn't get over how many of the songs were these extended dirgey workouts with big ploddy wet drums, swirling keyboards and single-bar basslines. Maybe that's a good thing in some people's books but that stuff puts me to sleep

HOTD is a bit more my thing I think. There's more going on

if you like the stylistic variety than it & kmkmkm (which is the same thing just longer and less consistent) are what you want yeah

cooooool

yeah hotd is kind of working for me. maybe this is it, finally

I'm in the 'The Cure are an amazing singles band but the albums are impenetrable' party. Pornography is probably the closest I've come but I've found that a little too monolithic when I've stuck around for the whole album. But yes, damn what an amazing singles band.

I just listened to Seventeen Seconds all the way through and I may as well have had no music on

yeah there's a few great songs on it but the rest is utterly forgettable

Its a vibe though. At 18 it was my vibe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mblx_jYFZmQ

I’ve said it before: the US version of Three Imaginary Boys is start to finish bangers.

It’s by far my favorite Cure album. After that I’m a singles guy.

With The Cure, it's always just me feeling like "OK that's the decision that was made, here?" whether it's the first 90 seconds of "The Holy Hour" making me want to turn it off (this is not a bass riff I enjoy to listen to, and I'm allergic to flange) and rendering me unable to enjoy "Faith" (The Cure album)

Listening to The Holy Hour for the first time and this typifies my general problem with the Cure: That bassline and drum pattern is not interesting enough to warrant a full one minute intro. And then some quite standard guitar strumming comes in until FINALLY at 1:30 a distant vocal comes in as though it's been recorded in another room. It gives me the uncanny feeling I've accidentally unplugged my USB from the deck and it's gone into "emergency loop" mode. It's just... I can't get enamoured by music with so little going on. It's not that I mind a bit of repetition or a slow burn, or that the bassline is necessarily BAD, it's just that not enough is going on in this intro for it to be given so much airtime. There's no atmosphere, tension, excitement - it's like listening to an amateur band practicing the same loop in their garage for hours. I'm a busy guy, I've got stuff to do!

Funny, I have gone back and forth with The Cure between admiration and exasperation, they're sometimes heavy-handed or using the same tropes, but The Holy Hour is one of my favorite moments of theirs. The sparseness and dirge atmosphere is certainly part of the appeal for me, love that bassline, the "gong" sound, the wandering synth, properly haunting.

Thank you dl for the shout of solidarity! The Cure are a band I enjoy frequently but only at their most buoyant, I find them usually-bad when they’re in dirge mode. Naledi finds them “properly haunting”! For me: the mood is not created.

I will shout it from the rooftops: the US version of the first album is a superb tuneful post-punk album.

That bassline and drum pattern is not interesting enough to warrant a full one minute intro.

You've got to turn it up loud enough to hear the keyboards underneath, though this might not sway you.

I just listened to Seventeen Seconds all the way through and I may as well have had no music on

― the wedding preset (dog latin), Friday, 31 January 2025 11:18 (two months ago) link

yeah there's a few great songs on it but the rest is utterly forgettable

― ufo, Friday, 31 January 2025 11:21 (two months ago) link

Its a vibe though. At 18 it was my vibe

― bert newtown, Friday, 31 January 2025 13:14 (two months ago) link

Dang, if Bert's right you guys gave up one second too soon! Get off your phones and learn some damn patience...

I love the crispness and clarity of Seventeen Seconds; Songs of a Lost World sounded like it was covered in an invasive layer of digital fuzz by comparison.

Having grown up on the Concert/Curiosities twofer cassette and various bootlegs, I still feel that the best way to experience them from the 17 Seconds/Faith era is through those live recordings, they have a special atmosphere.

*blinks*
I lied. I was 19. It's been a second.

A measure of life

I’m gonna say something foolhardy and recommend “Pornography”. Put it on as loud as you can stand and surrender to it. I love their pop and wistfulness but that’s the most powerful and fully realised record.

*blinks*
I lied. I was 19. It's been a second.

― bert newtown, Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait... how many?

I'm really curious to hear more about stories where this happened the other way around - where you loved or even absolutely adored a band. And then did a 180 degree turn on them and realised that your liking them was actually the thing you were wrong about?

And if there was a reason for that? Did you just grow out of them? (Maybe bands you loved when you were a teenager don't count.) Or was there a sudden stylistic shift that made you reevaluate the previous material? I suppose I'm less interested in stories of 'band member caught doing a horrible thing' because it's understandable that would make you reevaluate your adulation of them. And more in 'I realised that I was just completely wrong about the music here'.

This has happened to me rather a lot, but I'm now embarrassed to share who the artists were!

God there are probably loads from when I was much younger. In the early days of the internet I remember trying to teach myself html by creating a Coal Chamber fan site

I think there was a moment where I lost faith in some bands only to renege on it when they came back in full force. Blur and Autechre are two of them

Ah, see Blur were one of those bands that I very much lost faith in, probably permanently. When I listen to them now, all I hear is nostalgia for the person I was at the age I first heard them. I almost feel like I need to apologise for my fandom! I didn't know any better!

But then a band like Duran Duran is a band I've come 360 degrees on. Loved them when I was a foolish teenager. Spurned them in my indie 20s. Then discovered that actually they had been phenomenal all along. That was I was disdaining was my foolish teenage self. Not anything about the music.

It is weird listening to an album like Great Escape and thinking how weirdly dated and kitsch it seems. To think they were such a national sensation at the time with screaming fans is just strange

All the music I liked as a kid I still think is great now— Eurythmics, Billy Idol, David Bowie, OMD, Public Enemy, Digital Underground

There definitely were two phases of my teen years, first where I was inured by “what was popular with my friends” and some of it remains “good” (Black Sabbath) and some of it has revealed itself to be “bad” (Weezer) and lots of it has revealed itself to be “good, with caveats” (90s CanRock staples like IME OLP Tea Party). I definitely don’t listen to Zeppelin or Floyd like I did when I was 15/16.

Then there was the nascent gay phase where all I listened to was Björk and Tori and Lisa Germano and The Magnetic Fields, I wouldn’t say any of those artists are “bad” now but I definitely don’t have any of them on regular rotation (except Lisa Germano). As early as 2003 Vespertine tour I was watching the show and felt like “this music has served its purpose”

There’s also that odd thing that happens when an artist/band releases their debut and you have a sense of a vector but then subsequent releases make you realize you were incorrect about that vector, many examples spring to mind but I feel guilty about mentioning any of them

(to fgti's last paragraph) GAPDY. Intriguing in the mid-oughts but no desire to listen to any of them anymore.

There’s also that odd thing that happens when an artist/band releases their debut and you have a sense of a vector but then subsequent releases make you realize you were incorrect about that vector, many examples spring to mind but I feel guilty about mentioning any of them

Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

And then, as Etherwave suggested, you go back to the older stuff you liked, but realize you can now hear the way that the things you found yourself disliking later were already taking shape, and it poisons the old stuff.

I don't think there's any artist that I have strictly "recanted" on, and I certainly don't relisten to everything I've ever liked with any regularity. I do remember trying to "make myself" appreciate the most embarrassing or misguided 15-20% of the output of an artist who I otherwise enjoyed and admired. It may be why I'm dubious about recommendations to always keep listening to music until you "get it".

an artist/band releases their debut and you have a sense of a vector but then subsequent releases make you realize you were incorrect about that vector

Without any insinuation of falling quality, this immediately calls to mind the Fiery Furnaces:

"They're a blues-based band with some weird keyboard stuff on top"

...

"No, they're a weird keyboard band with a few blues affectations"

it poisons the old stuff

This doesn't happen for me. Also, if I really like an artist I will keep listening to them even when they are obviously past their peak, because just one good song on a late-period record can widen my scope of understanding them.

it poisons the old stuff

I mean, I can hear hints on a Kinks record from 1968 or 1969 of what will be bad decisions on a Ray Davies record 40 years later, but I couldn't imagine tossing out the older stuff.

I think it happens to me mostly with lyrics, which I pay a lot of attention to (if they're in a language I understand... and there are songs that I start to dislike *after* learning a language and realizing the lyrics suck). I'll hear some line in which there is only a modest instance of what will soon after become a major and recurring annoyance, and it'll get me thinking about all the bad lines / lazy writing on future records, and next thing I know the song is over and I'm in a bad mood... I can't usually turn this part of my brain off.

Yeah I can’t bring myself to name such an artist myself because my enthusiasm/fondness for their initial salvo remains so strong. Fiery Furnaces have bops for days but it is true that Gallowsbird remains my favourite

I think I was a couple years too old for GAPDY— my engagement with all five of those bands predated 2009 by many, many years

I think at one point I declared QOTSA to be "the greatest rock band in America" or something. Still rep for those early ones, but even those are not really deserving of such breathless praise

All the music I liked as a kid I still think is great now— Eurythmics, Billy Idol, David Bowie, OMD, Public Enemy, Digital Underground

There are records I loved as a teenager and still recognize as great, but I never need to hear them again. Public Enemy is definitely in this category. I don't think I've listened to them in years, but other acts I listened to just as much at the same time — Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, EPMD, Gang Starr — I still go back to every once in a while, even if it's just a song or two.

I do remember trying to "make myself" appreciate the most embarrassing or misguided 15-20% of the output of an artist who I otherwise enjoyed and admired.

I used to do this sometimes, especially with artists where I really liked one particular phase of their career but strongly disliked pretty much everything else. The biggest example for me is Bowie. I love the Berlin records (and especially the live recordings from that era), and I love Blackstar and even kind of like The Next Day, but when I listen to 90s and 00s Bowie, because people I respect praise those records highly, I think, You people are all out of your goddamned minds.

IOW/TLDR: I am right about David Bowie and the rest of you are wrong.

I will say I was very intensely set on hating Salem in 2010, via ILX posts and Tweets and multiple articles. While I certainly have not come around to their music, I do have to concede that they've been pretty prescient and influential in regards to huge swaths of the internet rap underground that I also don't like

they had their ear to the skreet

lol Whiney I love it

@ unperson I’m pretty sure the only consensus Great Bowie Album from those two decades is “Outside” (others deemed “quite good” to “hard pass”) and if you don’t like “Outside” then it is you who are wrong

first of all, anyone disparaging seventeen seconds and faith but praising pornography simply prefers more reverb on everything. i said this years ago on a cure fan forum and it made people there mad so i haven't said it since. it just seems like the logical conclusion to me. there's not much difference in how the opening vamps of "all cats are grey" and "cold" progress but some folks will swear up and down one is completely electrifying while the other induces yawns. whatever.

anyway ―and this is a huge tangent so feel free to scroll past― was going to post this on random old rap, but it's relevant here too. perhaps even moreso (and maybe why i balked on putting it there).

my thing would be backpack and indie hiphop. i've been revisiting the eddie ill and dl tapes and good grief how did i just ignore the blatant bigotry through all of it? because they weren't dancing around in shiny suits, they were "keeping it real"??? some stuff endures and still sounds like a good representation of the best of its era, but on the whole it was groups with names like 'smut peddlers' that got the attention.

either that, or the beat is incredibly tight and the song is ruined by a talib kweli feature. none of us knew the extent of his duncery back then. but by now, i swear to god the entire first decade of that dude's output has aged worse than milk. in case it's not clear: talib was one of the bad ones and i bought all of his records because he was "real." ugh, shudder. anyway.

reason i was going to post on random old rap is because my revisiting got me listening to a couple groups that were destined to be lost in the shuffle. made a couple of playlists if you wanna revisit the backpack scene:
first up is the nots click. i called them 'alternative thug rap' at the time. they were down with big l and were one of the first crews to hire dj spinna for beats on a regular basis. because they were otherwise unaffiliated with anybody, they showed up on all the backpack mixtapes. eventually released a forgettable album in the early 2000s that went in hard on the faux dipset schtick.
elsewhere, one of dj spinna's best projects back then was kansas city group the basement khemist. they were the real deal imo: mc joc max hits like an enlightened common or proper midwest q-tip, and spinna was untouchable back then. truly one of the greatest misses of that era that they never even released a second single and their best song was relegated to being a mixtape exclusive. joc max showed up on some other spinna-affiliated stuff but ultimately went back to kc.

good post+revive. have enjoyed everyone's thoughts.

they had their ear to the skreet

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Saturday, April 12, 2025 2:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

XD

wtf Austin, Smut Peddlers is great

nope

shrug. i mean... i bought their records so i'm at the 'admitting defeat' stage with groups like that.

if anyone likes that stuff, great. i mean, smut peddlers had good beats. but personally, i do carry some embarrassment that i used to be into it.

An interesting reversal of the question for me: I stopped listening to Swans around the time of the allegations about Gira. I had been a huge fan, seen them quite a few times, etc. I then softened a bit and revisited the records and they did very little for me— a few tracks aside, I don’t really see myself ever listening to them again.

My reevaluation came about a decade after the allegations fwiw

Closest answer to this for me is the Swans who, along with Nick Cave, I was SO onboard with in my late teens-early 20s but then completely lost interest in both during the 90s. I've revisited a couple of NC albums and still think the Birthday Party are fantastic but I've never felt any desire to go back to the Swans... I was reminded of this the other day when I heard something from Filth played on the radio.

Nick Cave is a good answer for me as well

Same, i still love shivers and release the bats but when we get to " Lookey yonder... " i kinda cringe at myself for following along fir an album or two.

when we get to " Lookey yonder... "

massive lol at this... yeah sums it up.

I stopped listening to Swans around the time of the allegations about Gira. I had been a huge fan, seen them quite a few times, etc. I then softened a bit and revisited the records and they did very little for me— a few tracks aside, I don’t really see myself ever listening to them again.

I find nu-Swans' music terribly boring, so I wasn't listening to those records anyway. And I don't know if I ever need to hear Cop, Greed or Holy Money ever again, though the live albums, Feel Good Now and Public Castration Is A Good Idea, are still pretty great. If I pull anything of theirs off the shelf it's likely to be The Burning World or Children of God.

The thing with Cave is that the "lookey yonder" tropes worked as long as it was hard to tell if he was being ironic or sincere. I assumed he was trying do both, as with most of his goth-adjacent peers. There was a power in him never winking and seeming cantankerous enough that he couldn't be totally sincere, even as he relished the kitsch of it all. But once the culture appointed him Minister of Sincerity in the last ten years, the whole approach lands a different way, even retroactively.

I have been on Team LOL Fuck Nick Cave for what feels like my entire life at this point, but it's only been 35 years since I saw this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqhOVY58zIo

a while back i came across that specific video years after having not seen it and was struck by how absurd it was -- not how i remembered it at all.

Good Son was where I pretty much got off the bus, although individual songs since then have moved me, that's where it became schtick imho

I mean, I can hear hints on a Kinks record from 1968 or 1969 of what will be bad decisions on a Ray Davies record 40 years later, but I couldn't imagine tossing out the older stuff.

― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, April 12, 2025 9:34 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think what Nu is referring to is specifically debut albums though, maybe even first two. like if the first Kinks album was Lola and you went through the rest of the catalogue you'd probably think they got lucky on that one and Muswell Hilbillies.

the example that comes to mind is Futureheads, their debut made them seem like early XTC and Devo in the form of a barbershop quartet, but they still had all the cool riffs and fun jerky playing. I remember that album being pretty well received and then their follow up happened and they became a much more generic sounding power pop outfit, kinda killed a lot of people's interest in the band outright

I wouldn't say I was wrong about someone like Swans, as their gloomy violent nonsense spoke to me with a vengeance in my younger days even if I don't care about it now. But Red House Painters probably hold the record for the shortest time between thinking "this band is amazing" to "I couldn't give a shit about this". 3 years tops. Probably seeing them a couple of times when the first couple of records came out and realising what a turd Mark K is facilitated this remarkable u-turn.

I'm going to try really hard not to vent my extreme loathing for Cave on this forum. But he is one of those artists I have loathed so strongly, for so long. And I've tried multiple times, to go back and listen and try to hear what my friends hear in this singer. And I just can't. I've always just felt like this man is a complete charlatan who has somehow convinced people he is a ~great songwriter~ on personal charisma alone. And somehow being able to persuade far better musicians and songwriters to carry him. Because his work just doesn't match the adulation. But it honestly feels like in the past couple of years, the scales have finally fallen from folks' eyes. And I suspect part of that was him getting on the internet and pulling back the curtail with his blog or whatever. The charm cracks when people read his actual thoughts and realise what an odious little toad he is.

But I do feel quite vindicated at how many people have got off the bus with him.

That said, I actually think that the video for the Weeping Song is one of the best things he's ever done. It got meme-ified, and seeing the video with far better music (It's Raining Men) over the top of it did kind of make me love it.

when I listen to 90s and 00s Bowie, because people I respect praise those records highly, I think, You people are all out of your goddamned minds.

I have no choice but to think of the Bowie from Let's Dance on as just a different guy altogether. Helps me forget about the Pepsi commercial. It's adored for a reason, but I don't see Blackstar as rising above any of those other 00s albums, sorry.

I was going to mention Futureheads as well. Saw them live in 2005, and they pulled off all the weird twists and the four part harmonies, while dancing around and seeming like it was no big deal. It's one thing to be able to piece together something like that in a studio setting, it's another to pull it off live. I thought they were going to be the ones who lasted from that wave. But then they just decided they didn't want to do that stuff anyway.

But I think that's different. I was 'wrong' about them, but it was a plausible hypothesis. It's wasn't thinking The Others would become the next Libertines, or something like that.

Nick Cave, Swans etc fall into this category of being stylistically very strong for a couple albums, they definitely had their moment, but then went on to have 40-50 years careers. The output from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds was already more than I needed in 2004 (or Swans 87-96) - I'd certainly have never imagined that their reputation would grow from here, that they'd become those masculine edgy figures for a whole new generation of kids. Subjective, yes, but I'd look at them differently if they had stopped when I discovered them. As it is, I didn't listen to their second career, didn't return to their first, I wasn't ready for them to be huge songwriter figures and grow careers comparable to Sonic Youth, or Bowie, or whoever. They weren't that good.

And be invited to the coronation of King Charles III.

he sings about murdering women but actually prefers rimming British monarchs and allegedly being a gropey creep.

An interesting reversal of the question for me: I stopped listening to Swans around the time of the allegations about Gira. I had been a huge fan, seen them quite a few times, etc. I then softened a bit and revisited the records and they did very little for me— a few tracks aside, I don’t really see myself ever listening to them again.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, 14 April 2025 20:11 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Precisely my experience. Like, exactly. I loved The Seer especially, but it just didn't hit the sides when I put it on the other day

I sometimes wonder what those artists whose "early stuff" everyone prefers actually feel about it. Maybe they were aiming for slick, professional, well-produced all along, but that spiky, edgy debut album everyone loves is to them just a manifestation of the limited resources available to them at the time.

That's often the case. Like Lou Reed hiring all sorts of hotshot session musicians once he'd quit the Velvets.

countervailing tendency: late-career realization that the early stuff really did have a special punch --- followed by attempt at quick, dirty, back to basics album. which may yield a good record or a bad record, but certainly can't sound anything like the inspiration through all the accumulated skill, patience, money and contentment. obv we have whole threads for that one.

I think I have two answers to this question:

1) Tom Waits -- was very into his output for maybe 3 years and haven't gone back to listen in at least 20, maybe more. Part of that was youthful curiosity at the time, and since then the only Tom Waits song I think about regularly is Johnsburg, IL because that is where my dog is from!

2) Rodan -- I never need to hear this band again. I don't hate their music but I certainly don't like it either. For a while though? I would drive for 3 hours each way to see them play.

ha @ Rodan, them being from Louisville and making Slint-esque music at a time when Brian and David had gone off in new directions worked in Rodan's favor. Also touring more than 20x including west of the Mississippi.

Reminds me of Lance Bang's Breadcrumb Trail which starts with Lance driving from Athens to Louisville for some noise show because Britt is supposed to be there... A lot of the post-Slint Louisville scene benefited from Slint's early demise.

I sometimes wonder what those artists whose "early stuff" everyone prefers actually feel about it. Maybe they were aiming for slick, professional, well-produced all along, but that spiky, edgy debut album everyone loves is to them just a manifestation of the limited resources available to them at the time.

― fetter, Tuesday, April 15, 2025 9:03 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

They Might be Giants are a good example of this. they got a lot of flack back in the day for hiring a full band, but they insist from the beginning that's how they always wanted it to be. they do look back pretty fondly on their early stuff though and acknowledge they had to do a lot of creative things to cobble that first album together

radiohead. i was obsessed from 15-25 then "liked them" from 25-35 or so. now the thought of listening to anything of theirs again legit makes me feel nauseous.

I sometimes wonder what those artists whose "early stuff" everyone prefers actually feel about it.

I have no comment

LL I appreciate that your dog is from Johnsburg, I think my first family dog was from a farm there as well. It’s also a town which was namechecked another time in a Handsome Family tune.

I never want to say I was wrong about a band just because I think that does discredit to the person I was at the time, but I don’t know what to think about the copious amount of swing revival CDs I used to own. acts like Royal Crown Revue really cashed in pretty nicely for a minute on people just like myself I think.

I do feel like a band might ascend to the heights of hyperbole in my heart, then sink for years without a trace in my listening, but one record will remain full of charm whenever I do get around to revisiting. Like, when I was 14, Jethro Tull was my favorite thing in the world and I find almost of all of it tedious, but Stand Up still pleases me as much as anything.

I sometimes wonder what those artists whose "early stuff" everyone prefers actually feel about it.

I don't think any artist still earnestly making records thinks their old stuff is best.

Nine Inch Nails. Never thought that shit was for me, but I watched them in Twin Peaks and while that was the worst moment of the show (half way through on my first viewing) I thought to give them a go and The Fragile is p good (specially the first 'left' side).

There are a lot of bands that I once enjoyed but my taste has changed since the advent of streaming— something about mass availability and constant immersion has changed my “needs” for this band or that.

That said, my canon list of “favourite recent bands” remains, if anything, more relevant to my interests than ever: US Maple, Xiu Xiu, Electrelane, Ruins, Deerhoof

when I was a kid (about 13) I hated the Cure because a frenemy I had loved them. I changed my mind as soon as I moved away and didn't have to see that guy anymore.

hated UB40 when i was a young'un cos of 'red red wine'.
yeah, i was wrong.
i have even come around to that song, albeit the full version as opposed to the radio edit.

The Swans comments from tabes up above, yeah, that tracks. I haven't even been tempted to relisten. Remarkably easy to let go, but then, lots of things I used to more actively like I happily shrug off now with relatively little angst, and others are so inculcated I kinda feel like I don't need a relisten. You become a different person, you listen for different things.

OK I'm going to need to be educated on what's good about ub40 pls

I think I'd prefer to stay wrong about UB40

you guys are in for a treat if you choose to accept it

also i b 42 haha

ha.
as expected.
present arms/signing off/labour of love/rat in the kitchen.
all of them are excellent pop/reggae.
it has been an emotional journey coming to terms with this realisation.

Nothing wrong with early UB40.

phew.
i am not alone.
trust me, this realisation re their excellence came as a massive shock to me.
i genuinely hated them due to an excess of 'red red wine' that dominated the uk airwaves for months on end.
but the fact is, their early albums are really good re the whole uk vs reggae thing.

heir early albums are really good re the whole uk vs reggae thing

yep this

I thought of one! In 2004 I saw this band Coco Rosie open for the Mountain Goats, I thought their set was so beautiful and special and immediately bumped their forthcoming album to the top of my wishlist. Album turned out to be ‘La maison de mon reve’

When I was in high school my faves were Sparks and Roxy Music, so I thought arena blues rock was boring. In my recent listening ZZ Top >>> Sparks.

Everything from UB40 is good up to and maybe including the self-titled album.

early UB40 is some of the best music of its era, full stop. incredible records

I like UB40 into the 2000s!

Not consistently, I must admit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgEzcG3GCbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf_5LX-bcSc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X4e67USJgo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flaapJe3G8g

Wouldn't pretend there's anything unique going on here - except in UB40 terms, because this is that period where Earl Falconer and Jimmy Brown seemingly turned the whole band into their electronic vaguely dnb/dubwise dancehall project - but I'm pretty easy to please with pop reggae.

When I was in high school my faves were Sparks and Roxy Music, so I thought arena blues rock was boring. In my recent listening ZZ Top >>> Sparks.

ZZ Top even bragged that they were "Master of Sparks" (it's presumably a facial hair superiority thing)