When you only really like the "wrong" album

Following a chat with stevie and others on the Faith No More thread.

My friends and I grew up with King For A Day... Fool For A Lifetime as the FNM album that made the tape-borrowing rounds. We were all about 14 or 15 when it came out, we all loved it. I wouldn't hear Angel Dust until I was in my twenties, the album my friends' older brothers would say was even better. And I dunno, that one just never clicked for me. It surprises me to hear, in fact, that KFAD wasn't so warmly received among fans at the time. But still I stand by it.

Similar story with Alice In Chains. The only cassette by this band that was in posession by my friendship group in the 90s was the MTV Unplugged album. So this was how I came to them, and in many ways I think of these live acoustic versions as my canonical faves: The studio versions on Jar of Flies etc sound strange to me. So it was a revelation to hear that again, fans weren't too keen on the playing of these renditions, that they were considered "phoned-in" and that Jerry and Layne were struggling to keep it together during the performance.

My Dad insists that Beatles For Sale is their pinnacle. Not a bad album I'm sure, but not a position I've ever heard anyone else take.

So this isn't "I think Terror Twilight is underrated", rather the albums you might actually prefer and were surprised to hear weren't so warmly received.

With Sympathy is the only Ministry album I really like

2 posts vmic

Beatles For Sale is my favourite too. A nice middle ground for them.

Here comes a third pvmic xp - Weezer's second self-titled album (the green album) is their best in my estimation. Blue has some good stuff on it, but I wish I could never hear Say It Ain't So ever again and also I don't have time for a full album of this chaotic novelty rock. Pinkerton has a reputation of being critically redeemed after an initial backlash, but I happen to think those critics were right in the first place. The green album is just perfectly executed power-pop that gets in and out like the wind.

not sure if this is exactly the "wrong opinion" as i've never heard anyone say his early stuff is "bad" exactly, but i do think i'm in the minority for preferring elliott smith's first couple of albums to his later work. i find everything he did after the s/t album patchy - yes, even either/or, although i still find it much more consistent than XO/figure 8/FABOAH. roman candle and the s/t are totally unlike anything else i've heard before or since, and the spare, rough quality of the songs enhances rather than diminishes them in my opinion. i've always thought as time went on his lyrics got more "on-the-nose" and the beatles influence in his music, while always obvious, got more prevalent to the point where his later songs feel more generic somehow.

Can this be the thread for me to far, far prefer Black Tie White Noise to Ziggy, or where I listen to Landing on Water far, far more than 70s Neil? Cus those

The Associates' Perhaps (first without Alan Rankine) has this reputation for being a letdown but honestly I ended up preferring it to all the stuff that is (admittedly rightly) regarded as the classic stuff

Some more (it's not that I only like these albums, in fact it's very much not that, but rather albums I might actually prefer and were surprised to hear weren't so warmly received)

Bloc Party - Intimacy - I think this is so obviously their best but I understand that it had to suffer simply for being the third album by an NME band. It's a shame they had to go back2basics after this

The Cure - Mixed Up - The Top and WMS would be "I think x is underrated" but Mixed Up I actually grew up with and heard countless times before I ever knew, say, Pornography. I love the whole thing: Ibiza chillout Lullaby, London chillout Close to Me, Bristol chillout Pictures of You, Fascination Street with a deadly countermelody (and a clear as rain mix), re-recordings of the Walk and A Forest that almost equal the originals, a shuddery ambient house Inbetween Days. But harhar Robert and dance beats.

The Chemical Brothers - We are the Night - The first one released after I became a fan and the only CD I took with me on a week long holiday summer 07. I did not yet realise how coldly it was being receive elsewhere. Sure The Salmon Dance is there to deliberately fuck up the flow just as Left Right had been, but virtually everything else - especially the title track, Saturate, Das Spiegel and A Modern Midnight Conversation - is top drawer.

Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns - ha I have little time for this lot otherwise but my mum had this playing in the car constantly at the time and (a couple of ballads aside) I really got into it, as I remain to be. Dazzle Ships for Kerrang! readers. I do remember googling it maybe a month after I heard it only to discover that apparently the fans hated it and The Catalyst in particular.

real emotional trash is the best album malkmus ever made, although i like some of his other albums well enough

The only Radiohead album I like is Pablo Honey.

Its mainly down to teen nostalgia but "Boys Dont Cry" is my fave Cure album

Is "The Royal Scam" the wrong Steely Dan album to like best?

no, that would either be katy lied or gaucho (not including modern dan, which i refuse to acknowledge as canon)

royal scam is excellent. it is a contender for worst album art of all time though

sonic youth "sister"

though I think it's reputation has improved over the years, the only Beta Band album I ever really clicked with was the self-titled.

Goat's Head Soup was the first Stones album I actually owned (as opposed to borrowing my dad's records), and it still occupies, if not first place in my heart (that would go to Sticky Fingers), then probably second.

sonic youth "sister"

― massaman gai (front tea for two), Friday, September 22, 2023 1:06 PM (nine minutes ago)

mine too

Let's Make Up & Be Friendly is easily my favourite Bonzo Dog Band LP, and consensus even among fans seems to be that it's terrible.

I'm that one human on earth who slightly prefers Saturnzreturn to Timeless, fight me

Usually people take it as me just being a contrarian, but 'Transformer Man' from Trans pretty much is the only Neil Young I like.

I'm sure I'd rather listen to Cut the Crap that any other Clash album

Lock thread

Cut the Crap is damn good

And it has their best song ever

Always thought it was interesting. It's not dull.

Their Satanic Majesties Request is the only Stones album I like.

I like a few Dylan albums but the one I like best is undoubtedly Street Legal.

My favourite Dylan is by far Desire.

Black and Blue is my favourite Stones. Followed by Satanic Majesties probably.

Cut the Crap is . . . well, it's crap. Sure, "This is England" is a decent song, but it stands out from the rest of the album like a sore thumb. It's a stretch even to call it a Clash album.

Is Desire bad and hated? It's pretty much the only one I would listen to for fun. Satanic Majesty's is super fun too

"The Hurricane" is a horrible song. The rest of the album is solid.

Cut the Crap is the pop kid brother of As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade and a credible punk sound collage antecedent of hyperpop. Ahem.

Desire is generally well liked (at least outside ilx) it's just it really is the only one I ever go back to with any regularity.

I had a similar experience to my OP with Soundgarden: Came to them via Down On The Upside and its attached singles. And while I like Spoonman, Black Hole Sun etc, a lot of the earlier stuff just sounds a bit hoary and meat'n'potatoes to me

you're crazy

my favorite wipers is land of the lost

I guess the "real" iconoclast preference would be for Y Kant Tori Read (which I find mildly interesting), but I like the Tori Amos 1998 to 2009 run better than her first three albums, which have some great songs but also a lot of wandering about.

royal scam is excellent. it is a contender for worst album art of all time though

The other contenders are all also Steely Dan albums.

The Sebadoh

I suspect that a not-insignificant percentage of the answer in this thread will be the first album you owned/heard by the artist.

Angel Rat is my go-to Voivod album, which I believe is quite highly rated by the fans but seen also as an attempt to sell out to the marketplace. Needless to say it failed in that regard due to being way too odd. I tend to pull that one out over Nothingface or Dimension Hatröss though when I'm in the mood for some cyber-thrash.

"I suspect that a not-insignificant percentage of the answer in this thread will be the first album you owned/heard by the artist."

when i was a kid i knew that Genesis were supposed to be some legendary 70s prog band and that i should check them out so i went to Caldor and bought three albums that were on sale cheap: wind and wuthering, trick of the tail, and then there were three. that was my introduction to Genesis! and to this day my very favorite Genesis album is trick of the tail.

"The Hurricane" is a horrible song.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

He ain't no gentle man, jim (beaux)

"I suspect that a not-insignificant percentage of the answer in this thread will be the first album you owned/heard by the artist."

Almost certainly.

Oh, another one are King Crimson - I prefer In The Wake Of Poseidon to Court Of the Crimson King, even though the former is basically a retread of the other. This is entirely based on me hearing it first.

(also one has Cat Food and the other has Moonchild)

I like Angel Rat and In The Wake Of Poseidon best, too. Also America Eats Its Young and the first Jane Siberry record.

Others I like best: Human After All, Pop (on occasion), Megatop Phoenix, Bilingual, Last Night, THE FINAL CUT, Skids' Joy, Rudebox. And I think the final twelve minutes of the final Led Zeppelin album represent their peak.

Human After All is a good one. I'd really struggle to justify that as their objective best, despite a couple of nice bits.

I like Jean-Michel Jarre but to me the only time he truly sounded wildly ahead of the curve was on Zoolook. well that and the trancey sections of "Magnetic Fields". but Zoolook is the one I really like front to back.

Not sure if this is a controp, but the only Kraftwerk album I can really enjoy front-to-back is Radioactivity. Maybe The Man Machine, but even that one drags a bit

By far my favourite of the three 13th Floor Elevators albums is Bull of the Woods. Never really got the appeal of the other two.

Yus. I agree. That's the one for me too. The other stuff is very lovely but a bit anodyne by comparison

I said on another, similar thread that merely a few bars of Keith Jarrett's piano irritates me, while I love his church organ album Hymns/Spheres.

The only T.S.O.L. album I like is Change Today?, the first one right after the original singer left. I think it's actually pretty well-liked, but it seems like fans (understandably) tend to see the Jack Grisham version of the group as the "real" T.S.O.L.

I like a lot of individual cuts, especially live, but the only Captain Beefheart record I really like is Unconditionally Guaranteed because Beefheart attempting to be "commercial" just sounds extra insane to me and is really funny and I love it so much

Also Love You is my favorite Beach Boys record, for sort of similar reasons, I can't believe after all the to do about the Smile sessions that everyone signed off on Love You, what a weird hilarious record

for a few years my favourite Beefheart LP was Bluejeans & Moonbeams, but that ended when I got into The Mirror Man Sessions, which is a much more standard choice I guess.

'Love You' is a really good choice here. I could imagine it somehow being someone's "only" Beach Boys record, seeing as it's a late-era record and it's sort of great in a quaintly janky way while also not really sounding much like their other albums.

My favorite Caravan album is 'Waterloo Lily.' I don't know if that's controversial, but it seems to be a popular choice for when they began falling off.

All the Tom Petty talk reminded me I only really like his first album. Aside from a few songs, the rest is merely pleasant at best to me.

The Mirror Man Sessions, which is a much more standard choice I guess

Probably still in the lower half of Beefheart records in terms of acclaim, though.

The only Coltrane album I love is the one with Johnny Hartman.

Holland is near the top of my favourite Beach Boys albums, I think of it as their prog album

Got another one: Song X. It's the only album credited under Pat Metheny that I really, really like, a masterpiece IMHO. The catch is that it's also credited to Ornette Coleman, and I think Metheny kind of defers to him.

To a lesser extent, there's also the one he did with Charlie Haden, Beyond the Missouri Sky (it includes the standard "Spiritual" - Johnny Cash cut a great version with American Recordings). It's pretty lightweight, but it's easy to see why it was such a huge seller in the jazz world though because it is easy to digest. Enjoyable nonetheless.

i'm not sure if Song X is the "wrong" album - I think Metheny fans generally love it too - but it's more of a Coleman album to me, so in that respect, it doesn't seem like THE one fans would pick.

Also John Scofield's Quiet - atypical of his work, but it's the one album under his name I like a lot.

Most Metheny fans I have known hated Song X, so that tracks.

This is not quite on topic, but I've always loved Recovering the Satellites, which (I think) is usually regarded as a letdown sophomore effort.

Boys Don’t Cry (the US version of the debut with the revised track list) is my favorite Cure album.

very different from Song X, but my favorite Pat Metheny in jazz ripper mode is Question and Answer with Dave Holland and Roy Haynes

I thought Rejoicing was pretty cool.

Not "ripper mode," obvs.

Tim Buckley's Greetings from LA, which seems to have a mixed-at-best rep among his fans, is the only Buckley album I really like.

not quite as unsung as the next 2 Buckley lps though

Yes, it's got plenty of admirers!

I don't exactly *like* it all that much but the only Vanilla Fudge album I'm at all interested in is The Beat Goes On

Not that dissimilarly, Anthem of the Sun is the only Grateful Dead project I care all that much about* other than Garcia's self-titled record.

(*that I've heard. I ought to hear Grayfolded)

My fav Yes is Topographic Oceans
My fav Crimson is Lizard

Tim Buckley's Greetings from LA

It's prob my favourite of his tbh!

Like some upthread, Kraftwerk's The Mix was my one album of theirs, a "wrong" album, but it's been supplanted by Minimum-Maximum, which seems to have a better rep

re: xtc-
mummer fucking slays.

My fav Yes is Topographic Oceans

TFTO is a fucking great album. About 15 years ago I had a morning commute that allowed me to listen to it in its entirety and it was a fantastic way to start the day.

my fav uncle acid album is mind control

agree about topographic oceana

Mummer def not wrong.

I had a deep Jean-Michel Jarre phase when I was 13-14, I was heavy into logging into BBSes and downloading Modtracker music and he kinda scratched that itch

Considering that my ears didn’t really know any better, for the longest time my favourite Jarre was “Chronologie”; had the best melodies, the biggest silly-payoffs, it sounded like the best Modtracker album ever made

I wouldn’t say “it’s the wrong album” from the guy (that’d be like Tio and Tea or whatever it’s called, I haven’t listened, only read about it), but for an artist whose roots were analog to go so wholly digital on Chronologie wasn’t popular with his fanbase. It remained my favourite for a long, long time, it might still be, idk. (Zoolook prob beats it these days)

tremolo otm upthread about the first couple Elliott Smith albums, too

like i dunno saying “ny ghosts and flowers” would be staking a claim for this thread

I was gonna say this myself before I saw it already mentioned. But even nyc ghosts and flowers isn’t bad or egregious, really; it just wasn’t what people wanted at the time, maybe? Murray Street got everyone back on board, but I like both of them.

Just realized I do have one these: 90125 by Yes. I haven't listened to all their highest-regarded albums but I've done at least 3 or 4 and 90125 is by far my favorite. I am a pop guy at heart tho

I only like weirdo post-1995 Scott Walker, particularly Tilt. Never got into his '60s albums.

I love a fair bit of Yes and really like a great deal more but loving 9012Live: The Solos is odd, right? But I do.

Chronologie is def one of Jarre's better albums, yes its digital but it actually sounds good which def wasnt true for a lot of the original analog guys (thinking specifically of Tangerine Dream here)

I like 70s Scott but Weirdo Scott is not the wrong albums. Dare anyone to rep only for Stretch or something from his lost country-pop era

stoned & dethroned

Maybe not the same as only liking the wrong album, but I'm pretty good at having the wrong favorite albums:

Talking Heads: Talking Heads 77
Replacements: Hootenanny
Led Zeppelin: LZ II
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic

Pretzel Logic is my favorite Dan, too.

It's the one I play most, ditto 77 ... and LZII is my favourite.

Xtc White Music

CTE, Pretzel Logic, and Aja were the consensus picks for years. Is Pretzel Logic the weird pick?

Based on ILX discussions, I thought SD connoisseurs judged Pretzel Logic as a somewhat basic entry point. Maybe I'm wrong?

I don't know why Pretzel Logic would be a consensus pick, it's a pretty weird album with a lot of tracks that don't particularly sound like Steely Dan.

As a wise person posted above:

There's no "wrong" album from their original run. I think only the two reunion-era albums would qualify for this thread.

Seems OTM.

pretzel logic is mostly leftovers from the first two albums but it still rules!!

"Any Major Dude" is my favorite Dan track. It just . . . sends me.

Sergio Mendes' Primal Roots. Features a sidelong exploration of The Circle Game (Edu Lobo's, not Joni's), beautifully untethered Brazilian jazz. Nothing else he released was even remotely like this.

If loving this is wrong, etc

ELO's No Answer is the only ELO I listen to.