ILM POLL: Say there, what about Boo Radleys?

Boo Who? j/k

Everything will be alright. Forever.

giant steps will win (i voted for that) but i hope it's not just gear who votes for wake up! cos really it's a classic album.

I voted for Everything's Alright Forever; Ichabod and I was good -- everything after that I never had a taste for. The rot had set in long before the godawful 'wake up boo' record.

Everythings for me too, tho Giant Steps also awesome.

I voted C'Mon Kids, cos I think it's pretty much as good as Giant Steps, but that GS will get HEAPS of votes.

People saying stuff like "everything after Ichabod sucks" seem like the worst indie snobs in the world to me.

wtf is byebyepride on about

c'mon kids for me, it's one of the most brilliantly progressive and unpredictable records of its era

People saying stuff like "everything after Ichabod sucks" seem like the worst indie snobs in the world to me.

OTM. Before Giant Steps the Boos really weren't that much more than another half-decent Shoegaze act. Granted Everything's Alright Forever is a fantastic album, but by Giant Steps they were firing on all four rockets. Also people calling out Wake Up! as an awful record simply based on that one single are silly and shouldn't be allowed outdoors.

Also, what's with "Find The Way Out" being in there? It's a best of.

Hmm. I'd say the Boos reached their songwriting peak between EAF and the release of Lazarus - I wouldn't swap the b-sides from those post EAF singles for half the tracks on Giant Steps. Mind you, I'd say the same for the b-sides to I Hang Suspended. (At The Sound of Speed and Let Me Be Your Faith piss all over the likes of Lose The Time Around or Best Lose The Fear).

The bottom line is, GIANT STEPS IS TOO LONG. EAF is a lot tighter, and dismissing it as half-decent shoegaze is just silly.

That said, I could make a case for any of them (except Ichabod, which I still haven't heard, despite looking out for it for 15 years or so).

Take The Time Around, even.

i think i may have accidentally tickied Everything's Alright Forever when i meant Giant Steps. OBVIOUSLY

it's a matter of taste (and age) i suppose. whether you're a shoegaze fan or a psych fan or a britpop fan can really sway it. giant steps is sprawling, but there aren't really any bad moments on it that i can think of (even the boring and cloying barney & me can be quite charming). EAF is a fine album and has many many great ideas, but it's still a shoegaze album that would have been lost in the mists of time had they not had a commercial breakthrough. As for EAF, monumental swaths of noise and impressionistic vocals are fine by me, but Giant Steps has all that and more. I love it because it tackles and succeeds in so much - ambient, noise, psychedelia, dub, indie, acoustica etc...

plus their b-sides have always been more entertaining than their album tracks and their a-sides have always been boring. that's the curse of the boos i guess. all their best stuff is the stuff no one's heard.

That's what I say about Embrace. Look at it relatively; you might think the Boos' singles are boring, but Lazarus and Wake Up Boo! are WAY more interesting than... Gravity. Or any Stereophonics song ever.

the b-sides to I Hang Suspended. (At The Sound of Speed and Let Me Be Your Faith

DOH. Of course, this just reinforces my point.

(OMG, you just dissed Barney (and Me...). *Definitely* a matter of taste :))

Lazarus was the only time they released a single that truly showed off their creativity. Whenever they released a single they'd edit out all the weird trippy shit (like on Ride The Tiger and Find The Answer Within) and you'd be left with quite a boring rock song.

What is it about Barney & Me that people like? I found that one and Wish I Was Skinny the only blights on that album. Sure lyrically they're rather charming, but they're so straight. I guess the flutey whirly bits on B&M sort of save it.

And the Faye Dunaway, and Sice's vocal in general.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnd NOW I'm getting older...

It's frickin' ace.

is the faye dunaway bit in b&m? i was just thinking about martin as a lyricist and that bit came to me as a standout for some reason. i'm the worst number one fan ever! yep, i take it back about barney and me. is it b&m that ends like a video game?

i had never heard of the boos over here in america before wake up. which i loved. also love cmon kids (my vote). even liked kingsize when it came out but that one hasn't aged well for me. i've tried on many occasions to work backwards from wake up (since there lies credibility, it seems), but none of those albums grab me. to each his own.

LISTEN: You have become unstuck in time.

wake up is their most sad album. it's a concept album even more than any other, but i think we discussed that on another thread.

I'm not too concerned. The good thing about loving music and having a lot of music is that you can be patient with things and try them again later. I'm sure we all have stories about sleeping on albums for 1, 2, 8 years before we get them. but specifically about the early boo albums, i also feel like there's a context i'm missing. a lot of the music "giant steps" gets compared to, for example, i'm just not that familiar with.

wtf is byebyepride on about

c'mon kids for me, it's one of the most brilliantly progressive and unpredictable records of its era

Hey man, different tastes and that. I guess I just like the shoegaze sound. (It has the advantage of hiding voices that were just about ok at best!) Although to be honest I haven't heard any of Giant Steps since it came out when I remember being crushingly disappointed by the singles in the contrast to Lazarus.

Also I don't judge records relative to their time since that confuses judgements of taste with objective historical judgement and I for one can't say that I had then or have now heard enough of what was going on at the time to make that kind of call. So 'of its era' doesn't fly for me, unless you are assuming a tacit 'relative to indie rock'.

Also I don't judge records relative to their time since that confuses judgements of taste with objective historical judgement

I recently spent 500 posts explaining why I don't do this either. I should have said 'of its type'.

After spending some time with all the records last night, I'm kicking myself as hard as I can for never hearing Everything's Alright Forever until just now. Having only heard the later stuff, I had no idea their shoegaze/dreampop roots were so rewarding.

This album instantly rocketed into my #1 position.

My favorite thing about Wake Up is that it sounds so incredibly happy, and then you read the lyric sheet...

Ichabod & I: At the time I loved it, listening to it now it sounds ridiculously lo-fi, as if it was recorded inside a shoebox. I think I was impressed by just how noisy it was: the end of Catweazle is full of that intense white noise that sounds like that bit in the middle of You Made Me Realise (live), but with gentle, melodic vocals at the same time. I still rate this version of Kaleidoscope highly, but on the whole the album’s just a bit too muddy-sounding to make me want to sit through it any more.

The two EPs in 1991 between the first and second album sound better-produced, but still essentially go for that mixture of extreme guitar noise and sweet singing. That wasn’t a problem for me as that was exactly what I liked back then. I love Naomi (off Every Heaven) and Everybird, Sometime Soon She Said and Foster’s Van (off Boo Up). I think these are all on Learning To Walk, but I’m not voting for that because it’s not a real album.

Everything’s Alright Forever is good and is the start of the kind of psychedelic/poppier stuff, but there’s no way it can live with Giant Steps which does all the same things to much greater effect. I like pretty much everything on it (the only weak tracks are Spun Around and Thinking of Ways) (and Best Lose The Fear) (and White Noise Revisited is a bit annoying) (but anyway: everything else is amazing). I can’t agree with this at all:

What is it about Barney & Me that people like? I found that one and Wish I Was Skinny the only blights on that album. Sure lyrically they're rather charming, but they're so straight.

I think they’re both great pop tunes. Part of what makes Giant Steps so incredible is that there’s such a variety of tracks on it, but it all hangs together so well. I don’t think you can just bin the pop.

I’ve still never heard Wake Up!. C’Mon Kids has its moments, but isn’t great. I listened to Kingsize about two or three times and decided I hated it.

My vote goes for Giant Steps.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I remember when I first heard EAF, all the shimmer and trumpets made me say to my bf of the time "hey the Boos should cover "Alone Again Or", how cool would that be?"

And then the Boos covered "Alone Again Or". It wasn't as good as I'd hoped but it was ok.

"alone again or" came out before EAF i think...

Did it? That'd be right. Well ok, *I* didn't know about the cover til after I heard EAF.

Kingsize for me but i have made my thought well known about this.

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

I didn't get to vote for "Wake Up!" which was their only GREAT album.

YOU ARE ALL STUPID (apart fromt he people who voted Giant Steps)

JKS, srsly, SJKS. But I mean, Giant Steps is soooo much better. Voting EAF is just snobbery.

This is what happens when I turn off "polls" on preferences!

GS comes second.

AWESOME

It has now been proven. Everything's Alright Forever > Giant Steps. FACT.

i screwed up my vote = +1 for GS, –1 for EAF.

A puzzling result.

As Grozart basically said: Giant Steps does everything that EAF does, but does it better and does other stuff too.

What a mad result!
I mean, Wake Up is better than C'mon Kids, surely!

Everything's Alright Forever is in it's right place, however.

my order would be(e):

1. Kingsize - this album has had a huge impact on my life, especially at the time. i have, at times, felt like Martin was writing out my life on this album. skip "Free Huey" and you have a remarkable album.

2. Giant Steps - they did just about everything they could do with this album and made a classic. i still feel like this is theWhite Album of the 90's.

3. Learning To Walk - the third best shoegazer album ever. it, however, is just a collection of three brilliant singles. 12 songs total with a couple of just OK covers thrown in.

4. C'Mon Kids - the guitar were back and were louder than ever. also contains their best song "Bullfrog Green."

5. Wake Up! - their stab at being commercial and made a accessible album expect for the lyrics. might be the boo's most honest work.

6. Everything's Alright Forever - this album simply doesn't have enough money behind it. great beginning but the heights were barely being reveled.

also from Kingsize is one of those perfect three minutes in pop music with the song "Put Your Arms Around Me and Tell Me Everything's Going to Be OK."

I picked up the Every Heaven EP yesterday for a single pound! I've had the Learning To Walk compilation for ages, but hearing it in EP context was out of this world, especially Bluebird which I'd totally overlooked. That song is out of this world.

Yeah, those e.p.s are too much all in one go, but broken up into their four-track sets...

If I learnt to read back my posts before sending them, that would be out of this world.

That's difficult to do when you're out of this world.

Also, I meant 'Naomi', not 'Bluebird' which is just okay.