Best Madness album poll

Absolutely

all depends on my mood of the day with Madness.
One Step Beyond > 7 = party and sing-a-long
Rise and Fall = kinda blue
Wonderful - nostalgic

going to have to think about this, but i suspect my votes going to Rise and Fall.

Rise & Fall is my favourite, has a sort of Beatlesque ambition and sprawl to it, a melodic adventurousness. but they're all good, tho i think 7 is patchy.

For me "7" is the key album. Before that, they were a bit too fast and quirky. From "The Rise And Fall" onwards, they got more sophisticated but the production also got increasingly boring and they started to sound less like Madness.

"7" is where they managed to combine those two sides, still kind of "nutty", but at the same time more sophisticated with a larger number of minor key songs.

i guess i just hate 'benny bullfrog' and 'pac a mac' - 'when dawn arrives', 'the opium eaters' and 'day on the town' are astonishing tho, and 'grey day' of course.

'Benny Bullfrog' is one of my favourites from the album, a very typical Madness song I think.

'when dawn arrives', 'the opium eaters' and 'day on the town' are astonishing tho

i rarely do the ILM thing, but a loud OTM is needed for this statement.

so mine'll be the solitary vote for "mad not mad", then.

i love 'burning the boats'

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

I always enjoyed "Mad Not Mad" most, esp. "Yesterday's Men".

Pleasantly surprised that their second best album won. I would have expected one of the two first ones to win.

weirdly, other than the lack of any love for Wonderful, this list is a perfect representation of my own Madness album rating.

Yeah, good result, though 'Keep Moving' is much better than 'Mad Not Mad' in my opinion.

hurrah! two votes for MNM. i can die happy.

Keep Moving's a great album, maybe my second favourite of theirs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXFJVsjpfg8

a return to the style of Rise and Fall perhaps ?

so - anyone going,or went to the hackney shows where the band are playing the new album out in total with orchestra/stage settings etc (ie not just doing the party faves) ?

i get the feeling, (ok, hope), that they are going to be getting the big mojo/word magazine treatments with the release of this album.

from the youtube clips i've seen and heard, i'm still holding out for the possibility that they are pushing this towards the darker edges of their Rise And Fall style.

[awaits the kickback from dingbod about them all being fat old tories b*stards now]

So will The Liberty of Norton Folgate' replace Rise and Fall in the bands catalogue as the ultimate moody/downbeat Madness album ?

Quite possibly.

The team up with Rhoda Darkar is very special.

Yeah, much better than this old fanboy expected. Negatives: a bit relentlessly midtempo throughout; choruses mostly take easy way out (not unheard of in older days, but not as ubiq).

But arrangements & production is spot on, and damn how good the Barson piano feels to hear. And the unexpected Bollywood (?) break in the title track is hilarious and also promising; I believe these guys could do londonworldmusic decently.

Amusing myself with guessing songwriting credits (bought from emusic, so I've no physical copy). Anyone got the answers?

keep moving is a lot better than i ever remembered.

f*cking love the appearance of general public in victoria gardens which i have now realised is the lost madness gem

You know, I have a couple of Madness albums here I acquired quite cheaply a few years ago, and it's occurred to me that I haven't given any of them a real deep listen yet. Must rectify that.

i totally agree re the result of this poll : R&F is by far the best Madness album.
however .. the cover.
it is somewhat troublesome.

I keep flipping between R&F and Keep Moving.

I assume you refer to the brownface in particular, mark? That indeed looks quite off now, even (or especially?) considering that all the figures are intended as stereotypes of sorts. The corresponding song is also a bit, uh, "hey I went to India and I hated it".

They're back with a so-so live record. But after a quick listen -- Norton Folgate is still incredible (and underappreciated?).

The succeding albums are okay, but "Never Knew Her Name" is an incredible lost track

I need to check out Rise and Fall. I've got the Complete and Utter compilations and they're excellent collections, but I would like to give their albums another chance.

How Can I Tell You and Powder Blue off Oui Oui are both fantastic songs as well. They're on the studio working on a new album right now. Norton Folgate is a stupidly brilliant record - vinyl reissue on the horizon.

IMHO Rise & Fall and Keep Moving are their best albums (maybe Norton Folgate is their equal too).

But you can't fuck with any of the first run tbh

I've been listening to "One Step Beyond..." and "Absolutely" recently. For some reason "One Step Beyond..." was the only Madness album I'd ever heard and I hadn't heard it in 30 years or something! Anyway, "Absolutely" is good but, nutty or not, I love "One Step Beyond..." more. I think "Bed and Breakfast Man" might just be my favourite Madness song of them all.

Love Bed & Breakfast man. That guitar sound is fantastic.

"He didn't like his dad / He earned all he ever had" - so much in that simple couplet

"7" is a bit... lacking in catchy tunes?

so so wrong.
it's the beginning of the bands love for darkness that permeates the album.
making it one of their best as far as i am concerned.
(maybe that says more about me than the album/band and me .. )
i mean, any album with 'grey day', 'cardiac arrest', 'mrs hutchinson', and 'day on the town' on it cannot be regarded as devoid of tunes.

Never liked "Cardiac Arrest".

They've gone a bit too Elvis Costello on this album for my liking. It's clever but I don't find it very engaging.

I've since gotten Rise & Fall, One Step Beyond and Norton Folgate - love them all, but I had to import Rise & Fall (pretty absurd that it still hasn't been issued in the U.S., not even on a boutique reissue) and I've been told the bonuses on the UK-only deluxe edition of Folgate are very much worth having, so I may import that as well.

different cardiac strokes and all that.
i love 7.
that album was when i realised that me and the band were in for the long haul as they were clearly moving on from the 'nutty sound'.

Day On The Town is absolutely one of my favourite Madness songs.