A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms POLL

"The Hollow" or "Judith" (because those are the two songs I remember, lol)

I listen to The Thirteenth Step at least once a month and never play this, ever.

Dan OTM -- Thirteenth Step is the superior record by far

gonna vote for "The Hollow"

Orestes had that peaceful melody I loved...but The Hollow was my first favorite. I voted Orestes as it was the song that made me want to buy the cassette.

Ultimately though this was in my "p. good" pile

I liked this record at the time, and saw them live before it was released (opening for Nine Inch Nails), which I also liked, but at this point I have absolutely no memory of what it sounded like, and I never heard the other two(?) albums.

same here. other than the two singles and Orestes, I couldn't recite a note or two from this.

I can't speak for the other albums, but on this one, I really think this would have gone from slightly above-average to meh without Maynard on vocals...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

i still pull this one out from time to time, coulda voted 'thomas' or 'orestes' or 'breña' depending on whatever

never got into thirteenth step really, maybe i should give it another try now that it's been a million years since

Unsurprisingly low turnout

cinderpress -- go for it. seriously. thirteenth step is pretty great. even though i first started listening to it in 2004, i was listening to some of the songs again the other day and it still totally holds up

gotta be in a certain mood for it though. with the exception of maybe the closing track, its not exactly a mood-lifting experience

Fuck, I saw this when system bumped it and planned on voting, but I guess something came up and I forgot. I love the hell out of this album and could have easily voted for Judith or Magdalena or several others, but I think I would have ultimately voted for 3 Libras.

I totally forgot about 3 Libras. that was a great one.

I was the lonely 3 Libras voter .. if ILM gave a fuck about APC I'm pretty sure it would've won.

i just flat out forgot it. and considering the airplay it got over here I'm surprised.

been playing this a lot lately since this thread was posted...i think it holds up fantastically, especially compared to other alt-rock records i was listening to back in my teenage years, and i still like it quite a bit more than thirteenth step

it's just really rich sonically all over and there's lots of great moments because of that i.e. the end of 'judith' on the last held note when a bunch of backing vocals drift in, the way the guitar solo at the end of brena melts away into nothing, etc

Yes, I love that part of "Judith" also!

I still love this album. Thirteenth Step was quite the experience live, but I agree that Mer de Noms holds up a lot better as an album.

Not sure how I missed this thread/poll, btw -- I'd have likely voted "Breña" or "Rose."

lol, I am bumping Thirteenth Step today

I think the thing I like about TS over MDN is the way it's engineered; several people have complained about sterility and Pro-Tools sanding all of the edges off of the songs, whereas what I hear is alt-rock presented with a sense of part isolation and interweaving reminiscent of baroque fugues. You can focus on any individual musical line in every song really easily with different details popping out here or there depending on where you pay attention, or you can sit back and let all of the pieces lock together in a grand musical puzzle that just sweeps over you. I think there are a lot of similar things happening on MDN but, because of how it was engineered, I find that a lot of the lines blur into each other, which sometimes has great, effective emotive power and sometimes pulls a little of the power out of the music.

So basically, my argument is that there is a clinical edge running through TS that reinforces the power of the underlying music and arrangement that really, really appeals to me; MDN has similarly powerful music that is sometimes diluted because the recording tends towards blending everything together. (BTW, do not take this as some grand unified theory of How HI DERE Thinks Music Should Work. I am talking about this specific band on these two specific albums; given that I think the underlying songs are all about the same caliber and of comparable styles, why does one appeal to me more than the other?)

a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle
a grand musical puzzle

(Btw, I listened to this album last night. No clue whether it sounds like a baroque fugue, but I agree the production is better than on Mer de Noms, including the "separation" between various instruments.)

reading comprehension really isn't your thing, is it

Let me know if I'm wrong but the point of your two rambling paragraphs seems to be, "While the songs are good all around, I probably like Thirteenth Step better because I like the production better."

I was talking about "No clue whether it sounds like a baroque fugue" which is not what I was saying.

what I hear is alt-rock presented with a sense of part isolation and interweaving reminiscent of baroque fugues

Although, yes, I get that "reminiscent" ≠ "sounds like," if that's yr point.

talking technique, not structure/form

I could also say Maynard sings in a Renaissance-y straight tone and that wouldn't mean I'm saying the songs sound like madrigals.

Review of the 'play the album' show last night. Maynard's got a new wig!

Also, this is the photo of a man who is so glad he is not Billy Corgan:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/a_perfect_circle-avalon6-02.jpg

Random Notebook Dump: I spotted former A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin backstage while being escorted into the photo pit.

!

Man, I'm so glad I got to see these guys live back in the year 2001.

I'd have loved to be there. A shame Paz Lenchantin didn't make a guest appearance considering she was there.

I forgot it was me who started this poll. Huge success.

the margin by which this record was better than its peers is still staggering

What peers are you counting?

circa 2000 alt rock radio

that's where I know it from, at least

http://www.billboard.com/charts/alternative-songs/2000-07-22

Ah! I wasn't even thinking about radio. I was scrambling to come up with epic gothish alternative bands who could be in their peer group - Failure? NIN? About 50% of Jane's Addiction, maybe? Some Queens of the Stone Age tracks?

didn't realize "Judith" was about Maynard's mother (I'd paid cursory attention to the lyrics other than the "IT'S NOT LIKE YOU KILLED SOMEONE" back when this was hot).

feel like I need to revisit this entire album because I'm at that depressing portion of being middle-aged where I am seeking nostalgia triggers. but I do remember a lot of it being good even if I don't remember 60% of it.

yeah i still dig this album unlike everything else i listened to on the radio in 2000

it's a dope record. thirteenth step is an upgrade in atmosphere and conceptual cohesion but song-for-song this one is nearly its equal

I wrote about this album (and seeing APC open for Nine Inch Nails) a couple of years ago for Stereogum:

The first band on, though, didn’t seem to be selling the same kind of angsty, industrial rage and despair as Trent Reznor and company. They were more like one of the faceless “alternative” acts that played three or four slots down the bill on radio festivals across the middle of the country every summer, back when there were radio festivals. The lead guitarist was a tall, bald-headed goon, and the other guitarist was wearing a shiny suit and a shaggy post-hair metal haircut. He looked like they’d recruited him from a wedding band. They had a female bassist, which still seemed slightly novel even after the 1990s, when every third band seemed to have a female bassist. And their singer was a weirdly retro throwback — he stalked back and forth across the stage, bottle in one hand and microphone in the other, shirtless in shiny pants, with long center-parted brown hair that fell to the middle of his back. He looked like the dude from the Black Crowes or something.

Their music was chugging, psychedelic post-grunge, sometimes sluggish and other times incantatory. The songs all sounded more or less the same, except for the ballads. To me, their best material felt like a cross between Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction, but lacking the sound of surprise that those bands’ original conceptions had carried years earlier (a decade, in Jane’s Addiction’s case). Their worst songs sounded like radio-friendly power ballads. But taken as a whole, their 40-minute set was…fine. Something to watch and listen to while waiting for Nine Inch Nails to play.

A couple of weeks after the concert, I got a copy of A Perfect Circle’s debut album, Mer De Noms, in the mail. I liked the cover art — two bright orange parentheses on a kind of blackened, rusty backdrop, with some weird squiggles running vertically down the center. It took me a minute to connect the CD to the band I’d seen at the Garden, though, and when I played it, I wondered why I’d been so lukewarm toward them that night. Mer De Noms, which turns 20 this Saturday, is one of the strongest debut albums of the 2000s. It’s a concise, punchy, focused record that delivers 11 songs and a brief coda in under 45 minutes, at a time of peak CD bloat. It’s also the only truly great record A Perfect Circle ever made.