Favorite Albums from bands whose devotees think you're nuts for thinking that that album is their best

This was a pretty cool thread (see the third link on this web archive) from a few years ago that mysteriously vanished from ILM in that time. It sparked some interesting discussion at the time and I was sad I couldn't reference it again...

Here are some of mine:

Motorhead 'Orgasmatron' had an atypical line-up and an atypical sound thanks to it being produced by Bill Laswell, but damn do I love it even more than the other Motorhead albums that fans of the band will say shit all over it (usually "Ace Of Spades" or "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith.") Some great songs too!

I prefer "Isn't Anything" to "Loveless" which puts me at odds with My Bloody Valentine supporters.

Few people other than me think that "I Against I" is the best Bad Brains release.

I listen to "It's Only Life" by The Feelies a hell of a lot more than "Crazy Rhythms."

Is it possible to like a live album by a band as their best that isn't Motorhead's "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith?" I adore "The Living End" by Husker Du and find that the simplistic ham-fisted soundboard tape-production and set list from both primordial noise and latter day fuzzy pop encapsulates the band far better than any of their studio albums. And I hate live albums!

"Wow" Moby Grape

The self-titled "Echo and the Bunnymen" album, "lips like sugar", "the game", all that.

Pablo Honey

I don't know if it's their best but it's my fav and can't stand the rest tbh. Ppl think that's weird.

I like "Kid A" a lot and am not fussed about any of the others.

so this is basically where your favourite album by an artist differs from the critical consensus on that artist's best album amirite

in that case let me add

Cowboy Junkies, The Caution Horses
Spiritualized, Pure Phase

That Spiritualized one is miles offside, this is the thread for liking "Let it all come down" or "Songs in A&E" innit?

"Their Majesties Satanic Request" by Stones and "The Elder" by Kiss. Probably also "The Visitors" by ABBA.

Most Metallica fans probably also disagree with me that the black self-titled one is their best, but in that case they also know that a lot of non-fans agree with me.

Know Your Enemy and Journal For Plague Lovers - The Manic Street Preachers

http://www.loriblakeley.name/loriblakeley_music/beatles_white_album378383_19681122.jpg

Few people other than me think that "I Against I" is the best Bad Brains release.

wait, really?

I think I'm one of the few Sparks fans who rates Propaganda as their best.

I like the second albums by The Cars and Devo a lot more than their much more popular debuts but i'm sure there's few people on here that agree.

I really like DI Goes Pop but I think Technicolour is Disco Inferno's masterpiece.

Should preface by saying I haven't actually heard every Superchunk album, but my fave is Come Pick Me Up.

Sleater-Kinney's All Hands on the Bad One never seems like anyone's favorite S-K album but mine. That's cool...more for me!

I think I'm one of the few Sparks fans who rates Propaganda as their best.

No I do too, owing to the fact that they gave me it, personally.

Tangerine Dream's White Eagle is my favorite album by them, but most TD fans seem to hate the stuff they did after 1979.

Ok, I'm one of the chowderheads that thinks Brain Salad Surgery is ELP's best album (ouch)

Also I always thought They Might Be Giants' s/t album was the best they ever did, haven't found anyone that agrees with that one yet. I'm a huge TMBG fan too and love all the early material but there's a weird quality in the first album that they haven't really been able to capture.

Ween - always loved Quebec the most, IMO it's the album with the most great songs on it

Rolling Stones - Some Girls
Feelies - Time For a Witness
Maxwell - BLACKsummer'snight

Queens Of The Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Also I always thought They Might Be Giants' s/t album was the best they ever did, haven't found anyone that agrees with that one yet. I'm a huge TMBG fan too and love all the early material but there's a weird quality in the first album that they haven't really been able to capture.

― frogbs, Monday, March 7, 2011 10:12 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

self-titled isn't as highly regarded as the next 2 or 3 but it's definitely pretty big in the TMBG canon, much moreso than any later album

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians - Perspex Island

mid-late '90s indie bands on the wane edition:
Superchunk - Come Pick Me Up
Fugazi - Red Medicine
Dinosaur Jr. - Hand It Over
Pavement - Brighten The Corners

I'm with you re Pavement.

Is it possible to like a live album by a band as their best that isn't Motorhead's "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith?"

U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky

A few other (non-live) ones that this thread brought to mind for me (which shouldn't surprise anybody)

Bad Religion - Into The Unknown
Teena Marie - Emerald City
Flaming Lips - self-titled debut EP (and probably lots of other bands' debuts, too.)

my favourite King Crimson album is The Construkction of Light. this makes me a leper in KC circles.

Five days a week, Delay 1968 is often my favourite Can album.

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

― da croupier, Monday, March 7, 2011 3:34 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

Fugazi - Red Medicine
Pavement - Brighten The Corners

― TIGER BLOOD aka the sheendriver (some dude), Monday, March 7, 2011 3:42 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I like all of Modest Mouse albums (though Moon And Antarctica the least), I just appreciate Dead's lack of dirgey ruts.

Al's Superchunk choice reminds me I'd probably take Here's To Shutting Up on the whole, though again it's not like I don't like earlier albums.

The self-titled "Echo and the Bunnymen" album, "lips like sugar", "the game", all that.

i like pretty much all Echo stuff but this is one of my favs ^^

That Spiritualized one is miles offside, this is the thread for liking "Let it all come down" or "Songs in A&E" innit?

on many days Let It Come Down is my fav Spz-- the album where the ideas & song suites of Ladies & Gentlemen got the grandiose production they were crying out for

I totally don't get the Red Medicine and Brighten The Corners action, though.

self-titled isn't as highly regarded as the next 2 or 3 but it's definitely pretty big in the TMBG canon, much moreso than any later album

absolutely but everyone says Lincoln is just a better version of the debut, which I guess is true in some respects but I get more mileage out of the s/t. I mean both albums are bizarre but there are songs like "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" which is just an awkward goofy pop gem that hasn't really been equalled by anyone.

Actually, I get BTC in the sense that it's arguably be the best of the Malkmus-over-groovy-backing-band era if you have no time for the sloppy-noisy-toonz early stuff. But the Red Medicine cult really baffles me. Do people really prefer all the interstitial dub bull over 13 Songs and The Argument?

my favourite King Crimson album is The Construkction of Light

that is bonkers

Tangerine Dream's White Eagle is my favorite album by them, but most TD fans seem to hate the stuff they did after 1979.

totally agree.
(i rate hyperborea very highly as well .. )

xxp I just kind of zone out on the dub until they start rockin like a house on fire again

Repeater is probly my fav. but Red Medicine has some real gems ("Bed For The Scraping" is all time top-5 for me — I DON'T WANNA BE DEFEATED I DON'T WANNA BE DEFEATED I DON'T WANNA BE DEFEATED I DON'T WANNA BE DEFEATED *guitar break*)

re: Fugazi, In on the Kill Taker is my no.1, Not really sure how that one's regarded...

my favourite King Crimson album is The Construkction of Light. this makes me a leper in KC circles.

Five days a week, Delay 1968 is often my favourite Can album.

yeah actually I think both of these opinions are pretty nuts

I can see liking the "bad" KC albums like Lizard or Islands the most, because they are at least unique and unhinged (in spots), but ConstruKction to my ears sounds like a bad Metallica imitation that only bothered to write a few new tunes...IMO the follow up Power to Believe is way better

Delay is decent but doesn't really have any great songs on it nor is the sound quality really good enough to listen to regularly..

my favourite King Crimson album is The Construkction of Light

that is bonkers

I'd agree that there are several other KC albums whose highs are better than anything on CoL, but it's the only one of theirs I like all the way through. most of the others have large swathes of stuff I can't really abide. I do like Power to Believe too, but it's a little patchier...

I generally dig CoL's relentless heaviness, but the thing that really gets me is the insanely intricite guitar lines that bounce between belew and fripp as they play alternate notes.

they do that on "Discipline" which is a way better album

totally agree.
(i rate hyperborea very highly as well .. )

― mark e, Monday, March 7, 2011 10:01 AM (9 minutes ago)

69-79 TD < 80-85 TD for me

Death of a Ladies' Man is Leonard Cohen's best album

I was thinking about this kind of thing yesterday when I was listening to Prince's Diamonds and Pearls, which I love and hear people say bad things about. (I also love even less well-considered albums of his, stuff like Emancipation and Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, but can't fairly call them favorites.) Also, Stakes Is High is De La Soul's best album. 8 Diagrams is my favorite Wu-Tang Clan album. Edutainment is my favorite Boogie Down Productions. Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant is generally my favorite Belle & Sebastian album. And I like Rock and Roll With the Modern Lovers more than the Modern Lovers' debut.

8 Diagrams is my favorite Wu-Tang Clan album.

(and I say that as someone who likes [some of] that album!)

My favourite Fugazi album is End Hits which seems to be nobody's favourite (although I couldn't say how it ranks against Red Medicine for most fans).

Wouldn't necessarily say it was his best but the Bob Dylan album I put on more than any other is Infidels.

Rock and Roll With the Modern Lovers

dunno if this is counts really, it's an entirely different band

xxp maybe we need some kind of ILM poll to establish once and for all the Fugazi canon

oh wait no I'm thinkin of rock n' roll with Jonathan Richman nm

I dunno. greetings and happy sad are probably the consensus picks, starsailor and lorca maybe. if you were to pick look at the fool or sefronia, you'd have to be put away.

I thought it was the first two that everyone liked, and occasionally the mid-period stuff.

I'm realizing after reading through this thread, how very few artists or bands I've actually heard the entire output of...

I don't think the first lp has had that much acclaim up to now has it? It's just been rhino handmade-ed remastered & heavily expanded. Still probably seems like a step along the way to somewhere rather than arrival.
Would think it would be Goodbye & Hello & Happy Sad so the 2nd 2.
Blue Afternoon is beautiful & should be readily available on cd. I had it once a long time ago but its been OOP since the early 90s, though I think there's a vinyl version on 4 Men With Beards.

Starsailor is probably considered too weird, though it may actually be his most famous lp. My Fleeting House the official Buckley dvd actually cut out about 10 minutes of Boboquivari the televised performance from the era because the anthologist didn't feel it matched his personal vision of what Buckley was about. Great shame (or worse) since it's the one complete concert by Buckley captured & presumably shows how he'd pace a performance. Would love to see the whole thing remastered and released intact, I have an old fuzzy version of it and it has been otherwise in circulation for years.

Lorca is possibly his weirdest, but was in print a long time after Blue Afternoon & Starsailor cos it hadn't been on Straight so couldn't be messed around by Herb Cohen's whims. Hopefully the straight catalogue material will now reappear over the next while. Some of it has already though not the Buckley or Beefheart stuff. Reminds me, it is a drastic shame that Rev-ola haven't rethought releasing their version of Henske & Yester's Farewell Alderbaraan which was supposed to be from masters. Joe Foster said he was stopped in his tracks pre-release when the radioactive needle drop appeared.

& back to Tim Buckley. Greetings From L.A. is a great lp, so I was surprised to see Jeanette Leech lumped it in with the last 2 in Seasons They Change. Influence may have moved onto soul/funk but it has some classic material on. Sweet Surrender possibly the best of those, some others not that far behind.

Sefronia is a bit weak I guess(, & Look At The Fool at least has some decent songs on but Tim sounds like he has a cold. Both of these lps have better contemporary-to-them live sets circulating.
I really like the Knebworth set from '74 that appears on the Return Of The Starsailor lp. There was a video of this set advertised for years in the back of Goldmine & other US collector publications, I haven't come across any evidence other than that that this was filmed. I'm subsequently wondering if it was actually that. Does anybody here know?

The more I think about it, the more I think that Let Us Prey is also my favourite Electric Wizard album. And it has their trip hop song, 'Night Of The Shape' on it, which is pretty odd.

Flaming Lips - Transmissions from the Satellite Heart
Charlatans UK - s/t (just to add something else)

Neither of these seem crazy, especially the latter.

"Blue Afternoon" is my favourite Tim Buckley album (xxp) Don't think I'm nuts for thinking that tho.

I cannot lie: I play Vive La Trance more than any other Amon Duul II

I can top that, I play Made In Germany more

^ slight fib

... tho only because I play Wolf City and Vive la Tance more

Vive le Trance is one of only three albums I ever bought and then took back to the shop the next day due to extreme musical displeasure.

(the others: NIN's fixed and Bally Sagoo's Nusrat remixes)

I like!

Albums you bought and then took back to the shop the next day due to extreme musical displeasure

Black and Blue is my favourite Rolling Stones album.
Tour De France Soundtracks is my favourite Kraftwerk album.

I think The Knife's first album is their best one.

I like the first Titus Andronicus way way more than the Monitor.

I think Tomorrow In A Year is The Knife's best one

Smashing Pumpkins, Adore

There's a pretty strong cult of Adoreheads out there, actually (although I think most of them post here, lol)

Golden Earring, Switch
UFO, No Heavy Petting
Status Quo, Quo

I think Tomorrow In A Year is The Knife's best one

Do Knife fans think this is a nuts opinion? I think the album is great (but I've also never listened to their other albums tbh).

My gf loves Adore and Machina and doesn't care for the first two Pumpkins albums. I think she's nuts but it might just be that she's five years younger than me.

My SP choices:

Mellon Collie > Gish > Adore = Pisces Iscariot > Siamese Dream (that's right!)

The rest I haven't heard.

most Knife fans I know of fall into either the Deep Cuts or Silent Shout camps; the arty ones will go for TIAY

I don't know anyone besides me who is all about The Knife

For me:

Nirvana - Incesticide
Kraftwerk - Radioactivity
Beach Boys - Smiley Smile

Are any of the other Knife albums similar to TIAY?

Siamese Dream is pretty much the only one I still pull out tbh, maybe individual tracks from Gish or Mellon Collie. I really loved Pisces Iscariot when I was 15 though.

Are any of the other Knife albums similar to TIAY?

not really. You can see a certain progression in their sound which ultimately leads to TIAY, but there's a pretty huge leap between Silent Shout and TIAY.

Here's a good one: The Yardbirds - Little Games

And though I can't call it my favorite, I have a soft spot for Frank Sinatra's "A Man Alone", which most devotees of ol' blue eys consider crud.

eyes

Prior to, say, 1995, wasn't that the go-to "classic" Kinks album? Meaning, a casual classic-rock-radio listener would either buy that or a comp if they were buying one Kinks album.

― Tarfumes The Escape Goat,

very possibly... when i started getting into them (outside of thinking their big mid-60s single were rad) it always seemed like Something else, Village Green.., Face to Face and Arthur were the ones everybody went nuts for.

xpost I have a big soft spot for September of My Years, which while not anyone's idea of crud doesn't tend to get mentioned alongside the Capitol albums.

The Cure - Wish

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Only album I ever bought from them (I'm lying. I also bought Mellon Collie but gave it away to a friend a few months later). There's a psychedelic, sort of tropical quality that no other record from them had. Also only SP where Corgan's voice doesn't annoy me after a few tracks, not sure why.

X-Post. "Wish" is a great album. But then, my favourites are "Head On The Door" and "Japanese Whispers" and I feel the latter in particular is a favourite which would really raise eybrows among devotees. :)

don't forget that you are like the only person on Earth who still likes Wild Mood Swings

Best Elvis Presley album - Having Fun With Elvis On Stage

(just kidding!)

I cannot lie: I play Vive La Trance more than any other Amon Duul II

Made In Germany for me, which may be even more looked down upon by most fans.

Best Elvis Presley album - Having Fun With Elvis On Stage

I came here to post that just now! And I'm NOT kidding. (The only one which might get more play 'round my stereo is the boot "Greatest Shit")

The Beatles - Help!

Hellacopters-Super Shitty to the Max
People can't get passed the production, I think its brilliant!

don't forget that you are like the only person on Earth who still likes Wild Mood Swings

It is patchy but I like some of it. I still rank it behind "Head On The Door", "Japanese Whispers", "Faith", "17 Seconds", "Wish" and "Three Imaginary Boys" so it isn't like it's anywhere close to my favourite albums by them. I feel they've lost it considerably more after that album (even though "Bloodflowers" has its moments.

But, really, "Wild Mood Swings" is the closest The Cure has gotten to a pure pop album after those two albums that are my favourites by them. "Wish" has a few pop songs (and those are songs that I really love) but also some more rock oriented tracks that I like considerably less. "Wild Mood Swings" is pure pop again, although surely not conducted as well as they did in the mid 80s. But even though I also love the early 80s postpunk Cure, I love the pop Cure most of all.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Superstition

I still love this album. I like some of their other songs more than anything here but as an album, this is my favorite.

My favorite Hawkwind album is Quark, Strangeness & Charm. J0n W1ll1@m5 thinks I'm a fucking fool.

Best Elvis Presley album - Having Fun With Elvis On Stage

I came here to post that just now! And I'm NOT kidding. (The only one which might get more play 'round my stereo is the boot "Greatest Shit")

LOL I just recently had my first 'wait this is Elvis and I really like it!' moment, aged 40, when my wife played me 'Roustabout' and 'Flaming Star'. Lo and behold these turn out to be from his movie stuff which apparently is cringe-worthy and abysmal.

tbh, Siouxise & the Banshees is one of the few groups whose entire discography is made up of albums that could be their best album; I think the only one that falls short for me (still haven't heard The Rapture yet) is Join Hands, and that is 100% because of the way it was recorded rather than because I think the songs are weak

having said that, Superstition? u crazy ^_^

I'm one of the people who thinks you're nuts for liking Superstition best! Not only it isn't close to being their best, it isn't even good. It was such a disapointment when it came out I really wonder which songs you enjoy on it. Maybe "Silver Waterfalls"?
(x-post)

"Kiss Them For Me", "The Ghost In You" and "Little Sister" are all great

Kiss Them For me is one of my favorite Siouxsie songs ever. Kinda like when Love Shack blew up and I was feeling vindicated for loving the B-52's all those years.

Jesus & Mary Chain - Automatic

P.M. Dawn - Jesus Wept

I saw Siouxsie on that tour. I loved the remixes for KTFM on the 12", especially the ambient kissapella with the indian drums. I think it may have been Talvin Singh? Maybe i'm making that up. I still have the promo cd single for Fear with all the house mixes, which used to be very popular when I Dj'd in college. The album tracks mentioned above are all great and the combined memories from my first year in college and seeing them live push Superstition into my fav. S&tB album. I see this opinion fits the thread's intent.

Pere Ubu - Ray Gun Suitcase

See, I might actually pick "Join Hands" as my fav at the moment...

The Beatles - Help!

This is probably my fav too.

Yeah, that is the definitive "Beatles" album.