Best Steve Lillywhite Production

Talk Talk Talk and I'm not even reading the rest of the list

If I Should Fall From Grace vs. Naked vs. the Las vs. Vauxhall

ugh this is hard.

did dude just retire after '94?

Also, I'm stopping before he gets to Dave Matthews Band, because fuck them.

oh. lol. had no idea he did them. that's kinda sad.

So much good here, and very little bad (I'm looking at you, Dirty Work).

Peter Gabriel's third album is one of those things that's unimpeachable imo, though, so I kind of have to vote for it.

first two Psych Furs albums really don't sound much like stereotypical Lillywhite productions to me which is prob why they are best

I have alot of difficulty on these polls distinguishing between which albums I prefer and which ones the producer did the comparatively best job on. If the artists and the material are great, the producer may not have all that much to do or may not have to stretch much creatively.

I am usually no fan of Lillywhite at all, but "3" sounds fantastic. It is not only the better album of all these, but also the better sounding one.

I think in the late '80s and '90s and beyond that U2 started to take up a significant amount of his time; I believe he mixed most of the albums since "War," if not outright produced them. He's part of the team.

I'm torn between that "Talk Talk Talk," "Peace and Love," "The Crossing" and "Vauxhall and I." And maybe "Kite." But I may just vote for Peter Gabriel. I'm thinking in terms of actual production, not favorite album.

As for the typical Lillywhite sound (which IMO is not very evident on "3"), I would say Big Country is the one act that benefited the most from it. XTC sounded much better later on when they worked with Todd Rundgren.

Voted 'If I Should Fall From Grace', btw.

Psychedelic Furs, "Psychedelic Furs" (1980)
Psychedelic Furs, "Talk Talk Talk" (1981)
Simple Minds, "Sparkle in the Rain" (1984)
and the U2 albums are what I primarily think of when I think of his sound. Maybe the first Big Country album, too.

in my head his trademark sound is brittle and reverb-y and yet a lot of these albums don't sound that way.

Yeah, when I think of the big "Lillywhite sound," Big Country is the first band who comes to mind. xp

i don't know if the US versions of the Psych Furs albums are markedly different to the UK versions but the first one especially feels much too fat and noisy to me to be a trademark Lillywhite production?

US/UK differences are strictly tracklist related. No differences re: production/mix iirc.

Strictly going by production, setting aside material and performance, I gotta go with Boy. But I've never heard Talk Talk Talk so maybe I shouldn't vote.

did dude just retire after '94?

into Dave Matthews hell

Talk Talk Talk is a lot like Boy, actually, except maybe a little more "in the room" dryness/liveness.

which might be down to the Furs being a bigger more chaotic band than U2 at that point

Some of these things are my favorite albums ever. My top five:

P-Furs - Talk x 3
Stones - Dirty Work (my adoration is well known)
Marshall Crenshaw - Field Day
Morrissey - Vauxhall and I
XTC - Black Sea

I understand you wanting to stop before the DMB records, but you don't allow us the chance to vote for the awesome new Beady Eye record!

Kidding aside, I wish this poll went up enough to include his work on Phish's Billy Breathes. Its a gorgeous sounding record and the best thing that anyone has been able to pull out of them in the studio.

I love what a big component his sound is to the albums he produced. He gets unfairly lopped in with the huge fluffy drums sound of the '80s, but the drums on his most drum-y albums - the three U2, the two Big Country, and Peter Gabriel - are generally pretty dry and natural. When paired with an awesome drummer, like Big Country's, he sensibly moves him up to the fore of the mix. Think how unimportant Larry Mullen Jr. got when Lillywhite stopped producing him.

Bonus trivia: name the not one but two albums in this list to feature Kate Bush!

guessing Gabriel's third and "If I Should Fall from Grace"?

He gets unfairly lopped in with the huge fluffy drums sound of the '80s,

I've never considered him a purveyor of eighties big bam boom either. The Crenshaw album fits his aesthetic most uncomfortably, and I like it a lot (Matos and Xgau have both argued that its big drum sound helped him sell Crenshaw's big melodramatic emotions)

I don't know what new toys Steve Lillywhite got in 1984 but these two both sound terrible imo:

Simple Minds, "Sparkle in the Rain" (1984)
Big Country, "Steeltown" (1984)

All those horrible clattering drums.

Love the drums on "Steeltown." But I love the drummer.

xpost The correct answer is Peter Gabriel and ... Big Country's "The Crossing!" Both feature cameo Kate Bush.

Torn between Boy and Gabriel 3. Both sound EPIC. (Even though I have to concur with Geir that the Gabriel one doesn't sound like what I think of as Lillywhite's trademark sound, like say Big Country does.)

Love the Furs and XTC albums, but big production isn't what really makes me love them.

can't think of Mark Brzezicki without thinking of the 80s and massive Zildjian promotion

I had such a teenage crush on 'Sparkle in the Rain', I can't really even hear it with anything even approaching an objective ear. It's not even that I still like or listen to it, but it's immensely evocative of a certain time. It drove my dad batshit at the time, so maybe it is horrible.

no it's a good record and of its time without being trapped in its time imo

Psychedelic Furs, "Talk Talk Talk"

VS

U2, "War"

This is a hard choice for me. I guess I'm more likely to put on the Furs album today, so that one.
Plus my friends and I recently tried to do cover/recording of "So Run Down," which was too much fun.

Last one of these I heard was Ha!Ha!Ha! which still sounded great. Kind of a punky mid-point between Roxy Music and Magazine.

What's that Thompson Twins album like btw? I don't think I ever head any of their pre-fame stuff.

It's got this one song that's also on the "Ghostbusters" soundtrack, I know that much.

Kidding aside, I wish this poll went up enough to include his work on Phish's Billy Breathes. Its a gorgeous sounding record and the best thing that anyone has been able to pull out of them in the studio.

jon/via/chi speaks the truth here. I'm going with Talking Heads Naked of the ones I've heard, but I definitely haven't heard them all.

I voted for Titanic Days. Someone had to.

I was going to put in a good word for Electric Landlady.

Naked seems very uncharacteristic of him tbh, like I completely overlooked that that was him, and I've listened to this album a bunch in the last couple years

Black Sea.

Steve Lilywhite's did his best work on that one Killdozer EP.

(xpost) Yeah, had no idea 'til this thread that Lillywhite produced Naked.

A lot of things make sense if you thread it together with his mixing, engineering and singles he produced. Like, he produced a few singles for the Smiths, and Johnny Marr is on "Naked." That sort of thing.

Famously, he was set to produce Rush but then backed out. That turned out to be the "Grace Under Pressure" record, which I really like, but which would have sounded neat with him producing.

I understand you wanting to stop before the DMB records, but you don't allow us the chance to vote for the awesome new Beady Eye record!

While my faith in Liam Gallagher as a songwriter is mediocre to say the least, Lillywhite did a good production job for Beady Eye. Much better than I imagine Owen Morris or Mark Coyle could have done.

What's that Thompson Twins album like btw? I don't think I ever head any of their pre-fame stuff.

There's "In The Name Of Love" although that track is very unrepresentative, actually pointing more forwards to the more famous stuff they'd do on the next album.

"Set" was more guitar oriented, and actually sounding very typical of Lillywhite's sound. As somebody who does actually consider myself a fan, I bought the twoofer of their first two albums when Edsel reissued it on CD for the first time a few years back, but I was not impressed.

Kate Bush sang on "the Seer" (from the Seer), not Steeltown. /buzzkill

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

PG3

torn between Field Day and Talk Talk Talk

torn between the xtc albums (prefer drums & wires, but the black sea is more interesting, production-wise) and if i should fall from grace with god. those 1st three U2 records sound really great, too.

went with drums & wires.

He produced Johnny Thunders' So Alone, too (or at least co-produced it with Thunders). I'd probably still vote for Field Day.

Sorry--you specify co-productions don't count.

Been wanting to check out Kite for a while now. Same with the Ultravox...

Voting for The La's. He single-handedly made that album sound great. How do I know this? Because every single one of the demos on that massive 3CD reissue sound awful. "Oh! We're so happy these demos are out!" the fans would say. "This is the way the band wanted it to sound before Lillywhite stole all their master tapes and fucked it all up!" Tossers the lot of 'em.

Same with the Ultravox...

DO IT! Fucking great, weird little record.

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

Huh, I could have sworn that was Kate Bush on "The Crossing," but I guess she doesn't pop up until Big Country's "The Seer?"

yeah, she does banshee wailing on the title track on the seer. don't think there's any female vocals on the crossing at all?

where is Southpaw Grammar or Maladjusted. Southpaw in particular is better than a most in the stuff in this poll, in fact I've grown to appreciate it more than Vauxhall. give it a spin.

3/Melt by miles and miles and miles and i'm not even a big peter gabriel fan.