This is a thread for spreading musical understanding

(The thread was inspired by Mark S' bafflement over Unrest and Nabisco's very reasonable and interesting explanation of why they're good, by the way. It didn't convince me but I liked reading it.)

It seems there's been a huge backlash on this. I guess the format of this thread precludes you from getting specific about what you don't like. Admittedly, the whole "experimental" and rebels-against-the-Man angle has been overplayed. The sound is pretty much descended from Sister Lovers, and holding out against Reprise was ultimately a kind of business decision.

So, I like YHF because I really love pretty much all the songs. Many of them delve poetically into a very American dread that I relate to, if I won't get hoisted on the petard for saying this. I like the mix of straightforward stuff ("Jesus, Etc.," "Pot Kettle Black," "I'm The Man Who Loves You," "Heavy Metal Drummer") and the stranger arrangements (a lot of the rest). To me, Tweedy's scratchy, tired moan is perfectly imperfect, fits the emotion of his tunes just right.

I think it may've been overhyped, but I still see it as quite an artistic achievement. It's stood up for me after hundreds and hundreds of listens, and I got a real thrill even hearing alternate versions of the songs in Sam Jones' documentary.

All of which might just mean I'm a fan, but I'm trying to give it a shot explaining what I like about the record. Hope this isn't too laughable.

(wl that is exactly the kind of reply I was hoping for when I started the thread, thanks)

I haven't heard this record for a long time but what i liked abt it was the quiet/loud structures but also he does use the vocal range in this amateurish manner and it comes off. I don't know what he talk about most of the time but it doesn't matter (when does it).

Unfortunately they have been lumped in with the post rock crowd and that hasn't helped but its a great 40 minutes. also I think it takes a while for the rec to sink in. It took me a few listens for sure.

nope, still not getting it.

do like the photos of his band though

The great thing abt this record is that it sounds as if the band are playing the music for two or three songs at once. They never settle onto a groove ('cause it's corny maaan!), the guitars, bass and drums never seem to go together but by some bonkers logic that beefheart applies it somehow does make sense. At the centre of it all is beefheart just belting out his 'lyrics', his wordplay. No poxy insights in to the human condition (thank god!). Again, all of this this takes a few listens. Part of the appeal though is that too many listens are never enough (you can never completely understand it), but that is part of the appeal.

This is my favorite of anything I've heard by them. Sure, they ripped off the Fall heavily in parts ("We need two states!"), as Mark E. Smith has often bitterly complained about, but then again they stole part of a melody from Jim Croce too. Which is pretty sweet in and of itself.

It's a more-than-minor masterpiece just for being all at the same time brainy, funny and desperate (the last of which is something they lost hereafter). The ramshackle, raw don't-give-fuck feel works just right. "Summer Babe" and "In the Mouth A Desert" are simply great songs. Malkmus's lyrical approach was (and remained, to his credit) pretty original and individual to him.

They also get points for parodying/ arriving at crusty rock 'n' roll disappointment ("Here") years before they ever even went for the brass ring and failed. Kind of like Bowie singing, "beware you rock 'n' rollers/ 'cause one day you're gonne be older." Only not at all.

Hold your applause, please.

its maybe the greatest sole mc/producer record ever, ems weird descending un-hiphop melodic bits and ugly sounding bounce stuff make his voice sound uglier and realer, turning the circus beat sarcasm of the dre stuff into thug life uncinematic pac realism. also the cartoon beat stuff is still there in fine form; the effortless 'business', 'drips' , etc and when he melds the two styles like on square dance its possibly the best style hes ever copped

Sometimes I think the idea of liking something has less to do with what you identify with, and more to do with what you're willing to forgive. I forgive Supergrass for their unrelentingly childish lyrics and their now-annoying britpop posturing, if only because they are the closest I have heard to capturing the same particular intensity as The Who's first album. They simply have more unrestrained gleeful manic energy than any other pop band out there. Listen to 'Lenny' or 'Sitting Up Straight' and tell me you don't feel it, even just a little bit. Try dancing - it helps.

Supergrass: don't get enough credit. I mean, the norm has been for every rock band to hold up big signposts to their emotional weight and ostensible profundity -- either that or just have some jokey gimmick -- whereas I Should Coco had this interesting purity of sounding like a rock band playing rock for the sole purpose of its being fun. They didn't take themselves particularly seriously -- even though they could have, as a lot of the construction and composition on that record is quite sharp. I think I felt about them the same way I feel about the Strokes: they'd just made a hugely fun, energizing, blazingly-performed pop-rock record, and (possibly unlike the Strokes) they didn't seem to be asking you to think anything else. In fact, they initially reminded me of being 10 and watching Monkees re-runs on Nickelodeon.

david, those involuntary body movements to musick are a GOOD thing

That reminds me:

The Strokes - Is this It?

"destiny" is gorgeous.

Pink – M!55UNdAZ700d

Lots of reasons why I love this LP. First and foremost – great songs. As I’ve said before, I know not and care less if they are autobiographical, but I can respond to them as if they are. Moreover, several songs are at least insightful into strained and broken relationships, be it with family, peers or authority figures. What’s really fascinating however, considering the LP is a whole, is the absence of any pro-male perspective (apart from the nods to US army vets). There’s not a single traditional lurve song to be found, and men in general get short shrift. All these issues are sometimes described with rather simplistic analogies, and in schoolgirl-journal terms, to be sure. But this happens to suit Pink’s persona / p.o.v. perfectly. And even if that is just a carefully constructed image, so what? I realise I’m making the album sound ultra-serious, when it’s just a pop record. It’s full of very funny lines too, if that helps.

Musically, it’s strong, full of simple but memorable hooks, and Linda Perry’s production and arrangements are excellent throughout. A lot of people were disappointed when they realised there was almost nothing else like "Get The Party Started" on the record. But when guitar-based pop is done as well as this, it’s time to reevaluate your AOR prejudices. Hell, I even like the Aerosmith collaboration, and I never thought I’d say that about any record.

(p.s. i promise nevah to write the title like that on ILX again)

anything by Interpol

Mysterons
After having followed the ILM thread Portishead - are we fickle or did they deserve to become dated so quickly? and having read Josh's recent post on them I relistened to "Dummy" as well. I was sure that the record would not have the same impact as in 1994 when I heard "Roads" on MTV and was completely overwhelmed by the tristesse and Verlorenheit (forlornness) emanating from that voice, the trembling synthesizer and the slow beats. I hadn't listened to it for a long time and back in 1994 I definitely had listened to it too often so that it had become one of those loved-to-death records. But I had a nice surprise. Especially the first track "Mysterons" with the extremely addictive slow drum machine rhythm which has a drum roll at the end did it for me. Already the start of that song is gorgeous. A guitar plays some ascending notes and the synthie sounds like a quacking duck. First the duck is quite shy and not too loud and then it bursts into some serious quacking which comes from scratching I guess. The song is then dominated by a low synthie sound layer. After a while the theremin (apparently only a patch on a minimoog according to this thread) joins in and produces some long beautiful sounds. They seem to come from the sky and remind me of the whoosh of a fast-blowing wind. Absolutely otherworldly. At the end of that song the drumming becomes very shaky and rolls like a thunder in slow motion. The less poetic technical term for this is reverb I think.

I'm just going to be lazy and reprint the deplorably overwritten review I posted on Head Heritage of Firewater's debut, GET OFF THE CROSS WE NEED THE WOOD FOR THE FIRE. It might not help you, but here's my take on it....

Firewater
Get Off the Cross We Need the Wood for
the Fire

Released 1996 on JetSet

Having spent a goodly portion of the early `90's irresponsibly ravaging my ears via the
serrated audio squal of Brooklyn's mighty Cop Shoot Cop (the initial sonic outpourings of
whom meshed with the workings of the inner ear as does the rusty screwdriver to spinning
bicycle spokes), I found myself virtually weeping bitter, caustic tears upon hearing of said
"urban guerilla industropigfuck noise squad"'s inevitable, acrimonious and messy implosion
in `95. Cop mainman Tod [A] (nee Tod Ashley) had jumped ship, having become bored by
C$C's rigid adherence to monochromatic malice. In my mouring, I halfheartedly consoled
myself with the anaemic drivel of lesser bands whose pathetic attempts to match the
scowling black-hearted sturm und drang of the Cop fell like runny, shredded condoms
in the shadow of the definite article. I badgered former band members, insiders, drinking
buddies, roadies and associates as to when (or even if) another chapter would be written,
and who would be in the cast of characters. Rumors came and went like johns through a
brothel. Having sucked up to the industry like the dutiful corporate cog I would later
(d)evolve into, I managed to sweet-talk my way into the good, gullible graces of a pouty
publicity gal who dangled promises of "Tod [A]shley's new post-C$C project" before me
like a can of frosty grape soda infront of a parched diabetic. Just when I was beginning to
give up hope and entertain thoughts of re-enlisting in the Kiss army, a package from
hitherto obscure indie label JetSet arrived at my door.
Hungrily, shredding open the plain brown wrapper, I was confronted with an image of our
supposedly would-be saviour, smokin' a butt and grasping one of the peoples' beers. So far
so good. Racing to my Mickey Mouse Close-&-Play, slappin' on the disc, ready to kick out
the jams like an undead Rob Tyner, I readied myself and started pouring over the liner
notes to discover....what's this??....bazouki?......djembe?........ACCORDION????!??? Before
I could realign my narrow musical prejudices, "Some Strange Reaction" broke through my
long-suffering woofers & tweeters and vanquished my momentary doubts. Wading deeper
into the album, however, it was clear that this was no workaday Cop Shoot Cop soundalike.
There would be no vitriolic call for urban upheval here. The guns had been holstered, the
soapbox replaced with a bar stool and the brass-knuckles had been hocked for beer money,
but somehow it still kicked the snots out of everything. This was an album that marched the
perma-frownin' 'No Wave'ers out of the East Village scenester bars and down to the dance
halls of Lower East Side's ethnic ghost town, where mohawks and black leather get swapped
for hasidic finery. How fitting that it came in a triagular sleeve, as it would not slip meekly
and comfortably in with the rest of my cd collection. GET OFF THE CROSS is a phoenix of
an album that flattens the competion.

It's funny, I'm going to say this one comes down to the lyrics. If the anarchic non-grooves and frankenstein stitch-up song constructions aren't your thing, it'll never really click. I particularly like how the amateur trumpet blatting is used as a kind of ugly glue throughout. Anyway, I think Ian Svenonius is a bona fide genius. From memory:

"Not talkin bout/A Beatles Song/Written a hundred years before I was born/they're all talking bout/the round and round/but who's got the real anti-parent-culture sound?"

self-dramatization of the Ulysses "myth," a hilariously extreme conflation of sXe, rasta, greaser, peter pan, anything that's "against." It's that "hundred years" that nails it, the wrongness of it (a petulant teenager yelp) makes the boast self-deflating.

"A hundred flowers bloom/A hundred schools of thought contend/Come one baby/Let's hang around."

From Mao to Pope to teenage lobotomy. Brilliant.

And terrific packaging to boot.

The best intro in rock. Guitar interplay that licks around the engine of the song like flickering lightening while Jagger punches the overload button. As the lyrics suggest, the song itself is like some sort of swirling storm, breaking moodily then bulding into a roaring tornado. Like a brooding apocalypse that bursts out from the speakers, Gimme Shelter is ragged, glorious, sheer rock. And nobody does it better than the Stones. Nobody.

“Give me two records and I’ll make you a universe,” DJ Spooky once wrote. Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ /rupture, goes him one better: not only does he have the skills to back up such a claim, unlike Spooky, but on this headwrecking two-part set, he reconstructs the sound of the world we live in. A former Boston drum & bass DJ currently residing in Spain, he mixes up hip-hop, dancehall, dub, Indian, North and South African music, gabber, glitchcore, and 20th-century composition into an unbelievably well-plotted whole: it’s simultaneously abrading and compulsively listenable like nothing since prime Public Enemy. Clayton’s spent the last five years obsessively studying North African music, and his emphasis on Arabicisms both real and received (the genius opening mix of “Get Ur Freak On” and “Oochie Wally”) has special resonance post-9/11: there may be no more haunting album sequence this year than the disc’s ending, which moves from Muslimgauze’s “The Taliban” to Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Homeless” to a gorgeous live track by Miriam Makeba, a 30-year exile from her native South Africa during apartheid. All this plus Rude-Ass Tinker’s insane deconstruction of “U Can’t Touch This,” the funniest piece of hip-hop-mangling laptopia ever and a good match for Negativland’s “U2.” [taken from my blog on my declaring it my 6th favorite album of 2001; now it'd be third]

First off, there are the strings. Those are just glorious. Secondly, Caron Wheeler has a very clear, agile voice that just swoops wonderfully over the melody. The beat is toe-tapping to the extreme and the harmonization in the chorus is simultaneously simple and perfect. Few songs are as well-realized as this one.

I already liked U2 when I bought Achtung Baby. It seems like a continuation of everything I had heard of theirs in terms of subject matter, except more personal. I was unaware of the postmodern hoopla surrounding it. All I heard were what I thought (and still think) to be good songs, and good production. Yes, the production doesn't compare very well with the techno records coming out at the time, as well as My Bloody Valentine, but in America, these things weren't very popular. At 11 I was unaware of them.

The whole album, to me, seemed very European. It made me think of Cafes and the contrast between old buildings and modern ones. The album made me think about speed, about the possibility of taking trains to all of these different and wonderfully cosmopolitan places. In its own strange way, Achtung Baby was my Trans-Europe Express. The album became part of the excitment of discovering the world, especially the changes that were occuring in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall (this is really the moment, in my mind, when Europe truly became the leading place for freedom, as opposed to America, which has been dying in its own way since the end of "Communism".) All of the above has little to do with the lyrics as much as the music and even the photos.

As for the songs themselves, my favorite is "Love is Blindness". I don't think the lyrics are breaking that much new ground, but the sounds are as evocative as anything I have heard. And the lyrical content and sonic environment match perfectly. All of the various guitars coming in and out, the organ that starts everything off, the melancholy (!) dubby baseline, everything. Especially chill inducing for me are the two "solos" that the Edge plays. The first involves him playing a few tearing notes before he aborts the whole thing. this could, if you read into it, be seen as a metaphor for the dysfunctional love being described in the lyrics. The second invloves the quick strumming of chords later on that takes the song to another level much the same way the Mullen's drums do on "With or Without you" on JT. I tend to react as much to the guitar sounds as anything else, and I don't tend to buy into Bono's lyrics as much as his attitudes. In this sense, "Even Better..." and "Mysterious Ways" are greats as well. As for "One" I like it! I think that the way that the song shifts subtly in dynamics makes it magic. When Bono rips into his open-throated vocalizing at the end, if you can like it, you will.

The problem with U2 is that they are overpraised without much thought. No canon-enforcing rock critic seems to explain the magic that they are capable of. JT, for instance, is always reffered to in the context of hair metal. Nobody says why they like them. For me, I always liked the idea of subsuming lots of influences completely under the pattern of the standard pop song form. That is why I like St. Etienne, Bjork, Everything but the Girl's latest work, and it it is why I like Achtung Baby. Yes, some of their songs are weak, but if you hate them, hate them for that fact. Hating them because Bono puts his foot in his mouth creates a double standard. MOST rock stars and pop stars are either pompous or idiots. Or both. But this is I*L*M*.
(Tom I hope this helps!)

I've always heard Achtung Baby thematically, as a prodigal-son kind of album; the songs seem to be about someone immersing themselves in media and the flesh, shaking off their puritan past and allowing themselves to experience things they'd have avoided in the past, in part to come out on the other side knowing more and better, in part to slap themselves in the face and face down some of their more irrational fears.

(Part of that has to do with my knowledge of what U2's earlier work was like, part of it to do with my most charged hearing of the album, on a Greyhound from Seattle to Minneapolis, having lost my job and apartment and having my back go out and landing in the hospital all within 24 hours: I'd always heard those prodigal-son themes in the album, but listening to it then and there, at 2am on headphones while everyone else on the bus was asleep, brought them home in an extremely personal way. I also happen to completely unabashedly fucking adore the Edge's multi-colored psychedelic guitar solo on "The Fly.")

At the risk of cracking Tom up completely, the album it's most reminiscent of, for me, is the Avalanches' Since I Left You, except that I hear the Avalanches album as enacting a (very similar) scenario of a woman breaking free of a constricting relationship and discovering the world. Both albums take off into parts unknown right from the git: "Zoo Station" announces Bono as ready for the gridlock et al--ready to surrender himself to the world rather than trying to control his corner of it--while "Since I Left You" is the bittersweet sound of a woman "discovering a world so new" following a breakup. In both cases, the music--"Zoo Station"'s industrio-guitars, "Left You"'s playful sample melange/groove--can be heard as signifiers of the world they're entering: post-Communist Europe where everything's up for grabs, the dizzy-dancing nightworld of post-rave clubland. And both end on an unresolved note: "Acrobat" and "Love is Blindness" (my two least faves by far) attempt to get a grip on the task at hand (caring for someone else), but Bono sounds uncertain of whether he can handle something that concrete; he's still woozy from all the movement he's been through. Similarly, the end of Since I Left You finds our heroine wistfully looking back at the end of the relationship, wishing she could go back, knowing she can't, because she's changed too much to ever enter something like it again.

Off the top of my head: I like pastiches when they are heartfelt. Pavement are more lovably vulnerable than any of the bands they ripped off. It's the guitar equivalent of a great IDM album: parasitic but wonderfully dysfunctional. It has the best 'bad' production (I've heard) since White Light/White Heat. The fuzzy/tinny textures are obviously a lot like VU/SY/MBV's, but more childishly playful. It's more pop (in a Beatles sense not Britney)and less rock than any of those bands.

(not that I'm actually a fan or anything)

It's tragic enough when people today think there's anything 'already done' about a rock-solid collection of great, catchy songs with enough melodic interplay to make the thing timeless, so to hear you say that pop was already done back in 92 is really, really bleak. Don't be bleak man, be happy!

The melodic interplay on this album is the best ever. The way it just seems like the songs are conceived in their final form: that no melody is inseperable from the others that accompany it, really is awesome. Also, the perfect use of the thin sound to bring out the enthusiasm of the band without crowding out the pop melodies, makes it one of the few records I can truly enjoy for the energy.

And it's a rock-solid collection of great, catchy songs, damn it!

(I can't get past the first song: so perhaps I may be convinced to give it another few goes, if you think there is really goodness in it. By the way, bad band name. Bad. Yes.)