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Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Tin Drum is a fantastic album, but so is Gentleman Take Polaroids, stick with it, it gets better the more you play it. Also love Scritti, but then I also love their "dated" contemporaries: pre-pomp Simple Minds, Associates, Heaven 17 of Penthouse and Pavement, ABC, Visage. I even have a soft spot for the likes of Duran's The Chauffeur and Planet Earth and Spandau's To Cut a Long Story Short and Chant # 1.

Yeah this is fair - I probably shouldn't have said 'dated' because that's always taken as pejorative. I actually like most of the other groups that you mention (although with some of them I've only ever really skimmed the big hits) - I suppose all I would say is that a lot of them sound recognisably '80s UK' to me whereas with Japan what initially struck me was how modern they sounded, or if not modern then at least, not tied to their particular period.

Stuck on Gentlemen Take Polaroids again last night on your recommendation, and yeah, I can see this growing on me. The songs maybe feel a bit more laboured and less immediate than the ones on Tin Drum, which feel very effortless to me even though they're obv. very carefully put together. But yeah, still good. Enjoying Swing a lot (perhaps because it feels closest to some of the tunes on Tin Drum):

 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Anyhow, this is my COTD :


Probably the only new find from the ILX best of 2016 polls which really excited me, which is a shame because I ended up get unexpectedly engaged by their 2015 best-ofs, especially the albums.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Went to Bristol yesterday to see The Julian in this little scuzzy rock venue. Absolutely magical - no band, just him and his guitar. Some old Teardrop material and solo stuff right up to his new album.


Perhaps the last of the true hippies?
 

Leo

Well-known member
that first teardrops album "kilimanjaro" is still one of the best of the pop-centric post-punk/new wave albums, at least eight or nine tracks that were or could have been singles. i remember getting a couple of cope's solo records, which had some good bits too. funny how he went on to become the scholar for psych/garage rock.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

M&S - Keep On (Tuff Jam Vocal Mix) (1998)

This version has much more bass than the version I used to call up on YT, too much really, but I still really like this tune. I always think of this type of tune as having a very 90s sort of optimism, which I guess still applied as late as 1998. This tune is the power and the glory. It gives me an idea of how happy a Christian must be.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
With thanks to Leo & craner :


But really I could have chosen just about anything from Fourth Drawer Down. What an extraordinary album! It's funny, every time I think I've bottomed out on amazing discoveries from the late 70s-early 80s period and all that's left is barrel-scrapings, up pops another gem like this.
 

Leo

Well-known member
right-o, andy (welcome back, btw). i imagine some (many?) people might put off by billy mackenzie's vocals but everything works together.

don't mean to make this an early 80s thread but this is another classic. don't do drugs, kids.

 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

Partly cos its the most unfashionable thing I could do on here and it will annoy luka for a millisecond, but also cos I put Ok Computer on, on a whim, and I'm actually enjoying it. It's a different class of miserabilism. It's a bit grungier than their more recent stuff (the Nirvana influence still lingering at this point), which sticks a bit of an edge into the back of Yorke's wailing, which in recent years I've found laughable and intolerable.

It's also nostalgia. I remember having very gratifyingly gloomy walks along a rainswept beachfront listening to this album on holiday with my 'rents. The gloom was entirely focused on my self-imposed celibacy, rather than New Labour or whatever. And still is.

Radiohead often get shat on for being miserable by poptimists but as a Brit I'm constitutionally disposed to wallowing in misery.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've been trying to find my way back to misery. I can't remember my way. I was so focused on banishing it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's indulgent, even in the era of Trump and the looming spectre of global extinction, for a middle class white man to be miserable. I mean it feels indulgent. It feels teenage.

OTOH I don't think people who enjoy Radiohead (notice how I'm trying to extricate myself even here from that group) don't feel miserable while they're enjoying it. Whereas for many, listening to Katy Perry or whoever is a Gulag for the ears.
 

luka

Well-known member
You're supposed to feel feelings that's why they're called feelings. The clue's in the name
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Transitioning from Radiohead to Prince ('I wanna be your lover') just now was like watching and feeling the sun coming out from behind a cloud.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Throwing in a big, blatant chunk of red meat for Luka (though he'll probably say it comes after Hype went shit anyway):

 
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