Most underrated LP/albums ever

Woebot

Well-known member
I've always felt that was about Donovan's "Cosmic Wheels". It's not obscure, but few of his many greatest hits comps include anything from it. It's got lots of hooks and a glam rock feel in places, plus an all-star backing band: John "Rabbit" Bundrick, Suzi Quatro, Cozy Powell, Chris Spedding, Alan White.
donovan is a cruelly underrated artist IMHO.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
The title track is a monster

You can listen to it almost as a lost Coil work, on microdots, the kids all bop to its strange groove too which is the toughest dance-floor going




Fuck Weather Report haters
The Live sides take all to a another level , if one likes WR you owe it to your self !
 

woops

is not like other people
Yes! I love their "in expression of the inexpressible" lp too. Stormy and very delicate at the same time. It's music that sounds like it's made by grown ups, but not in a shit boring way. Rather it has the complexity and ambiguity and ambivalence that comes with leaving adolescence. You know that the people making this music have really lived. They've made big mistakes and they've really doubted themselves.

Far superior to sonic youth I think, who even when good have a trace of dilletente adolescence to them
yeah this that's what i meant yep.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
I've seen Sonic Youth twice, and you know what? Each time the support bands were the ones I remember..blew them off stage..

The worst rock biography I've ever read was one about Sonic Youth, rather than the tales of Lower East Side debauchery I was expecting it was all "and for this track Thurston tuned his guitar to E-E-F-A-G-E#" - total snooze fest...
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
John Darnielle reckons Stockholm Monsters "Alma Mater" is the best record ever. I mean obviously it's not, but there is something there. Whereas the Smiths wallowed in melancholy, with Stockholm Monsters their total focus on how miserable life is becomes kinda grandiose, celebratory, joyful. It ia absolutely pitiful and majestic at the same time.

"every thing's wrong, everything's wrong, I must stay where I belong!" YEAH!

great record to get drunk to. Sit down with this and some high strength alcohol and you've got an evening.

 

Woebot

Well-known member
I've seen Sonic Youth twice, and you know what? Each time the support bands were the ones I remember..blew them off stage..

The worst rock biography I've ever read was one about Sonic Youth, rather than the tales of Lower East Side debauchery I was expecting it was all "and for this track Thurston tuned his guitar to E-E-F-A-G-E#" - total snooze fest...
hm - easy target. i'm sure you are right about the biography though. i saw them with rapeman (amazing) and dinosaur jr (also amazing) but SY were also brilliant.

they are certainly above the fray - for years i used to guffaw that they wanted to be on 99 records but ed bahlman never took the bait - but i couldn't possibly knock that stretch evol>sister>daydream nation. that's as good as talking heads/led zep peak purple patch and i think more luminescent than the huskers longer but maybe less incandescent stretch.

with the benefit of my mature sensibility sister probably most of all. i remember buying it when it came out in 1987 - i was only sixteen (!!!) younger than my own children - and it was quite a difficult listen.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
revisited this - that petrol emotion - manic pop thrill - the earliest indie lps i bought - and while it's not an unheralded classic it is a really very stonking little album

 
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martin

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I’ve never really understood the classical avant-garde, meaning I don’t know how to appreciate it on an academic or intellectual level. I guess I’m just drawn to stuff that sounds weird and mental, especially if it disturbs me or makes me laugh. “De Natura Sonorum” may be brilliant for all I know, but I find it dull. I don’t understand the 'theory' behind this music, so I’m possibly getting a one-dimensional take on something quite complex. Can’t lie, the fact that friends thought this stuff was insufferable arty-farty bollocks and hated it was also part of the appeal.

Stockhausen (I just call him ‘Stockhausen’, like Madonna or Prince) blowing arts funds on sending a string quartet into the sky in helicopters is my kind of gig - especially if it’s true that the double bass player got airsick and threw up over her instrument (no clue if that’s true, or if there even was a female double bass player…could be a fake memory? Sure I read it somewhere. Maybe I dreamed it.)

Everyone goes on about Gesang der Junglinge, Stimmung and Kontakte, but Oktophonie is my favourite and seems underrated to me. Tense, doomy drone that really came into its own during the pandemic outbreak. I think the idea was to position eight loudspeakers, each connected to a separate ‘player’, around the listener(s) and bombard them from all directions. Would be brilliant to actually experience this live. Only edit I’d make would be to completely delete the annoying vocals that pop up in one section, but they’re extremely brief and not a deal-breaker.

 

bassbeyondreason

Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
Cymande are the goto Black British afro rock/soul/crossover group. A couple of years before them (1970) Demon Fuzz came out with the genre mashing Afreaka! So so good.

Amazing band. Their second record from 1976 is less consistent (and more reggae-fied) but has some killers:


...and before they were Demon Fuzz they were Blue Rivers and the Maroons, one of the greatest ever British soul bands:

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Demon Fuzz is quite a big like collectors record I'd have said. Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I'd have said maybe it's not that well known but amongst those who know it it is quite highly rated. Whereas I was imagining this thread to be about things that are well enough known or known of, but wrongly dismissed. But, then again, when you think properly about that distinction I'm drawing, who the fuck cares, so I'll just shut up.
 

bassbeyondreason

Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
I'd actually say Osibisa are more underrated, their stuff isn't rare and they're a footnote in rock history, so sort of overlooked in favour of the wilder obscurities.
 
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