Albums/artists you just DON'T GET.

[michael]

nomadologist, I meant to write before, it does sound like you're getting Radiohead and just hating what it is they're up to.

Fair enough to the apologists, probably am dismissing Kid A out of hand, but was basically just trying to say why I didn't like it. I do remember bits and pieces exciting me from around that time. That Reynolds article actually got me quite excited. I forgot that music writing can do that.

About Stevie Wonder, do the people who are dismissing him like other smooth, easy music? Do you like Sade or the glossy disco stuff like Earth Wind & Fire or Chic, or any crooners? Cos if you don't like any of that then of course you won't "get" what he offers. If you want your music to be ruff / street or challenging / thorny or a combo of both then you're shit out of luck. I like him most for the completely drippy teenage-crush stuff like Creepin (when he sings "Love is so amazing" I kinda laugh but am also like "fuck yeah!"). I think MMS has really nailed the Stevie experience. He does seem really straight and keen to focus on the positive and all that, which can be pretty hard to stomach.

If you do want a fairly odd sounding song (at least arrangements-wise) I'd recommend Have A Talk With God. I first heard it mid-90s when stuff like Wu-Tang and Tricky was big among my peers and I thought it sounded like some weird remix, not something from the 70s. Of course it is a song about how when life is difficult you can just talk to God and everything will be fine, with happy harmonies...

 

[Chris]

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Cat Power, Iron & Wine, and Sufjan Stevens (he has some pretty songs I guess, but overall sounds so generic and indie-yuppie IMO).

Richie Hawtin's old Plus 8 era stuff (plus most of the other stuff on that label at the time) kind of bores me sometimes too... yeah, I get it, it was a little faster and harder than previous techno, but not so radically or interestingly so that it didn't just sound like a watered down, whiter (in a bad way), version of the other detroit guys. I like his later stuff though.

 

[nomadologist]

regardless of whether you want to like Kid A (which I bought on its release day waiting to be blow away by its mindbending innovations, played once, then thought "Autechre and Aphex Twin did this better a long time ago"), wouldn't most agree Radiohead really jumped the shark around Hail to the Thief? When I heard they'd settled on that for the album title, I winced and died a little inside.

ditto BPB, Cat Power, I&W, Sufjan Stevens. The stuff the horrible soundtracks to drinking coffee ordered in pretalian aremade of...

 

[dHarry]

regardless of whether you want to like Kid A (which I bought on its release day waiting to be blow away by its mindbending innovations, played once, then thought "Autechre and Aphex Twin did this better a long time ago"),

Autechre and Aphex Twin did create that sonic template, but they certainly didn't combine it with songs in the way that Kid A did, and that took the concept in a new direction. Like/love/loathe it, it was an innovation, akin to David Sylvian's Blemish or Scott Walker's The Drift.

Hail to the Thief? When I heard they'd settled on that for the album title, I winced and died a little inside.

I admired that they were making a statement about Bush, even though I'm not a fan of explicit "protest songs", or Radiohead for that matter.

 

[tht]

this thread is largely uninteresting because it is regardless of whether you want to like, all that reheated teenage anxiety hmm is it ok to like fugazi kinda stuff, kid a is a very good english dreampop album, a lesser in the tradition of another green world/154/the bridge/69/loveless HOWEVER i can quite see how all that is execrable about thom yorke as a product can dwarf the good things about the music itself

i think i would like to quite like radiohead as a gesture of equanimity towards english middle class life, they encapsualte all that is shit about it and thom yorke knows it, and he gets himself in a lather about it so i don't have to

having gone through an old dvdr of their stuff i wish i could get some thrills from their anal explusive _rock_ songs but they seem awfully tame even in comparison to 'in utero' or 'doolittle' and the worst aspects are the ones i always disliked, the roger waters stuff, shitty violins and synths and sundry other shit

however i found enough songs (mostly off com lag and amnesiac and their last album) for a short mixtape i think is very good, mostly the tossed off sub bpitch/skam laptop pop, it's way better than anything else in that vein

 

[nomadologist]

that's the part i don't get, dHarry. i don't think the songs on Kid A are all that great, nor do i think it's innovative to take armchair electronic music in the form of a couple of production techniques and slap them onto old radiohead songs.

i don't mind hating bush, but it was already getting tired at that point to "speak up" against him without actually trying to do anything about it or getting involved politically. the problem is the very people who should be doing things instead pat themselves on the back for "speaking up"

 

[nomadologist]

this thread is largely uninteresting because it is regardless of whether you want to like, all that reheated teenage anxiety hmm is it ok to like fugazi kinda stuff

you're totally right

also, i think they may be more interesting to british people, the radiohead albums from kid a onward, where they ditch american alternarock as a primary influence...

 

[dHarry]

About Stevie Wonder, do the people who are dismissing him like other smooth, easy music? Do you like Sade or the glossy disco stuff like Earth Wind & Fire or Chic, or any crooners? Cos if you don't like any of that then of course you won't "get" what he offers.

Anyone here listened to Innervisions? Too High's Moog-bass funk about drugs, Living For The City's intro of police sirens, cell-door slams, "get in that cell nigger" (sampled by Public Enemy) leading into a James Brown-esque hard funk track about urban poverty, Higher Ground's proto-schaffel's swung-blues funk - not overly smooth or easy...

 

[Don Rosco]

Anyone here listened to Innervisions? Too High's Moog-bass funk about drugs, Living For The City's intro of police sirens, cell-door slams, "get in that cell nigger" (sampled by Public Enemy) leading into a James Brown-esque hard funk track about urban poverty, Higher Ground's proto-schaffel's swung-blues funk - not overly smooth or easy...

Yeah! Proper Black Futurism. Just Stevie and two white british synth programmers funking it up.

 

[mistersloane]

Innervisions is just one of the greatest albums ever made, the first time I heard it I was on acid and it completely fried my brain, then I listened to it straight and it had much the same effect.