But you’re never gonna see me cryyyyy the laaaast goodbye
But you’re never gonna see me cryyyyy the laaaast goodbye
Have nominated Sooofyan's Illinois for the coming week of album club, forgot how much i loved it.
I've never listened to that front to back, only bits. Now going on and it had better be good.
I find it a bit patchy. Carrie & Lowell is more consistent/better overall quality (but nothing at the highs of Chicago/Gacy/Casimir etc.)
Michigan was always my favourite. I've very much got to be in the mood for Sufjan though. I still haven't checked out the one he released last year.
Remember the buzz around the "50 States Project" at the time? Even when he openly stated it was nonsense I still half-believed he was going to do it.
I'm a massive hypocrite for picking it really, because the whole process (the 6 of us take turns picking an album each week, then the 7th week is a week where we have a theme and we all nominate 3 songs - last one was best covers) has reinforced my belief that, unless you have a REALLY good reason, you shouldn't be making albums longer than 45 minutes, and tbh you shouldn't be making that many songs longer than 4 minutes either.Originally Posted by Raoul Duke
One of my mates picked two albums by fucking METRIC two weeks in a row, and I swear that most of the songs were like 4-5 minutes long. Why!?!? I guess Sufjan's epic orchestral shit sort of justifies it, but imo it would be better if someone had ruthlessly cut it down to 45 minutes and 10 tracks. The Clash's Sandinista! was a TRIPLE ALBUM. 2hrs 24ms. Fuck off.
Intrigued by your thoughts @Jimmy Floyd
Last edited by igor_balis; 20-02-2021 at 06:52 PM.
Yeah it is good, strays slightly into the twee at points but has some lovely high points. 8/10
I find a lot of his better stuff is when he simplifies it and only brings the orchestra/synth on strong in the bridges and otherwise keeps it melodic (as per whatever track it is after Chicago).
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 20-02-2021 at 06:58 PM.
Give The Avalanche a spin too, Jim. It's a separate album album that is made up of material recorded in the Illinois sessions but not used for that record, so it serves as a good/interesting companion piece. It's basically as long (if not longer) too, which says a lot about how prolific he was at the time.
We should do album club on here, it's cool because it forces you to listen to stuff you wouldn't have done otherwise.
We've done:
Van Halen, ABC, Metric (*2, lol), Parquet Floors, The Streets, The Zombies, They Might Be Giants, The Feeling (lol), Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift, KLF, and some stuff I've forgotten
Albums should just be ten tracks. Anything more than that is tomfoolery.
Agreed. Unless you only have 8 or 9 decent tracks, in which case you should just release them as is.
There's a good album in Generation Terrorists if they just cut it in half.
hahah, exactly. even richey said "everybody knows the first album would have been better if we'd left out all the crap"
appaz the received wisdom is that they tried to emulate london calling, but i reckon even LC is a bloated mess
There's no secret to it. They weren't called The Welsh Clash for nothing. Their first single 'Suicide Alley' rips the riff out of Tommy Gun.
TTH album/film/book club is a good idea.
we unsurprisingly do it by discussing each album track by track on a VOIP program each week, i'd be bang up for it. any takers?
we could do it fortnightly if that sounds too ambitious
edit: we did try to do it non-verbally over messenger but it was shit, deffo think u need to actually talk for it to work
Sufjan Stevens albums ranked:
1. Age of Adz
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2. Carrie & Lowell
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3. The rest
"It's cool because..."
I like most of Generation Terrorists.
It's starts really strong but after Little Baby Nothing, there's only two more songs I like (Repeat, Spectators of Suicide - actually, Methadone Pretty's alright as well) so there's stretches where nothing really hits.
The Manics are a weird band, really. I do quite like them but I'm still not really sure what they are. Their earnestness really works on stuff like A Design for Life, but it gets a bit much for me. The MASH song was a deliberately hokey and shit; "Director Robert Altman had two stipulations about the song for Mandel: it had to be called "Suicide Is Painless" and it had to be the "stupidest song ever written". Altman attempted to write the lyrics himself, but upon finding it too difficult for his 45-year-old brain to write "stupid enough," he gave the task to his 14-year-old-son Michael, who wrote the lyrics in five minutes." That they did it a straight, serious cover pretty much sums them up, for better or worse.
They were always one of the ones I listened to most and made a point of going to concerts, loved them, but I don’t think I’ve heard a single song after the Tigers album.
I bought Futurology at Poundland. That should tell you everything you need to know about that album. Journal for Plague Lovers is great and I think Resistance is Futile is nice.
The Avalanches > The Avalanche.
I don't disagree with this statement.
I bought two recorders and a tin whistle. I've been terrorizing my wife and my daughter since.
I enjoy this a whole bunch.
Jungle Boy (AEW wrestler) is responsible for my daughter getting into Tarzan Boy by Baltimora so been listening to that a lot. It’s harder than the crowd make it seem, to do the ‘oh oh oh oh’ part to the right tune.
Far easier shouting along to Judas by Fozzy (Chris Jericho’s theme) when doing the dishes.
I actually have the 7” of Tarzan Boy from ages ago.
I'm a twit
We've managed to do ALBUM CLUB every week except christmas for over half a year now. It's been a fairly fun experience, except the lad who lives in China who usually emails his thoughts for one of us to read on his behalf has decided to join in a couple of times recently. We start at about 3am his time, and both times he's actually joined the video chat he's clearly been on about his 15th beer. He's a gobshite after half a pint, so it's been quite tedious, and we can't really ignore him because skype fucking notifies him that the video call has started and he can just press join.
I've lost my bottle (/am being less selfish) in that I can't quite face nominating niche stuff I really like. If it was 4 of us, I'd be more inclined to make people listen to FELT or MOMUS as I could make up for it by picking something more canon shortly afterwards, but I don't want to piss everyone off with my radio 6 john peel bullshit and have to wait two months to pick something less divisive. Again, if it was a shorter turnaround I'd try to actively pick more stuff that isn't white blokes with guitars. Though maybe I should be less worried about that stuff considering someone picked a fucking electric six album recently.
I'm still very much up for doing something similar with yous lot if anyone fancies it.
Not sure of the genre for this, but I know some of you like this stuff, so enjoy...
Tick
In a bid to listen to a bit more.. life-affirming music than I usually do, I stumbled upon Genesis Owusu. Really liking this year's album so far. Great R&B record that jumps between styles from track to track and is insanely catchy a lot of the time. I just saw that Kirin J Callinan has writing credits on a lot of the songs, which makes sense as I mostly like his music as well. This is a lot less goofy, though.
Getting into a band called Whitney in a big way. It's the drummer and guitarist from Smith Westerns (must be 12 years since you first put me onto them @-james-). Heard this track being played in Next, so shopping does have its perks.
So Radiohead's Kid A Mnesia exhibition thing is out on PC/PS4/PS5. It's a bit good.
Probably not anyone's cup of tea but my dad's band have done a new album that got a 4 star review in the latest issue of Mojo:
I'm guessing daddy isn't lead vocals?
'My dad's band', a phrase to strike fear into the hearts of many a noble Englishman.
I can't listen in the office but I like the title.
Haha no, that's Larry Love from Alabama 3. My dad is the bass player.
Spotify wrapped. Random bangers and people that died-core
Toggle Spoiler
Mine had folk as the 5th most listened to genre. It's been nice knowing you, everyone, but now it's time to say goodbye.
Top 1% of MF Doom listeners and more time overall than 89% of users. Working from home
Ok then
A low music consumption year has skewed it in favour of the gym tracks for Bicep, Kanye, Ghetts (?) And Going The Distance.
I'll never know since the Wrapped animation almost instantly crashes my spotify appSeems like a lot of St. Vincent, Daughters, Rina Sawayama and Ween.
Mine's plagued by my daughter listening to songs from Gabby's Dollhouse and Teen Titans Go with the top song being The Night Begins to Shine by B.E.R.
Top artists were correct though: 6ix9ine, Elliott Smith, Drake, Tyler the Creator and Kanye West. Probably identical to last year.
My "audio aura" saying my top music moods are hype and melancholy threw me a bit, and feel like I've been diagnosed as bipolar just like that.
I'm a twit
I’ve properly got reobsessed with Elliott Smith again. It never really went away but I don’t listen to anything else anymore. Been listening to an audio book biography and even though I could already recite most of his life, I’m still loving it. And I’ve been buying lots of vinyl records because, amazingly, loads of special/limited editions still get released. Roman Candle and Either/Or were released on pink vinyl, limited to 91 prints each. Got em. And it was an anniversary of his self titled record so loads of stuff came out, including another photo book. Mine!
Also got some other numbered vinyls from eBay for silly prices but I just wanted them. I remember about 15 years ago spending what at the time felt like ALL MY MONEY, on 2 of his records that had been signed, but I could definitely flip them now for like 5 times what I paid, even without it any certificate of authenticity or whatever. I’ll never sell them though. They can stay on the wall.
I think the only record I’ve not got now is the soundtrack to the Heaven Adores You doc, and no doubt I’ll get it one day.
Was nice to see him in Igors Spotify Wrapped thingy.
I'm a twit
Can't get enough of Sharon Van Etten atm. Simply superb.
Yeah she's great. 'I don't want to let you down' is a banger
This was one of my songs of the year. Pair of legends.
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