Albums you grudgingly respect / dutifully acknowledge the objective eminence, but when push comes to shove you never actually want to play / could happily never hear again.
Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat
The Beatles - The Beatles aka White Album
The Band - Music From Big Pink
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - "Heroes"
Can - Ege Bamyasi
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
The Aphex Twin ...I Care Because You Do
"Bypasses You Almost Completely" - the "almost" here refers to the one or two tracks on the album you unreservedly love. Usually these are The Obvious Singles e.g. "'Heroes'", "The Weight" - even when it isn't literally a single (was "Vitamin C" a single? Perhaps it was in Germany). Sometimes there's like one other track you really like e.g. "The Secret Life of Arabia".
With Ziggy, it's just "Ziggy Stardust" and "Suffragette City".
With Station, it's just "Golden Years", which is one of my absolute favorites by Bowie. The title track's eminence in people's hearts continues to perplex.
White Album, the actively liked songs would be "Blackbird" and "Something", "Back in the U.S.S.R"... A few others are nice enough ("Guitar Weeps", "Mother Nature's", "Dear Prudence", “Warm Guitar”) Its grade is lowered by the excrescent presence of some of the very worst things they ever made: "Glass Onion", "Ob-La-Di", "Bungalow Bill", "Do It In the Road". Most anything perpetrated by McCartney. Mainly, it's just very very long.
Exile is just a samey slog really. "Happy" and "Let It Loose" would be my picks here.
Apart from the sublime "Alberto Balsam" nothing from .... I Care Because You Do has ever managed to lodge itself in the memory or the heart, despite periodic attempts at "giving it another go"
^^^^
Albums that don’t qualify for this category -
- universally accepted as duff /disappointing records by Canonic artists (eg Television’s Adventure)
- albums by Canonic artists where there is no consensus about whether it’s great or shite (Strangeways Here We Come).
(I am not sure what Smiths fans feel about Meat Is Murder - to me is it is a mystifyingly slight and sterile sounding album redeemed by two luminously wondrous songs, “Well I Wonder” and “the Headmaster Ritual” and if I am feeling generous “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” which is lushly appointed (it is lowered in my estimation by being a bizarrely misguided choice as a single - continuing a long stretch in which the Smiths could do (almost) no right when it came to the Single (from Shakespeare’s Shitstir to well the end really - save perhaps Thorn, Shoplifters, Sheila). Meat also contains some of their slightest tunes - "Rusholme", "Want The One I Can't Have", "Nowhere Fast", "Barbarism Begins" - and a couple of real graters ("What She Said", "Meat Is Murder" itself). I suppose on balance, added up, it totals out as simply not very good, even before you factor in the clinical production. But I'm sure many would disagree).
Got to say Station to Station is probably my fave Bowie album but the title track does go on a bit. Lodger is the one from his imperial phase that leaves me cold, not many decent tunes, only Boys Keep Swinging up to his highest standard. Subsequently Scary Monsters is great which gives it undeserved credence, it used to be considered part of the "Berlin trilogy" and not early evidence of the well starting to run dry
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see to what extent albums that fall into this category are totally subjective to each listener, or whether there is likely to be any overlap / consensus at all?
ReplyDeleteEG, even your brief list contains three records I could happily listen to on repeat forever (Velvets, Can, Stones), but I do agree with you on ‘..Big Pink’, which has never fully connected with me.
My impression is of it having briefly been hugely influential upon release, but then subsequently being overshadowed for all time by the (more focused, more immediate and generally better) self-titled album which followed shortly thereafter.
Will try to think up some other examples to add to the list… in fact, just talking Can, ‘Future Days’ is probably one one that sits in this category for me personally… I’ve tried with it over the years, but for some reason it’s always remained an “in one ear / out the other” kind of listen.
I think it's a subjective thing by definition - in many of these cases a curious failing on the part of the self, or to do with the contingencies of listening (when in your life, whether you heard other albums by the artists first, encountering it in a busy time of listening when you couldn't give it the lavish due it deserves).
DeleteBut it would be interesting to see if there is any convergence e.g. with the not much liking Music From Big Pink. Sounds sort of wooden and laden and stately to me, whereas the self-titled next one is just a groove all the way through. (I don't really care for any of the subsequent Band albums - in that sense they are bit like my relationship with Van Morrison which is Astral Weeks and Astral Weeks alone).
I like Lodger or at least it's got a few more winners for me - DJ, Boys Keep, Repetition. Scary is a great album, except that there's some rather, er, strained moments on it. But the four singles are top - particularly fond of "Up the Hill Backwards", which is navel-gazing at its most beguiling. Almost like he'd heard Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap and thought I'll out-do that Devoto lad.
DeleteYoung Americans is crap. Very weird production that makes it sound as though you are listening to the band from behind a glass panel.
ReplyDeleteYounger Than Yesterday sounds a bit thin compared to Fifth Dimension and The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
Pet Sounds and Astral Weeks are albums that totally escape me, but I'm unconvinced that either VM or the Beach Boys are all that great generally.
Wow, I have the opposite opinion on Younger Than Yesterday. Fifth Dimension sounds thinner and Notorious Byrd never quite coheres as an album for me. But then I did hear it as a CD. There's certain records that through not hearing as they were made to be heard, vinyl LP with two seconds and a discernible pause midways, it causes a kind of prolapse of structure. Most of the Beatles LPs are like that for me actually because I only ever heard them as CDs.
DeleteIt may be because my copies of Fifth Dimension and NBB are original sixties pressings, whereas my copy of Younger Than Yesterday is a Demon reissue. Not sure Demon mastered their records particularly well, as the only one I bought that sounded really good was Gene Clark's No Other.
DeleteTwo that immediately jump to mind are "Horses" by Patti Smith, with "Gloria" being the standout track I adore, and "Daydream Nation", "Teenage Riot".
ReplyDeleteTwo albums that have plenty of excellent songs, but which in the end I could live without, are "Crocodiles" by Echo & The Bunnymen and "The Smiths", both spoiled by their production. My judgment also has to do with the order in which I heard them. I heard live/radio sessions of the key songs on both albums first and my later discovery of the studio versions left me cold.
Regarding "Meat Is Murder", I half concur. I like the murkiness of some of those tracks and if it's an album of mostly minor songs, like "I Want The One I Can't Have", I hear a lot of their genius in those. That said, I think where I agree with you is the track listing. It has always felt unbalanced. Here in the States, Sire released it with "How Soon Is Now?" leading off Side B, so when I first heard it the LP was much more impressive. It hung together better with those epic 7 minutes in the middle. As a purist, when I discovered the correct track listing, I made a point of sticking to the 9-track version. It was then I could clearly hear that the album was missing cohesiveness and heft. So I do agree it's an oddity in their discography, but the album expresses so many facets of their DNA-- almost everything great about them is haphazardly baked in there, scattered about in miniature-- that I can't help loving it.
Yes I'm not keen on Daydream Nation. Prefer the previous three albums - much treblier and wirier.
DeleteI would say that the White Album is in a different category: albums that should be made a lot shorter. Get rid of all the filler, in-jokes etc Like Sandinista! Or many 90s hip-hop albums.
ReplyDeleteI do actually listen to Exile on Main Street: because it is quite samey it works as a mood/vibes album to play in the background.
Lots of Radiohead fans rate In Rainbows very highly, but I've never got it. Possibly, I had outgrown them by that point and it just didn't mean as much.
Ambient-Stones, yes that makes sense.
DeleteI've always slightly resented Secret Life of Arabia at the end of the second side of Heroes because it disrupts the vibe that has otherwise been created. IIRC there's an instrumental from around this time that didn't get included (later comped) which would've fitted the bill.
ReplyDeleteFrom an R&B/jazz perspective: What's Going On and Kind of Blue. The complaint about Exile ("samey", "mood/vibes album") applies here too, and maybe this is an aspect that is key to other LPs people may be inclined to pass on.
I now realise my contradictory stance in my post re: the creation of mood/vibes i.e. what I want from the second side of Heroes, and my complaint about the other two LPs I mentioned!
ReplyDeleteI'd always give Sly's Fresh the nod over Riot. Again, the latter, although having its disruptive moments, is a bit of a mood.
ReplyDeleteI would vouch for Meat Is Murder. It's one of those records where the first side is stronger than the second - Well I Wonder is one of The Smiths' most elementally beautiful songs. The title track is fine apart from the lyric - Some sterling work by Johnny Marr on there and the bovine sound effects are grimly effective. It should have been an instrumental. Morrissey's words are petulant sixth form claptrap, which would be forgivable if he didn't come out with the same unequivocal drivel when he gets on to the subject of animal rights, even now.
ReplyDeleteBarbarism, I grant you could be a Level 42 B Side. I never really buy Marr's claims that he took inspiration from Nile Rogers. If there was ever a band who were never meant to get funky, it was The Smiths, and I do mean that as a compliment.
What I always find er.....strange about Strangeways, Here We Come is that all four members of The Smiths have insisted at some point that it's their masterpiece. It seems to divide opinion among critics, but whatever it's merits I really don't see how anyone could judge it a masterpiece.
If nothing else, the White Album allows for a good parlor game in which you and your friends compete to try and whittle it down to an amazing single LP. Not too many double albums work for this (maybe none?) as they contain too few songs or people just aren't as universally familiar with them.
ReplyDeleteYes it's the classic excuse for that.
DeleteWhat would be other contenders?
London Calling. I would up the ante and argue for it to be reduced not to single LP but to an EP. Title track, "Lost in the Supermarket", "Train In Vain", er... 'Clampdown' maybe?.... 'The Right Profile' perhaps.
The EP question is a good one, I thought of that as well.
DeleteI know this is heresy-- and to be clear, I really like all the songs I'd chop-- but New Order's "Power, Corruption & Lies" would have made one of the all-time great 4-track EPs: "Age of Consent", "The Village", "Your Silent Face", and "Leave Me Alone".
Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life would be a contender for this game. Not only a double, but initially came with a bonus EP. Would make a great single LP to rival Innervisions.
ReplyDeleteActually I think Songs in the Key of Life is one of the - fairly rare but not that rare - double albums that really stands up all the way through. It's soul's Daydream Nation! I say that because I had a cassette of it, taped over a C90, and somehow my dad took possession of that tape and played it incessantly, and at an uncomfortable, slightly-distorted volume often too. And even then that aggravating over-exposure didn't destroy the album for me.
DeleteA tape of Songs in the Key of Life, obviously. The idea of my Dad obsessively listening to Daydream Nation is a surreal thought.
DeleteIs Stevie Wonder the only artist to have released double albums consecutively? Meaning 'Secret Life of Plants" , the next studio release after Songs in the Key. (Although in between he released a TRIPLE album - the 'best of' Looking Back).
lol, Chicago Transit Authority
DeleteRe the Beatles, Sgt Pepper fits the bill for me. Re Adventure, what happened? Those songs are good in their live versions.
DeleteIn terms of consecutive double-albums, Todd Rundgren *almost* pulled off a triple play, with A Wizard, A True Star (which I think may be the longest-ever single vinyl LP, time-wise) bookended by the true doubles Something/Anything and Todd.
DeleteAnd not that I'm going to parse the entire discography, but I have to believe Frank Zappa had at least one run of consecutive double LPs at some point.
DeleteUrban Hymns by The Verve was a big disappointment to me, because I thought the two previous LP's were great. Too songwritery, too self-consciously "classic".
ReplyDelete