Music: Last Album You Listened To And Rate It III

[ItsFineImFine]

Quivers - Golden Doubt (2021, Australia) - 4/5

That's as good as you'll get from a jangle pop album in the 21st century. Quite a similarity between them and their countrymen The Go-Betweens.

 

[Thucydides]

10/10

 

[Hippasus]

10/10

Now this I got to hear.

 

[Thucydides]

10/10 - Incredible.

 

[Thucydides]

Another 10/10

the almost 13 minute version of Blue Rondo A La Turk is amazing .

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Daytona by Pusha T (2018) - It starts of well, but the middle tracks are pretty medicore. The backend with Infrared is fun as well and I enjoy Pusha T's cocaine narratives. Great production at times by Kanye West. This doesn't mean much because I think he's a trashcan as a rapper/lyricist but it's probably the best full-length project he's been a part of.

 

[Shareefruck]

Thinking of slowly going through some of this list:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phim...ung_masterpieces_and_underappreciated_gems/1/

Gave another shot to some of the more familiar ones from it.

Deluxe by Harmonia - 3.0 or 3.5 (Very Good/Great)
Warmed up to this a lot. Premise/effectiveness reminds me of Neu!75, except w/ a Cluster second half instead of Dinger. Walky Talky, Monza, and Golem were the highlights for me but the whole thing is really solid (maybe a little hesitant on Notre Dame?). Could start rising for me.

Disintegration Loops III by William Basinski - 2.5 (Good)
Seems to have a reputation for being the best one, and it's good, but I prefer the first one

La Dusseldorf by La Dusseldorf - 2.5 (Good)
Kept thinking this was proto-Neu! instead of post-Neu!-- consistently good but felt slightly more dated/cheesy

Another Setting by The Durutti Column - 2.0 (Positive)
Got really into the first half, and actually prefer the overall style over LC. Bordeaux felt almost New Order-ish to me. Would love to hear more like it.

Pygmalion by Slowdive - 1.5 (Neutral)
Found it more enjoyable and less gratingly saccharine (maybe that's not the right word, but something about shoegaze vocals can really get on my nerves after a while) than Just a Day/Souvlaki, but it mostly just made me want to listen to Talk Talk instead.

Tone Float by The Organization - 1.5 (Neutral)
I'm into how clinical it sounds, but doesn't seem backed up by strong material

Morgen by Morgen - 1.0 (Negative)

Highlights:

 

[Saturated Fats]

Thinking of slowly going through some of this list:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phim...ung_masterpieces_and_underappreciated_gems/1/

Gave another shot to some of the more familiar ones from it.

A lot of noise-drone and experimental-noise stuff on there. A few albums I'm familiar with (and a few that aren't exactly obscure).

Jex Thoth is a stellar psych-metal album, Music from the Lion's Mouth is my favourite non-Joy Division post-punk album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die is a haunting gem, Octopus is magnificent, and Great Lake Swimmers might be in my top-50 of all time.

Thanks for the list, I'm gonna give this a real go-through.

 

[Mikeaveli]

The Beach Boys - Endless Summer

A decent enough compilation of the pre-Pet Sounds Beach Boys. A lot of the essential tracks are there but there are some huge misses included in the tracklist. Also, for some reason there are also zero tracks from The Beach Boys Today! outside of the inferior album version of Help Me, Rhonda. I came up with a modified tracklist that I think better represents the early Beach Boys and includes pretty much every worthwhile song released before Pet Sounds.

Remove:
The Warmth of the Sun
Girls on the Beach
Wendy
Be True To Your School
Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys Today! Version)

Add:
Don't Back Down
Good to My Baby
Don't Hurt My Little Sister
When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)
Please Let Me Wonder
She Knows Me Too Well
In the Back of My Mind
Summer Means New Love
The Little Girl I Once Knew
Help Me, Rhonda (Single/Summer Days Version)

Final Tracklist (all mono unless specified):
1. Surfin' Safari
2. Surfin' U.S.A.
3. Shut Down (2003 stereo mix)
4. Surfer Girl
5. Catch a Wave
6. In My Room
7. Little Deuce Coupe
8. Fun, Fun, Fun (2013 stereo mix)
9. Don't Worry Baby (2009 stereo mix)
10. I Get Around
11. All Summer Long
12. Don't Back Down
13. Good to My Baby
14. Don't Hurt My Little Sister
15. When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)
16. Please Let Me Wonder
17. She Knows Me Too Well
18. In the Back of My Mind
19. Girl Don't Tell Me
20. Help Me, Rhonda (Single version)
21. California Girls (stereo mix)
22. Let Him Run Wild
23. You're So Good To Me
24. Summer Means New Love
25. The Little Girl I Once Knew

Original tracklist: 7/10
Modified tracklist: 9/10

If you wanted to be really concise and only include the best of the best you could also trim the tracklist down to the 12 bolded songs.

 

[Thucydides]

10/10

 

[Shareefruck]

Y in Dub by The Pop Group - 2.5 (Good)
This just got released in November. Personally, I approve of these types of experiments and do not find them unnecessary, but I don't necessarily feel better or worse about this one than the original. It makes the weaker tracks a little more digestible (I'm just a sucker for dub effects in general), but I prefer the stronger tracks in their raw form. Y is still an album that I WANT to put on a pedestal because its peaks blow me away and are my favorite type of thing, but the rest of it, despite not being bad, makes the experience feel a bit disjointed for me.

Also, really liking 3:38 (both versions)-- Wasn't familiar with it before because it's not part of the original track list.

Elseq 1-5 by Autechre - 1.5 or 2.0 (Neutral/Positive)
Listened to this again. I think I have a better grasp of it now, but ultimately, I still disagree with their philosophy with these newer exhaustively long albums. It's not about how palletable or digestible it is for me, and it's not that the baseline quality of each track is bad or anything, I just feel that the more tracks you have, the more the album's overall value gets diluted, and the less that the peak tracks influence how you feel about the album as a whole (the average quality ends up dragging it down). Shame, because I feel like if you just had a single 40 minute album revolving around Foldfree Casual and Freulaeux, you'd end up with a pretty brilliant/near-perfect album that would shoot up my favorites.

Vini Reilly by Durutti Column - 1.0 (Negative)
Might need to try this again, but I kind of get where the "Durutti Column resembles elevator music" dismissals come from when I listen to this, which I didn't feel at all when I listened to their earlier stuff. Wasn't really feeling it.

Highlights:

 

[Thucydides]

Some of the bass playing I find distracts from the song. The piano playing however is excellent .

9/10

 

[Thucydides]

9.5/10

 

[Thucydides]

Great sound with the full band and the sax and trumpet . It really sings. Might be my fav along with “everybody digs bill Evans” - completely different sounds but both amazing .

9.5/10

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Vini Reilly by Durutti Column - 1.0 (Negative)
Might need to try this again, but I kind of get where the "Durutti Column resembles elevator music" dismissals come from when I listen to this, which I didn't feel at all when I listened to their earlier stuff. Wasn't really feeling it.

You might like this. Definitely not a track that could be taken as elevator music.

 

[Shareefruck]

You might like this. Definitely not a track that could be taken as elevator music.

Cool, what's that from? Hmm... Any other Durutti Column albums you'd recommend in general after the first three?

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Cool, what's that from? Hmm... Any other Durutti Column albums you'd recommend in general after the first three?

I really like Fidelity (1996), where Future Perfect is from. Not every single track hits but it's got a pretty superb organization to its orchestration and some tracks really have high peaks, IMO (Future Perfect, G & T, Abstract of Expression)

 

[Thucydides]

Another great album ! The title track “how my heart sings” is worth the price of this record alone. Bill Evans was a musical genius.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

The Sherlocks - World I Understand - 3.5/5

This is some pretty solid British landfill indie. Singer has a solid voice though, wasted on mediocre instrumentals. The songs have an issue of being a bit too samey and took several listens but there are some really solid choruses here, this song is pretty representative of the album. I saw someone comment it's the best The Killers album since Hot Fuss:

 

[Thucydides]

Jazzy, funky with some grooves. A great morning album to start the day.

9/10

 

[Thucydides]

10/10

 

[Thucydides]

Wow what an album. Someone put me onto this this morning and I’ve been listening to it off and on all day .

This album is dripping with swagger and confidence from musicians at the top of their game.

10/10

 

[Spring in Fialta]

You Forgot It in People by Broken Social Scene (2002) - Incredible peaks. The variation in sounds could be considered off-putting, but I found it largely hits the mark. The 56 minute run-time could have used some cuts due to a couple of more indie-basic tracks that (IMO) could have been cut and left the album with a leaner runtime that I think would have added to the album's oomph and made it stand out a little more. The vocals sometimes work - but I think you can tell the band's foremost focus is on the orchestration of sounds - and it sometime feels like the vocals were added as a bit of a bone to a imagined audience but there's clear moments where I think they could have been stripped of that again indieish/sensitive/aught sensibility. Probably the best album I've listened to from a Canadian act.

Standout tracks: KC Accidental, Pacific Theme, Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

It's Almost Dry by Pusha T (2022) - The tracks released by prior the album's release are by and large the best ones. Pusha T, at his best, is an incomparable lyrical stylist and he often has the production to go with it, but there's definitely some forgettable tracks in this album and something closer to Daytona's (which I find gets better on subsequent listens) runtime would have benefitted immensely because the album's peaks are probably better than former's.

Standout Tracks: Diet Coke, Call my Bluff, Neck and Wrist, Hear Me Clearly, Rock n Roll

 

[Spring in Fialta]

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