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Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: Thrillho on 12 Apr 2010, 07:53
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A lot of the alleged all-time great bands have major dips in their catalogue. Tommy often points out, for example, that the Stones are superior to the Beatles because although the latter made many extraordinary albums, the Stones managed to make four basically perfect albums in a row, which The Beatles never achieved.
This got me thinking about what artists I like have the most consistent catalogues. A lot of my favourite bands like the aforementioned Beatles or my favourites, Pink Floyd, have several pretty shit albums. The closest I could think of was Nick Cave, who for my money has made only one shit album in his entire thirty year career; but he then immediately followed it up with a double-album that's probably his finest work.
Anyway the conclusion I came to was - the Pixies have the most consistent catalogue in the history of music.
A lot of people seem to dislike Bossanova, which I've yet to hear, but it seems like even that was pretty strongly acclaimed. It amounts to Pixies on an off day (i.e. their last two albums) still making brilliant records, so across their four and a half album career (I mean you can't count a band like Joy Division who basically only made two albums) they don't really have a 'bad' album.
Are there any other bands that can match the Pixies' catalogue in consitency of acclaim?
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Neil Young?
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - 1969
After The Goldrush - 1970
Harvest - 1972
On The Beach - 1974
Tonight's The Night - 1975
Zuma - 1975
Comes A Time - 1978
Rust Never Sleeps - 1979
Excluding 1977's American Stars 'n Bars that's eight great albums.
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Include Time Fades Away as well.
The Fall had an amazing run from 79 to about 82:
# Live at the Witch Trials (1979)
# Dragnet (1979)
# Grotesque (After the Gramme) (1980)
# Slates (1981)
# Hex Enduction Hour (1982)
Sonic Youth in the 80s as well:
February 1983 Confusion Is Sex Neutral Records
March 1985 Bad Moon Rising Homestead Records
May 1986 EVOL SST Records
June 1987 Sister SST Records
October 1988 Daydream Nation Enigma Records / Blast First
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Time for me to get on my Silver Jews hobby horse again, I guess.
- Starlite Walker: weird and idiosyncratic and experimental and ultimately beautiful in equal measure; contains "Trains Across the Sea" which shows David Berman already in great songwriting form.
- The Natural Bridge: arguably the band's least compelling album and perhaps a slight stumble on their way to the classic song-driven albums that would come to define the band; but god, when your weakest album starts with "How To Rent a Room" and ends with "Pretty Eyes" then I think you're doing something pretty fucking right.
- American Water: out-and-out indie classic. One of the best albums of the nineties.
- Bright Flight: inevitably hidden in the shadow of its predecessor but this is a fantastically solid and consistent album. If "I Remember Me" and "Death of an Heir of Sorrow" don't break your heart then you should probably consult your doctor; likewise if "Tennessee" doesn't make you laugh out loud at Berman's wordplay.
- Tanglewood Numbers: between this and Bright Flight it's no secret that Berman went through some incredibly dark times. From the opening chords this is an album of catharsis, rockier than any of the others and driven by desperation, despair, hope, and tenderness. It genuinely gets better with every listen.
- Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea: arguably a pale immitation of its predecessor, but I love this album as I love all the Silver Jews albums. It starts dark and gets steadily lighter, stranger, and funnier as it progresses. "We Could Be Looking For the Same Thing" is a beautiful, simple song to see out the Silver Jews' career.
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The New Pornographers
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Spoon!
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Neil Young?
Now I loves me some Neil Young, and that is a great string of albums, but we do not live in a universe where the man's catalog could be considered consistent. Remember the 80's? Ever try listening to Landing on Water?
As far as consistency goes, I gotta toss my hat in with the White Stripes.
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Spoon!
Boo!
Time for me to get on my Silver Jews hobby horse again, I guess.
- Starlite Walker: weird and idiosyncratic and experimental and ultimately beautiful in equal measure; contains "Trains Across the Sea" which shows David Berman already in great songwriting form.
- The Natural Bridge: arguably the band's least compelling album and perhaps a slight stumble on their way to the classic song-driven albums that would come to define the band; but god, when your weakest album starts with "How To Rent a Room" and ends with "Pretty Eyes" then I think you're doing something pretty fucking right.
- American Water: out-and-out indie classic. One of the best albums of the nineties.
- Bright Flight: inevitably hidden in the shadow of its predecessor but this is a fantastically solid and consistent album. If "I Remember Me" and "Death of an Heir of Sorrow" don't break your heart then you should probably consult your doctor; likewise if "Tennessee" doesn't make you laugh out loud at Berman's wordplay.
- Tanglewood Numbers: between this and Bright Flight it's no secret that Berman went through some incredibly dark times. From the opening chords this is an album of catharsis, rockier than any of the others and driven by desperation, despair, hope, and tenderness. It genuinely gets better with every listen.
- Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea: arguably a pale immitation of its predecessor, but I love this album as I love all the Silver Jews albums. It starts dark and gets steadily lighter, stranger, and funnier as it progresses. "We Could Be Looking For the Same Thing" is a beautiful, simple song to see out the Silver Jews' career.
yesssss
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I'd love to second the White Stripes (they are one of my favorite bands, afterall) but...well....there's that one album...and it's got some jams on it, but....as a whole...meh.
i think The Unicorns win. not only is Who Will Cut Our Hair one of the best albums of all time...it's their only album*.
That's 100% consistency!
*well, the only one that counts
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In that vein, Death From Above 1979.
edit: misspelling!
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vein
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Tommy often points out, for example, that the Stones are superior to the Beatles because although the latter made many extraordinary albums, the Stones managed to make four basically perfect albums in a row, which The Beatles never achieved.
Actually I prefer The Beatles considerably. There are no genuinely bad Beatles albums. They are just slightly lesser in the context of the other albums.
On topic, I would cite Will Oldham as a good example because I don't think he's ever made a bad record.
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Most of you seem to be getting it, Neil Young is a bad example - he has eight great records, sure. He also has dozens of terrible ones. This is the same reason that Bob Dylan, for example, is not included.
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Well, look at it this way. I'll agree with you about the Pixies for the sake of argument, which isn't hard considering I genuinely like all of their records. Let's give them the following -
Purple Tape
Surfer Rosa
Doolittle
Bossanova
Trompe Le Monde
Fuck live albums, B-sides and compilations for the time being. That's five solid records back to back right there. Comparatively, The Beatles have eleven by my count (being all of their studio records), Dylan has his first nine records and The Stones have four between 1968-72. If you ask me personally, I'd argue that Lungfish have eleven (all of their studio records), Silkworm have eight (barring the very first one), Fugazi have seven (including 13 Songs). Low have eight, Yo La Tengo have eight. Will Oldham has fifteen by my count though, which I why I mentioned him. He's never made an album I haven't poured over and eventually enjoyed, regardless of which name he is using.
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Which eight Yo La Tengo albums would you pick, Tommy? Also, what do you think about The Wonder Show of the World? I have only listened to it twice but I think it is going to really grow on me.
Contributing: Sleater-Kinney made seven really good albums and five of the best of all time, in this guy's opinion.
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Weezy.
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Most of you seem to be getting it, Neil Young is a bad example - he has eight great records, sure. He also has dozens of terrible ones.
Yet you included the Stones who have alarmingly similar statistics?
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Which eight Yo La Tengo albums would you pick, Tommy?
Fakebook onwards.
Still not heard the newest BPB though.
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Will Oldham has fifteen by my count though, which I why I mentioned him. He's never made an album I haven't poured over and eventually enjoyed, regardless of which name he is using.
Does that mean that you like Sings Greatest Palace Music now?
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Death, hands down.
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how long do you think a band's discography should be before they can be considered for this?
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Agalloch, with no bad albums, at one point I would have said The Grey is bad, but it was more of an acquired taste EP.
Sculptured, with no bad albums out of a whopping three. You could argue that the lyrics on The Spear of the Lily... are cheesy, but not offensively so, and the music is good on all three albums. Assuming you like avant-garde atonal jazz-influenced metal.
Clutch might make the list if we are ignoring production issues, Strange Cousins From the West has not nearly enough bass, but would sound great if they were playing live. They've had something like eight albums, I'm probably wrong on that.
Out of those three, one thing is consistent, and that is that the music isn't. The music is always good, but they change up the style. Don't know if that helps or hurts consistency of quality.
Also, Down with three albums, there probably should be some sort of lower limit on how many albums a band has to have before they count as consistent.
Maybe CoC and Crowbar, but I don't know much about their earlier stuff, and a couple of Crowbar's albums are kind of boring.
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Does that mean that you like Sings Greatest Palace Music now?
I do but I'm not sure if it counts.
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Most of you seem to be getting it, Neil Young is a bad example - he has eight great records, sure. He also has dozens of terrible ones.
Yet you included the Stones who have alarmingly similar statistics?
That was probably a bit misleading of me to put it in the main post, it was simply meant as a comparison to the Beatles.
The question now sort of raised by what Tommy was saying is whether it's about the quantity of great records you've produced or the percentage; I was stating it was more about the percentage myself, but now that I think about it, if you compare Pixies to Dylan who I reckon has at least 12 good to great albums or Nick Cave who has 13 or so, that could be considered a greater achievement. What do you all think?
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Well no, simply because it doesn't exactly equal "consistency" per se, plus there's not really a great deal of merit to a(nother) thread where we just talk about people that have released some good albums but also some that suck.
In my opinion I would say that Boris have never had a particularly bad release, including splits, collabs and live albums etc. which is pretty amazing considering just how insanely prolific they are and the sheer range and variety of sounds that they cover.
That being said there are several releases of theirs that I haven't heard (have I mentioned that they are ridiculously prolific?) so it's entirely possible some of the Merzbow collabs, for example, aren't too hot.
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Anaal Nathrakh have never had a bad release, though this could be because a) They are good at what they do, and b) All their releases sound pretty much alike.
I've only heard one album by them, but from what I understand The Chasm is a great, very consistent, very under-rated death metal band.
Same with Immolation, except they aren't really under-rated
Also Enslaved, guys, Enslaved
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I was thinking about this the other day and while I don't have a real extensive knowledge of him (I know, actually, Small Change, Swordfishtrombones, Alice, the Black Rider and Orphans, but that's it), I think Tom Waits would fit best for this. The man never seemed to peak in any one area or time, he seems to just deliver constant greatness.
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Spoon!
was gonna say this
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ROCKET FROM THE MOTHERFUCKING CRYPT.
aside from a few recorded-in-a-shoebox lo-fi weird jams on their obscure vinyl releases, they never wrote anything even approaching a bad song. and they were prolific AS FUCK.
(do i also need to mention the three FLAWLESS albums they released all within one year back in 95?)
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Spoon!
was gonna say this
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Contributing: Sleater-Kinney made seven really good albums and five of the best of all time, in this guy's opinion.
YES. As in, totally, totally agreed.
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-This message courtesy of my dad's influence on my musical taste-
Bruce Springsteen!
Right up until Lucky Town and Human Touch, anyway. Besides those (and even they had a couple okay songs) and most of Devils and Dust, I have never heard a Springsteen song I didn't like.
And I have heard almost all of them.
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Hendrix.
The Velvet Underground.
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I was thinking about this the other day and while I don't have a real extensive knowledge of him (I know, actually, Small Change, Swordfishtrombones, Alice, the Black Rider and Orphans, but that's it), I think Tom Waits would fit best for this. The man never seemed to peak in any one area or time, he seems to just deliver constant greatness.
Yeah, I'd probably agree with this, with the minor edit of changing "constant greatness" to "constant goodness with peaks of pure glory"
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Hey can I nominate Nickelback?
They're consistently terrible.
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Boards of Canada!
Coil!
Nurse With Wound!
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Nurse With Wound is an interesting choice. I've liked everything I've heard (which, admittedly, is but a small part of their massive catalogue), but though it is consistent in quality, it certainly isn't consistent in sound. They've changed around a whole bunch over the decades.
I'm also sort of bitter because they are coming to Montreal soon, but it's going to be while I'm in Vancouver. Harumph!
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The Velvet Underground.
Seconded.
If you only count the albums recorded by the original Mascis/Barlow/Murph lineup and not the ones that are just Mascis solo projects Dinosaur Jr has been flawless. Feel like I should mention Tom Waits too.
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Radiohead?
One meh album at the beginning of their career and then six great ones in a row, including three of the greatest ever.
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I totally love all of Gojira's albums so i guess i consider them consistent in quality.
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The Velvet Underground.
Seconded.
(http://a33.idata.over-blog.com/0/00/94/22/covers/the-velvet-underground---squeeze.jpg)
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Skyclad ... right up to that moment that their leadsinger went elsewhere.
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Well, if we are going strictly by critical acclaim (which this thread is about), Radiohead have released some of the greatest records ever. This is why critical acclaim is maybe not the best way to measure quality of music. I suppose to satisfy the forum gods someone needs to take a shit every time another poster says something positive about Radiohead, though.
I guess it always a pretty controversial claim to say things are the "best ever". I am glad no one has argued against my Sleater-Kinney comment and revealed me for the over-zealous fan that I am.
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The Metacritic most critically acclaimed music ever list is fascinating (http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/).
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The Metacritic most critically acclaimed music since 2000 list is fascinating (http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/).
fyp
also why exactly is it bullshit jens?
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dude i wasn't talkin about radiohead
radiohead is only on that list twice
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well yeah you can't really fault metacritic for what's on that list
and whatever man so a lot of critically-acclaimed albums are shit so what
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I don't know a lot about Metacritic itself, maybe it's good?
It's actually very good. The concept is excellent and the execution is sound. As has been related already, you can't really blame Metacritic for their own rankings because they take an aggregate score. I'm not suggesting their system is flawless, in fact it's fundamentally broken by nature because they can't make people review things period and certainly not in a conventional manner which would allow for a definitive aggregation to be taken, but regardless, it's a really useful site if used with this in mind.
My fondness in no small way stems from the fact that an album which sells a few hundred copies could in theory be ranked over one which goes multi-platinum. You'd be amazed how seldom that happens on conventional writer polls and listings.
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(http://a33.idata.over-blog.com/0/00/94/22/covers/the-velvet-underground---squeeze.jpg)
I don't know anyone who considers Squeeze to be a "real" Velvets album, namely because the people you think of when you call them the Velvets weren't in the band any more, but hey, if you want flaunt popular opinion, which you frequently do, by all means consider Squeeze to be an immense stain on the legacy of an otherwise stellar fucking band. Composed of people who had nothing to do with the recording of the album entitled "Squeeze."
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Indeed, but at the same time, it has the band's name on it and it 'counts' in their discography. Depends how you look at it really.
I mean if you think about a band like Wilco, they only have two of the same guys left but they're still the 'same band.'
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My fondness in no small way stems from the fact that an album which sells a few hundred copies could in theory be ranked over one which goes multi-platinum. You'd be amazed how seldom that happens on conventional writer polls and listings.
Agreed, that list (essentially their version of the best albums of the decade) is, while nothing like my own list would be, much better than any I've read from major sites like pitchfork or nme.
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Yeah, I mean, saying that an album by some band isn't "real" because it wasn't produced byt the sam people who used to be in the band is kind of a copt-out, which is why I put the term in quotation marks. But fans of the band are perfectly entitled to ignore it because at least for me there are really more reasons to not even care it exists than not.
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Consider this, if Jagger, Richards, Watts all quit and Darryl Jones managed through legal wrangling to keep the name The Rolling Stones, would you say that the following albums are actually by the same band that brought us Let It Bleed?
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Is Chinese Democracy really a Guns n' Roses album?
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I'd say that in contexts like that you could easily split a bands output into separate eras depending on who the major influence in the band was at the time. So post-Guns GnR, for example, or post everybody Velvet Underground, or post-Barret Pink Floyd.
How fine you make the split is up for grabs. I'd say it'd have to be a departure of the lead songwriter and a then clear change in the bands style as the rest of the members/the replacement make their mark, like Pink Floyd post-Piper.
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Honestly the only things on that Metacritic list that make me particularly annoyed is all the legacy act stuff & the compilations & live albums.
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You see, these are all about what we 'consider.'
If the banner on the CD says the artist name, then I'd say that means it's part of the official discography unless otherwise stated, regardless of how I personally feel about it.
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What if the band didn't want it to be considered part of the discography, but the name got stuck on it anyway? I'm thinking the Sabbath albums when it was more Tony Iommi And Friends, and he just wanted to do his own thing with a solo project? Sure, you've got Never Say Die and Technical Ecstasy stuck between eight great studio albums, so they wouldn't quite count for consistency, but after Mob Rules I'm pretty sure everyone except the label knew that Sabbath was done making new material.
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I want the time when I needlessly insulted a bus driver on a school trip to not be considered a part of my personal history but hey guess what guys, it happened.
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Squeeze is a Velvet Underground record! Says so on the cover, right there. Self Portrait is a Bob Dylan record too. Their Satanic Majesties Request is an album by The Rolling Stones.
If you put a run of great records together, I don't think it detracts by having a few border albums in there which are rubbish.
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I want the time when I needlessly insulted a bus driver on a school trip to not be considered a part of my personal history but hey guess what guys, it happened.
That...doesn't seem like a very good comparison to me.
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I want the time when I needlessly insulted a bus driver on a school trip to not be considered a part of my personal history but hey guess what guys, it happened.
What about when the asshole behind you cussed out the driver and then everybody pointed at you when he turned around?
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What about the time you wrote and recorded Squeeze
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That made me laugh.
I LOL'd, I LOL'd.
LOL'd!
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Thanks to another thread in this forum, I just realized that Type O Negative has a consistently good discography.
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LOL'd!
You laugh out louded??