I really like The Thievery Corporation and know there are some fans of theirs on here. However their album The Temple of I and I really didn’t move me when I first heard it and has stayed on my shelf ever since.
However I played it on one of my work from home days and have to say have played it about 5 times in the last week. Don’t know whether it is fine weather or a relaxed frame of mind but it has really gelled with me.
What albums did you ‘get’ after initially being underwhelmed?
Passed my by the first time around
by 16 Comments
Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, although I’m still not quite 100% with it. I’ve listened to it lots over the years, as it’s my brother in law’s favourite album and he’s always banging on about it, so every now and then I’d dig it out, listen to it, shake my head and put it back on the shelf. I’ve finally begun to appreciate it though, probably because I’ve listened to it enough for it to start sounding familiar, but also because I bought the new remaster a couple of years ago, which I think sounds much better
Interesting. Loveless is one of the very few records which took my head clean off the very first time I heard it..
I think one of the main problems is that three of the layers of noise on the album are set at exactly the same pitch as my tinnitus!
Took me 35 years to get “Trout Mask Replica”.
Still not sure I’ve actually “got it”.
Mood dependent I think, and you have to prepare yourself for it.
Until the lockdown started, I had been trying to do or experience something new every week and Trout Mask Replica was on my list*. Nope. Didn’t get it at all I’m afraid – and I like challenging music (Sunn O))), late Scott Walker). However, my father recently turned 92, so I still have around 35 years to get it.
*So was peanut butter. Absolutely vile!
I think it’s a case of is that all there is? A tiresome, sort of samey, discordant, skronking, compressed blues with some free associated, surreal lyrics. I get it but I don’t really want it thanks. Clear Spot is a better bet.
Having virtually worn out my copy of Talking Heads:77 I was extremely disappointed with More Songs…. I assumed it was the presence of Brian Eno that had done it. I softened a bit when the first Devo album came out and Eno hadn’t ruined that. .. I probably only played More Songs… a handful of times.It wasn’t until Fear Of Music came out that I instantly liked and I suppose I ‘got’ the (slightly) different direction and went back to More Songs… and don’t really understand what the problem was. I don’t think I’ve ever looked out of the window when coming in to land in the US without thinking of The Big Country.
Thievery Corporation’s The Temple of I and I is fab.
Two albums that I didn’t “get” at first? Rickie Lee Jones’s ‘Pirates’ and Heaven 17’s ‘The Luxury Gap‘. In both cases I think I was so blown away by the debuts that I wanted more of exactly the same from the follow ups. While RLJ’s debut sounded very “street” and “hobo”, its follow up sounded all sophisticated and orchestral. And while Penthouse & Pavement’s lyrics were mostly political, The Luxury Gap’s lyrics were all superficial nonsense. But I eventually grew to love both Pirates and The Luxury Gap every bit as much as I love their predecessors and still play both regularly. However, in both cases I was hugely disappointed with the third albums and lost all interest thereafter.
You should give How Men Are another go. It’s fab.
I have been told that before on the AW. By your very wise and discerning self, probably. I’ve also been recommended further RLJ to listen to. I have tried both. My heart tells me I should be open to such valued suggestions, however my gnarly old dysfunctional ears are most contrary and reject every attempt to comply with nothing less than haughty disdain.
I have dozens of these. Three from the last week:
-A Bar-Kays Funk Essentials compilation. I must have had this for 20 years at least. Listened to it once and underwhelmed. Pulled it out last week and played it about three times in a row
– Early Flaming Groovies compilation called Yesterdays Numbers, which is Teenage Head plus most of the next album. Listened to two songs 20 years ago and put it away, disappointed it wasn’t the same band represented on Groovies Greatest Grooves. Pulled it out last week and loved it.
– Pretty Things Parachute: Bought second hand some time in the mid 90s. Played the first few songs then put it away. Pulled it out last week and it found it most agreeable.
See jazz, soul, disco and electronica: all deemed either too difficult or too trite by younger editions of me, yet now up there in my appreciation stakes as country, “world” and folk. The funny thing is how little appeal rock as a descriptor now offers……
Agree with that @retropath2 if people ask me what music I listen to the very last word I would use would be rock even though some of the music I love would fall into that category.
Carole King’s Tapestry.
Back in the mid/late 80s, as a callow youth, I worked in hi-fi and it was popular with the kind of bald-headed, grey-bearded audiophiles who frequented hi-fi shows. Look at that cover, she’s wearing flares, and my Gran’s curtains! And listen to those strangulated, over-damped, 70s drums.
It took a mid-90s 2CD compilation of her demos, and a late-night BBC2 documentary, for the penny to drop.
Right now it’s Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus – on release I felt it was too long, too dense, and too conceptual for me. Now, I think it’s the high water mark of the gospel/blues/gothic NCATBS style and has some of their finest tunes. Top tip: listen as two single albums, don’t go for it all in one sitting. Orpheus in particular comes alive in isolation.