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Urban Hat€monger ? 06-08-2006 04:59 PM

04- 4
03- 5
02- 1
01- 2
00- 3
99- 2
98- 4
97- 3
96- 6
95- 2
94- 4
93- 2
92- 2
91- 2
90- 1
89- 5
88- 2
87- 3
86- 1
85- 2
84- 3
83- 2
82- 2
81- 2
80- 1
79- 7
78- 2
77- 3
76- 1
73- 5
72- 5
71- 1
70- 1
68- 3
67- 3
66- 1

Thats with the last 3 included ;)

liveforever 06-09-2006 03:33 AM

there was a comment on artic monkeys...i dont beleive they were the descovery of the year...a band called "arcade fire" you must listen to first before making such alligations.

coffeeshop 06-09-2006 03:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger
http://images.windowsmedia.com/img/p...26_800x800.jpg
6. SONIC YOUTH - DAYDREAM NATION (1988)

Teenage Riot
Silver Rocket
The Sprawl
'Cross The Breeze
Eric's Trip
Total Trash
Hey Joni
Providence
Candle
Rain King
Kissability
Trilogy: The Wonder/Hyperstation/Eliminator Jr.

A lot of people say Nirvana broke the underground....
Nahh
At least not with me anyway.Although technically I owned Nevermind before I owned Dirty it was that Sonic Youth album that got me into 'indie' I still consider Dirty to be the first indie album I ever owned (And yes I do realise it came out on Geffen , so shut it).Quite simply if it wasn`t for Sonic Youth I wouldn`t have discovered Husker Du , Pussy Galore , Nation Of Ulysess , Dinosaur JR , Big Black , Galaxie 500 , The Pixies , Black Flag , Redd Kross , The Flaming Lips and many many more at the time that I did. Sonic Youth made me realise there was more to rock music than what i`d already heard , it was them that made me want to discover the underground , Nirvana for me were no different to most of the other rock bands I was already aware of.

Sonic Youth for me are very hit & miss . perhaps THE most hit & miss band out there For every great album they`ve ever made (This one , Goo , Dirty , Sister)They`ve also made some totally unlistenable crap (Bad Moon Rising , NY City Ghosts & Flowers) But I guess you have to respect them for it , there`s not many bands that can spend over 15 years on a major record lable and spend the whole time doing what the hell they like with their music without outside interference.

I think this is their best album , it seems more focused than most of their stuff. There`s hardly any of the usual Sonic Youth thing where they break the song down in the middle & fill it with 3 minutes of tuneless jangly guitar bits (Sonic Youth fans know exactly what I mean by this).There are a couple of weak points on the album , Providence is Radiohead`s Fitter Happier a decade earlier, a simple piano peice in the background with phone messages rather than Thom Yorke`s Steven Hawking impression. Also Rain King is a bit of a tuneless duffer but the quality of the rest of the album more than make up for those.

But the good stuff, God it`s wonderful. Teen Age Riot could very well be the greatest album opener of all time , but i`ve probably said that already somewhere about other songs on here. You expect it to be a loud fist pumping anthem , but it isn`t. It`s a gentle slow building song with Kim Gordons (Age 70) breathy vocals easing you into the album before Thurston takes over and starts the album off proper .I do like Kim Gordons vocals in fact i`d say she`s in my top 5 of female vocalist. She manages to pull of sexy , agressive and vunerable all at the same time.Sometime I find it rather unsettling but always captivating. Silver Rocket is another of my favourite songs off the album and one of my favourite Sonic Youth 'ROCK' songs. In fact this is the song they played the first time I ever saw the band on TV. With Thurston Moore in bright green pants & the band surrounded by fairy lights. I always picture that in my head everytime I hear this song now.
By now on any other Sonic Youth album i`d figure 2 songs in so i`m bound to not like the next song , but no ... not on this album The Sprawl in my opinion is one of the bands best , yet most ignored songs. Kim Gordons vocals are bursting with sexuality & attitute , I could listen to that woman yelling '**** YOU' over & over again in the context of a song quite happily.It sufferes a bit towards the end with the usual '3 minute jangly bit' but you expect a song called The Sprawl to be a bit .... well y`know Sprawling? In contrast the next song Cross The Breeze is much the same in style only much harder and with Thurston on vocals this time the song doesn`t lose direction & is much
stronger for it.

The second half of the album is where the real strength lies , not that the songs on it are fantastic but because although some of them are obvious filler ,they are really really solid good songs. The likes of Eric`s Trip , Hey Joni , Total Trash or Kissability on any other Sonic Youth album they would probably be highlights. Not as good as the first half of the album but stick them on any other album & they would be. When you have filler tracks that good you know you have a special album. What the second half of the album has though is Candle. Make me write a list of all my favourite Sonic Youth songs and Candle would top the list , no question. Very much the same as Teen Age Riot in structure but much much more listenable. This is almost the nearest that Sonic Youth have come to doing a commercially sounding rock song.If anything I think it`s a huge shame they didn`t do much more of this. They did on 'Dirty' but not as good as this sadly.
The album finishes with the epic 14 minute Trilogy , which is basically just an excuse to stick 3 songs on as one. One of the things i`ve noticed about this song(s) is that the encapsulate Sonic Youth`s career in one song. The Wonder sounds like it could have come off their previous 'Sister' album , Hyperstation could be easily slotted onto the Evol album & nobody would notice.And the album ends with the punk rock blast of Eliminator JR which brings us back to the days of Kill Yr Idols /Confusion Is Sex era Sonic Youth.
And thats what makes this album special , the best of the past mixed with what was to come with Goo & Dirty. Their whole career in one album. And because of mainly this album i`ll always be getting whatever new album they come out with , even if I don`t like a single song on it , i`ll still get the album that comes out after it.


Kim Gordon was 35 around when that album was released. It is my favourite Sonic Youth album too, 'Cross the Breeze and The Trilogy are the pure mesmerising. I agree with your comment on the Trilogy too, it does encapsulate those periods.

EVOL is probably my 2nd favourite Sonic Youth album and I love every song on it. Star Power, Tom Violence, Green Light, Shadow of a Doubt all excellent.

cardboard adolescent 06-09-2006 03:00 PM

I'm compiling a list of my own Top 100... so far I only have 50.

Pretty tedious and difficult task.

Urban Hat€monger ? 07-06-2006 03:51 PM

This will be finished this weekend , promise :D

Apparently my reveiw of my No 1 album is 1000 Characters too long :laughing:

Urban Hat€monger ? 07-07-2006 06:54 PM

http://www.backagain.de/pop/bowie1.jpg
3. DAVID BOWIE - LOW (1977)

Speed of Life
Breaking Glass
What in the World
Sound and Vision
Always Crashing in the Same Car
Be My Wife
New Career in a New Town
Warszawa
Art Decade
Weeping Wall
Subterraneans

It`s fair to say that Bowie has been with me throughout my entire life. My earliest memory musically was when I was a small child & seeing the video to Ashes To Ashes and thinking it was the greatest thing in the world. It`s funny how seeing a guy dressed as a clown walking in front of a bulldozer captured my childlike imagination.Anyway , from that day I was a Bowie fan. I grew up in the 80s seeing him regularly on kids tv showing off his new videos , I remember going to the cinema to see Labyrinth even though I had a really bad ear infection at the time and could only hear in one ear.I remember watching him perform at Live Aid , I remember being disappointed my mother wouldn`t let me go & see him in Absolute Beginners at the cinema (probably wise in hindsight , it was panned by fans and critics alike).
The only time I wasn`t a Bowie fan were for a couple of years in the late 80s/early 90s when I was going through my metal phase. And that was no big deal really , I mean he was in Tin Machine at the time.But it didn`t last long and by the early 90s I threw myself into his body of work from the 70s that was unfamilier to me until then. Naturally I picked up on the Ziggy Stardust / Scary Monsters eras first , then the white boy soul of Young Americans followed by the hippy singer /songwriter era Bowie of Space Oddity. The Berlin period & Station To Station was last on my list. I guess I was more interested in straight up rock music at the time. Gradually I got bored of classic rock & found myself playing Bowies collaberations with Brian Eno much more regually until this album in particular became a huge favourite.
That is one of my reasons for loving Bowie so much , no matter what my mood or musical preferences, his body of work is so widespread musically that there is always something I can pick up on. I don`t have any scientific evidence to prove it but I would think that over the last 20 years or so i`ve listened to Bowie more than any other artist.
As far as this album goes you could see it coming listening to his previous album, Station To Station (One of his most overlooked albums in my opinion). But even so , this is totally unlike anything that came before it. Sure there are Krautrock influences , Kraftwerk and obviously Eno are huge influences, but at the time those bands were hardly mainstream. For an artist as commercially popular as Bowie to make an album like this is virtually unheard of these days. I mean hell , that would be like Robbie Williams making a post rock album.
The album itself deals with Bowies recovery from cocaine addiction , most of the songs on the album are about self destructivness , lethargy and feeling empty , which explains where the album title comes from.At that time he really was at his lowest point.He was also almost bankrupt from years of bad buisness decisions too.He took off to Berlin to get away from this with Brian Eno & Iggy Pop (Who sings backing vocals on the album)basically shut himself in the studio and spent the time putting out 3 of his most ambitious albums , this being the first.The same collaberation also saw the result of Iggy`s Lust For Life & The Idiot albums.
Another theme of the album was Night & Day , which explains why sides one & two are so radically different from each other. The working title for the album was New Music, Night and Day , which sums it up perfectly.
The first half of the album is more traditional Bowie but with Eno`s genius to spice things up a bit. One thing you notice is that the songs are really short, in fact the longest is barely over 3 mins. It opens up with the instrumental 'Speed Of Life' The sound of the album hits you straight away with the jagged synths , electronically treated drum sound and the angular guitar sound with an easily recognisable Bowie style riff , before the sythns changed tack & wash over the sound.The song is really an intro to 'Breaking Glass' which follows the same pattern with it`s wonderful funk bassline & Bowie`s deep growl throbbing through all the electronic effects. It`s only a short song and 'What In The World' comes up next pretty quickly. This is the first chance Bowie`s vocals to shine on the album , most of them are done in a kind of talk/ half singing kind of way. It`s a very disorientating song with the guitars & synths swirling around with Bowie`s voice almost lind of chipping in at random places.
'Sound & Vision' is the big hit single off the album , and one of the best songs he has ever written.With it`s gentle riff & layered sythns and huge electronic sounding drums crashing in, Bowie`s voice compliments this song perfectly but then , he does that in almost every song. This song is definetly way ahead of it`s time , people ripped this off shamelessly during the 80s , but Bowie was there first.
'Almost Crashing The Same Car' IS my favourite Bowie song EVER. A beautiful ballad that touches on the self destruction theme I was talking of earlier. It could come from any Bowie era & not sound out of place.But I think it works best in this era , the electronics make the song sound cold & harsh , even Bowie`s nomally warm voice sounds cold & isolated on this song. The effects are kept to a bare miniumum save for the drums and there`s a wonderful disjointed guitar solo that gives the song an uncomfortable edge to it.
'Be My Wife' totally changes tact , a piano driven rock song that starts out as a kind of english music hall song , and then changes to a traditional rock song with a really funky bassline , this isn`t really the kind of song this album is remembered for but it`s up there with some of Bowie`s best material.This part of the album ends with 'A New Career In A New Town' an upbeat quirky instrumental in which oddly a harmonica trades blows with the synths for the sound of the song , strange , but it works.
The second half of the album is where things go off on a tangent. 'Warszawa' is the first track where Eno`s genius is given full reign.A slow ambient / classical peice with Bowie`s voice in the background almost sounding like an opera singer. I remember hearing this for the first time and it was a huge 'WTF?????' moment. 'Art Decade' is much more modern sounding and could almost come off of any Eno solo album, in fact if you`ve ever heard Eno`s 'Deep Blue Day' off the Trainspotting soundtrack album it reminds me a lot of that.
'Weeping Wall' is 80s pop 3 years early , listing to this song you could almost imagine people like Ultravox , OMD & Visage taking notes from it. It`s a very bubbly track ,that seems to have a spooky gothic air to it, again an instrumental like pretty much all the songs on this part of the album , even the songs that do have vocals , it`s more as background noise like in most post rock albums you hear.The album closes with Subterraneans , another very mellow ambient/classical song with strings & operatic vocals with a few jazzy interludes thrown in the mix. The album doesn`t end , rather it sort of floats away a wonderful close to a brilliant album.
Even if you don`t like every song on this album you have to admire the sheer balls & talent to put something out like this.I`ve seen some people say this is his greatest work , i`ve also seem people say this is where Bowie lost the plot and started going downhill. I`m in the first camp obviously , I think this album is a work of genius and you can see the affects it had on music all through the 80s & right up to the 90s.
This album helped put electronic music on the map , it wasn`t the first , but it opened the doors.Synth pop , electronica , post rock all owe this album something , even 90s alternative music (Trent Reznor said The Downward Spiral was his 'Low'). It divides opinion probably more than any album I know (maybe Kid A comes close) but it`s for those reasons I love music.I love listening to an album and not knowing if I like it or not. It took me about 9 years to love this album , and every time I listened to it I found something else to like about it.
A really rewarding album.


cardboard adolescent 07-07-2006 08:23 PM

Great album. I get the feeling it'll grow on me, I like it enough, but I don't really feel the need to listen to it very often.

Maybe in ten years it'll end up on my top 3 as well. Who knows.

Urban Hat€monger ? 07-07-2006 08:24 PM

I think it was about 4 years before I even attempted side 2

cardboard adolescent 07-07-2006 08:27 PM

I was blown away by side 2. Having only heard a few songs from Ziggy Stardust and Space Oddity I wasn't expecting that at all.

Frances 07-08-2006 01:03 AM

Low is great, though he was in the throws of shaking off contracts at the time.

and WHAT??? The second side is heaps better! 4 years!


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