Unpopular Musical Opinions

[Richard Cranium]

I'm sure Rachmaninoff would be greatly jealous of The talent of Outkast and the genius if Kanye.

Be honest, how many albums of theirs have you listened to, start to finish?

 

[La Dispute]

Aphex Twin is just noodling for the most part.

Pink Floyd's Animals album is utter crap.

I like Aphex Twin but Boards of Canada are definitely superior.

I think a lot of Pink Floyd's albums are kind of boring and overrated. I like Dark Side, The Wall and Piper but Animals and Wish You Were Here are pretty mundane.

 

[chargers 09]

Be honest, how many albums of theirs have you listened to, start to finish?

Aquemini and ATliens are 2 of Hip-hops greatest albums.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

I like Aphex Twin but Boards of Canada are definitely superior.

I think a lot of Pink Floyd's albums are kind of boring and overrated. I like Dark Side, The Wall and Piper but Animals and Wish You Were Here are pretty mundane.

Agreed on Boards.

Campfire Headphase defecates on anything James has released.....for example his Selected Ambient Works stuff - I would argue you need to be on psychedelic drugs for it even to be listenable.

Another unpopular view - I think the much lauded Perth 'scene' is (Jebediah etc) and always (Tame Impala, Birds of Tokyo) has been utter try hard s**t.

 

[La Dispute]

Funnily enough, I have listened to Aphex while on psychedlics and it does make a substantial difference.

Electronica, particularly IDM is just made for that kind of setting.

 

[Richard Cranium]

Geogaddi is where it's at.

 

[Plugger35]

Here are a few to get you going.....

The Clash are overrated, and PiL are better than The Sex Pistols.

Arcade Fire are massively overrated, and the fact they are as big as they are now says more about the barren state of guitar rock than anything else.

U2 are and always have been s**t.

Aphex Twin is just noodling for the most part.

Jay Z's Magna Carta album was actually good.

Pink Floyd's Animals album is utter crap.

Alex Lloyd's first album was good.

That doesn't make much sense.

So you'd rate Alex Lloyd's debut album ahead of The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby?

I don't think even Alex Lloyd himself would believe that.

 

[WALDENPOND]

Here are a few to get you going.....

The Clash are overrated, and PiL are better than The Sex Pistols.

Arcade Fire are massively overrated, and the fact they are as big as they are now says more about the barren state of guitar rock than anything else.

U2 are and always have been s**t.

Aphex Twin is just noodling for the most part.

Jay Z's Magna Carta album was actually good.

Pink Floyd's Animals album is utter crap.

Alex Lloyd's first album was good.

Would not argue with any of these especially PiL.

 

[WALDENPOND]

Be honest, how many albums of theirs have you listened to, start to finish?

Properly, Outkast admittedly only Stankonia and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. But I fear unintentionally most of the Kanye catalogue.

Not saying either is bad but would not rate either that highly even their genre. But that's just my opinion.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

That doesn't make much sense.

So you'd rate Alex Lloyd's debut album ahead of The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby?

I don't think even Alex Lloyd himself would believe that.

The first record (Black the sun I think) seemed quite understated looking back....it all went to s**t after that.

I just never got into U2....just seemed like a total wankfest. I'll admit though I'm one who loathes music being mixed with politics....hence why I didn't get into The Clash much either.

 

[Plugger35]

The first record (Black the sun I think) seemed quite understated looking back....it all went to s**t after that.

I just never got into U2....just seemed like a total wankfest. I'll admit though I'm one who loathes music being mixed with politics....hence why I didn't get into The Clash much either.

I quite liked Alex Lloyd's earlier stuff, some good songs to play on acoustic guitar.

Wouldn't put him in the same class as U2 album wise but it's like comparing apples and oranges.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

I quite liked Alex Lloyd's earlier stuff, some good songs to play on acoustic guitar.

Wouldn't put him in the same class as U2 album wise but it's like comparing apples and oranges.

I wasn't comparing them though mate.



Jon Butler is shite, there is another one.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

...Jon Butler is shite...

If that is unpopular I hate the people that inhabit this planet.

 

[Jack Stevens]

Last Dinosaurs are the best Australian band of the last decade. And they're only really just getting started..

 

[Roobs321]

I also enjoyed Alex Lloyd's debut.

On U2, they certainly have a couple of decent albums. I always had a soft spot for Achtung Baby, Unforgettable Fire and War.

I think Kanye West is certainly overcelebrated, but to me it's not something to get worked up about. People have (and will) praise worse albums. Kanye is okay, but it mostly seems to be the younger crowd that see him as a genius. They'll make him their generations whatever, and the rest of us will just go on with our lives.

To me, Aphex and Boards are mediocre in comparison to Autechre, but again, that's just personal taste. Aphex and Boards were always more hip. The marketing and packaging of music is still relevant in popular music.

On Australian albums since O#5 (whilst not being a Powderfinger fan, I generally preferred Internationalist and Vulture Street, maybe even Fanning's solo Tea & Sympathy), I think No More Shall We Part and The Tension & the Spark are certainly better, among others. Hell, albums like Dig! Lazarus Dig! and even Diorama.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

I like Achtung in as much as I always love to see an artist successfully change things up and leave a few chins on the floor in the process, but ultimately U2 were way way behind The Pixies and The Smiths from guitar bands that came out of the 80s.

 

[Plugger35]

Pete Murray is another underrated acoustic Aussie balladeer from the early 2000s.

Feeler was a great album.






Bernard Fanning's solo album Tea & Sympathy was a great acoustic album too.

Love this song.



The sign of a good song is when you can strip it back to acoustic and it still sounds good.


As for Odyssey Number Five if you think it's mainstream or mundane you need to think again.

So many good tracks on that album, it was featured on SBS Classic Australian albums for good reason.

Two underrated classic tracks off that album.





So much emotion pouring through that album, if you can't hear that you're deaf.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

...So much emotion pouring through that album, if you can't hear that you're deaf.

I hear it, I just don't feel it.

 

[La Dispute]

My old man was a massive fan back in the day, so I've had plenty of time to consider whether I like it. I've probably listened to it over fifty times and it's just not to my taste.

Powderfinger lyrics are dull, the production is just too formulaic, Technically, they are all pretty meh... The whole thing kind of just glosses over me. I can see why some demographics like them though and that's fine.

 

[La Dispute]

To me, Aphex and Boards are mediocre in comparison to Autechre, but again, that's just personal taste. Aphex and Boards were always more hip. The marketing and packaging of music is still relevant in popular music.v

Autechre are great too, I just prefer the more organic BoC sounds. The music makes me feel so strangely nostalgic because of how earthy it is.

Autechre sounds robotic and pretty calculated; which is cool, but I hard to relate to?

 

[Silent Alarm]

Agreed on Boards.

Campfire Headphase defecates on anything James has released.....for example his Selected Ambient Works stuff - I would argue you need to be on psychedelic drugs for it even to be listenable.

Another unpopular view - I think the much lauded Perth 'scene' is (Jebediah etc) and always (Tame Impala, Birds of Tokyo) has been utter try hard s**t.

Perth (and Adelaide) is Australia's most underrated musical city when you consider the population, the people, the mentality... it made a pretty special breed of people. If you look at the Triffids, they were making songs in this mould that the east coast and Dunedin was, but it wasn't just jangly and stoney sounding post-punk. Born Sandy Devotional is so open and spacey (like the Cure), has female vocals (the Go-Betweens did to but post-punk has always been a dude's game; it borrowed a lot from the Sarah Records aesthetic in that way)... it is so Perth in the best way possible. It was with it enough to use this template but it was isolated enough to not fall into any specified scene or feel compelled to jump into a pre-existing, trendy basket.

Estuary Bed is like a Robert Drewe novel. I like being an Australian and I like the east coast a lot, but the beach culture in WA is so prevalent and pure and impossible to get away from. Is there a more profound stanza than this? In Victoria, they make three hour trips to live in houses to spend a week off work and spend 7 hours a day – like mad dogs and Englishman – down the beach all day. In grey sanded, choppy beaches. In WA you go down at 10am, leave 20 minutes later, sit down the park or at home, go back up at 5pm... and you walk down and sit around all day and hear the crickets and kick the footy and squint all day. Some of my favourite memories are being 12, 13, 14 and leaving the house all day, meeting your mates down the beach and trying to figure out who lived closest and how to best ration $12.60 stolen from parents ashtrays.

The children are walking back from the beach
Sun on the sidewalk is burning their feet
Washing the salt off under the shower
And just wasting away, wasting away
The hours and hours and hours

They have songs that just sound like dead spaces, like when you drive around and spend three or four hours looking outside and seeing massive canopies, then nothing but farms, then nothing but dirt and road. It's amazing how well they manage to integrate these dichotomies; of dead grass and heaps of it, suburban beach streets and no houses for Ks... seriously underrated band.

I think the best music and art is what I can relate to. I never dug escapism. The real world you know always seemed to have more to say. So it's probably some bias but whatever...

Anyway, I think the current movement is so s**t. Pond are just pontification, Lame Impala are so derivative I can't enjoy them, Kevin Parker and Jay are treated like royalty or something. It's so bizarre and tight-knit and cliquey and so unrepresentative of what Perth sounds like. I'm a little bored of the Twerps/Dick Diver/Ocean Party thing in Melbourne but at least they try and change, seem a little more communal, and have something to say – they don't like the government, they sing about being on the dole, being hungover and wasting your life drinking, and they throw in comments about IGA and Black and Gold.. I'm not saying that's all Australia is, it definitely isn't and to suggest it is would be pretty narrow, but it's like... I don't get that from Tame Impala.

The current Perth scene sucks nurries, basically. At least the Sleepy Jackson wrote some really good pop songs. Lovers is such a nice album. Sounds like an afternoon sleep and thinking about girls.

 

[Gibbsy]

Last Dinosaurs are the best Australian band of the last decade. And they're only really just getting started..

Their debut is really nice hey. Bought their first EP back in 2010 and was a big fan. They haven't put anything out for three years though, what's the go?

 

[Jack Stevens]

Their debut is really nice hey. Bought their first EP back in 2010 and was a big fan. They haven't put anything out for three years though, what's the go?

They're off to America to record really soon. I was chatting to Sean the other day, he said to expect singles early next year and an album mid next year. But yeah, for the last 18 months or so they've been very quiet.

 

[chargers 09]

Perth (and Adelaide) is Australia's most underrated musical city when you consider the population, the people, the mentality... it made a pretty special breed of people. If you look at the Triffids, they were making songs in this mould that the east coast and Dunedin was, but it wasn't just jangly and stoney sounding post-punk. Born Sandy Devotional is so open and spacey (like the Cure), has female vocals (the Go-Betweens did to but post-punk has always been a dude's game; it borrowed a lot from the Sarah Records aesthetic in that way)... it is so Perth in the best way possible. It was with it enough to use this template but it was isolated enough to not fall into any specified scene or feel compelled to jump into a pre-existing, trendy basket.

Estuary Bed is like a Robert Drewe novel. I like being an Australian and I like the east coast a lot, but the beach culture in WA is so prevalent and pure and impossible to get away from. Is there a more profound stanza than this? In Victoria, they make three hour trips to live in houses to spend a week off work and spend 7 hours a day – like mad dogs and Englishman – down the beach all day. In grey sanded, choppy beaches. In WA you go down at 10am, leave 20 minutes later, sit down the park or at home, go back up at 5pm... and you walk down and sit around all day and hear the crickets and kick the footy and squint all day. Some of my favourite memories are being 12, 13, 14 and leaving the house all day, meeting your mates down the beach and trying to figure out who lived closest and how to best ration $12.60 stolen from parents ashtrays.

The children are walking back from the beach
Sun on the sidewalk is burning their feet
Washing the salt off under the shower
And just wasting away, wasting away
The hours and hours and hours

They have songs that just sound like dead spaces, like when you drive around and spend three or four hours looking outside and seeing massive canopies, then nothing but farms, then nothing but dirt and road. It's amazing how well they manage to integrate these dichotomies; of dead grass and heaps of it, suburban beach streets and no houses for Ks... seriously underrated band.

I think the best music and art is what I can relate to. I never dug escapism. The real world you know always seemed to have more to say. So it's probably some bias but whatever...

Anyway, I think the current movement is so s**t. Pond are just pontification, Lame Impala are so derivative I can't enjoy them, Kevin Parker and Jay are treated like royalty or something. It's so bizarre and tight-knit and cliquey and so unrepresentative of what Perth sounds like. I'm a little bored of the Twerps/Dick Diver/Ocean Party thing in Melbourne but at least they try and change, seem a little more communal, and have something to say – they don't like the government, they sing about being on the dole, being hungover and wasting your life drinking, and they throw in comments about IGA and Black and Gold.. I'm not saying that's all Australia is, it definitely isn't and to suggest it is would be pretty narrow, but it's like... I don't get that from Tame Impala.

The current Perth scene sucks nurries, basically. At least the Sleepy Jackson wrote some really good pop songs. Lovers is such a nice album. Sounds like an afternoon sleep and thinking about girls.

I know its not the point, but the beaches down Peninsula way are excellent. Both ocean side and bay side, only an hour away from the CBD. Less if you live south of the Yarra.

 

[Silent Alarm]

I know its not the point, but the beaches down Peninsula way are excellent. Both ocean side and bay side, only an hour away from the CBD. Less if you live south of the Yarra.

Still nothing on WA/some Tassie beaches