>Icky Mettle [Alias, 1993] >Guitars screeching every which way, beats speeding and hesitating and slamming chaos back into the box, twentysomething boyvoices whining and arguing and drawling and straining, it's the world according to indie rock: a tantrum set to music as sharp and self-contained as a comedy routine. Aurally, this is now--one now, anyway. If it has zero to say about tomorrow, why don't you just worry about that then? A
>Archers of Loaf Vs. the Greatest of All Time [Alias, 1994] >Even when they fuck around--half a minute of silence to open, two minutes of scales to whet or ruin your appetite for their catchiest tune--they sound like a live band ready to service a living audience, their gleeful anger felt rather than assumed. And with a new album coming down the chute, this abrasively aestheticized little EP could be your last chance to one-up the madding crowd. A-
>Vee Vee [Alias, 1995] >Eric Bachmann's pissed-off, speechlike yowl-to-croak isn't as callow or pop as Stephen Malkmus's demented, speechlike croon-to-whine, but their bands share an aural gestalt: tuneful two-guitar breaks that set off unkempt explosions before recombining in brief climaxes soon interrupted by more disarray. The Archers trace the agitated melodies and off guitar to the Replacements, as if the clamor Bob Stinson unloosed by accident and spirit possession was instead planned out by former sax major Bachmann and axe-wielding bad boy Eric Johnson. With Paul Westerberg an adept of the realistic popsong and the Archers' titles so gnomic they forget them themselves, I resisted this notion until the show where I caught myself shouting out a whole utterly comprehensible stanza: "They caught and drowned the front man/Of the world's worst rock and roll band/He was out of luck/Because nobody gave a fuck/The jury gathered all around the aqueduct/Drinking and laughing and lighting up/Reminiscing just how bad he sucked/Singin' throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw the bastard in the river." A
>The Speed of Cattle [Alias, 1996] >The usual outtake flotsam--singles, B sides, flexis, compilation cuts, alternate versions, John Peel instrumentals, long-intro thing that would have fit onto Vee Vee, seven-minute opus that thank God wouldn't have. All punky, all dissonant, all yet to be melded into one of them seamless wholes. But I say the bits and pieces of the most musical band in Alternia beat the fully realized works of art of mortal road heroes. In fact, I say they are fully realized works of art. A-
Henry Garcia
>All the Nations Airports [Alias, 1996] >What verbal content you can parse might be sardonic if it carried any emotional weight at all--conned customers, security from LAX to JFK, assassination on Christmas eve. Yet it's too hoarse and wild to seem detached or even deadpan; basically what it gives off is intelligence, as a given you live with rather than a goal you achieve. The import's in croaked, wild, intelligent music that's also virtuosic, especially up against the myriad alt bands who fancy themselves players these days. The controlled discord of the four instrumentals recalls the compositional smarts of Eric Bachmann's sax-based Barry Black, but the nasty little guitar lines have Eric Johnson all over them, and bass and drums put in their two bits as well. True, their WEA debut could be more songful. But don't blame them for making the most of the cognitive dissonance that is their lot. A-
>White Trash Heroes [Alias, 1998] >Hey, we all have our personal alt-rock standbys--campaigners who've stuck out a sound that rings our chimes dead center. So if I tell you mine are the Voidoids revisited, will I maybe make a sale? Two guitars, one choppy and one fleet, rip up bebop-worthy dissonances over punk forcebeats, and if the frontman seems less than charismatic, well, Richard Hell types never hold their bands together for six years. Seeker that he is, Eric Bachmann varies croak with tweetle, massages some keybs, even samples. Minor details, I insist. This is their sound, there is none higher, other indie bands should just retire. A-
I don't know who's more gay, cuccgau or the LOAFposter.
Ethan Gomez
The Boo Radleys > Pavement >>>>Loaf
Sebastian Hall
You are the biggest one between them.
Nolan Young
Now let's pls not shit up a LOAF thread with BRIT SHIT
Jacob Stewart
BASED and RED PILLED stealth Archers' thread.
Kayden Morris
Christgau been BLACKED RAW by thick, hot, MEATY LOAF!
Oliver Nelson
Loaf is 120 Minutes core, you’re obviously too young to remember that though
Asher Barnes
Hot n nude for loaf
Camden Edwards
Bob looks so fucking old in that picture, you know who's not fucking old? POLVO*
*you thought I was going to say Archers Of Loaf, didn't you?
Sebastian Russell
Back to the tip top!
Luke Morales
Robbie smells like dusty crates and used Bull lube
Angel Rogers
>Writing in a two-part feature on music critics for Rolling Stone in 1976, Dave Marsh bemoaned that such was the elevation of rock journalism, "Many critics ... superimpos[e] their own, frequently arbitrary, standards upon performers." He cited Christgau as a "classic, sad example" of this phenomenon and added: >[His] "Consumer Guide" in the Village Voice was once a model of cogent, witty criticism. Lately, Christgau has grown arrogant and humorless—the raves are reserved for jazz artists, while even the best rock is treated condescendingly unless it conforms to Christgau's passion for leftist politics (particularly feminism) and bohemian culture. While he is far too shrewd to let his dislike for apolitical or middle-class performers affect his A plus to E minus rating of them, the tone of the writing is now snotty—it lacks compassion, not to mention empathy, with current rock.[97]
I want to agree with Dave Marsh, but then I remember he said Queen were the first fascist rock band and he also denounced disco and New Wave when that was only really fair for the later watered-down commercial incarnations of them.
Adam Lewis
For reference purposes this was his top albums of 76 list. It's actually not too bad compared to later ones from the 80s onward which read more like how Marsh described them as being and who could hate Songs in the Key of Life? The McGarrigle Sisters though...anyone who gives an A to that should be burned at the stake.
Q: So Christgau's one of the great editors... A: Oh Christgau's great, I mean, fantastic. Tremendous insight into what you're trying to say, really good ideas about what you might do, he'll spot holes in your thinking--his sense of other people's language is not nearly so--at least when I worked with him, which is a long time ago--not nearly so insular as his own writing has become, or at least as I think it's become. No, he's a fantastic editor, just an absolutely fantastic editor. Q: Okay, but you do have--I'm not looking for you to slag some of your contemporaries or whatever, but you obviously have some problems with Christgau. You did that piece on the Pazz & Jop poll a few years ago. A: Oh I have tremendous problems. I think I basically--first of all, I think he hates rock-and-roll. I don't even think he makes much of a secret about it. If you actually look at his reviews, he doesn't like rock bands. He said some miserably--I can't think of a better way to put it but bigoted things about, for instance, the heavy metal audience. And I think he's promoted a fairly self-aggrandizing idea of what rock criticism should be. So, yeah, I disagree with all those things, and there's no reason to make a secret of it.
Landon Wood
Jailbreak [Mercury, 1976] The proof of how desperate people are for new Springsteen is in how they'll settle for this, even. Songs like "The Boys are Back in Town" are the sort of thing that ends up in Bruce's wastebasket. If Irish teen traumas are as boring as Phil Lynott's descriptions of them, then it's no wonder they have trouble keeping their birthrate up. And if they're as secondhand as Scott Gorham's guitar lines, then the Irish will probably end up preferring Springsteen too. C
William Howard
Thanks for the great chart, fellow Troitskician. Saved!
^Yeah that. This album is far more important than he will ever realize.
Dominic Davis
I didn't give up on my LOAF, did u?
Bentley Lee
Yeah his 80s charts were awful and I don't think he even remembered that rock or pop existed during those years.
Joshua Smith
I'm not saying the mid-70s wasn't a pretty buttrocky period, but...
Andrew Gray
Remember when he said he was disappointed when Steely Dan went commercial on Aja because suburban normies would start listening to them?
Anthony Sanchez
Rock and Roll Over [Casablanca, 1976] People who dismiss them as unlistenable miss the point--they write tough, catchy songs and if they had a sly, Jagger-like singer up front, they'd be a menace. But they aren't a menace--as my sister, niece, and nephew assure me, the kids get off on the burlesque. I mean, when the cartoon superhero urges the audience to bend down and get out their rocket, don't they know this is a caricature of sex and macho sex at that? Maybe so, but I'm not getting on my knees to find out. C+
Brody Garcia
Flowers of Romance [Warner Bros., 1981] J. Lydon's right--rock and roll is boring. And needless to say, so's rock criticism--in a multimedia age I should be able to write my reviews in scratch-'n-sniff. If I could, this one would smell like an old fart. I mean, rock and roll may be boring, but at least it's boring in an engaging way. Bassless Araboiserie is interesting in a boring way. C+
Wyatt Taylor
Thanx
Nolan Jackson
Just shit out a big fat LOAF all over everyone in this thread. Music for this feel?
Nolan Hill
Archers Of Loaf
Adam Brown
Real to Reel [Epic, 1978] Given the fluttering keyboards, weedy vocals, and fantasy-fiction medievalism favored by these Midwestern up-and-comers, you'd figure this was just round four of dips to disc, but it's worse than that. That title means something; in the great tradition of heartland eclecticism (or is it rootlessness?) (not exploitation, surely?) they're adding power-rock and pop-melody moves to the art-rock casserole. With hooks, yet. Lord save us. C
Jonathan Hughes
This isn't your thread anymore cuck
Daniel Brooks
Yep there we go. Those flyover people have some nerve singing about D&D stuff, they should be all like Woodie Guthrie and complain about poverty and capitalism.
Josiah Wright
I always took it that that stuff was escapism from the soul-crushing boredom of the Midwest. Smoke a blunt and imagine some cool world with dragons and knights.
Benjamin Adams
Cuckagu lives in NYC, he can't understand what it's like to live in Indiana or Minnesota. Actually if you read his review of Aqualung he basically admits that cool city people like him can't be impressed as easily as those toothless rural hicks.
Dominic Johnson
Accept
Distinctions Not Cost-Effective [1980s]: While on summer vacation in 1983, I found myself walking behind two teenagers with a boombox blasting these Swedish metalleers. I found myself enthralled for about 30 seconds. I must have been in a really good mood that day.
Jacob Rivera
>cool city people like him can't be impressed as easily as those toothless rural hicks It's true though Fuck middle america and the south
>couple of well-groomed dudes walking together and holding hands >one has a pink tie Oh, it's _that_ part of Portland.
Alexander Watson
>But not only is Beefheart more profoundly interesting than any of Zappa's permanent floating seminars in the psychoses of late capitalism, he is also, I think, a lot more interesting (and certainly more likable) than Zappa himself. Zappa receives rather uncritical approval from most of the "serious" rock audience, especially that portion which maintains loyalties to jazz or traditional music. This is mostly because his expert image manipulation has everybody buffaloed: it isn't the products of his apparent musical sophistication that attract his fans so much as the way he has sold the idea. >It's ironic that the most ardent admirers of such a master of media tend to reject the whole idea of celebrity as star-tripping or some such inanity, when it is his acute and quite cynical understanding of the way celebrity works that has attracted them in the first place. I am often tempted to put Zappa right up there with Bobby Sherman as a selfish exploiter of popular taste. That Bobby Sherman wants to make money while Zappa wants to make money and pose as a successor of Varèse is almost beside the point. There are reports that the new Mothers are warmer, but until now they have shown an overriding contempt for rock music and its audience. The guises of this contempt can be amusing, insightful, and even exciting to listen to, but it's still contempt underneath, and my suspicion is that it isn't good for people. >But where Zappa's distance from his audience is a calculated means of bullying it into some sort of respectful cash-on-the-line attention, Beefheart really doesn't give a shit. Zappa plays the avant-gardist and Beefheart is the real thing. He does perform, but for once performance and self-expression are almost identical: his detachment is in some sense pure and even innocent, and at the same time he is arrogant as only the pure in heart can be arrogant.
Gabriel Roberts
He didn't like Zappa because Zappa was too much like himself.
Jordan King
Workin' It Back [Asylum, 1986] Forget platonic love--this is platonic sex. I mean, the man is the best-known paraplegic in America; when he sings songs called "Never Felt Like Dancin'" or utters lines like "The thought of your body has got me erect," their status as mere collections of signs is understood literally by his fans. And thus their status as fantasy can be approached literally as well. Helps that while only "Love 4/2" is up to, let us say, vintage Jerry Butler, just about every cut at least maintains the atmosphere. Also helps that he's transferred his vocal savvy to however much of his body he's got left. B+
Adrian Allen
>Springsteen wtf
Adam Flores
He said the same thing about Miles' Sketches of Spain
Colton James
I listened to Icky Mettle and All The Nations Airports for the first time a couple days ago. Didn't really like Icky Mettle but ATNA is really dope. Which of their other albums measure up to that one?
Gavin Wood
I listened to SOS and I sort of see his point. It's like a bad 60s movie soundtrack.
Sheik Yerbouti [Zappa, 1979] If this be social satire, then how come its only targets appear to be those individuals whose peculiar weirdness diverges from that of the retentive gent at the control board? Or are we to take his newfound fixation on buggery as a symptom of approval? Makes you wonder if Frank's primo solo on "Yo Mama" and those unique-as-they-used-to-be sounds and textures are as arid spiritually as he is. As if there were any question after all these years. C+
Elijah Walker
[Q] Good day, Robert. Please share your opinion of John and Yoko's "Woman Is the Nigger of the World." -- Wayne Timmins, Ontario, Canada
[A] The whole Some Time in New York City album sounds better to me now than it used to, and "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" was always the best song on it. Problem is, of course, that even in 1973 white people appropriating the word "nigger" was not just problematic but beyond the pale. And it still is. But as protest music goes, the detail and analysis of the rest of the lyric remain of unusual intelligence and complexity. Good tune, too.
>that even in 1973 white people appropriating the word "nigger" was not just problematic Oh my god, he actually said the P-word.
Bentley James
>Yoko Ono >white Bob, I...
Aaron Russell
Git em lenny
Eli Miller
Oh was she the lead vocalist on that song?
Carson Williams
Remind he called the Runaways Bimbos.
Landon Collins
If only that song really was a feminist protest anthem the way he thinks it is and John was using that phrase to mean that women are held back and downtrodden instead of his opinion of the fairer sex...
Night in the Ruts [Columbia, 1979] This one begins with a promising song about the band's career titled "No Surprize." Then they inch towards the dull tempos, flash guitar, and stupid cover versions of heavy metal orthodoxy. No surprise. C+
Jason Fisher
She has a bad relationship with Joan and Lita to this day, mostly because of the sitting there giggling as Kim Fowley fucked her when she was passed out on date rape drugs.
I guess Sandy West's death killed any chance for a Runaways reunion though the best time for it would have been in the 90s when they were still young enough to pull it off and were much better musicians than in the 70s.
Adam Clark
GO CHRISTGAU!
Kayden Myers
Doing a reunion after Dazed And Confused came out would have been the best. That movie introduced Cherry Bomb to a generation of slackers who loved shit like Nirvana already. Very big missed opportunity.
Thomas Nguyen
Feminists told me wimminz all look out for each oth...oh, wait.
Nicholas Carter
Dazed and Confused [Medicine, 1993] But it's really great junk--'70s AOR as hard rock utopia, carefully excising all the metal drudge-trudge, El Lay wimpout, and boogie dumb-ass, and all without you ever having to come into contact with any Montrose or Outlaws albums. Most of the songs are by certified legends such as Black Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, others by lesser lights such as Foghat and Black Oak Arkansas. Some songs never gained their proper stoner cred, such as Low Rider (bombastic) or Cherry Bomb (too girly). But only someone who suffered his first nocturnal emission between 1970 and 1975 will be motivated to collect the catalogue it implies. For the rest of us it's a way to sit back and enjoy an era of music that for all its high-volume guitar excess retained an energy and pop sensibility that harkens all the back to the rock and roll of the '50s. B+
Jason Long
>Most of the songs are by certified legends such as Black Sabbath I wonder what motivated this display of generosity?
Leo Clark
Possible he changed his mind about them later. Lester Bangs thought Sabbath were just a shitty Cream ripoff when they first came out but they grew on him.
Andrew Jackson
Recent Q/A he said he still doesnt like them and likely never will though he sort of grudgingly accepts their place in the rock canon.
Carson Young
REAL BOB THREAD UP UP
Wyatt Gutierrez
His reviews are based on how much he enjoyed his breakfast that particular day.
Bentley Adams
The Best of the Runaways [Mercury, 1982] Forget the title--if Kim Fowley knew how to make a Joan Jett album, he would have done it in 1976. C-
Nathaniel Campbell
Eat 'Em and Smile [Warner Bros. EP, 1985] As a person of more culture than the average Van Halen fan, it didn't smash my preconceptions to hear him cover the Beach Boys and the Lovin' Spoonful, and "Just a Gigolo" just irritated me, reaffirming my suspicions that he chose heavy metal because Vegas wouldn't have him, which is clearly where he'll end up if this bid stiffs. But the music video for "Easy Street" and its panoply of grotesque caricatures and their capacity to shock is tonic in this bland musical moment. This is an adequate soundtrack. B
Connor Smith
>varnaline based
Gabriel Ramirez
Skin Tight [Mercury, 1974] Alternative title: Shoogity-Boogity. B
Fire [Mercury, 1974] You guessed it: More shoogity-boogity. B
Honey [Mercury, 1975] A/k/a Boogity-Shoogity, and I don't mean to be mean--I quite like these guys in limited doses. There are even good slow ones here. What's more, it's their funniest album ever, and that's no typo. Only I can't quite convince myself that artistic development is even a category for a group that is clearly pure Act if not pure Product. What I can do, however, is be glad that they make Earth, Wind & Fire sound like the Herbie Mann Singers. B+
Benjamin Williams
Not bad at all. That PJ Harvey entry is patrician, saved.
Brayden Edwards
Asia [Geffen, 1982] The art-rock Foreigner is a rare find indeed--it's not often anymore that a big new group is bad enough to sink your teeth into. John Wetton and Steve Howe added excitement to contexts as pretentious as King Crimson and Yes, but this is just pompous schlock in the grand manner, with synthesizers that would make John Williams proud. And after hearing two lyrics about why they like their girlfriends, one lyric about "surviving", and three lyrics about why they don't like their girlfriends, I'm ready for some brain salad surgery. C-
Robert Wilson
The Beach Boys [Caribou, 1985] What would you say if the Four Lads suddenly got back together and covered songs by Boy George and Stevie Wonder? Betcha they still harmonize pretty good too. C
Robert Perry
Outrageous [Imperial, 1969] Fowley is such a gargantuan shuck that he ought to be preserved in a time capsule. I don't understand how he continues to earn a living, but he does. This is a follow-up to his flower record of a couple of years ago. It comes complete with revolutionary liner notes ("Guerilla warfare has begun. The streets belong to the people. Let's tune in to find out what went wrong today.") that for some reason--they'd sell a few, no?--are concealed within the double-fold. E
I'm Bad [Capitol, 1972] Normally I'd think it's a little low to charge money for snazzy jackets containing blank discs. Caveat emptor. E-
Aaron Myers
oh boo boo those cheesy suburbanites listen to this music how turrible
Colton Ortiz
American Fool [Riva, 1982] The breakthrough fluke of the year has it all over his predecessors in REO Speedwagon--Bob Seger, Cougar's current role model, has been dreaming of riffs with this much melodic crunch ever since Night Moves, and when I don't think about whys and wherefores they satisfy my mainstream cravings. But the guy is a phony on the face of it, and not in a fun way--anybody with the gall to tell teen America that once you pass sixteen "the thrill of living is gone" has been slogging toward stardom for so long he never noticed what happened to Shaun Cassidy. B
Carter Nguyen
I think what he means to say is during the counterculture era Christgau was an acceptable and insightful writer (maybe not so much when he called Jimi Hendrix an Uncle Tom) but started to lose it as the counterculture era wound down and the charts got taken over by increasingly lazy buttrock and he started to become increasingly upset and spiteful about it so he took to not just insulting the bands but their fanbases as well.
