Unjustly slagged albums

I purchased a secondhand copy of Goat's Head Soup the other night, on my way to my shift at Humpernickels Restaurant (just kidding, Nik).

For years, I've read that Goat's Head Soup signaled the end of the Stones' glory years, especially following in the wake of Exile on Main Street. But it includes a couple of songs I already knew and liked, and it was a deal, so I decided to buy it.

Well, I guess the Stones' purported decline still beats a lot of other bands' peaks. IMO, Goat's Head Soup is excellent. I've listened to it in the car a few times now, beginning to end, and it's definitely stickin' to my ribs, like a good bowl of soup should.

What albums would you nominate, as ones that have received almost unanimous critical panning over the years, but have satisfied your own ears consistently?

Yeah I love Goat's Head Soup. To me, it is a mix of old Stones and their more modern sound. Songs like Angie and Heartbreaker show the future whereas Silver Train and Starfucker both could have been on Exile.
Dancing with Mr. D is one of my favorite albums starters.
100 Years ago always reminded me of Van Morrison.
Coming Down Again is one of the most appropriate titled songs.
All the songs are really good.
Starfucker always reminded me of the New York Dolls for some reason.

Goat's is long a stand-by road tape for me. Great late-nite driving. You can't beat any of the Mick Taylor LPs. Same for It's only Rock n Roll, the two are like a double LP. I never thought about Starfucker being Dolls-ish.

Did anyone here have the American version of the LP that had the overdubs over the lyrics (so that you couldn't hear them)?

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Hmmm, unjustly slagged. Rant potential: medium.

Stooges - Weirdness.
It took time to grow, exactly like the original LPs did. I like it better than the first LP. Some have slagged the production. I find it to be the initial redeeming quality. I'm also thinking that some held the band up to some personal standard that can't be met; like they were expecting some great pop hit to emerge, or a touch of prog, or a duet with Neko Case or the like. It sounds like the Stooges. Dunno, maybe I'm exaggerating. I did end up liking it, though.
+Raw Power remix. I like having two versions to compare/contrast. Fun.

Some of Bowie's recent work. I'm baffled by the love for Station to Station. There are only three Bowie LPs I dislike enough to not have in my collection: Station, Golden Years and Tonight (all are one hit + a ton of filler). So, equally, I'm baffled by the slagging of Outside and Earthling, two of his finest works, both of which surpass the other three. And where's the freaking Outside sequel, Dave?

maybe AMERICAN HI-FI - Art of Losing
Good power-pop.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible. Good chart rock fodder. (Well, I guess if you look at units sold, it's not exactly slagged). What exactly were people expecting from them? Funeral Mask Replica? [Course, I kneel to anything that's good, listenable rock in the wasteland that is Top 40. Admittedly dampered by not liking REM, U2, rap, country, Springsteen, post 70s Dylan...]

Revolver - Baby's Angry. Slagged as shoegaze also-rans. Not so. Textbook.

Sex Pistols - to this day, I encounter people who think of them as a cartoon, joke band, not to be taken seriously. As in, the cultural importance is there, historically, but the music was never meant to be actually listened to.

Jane's Addiction - Nothing Shocking. Ira

U2 - October. Considered sophomore slump? It's the only one I like!

Sugar - Beaster. "Their toss-off, place-holding EP"? Their opus!

Rancid - Life Won't Wait. "They felt obligated to do their Sandinista." One of the greatest LPs of the 90s. Having a pre-conception about Rancid is as intellectually daft as not listening to Oasis because "they just think they're the Beatles".

Oasis - Be Here Now/Don't Believe the Truth. (see above) for sounding like the Beatles. Even Bill Maher slagged them this week for that little quip that he got from the media - not from actual listening. Did the British press ever attribute this falsehood to a band that openly admits a fascination with Lennon-McCartney and even covers their stuff? There's a big difference between the two. But, ultimately, do they actually sound like the Beatles? Uh, no more than any other rock band.

NOfX. (or most Cal pop-punk). The War on Errorism is a great LP. Seems like people slag these bands for either being "too punk" or "not punk enough". What would your band sound like if you played this genre? Would you be tuneless speedcore, bland garage three-chord, something catchy, topical-political? The genre is healthy and very important/formative for our younger listening brethren. So, not an unjustly slagged album, but an unjustly slagged genre.

Morrissey - any later stuff. As good as he's always been. A Morrissey not being true to his whims is what would really suck.

Meat Puppets - Rise. Geez, the new one is really getting beaten on. I was expecting a mellow grower just like his last one (Snow) and that's exactly what it is. Seemed obvious. Guess some were expecting another Mirage? Critically, it's just as easy to slag a band for growth as it is stagnation, right? There's something to be said for consistency, but, it's not like a band's back catalog evaporated with a belated new release. You're still allowed to listen to the old stuff...

Joy Division - Ever heard somebody give love to Unknown while slagging Closer or vice-versa? Are they really that different??

Fugazi - "They sucked past Repeater". You get no bonus trendinista points for missing out on The Argument; their best.

Same for slagging The Fall and not realizing the 4th decade band did their best work in the past few years.

Clash. Cut the Crap. Their best. (kidding)

Butthole Surfers - "They sucked when they started to actually write songs." Electriclarryland sucked, true. But if Weird Revolution would have re-hashed Rembrandt Pussyhorse, that would've been awful. WR is fun and detailed.



Post Edited (09-19-12 02:21)

Funeral Mask Replica? Nice one, Paganizer.

Sonic Youth: NYC Ghosts and Flowers. The sites I read the most give a 0 out of 10, 1.5 out of 5, a 5 out of 10, and TP rips it a new a-hole. I think it is a pretty beautiful and wonderful atmospheric record.

I agree with the defenders of Goats Head Soup. It is a pretty good record. However, I do think it qualifies as a shark jumper. As far as I understand it, jumping the shark means that a band (or a TV show) is now trying overly hard and the magical spark of the past is clearly gone. While there are some decent songs, one cannot deny it is a major step down from the previous 6 records.

Great list, Paganizer, though I would have to say that most of the albums you have on there are not universally slagged. Beaster is the second career peak of Bob Mould -- the first being New Day Rising. Tilted is one of the hardest rocking songs in history. And yet that album ended up in the cutout bins as quick as any album I ever saw. This was an act of omission however, on the part of the listening public, rather than a slag. Even Maximum Rock and Roll said it kicked ass!

Stones - Black and Blue. With Taylor gone, the sound changed. the band was trying out lead guitarists, namely Wayne Kramer, whose work appears on this unjustly slagged album which has the reggae (Cherry Baby, Negrita), a classic ballad (Fool to Cry) and what for me is a toss up (against Monkey Man) for the best Stones track off all time, Hand of Fate, which features the best Stones solo.



Post Edited (09-19-12 02:22)

Strokes - "Room on Fire", although, that seems like a backlash overshadowing the actual initial response.

The reviews were almost uniformly strong upon release - alot of people who don't like the Strokes think this is their best, as does a core contigent of their actual fan base and yet there was some kind of general feeling that since it didn't sell a billion copies it was a sophmore slump and it's even used as an "exhibit A" of the sophmore slump by our new lazy thinking pop culture press.

It's a very strong record - not a world beater like their debut is (for me), but still......it doesn't get anywhere near the praise it should.

Regarding Oasis - "Be Here Now" suffers just for the length of the songs. Some editing would have helped there - but there's lots of great melodies on that. As for Oasis sounding like the Beatles, to me "Definitely Maybe" secured their place in history - it's my fave record of the Dark Ages (the 1990s), and to anyone who'd dismiss that as "a Beatles rip-off" well they aren't giving the band enough credit for their larceny.

The Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Pistols, Stone Roses, Jam, La's, T. Rex, Faces - all get tossed into the blender and what comes out is delicious.

What Beatles song does "Bring it on Down" sound like? How about "Columbia"?

As for Bill Maher , who I like in general, - he says some baffling things and well, apparently he never heard "Exile on Main Street", "Sticky Fingers" or "Let it Bleed"..........because I remember him telling Chuck Klosterman that the Rolling Stones had never made a great album "all the way through".

Klosterman was in "set my face to stun" mode.

I know Interpol isn't really liked around here but I could never get how people gush over their first and dismiss Antics. The only song I dislike off of it is Slowhands - which I believe was the first single. Maybe they couldn't get past that song but

Take you on a Cruise
Narc
A Time to be so Small

are all classics. Even their poppier stuff Evil, Cmere, Public Pervert are all great.

To me both are great.

Now this is a topic I can sink my teeth into...

I'm not sure that GHS has been that widely panned, but I get the point.

Here's one:
Dexys Midnight Runners - DON'T STAND ME DOWN For all intents and purposes, this ended the band. Warren Zevon justifiably sued 'em. And the first single ("What's She Like") was 12 or 13 minutes long, with about a minute of that being staged studio chatter. Kevin Rowland vents his spleen regarding various injustices, perceived or real. I don't even know if this thing ever saw stateside distribution. And it is amazing. Intense, emotional, joyous, angst-y, transcendent, ripping off Zevon, confessional, career-killing genius.

I also think every New Order album has been unjustly slagged. They're regarded as a singles band- the fact they've released as many compilations as proper albums indicates as much- but the albums are a completely different proposition. And they were justifiably sued by John Denver ("Run 2", 1989)!

Most Steve Forbert albums.

X: "Ain't Love Grand" and "See How We Are."

Guided By Voices: "Do The Collapse"

Funny that this should come up now as I've always thought that The Damned's Strawberries was harshly dealt with.
As for Dexy's, over the last few years I've read a lot about Don't Stand Me Down being a bit of a lost classic, probably mostly written by the people that panned it in the first place. Methinks a lot of scribes didn't like Kev not giving them the time of day.
I still remember the headline in the NME for the review of Sandanista - "Complete Chaos". But I've always liked it for it's complexities and ambition and for the fact they got away with it on a major label.

I saw David Johansen's "In Style" re-release in the store and listened to it most of the weekend. I, like Ira, thought the material was really weak when I first heard it, but on repeated listenings now has become a fave. I think at the time that his first was so hugely killer that i felt let down by his second (the same way I felt about "Give 'em Enough Rope")...................

most people will disagree me on this and to a certain degree i disagree with myself as well .
paul westerberg- 14 songs is still one of my favorites most of the songs to me are great with a few averaqge ones.
eventually is another story but i would give it 3 stars out of 5 it has 2 or 3 great songs and 3 or 4 good songs and 4 or 5 mediocre ones.
suicide gratification half of it is real good and half of it stinks to me.
not knowing what to make of it .
if you compare the beatles and mcartneys works
and the replacements and westerbergs works it might be a smilar critque.

when westerberg is mellow the complaint is he lost his edge others would say he matured. i say a little bit of both

Not too big a fan of "Eventually" and especially "Suicane" (which I really dislike alot)...."14 songs" however is a fine record with only a couple duds on it.

Usually the records where he surprises his personality are the ones that don't work - when he taps into his malcontent side whether it's in a ballad or rocker he's usually fine - the songwriting can even be weak, and he still has enough charm to get by.

Since the "Stereo/Mono" comeback I think all the records are strong or at least pretty good except "Folker" which I thought was fair to middlin'.

"Come Feel Me Tremble" to me is his best solo record although satchmykels isn't a fan of that one at all.

mats84 wrote:


>
> Since the "Stereo/Mono" comeback I think all the records are
> strong or at least pretty good except "Folker" which I thought
> was fair to middlin'.
>
> "Come Feel Me Tremble" to me is his best solo record although
> satchmykels isn't a fan of that one at all.
>


satchmykels also thinks "folker" is the best thing he's done since "14 songs"...


then again, he almost nominated "music from the elder" as an unjustly slagged album. ooops

nosepail
though I find NYC Ghost & Flowers a bit bland for a Sonic Youth record, I find your defense of it entertaining and welcome.

Pixies - Bossanova, Trompe le Monde

conventional opinion is that these two somehow don't count
like 'em both better than Doolittle

R.E.M.- Life's Rich Pageant- I must disagree with Ira because I think this is one of R.E.M.'s best albums. His review of Fables Of The Reconstruction was right on the money but he got it wrong on Pageant.

The Ramones- Pleasant Dreams- Does it hold a candle to anything they did in the 70s? Of course not! But it is still a pretty good album in its own right. "She's A Sensation" and "7-11" are 2 of my favorite Ramones songs.

The Raveonettes- Chain Gang Of Love- This album is much better than the Trouser Press review gave it credit for. It is definitely the best noise pop album since Psychocandy and it is in my Top 5 all time.