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whiskeyclone
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The first two albums kicked pretty solid ass, the third was half-good. It was all downhill after that, though. I was listening to Crash earlier this year for the first time in ages and it made me decide to check out the last album…pretty lackluster, as I kinda knew it would.
Good for Stereogum for breaking through and covering something in the forbidden zone, though. There’s no decent reason for places like Pitchfork to ignore releases from acts like The Black Crowes or Les Claypool bands just because they’re in with jam fans. It’s kinda disgusting, frankly.
Hit me like a ton of bricks when I woke up this morning and heard. Regardless of his feeling on it, I dare anyone to watch The Last Waltz and not become a Levon Helm fan for life. RIP.
Cobain was one of that generation’s leading hipsters.
Nothing wrong with joining up with a cooler band.
There it is. Soundgarden rocked in all the right ways during their original run. Cornell’s vocal chords and songwriting ability burned out years ago now, but just like Billy Corgan, another 90s rock god who’s fallen into hackdom, that doesn’t mean their band’s were elite in their time.
I wouldn’t say Kanye’s a no-talent or anything, he’s a great producer and sometimes a solid rapper, but he’s not as good as he and many here think, and frankly he just has little things about him (and I refer to as a rapper, not a public figure) that piss me off. And honestly, I was a bit dissapointed by the Watch the Throne production.
This was written in 2008 before the Crowes put out their modern opus the next year so I’ll forgive the dumbass condescension to them.
- Peak Soundgarden was better than peak Kanye, hate to say it, though at his peak as a producer I could at least see arguing otherwise.
- All this over-the-top political correctness is retarded.
- Chris Cornell lost it a long time ago…Cochise was a fluke and his last good song ever.
- Kanye’s a twat, just a talented one.
I think that’s all.
Siamese is my favorite album of the 90s. Gish doesn’t have the best songwriting, but it’s them at their most psychedelic and it rocks. I prefer it sound-wise to post-Siamese (and Pices) stuff.
He peaked before MCIS. Siamese Dream era is one of the ultimate guitar achievements of the 1990s, hands down. And he still had some serious moments after MCIS – for all it’s rep as having been kinda lame, Zwan was a serious guitar album at certain points – the title track on it was one of his great achievements IMO.
And then after that…yeah he fucking lost it hard. But still, dude was the #1 mainstream rock guitarist of the 90s IMO. I get why people’d say Greenwood, but the grunge guys, as much as I like a lot of those bands, are not his matches.
Weird, but then again so is Jim James. Still, I’d have watched for that just because I love the band.
And zombies were before vampires. Come on now, Stereogum. Frankensteins might be a solid move, though.
Exactly. Gish came out the same year as Loveless, and they already sound killer on that, Siamese Dream was a progression from there, albeit one that IS obviously influenced by Loveless.
And Siamese is every bit as good as Loveless as far as I’m concerned because they are both DIFFERENT albums. Siamese Dream is a big dynamic rock album, Loveless is something else entirely.
It’s just that Corgan turned out to be a massive shit who’s diminished his reputation over the years while MBV haven’t put out anything since.
Ten was never my favorite PJ album, but I also didn’t get into the band until ’97/’98. The singles are mighty if overplayed and there are some other fierce tracks scattered throughout. But Vs. and Vitalogy remain my favorites – on Vs. they just sound absolutely FURIOUS and on Vitalogy they sound like they’re about to fall apart at any minute. They fit really well with the narrative of the band and what they were going through, too. Ten does feel a bit standard-fare arena rock in some ways, but not in a particularly off-putting way.
I don’t see what everyone’s beef with the guitar solos is though – people, especially “indie people” get so damn weird about guitar solos. I remember absolutely loving the band that much more because the soloing on tracks like “Alive” sounded so unabashedly heroic. As a matter of fact, my favorite version of “Black” is the one on “Live on 2 Legs” where they add in a minute or two of outro solo that completely ramps up the emotional impact to a whole other degree, encapsulating what the song was going for in just over a minute. Let PJ solo, I say.
Another thing that kind of grinds my craw from back in that day was what a dick Cobain was about the band. In Utero was a great album, but Cobain was for all intents and purposes a spiteful hipster a lot of the time, and you can tell he hated Pearl Jam based on basic hipster instinct – the sound was too big and bold, Jeff Ament was a jock – that kind of thing. And it’s that kind of mentality that a lot of people who have hated on Pearl Jam over the years have shared. I just feel it was kind of pointless and immature.
Favorite Ten track – “Porch”
Favorite moment – Either the beginning or end of “Black”
Favorite Ten memory – Hearing that Live on 2 Legs “Black” in middle school and just being blown away at how much harder it hit me than the studio one had on the radio.
When I Was Born for the 7th Time, too. You’re right, that was a beasty year, much as it didn’t necessarily seem so to me at the time.
Ditto. Wasn’t the barn-burner I had hoped for, but it’s grown on me pretty well. Not perfect, but in my top 10 so far. But then again I think a number of the ones all the critics are creaming over are rather overrated, too.
Haha, you’re pathetic, you hipster jackass. “Oh, those bands were popular before and aren’t all being gushed over by indie critics anymore, UR lame”. Get out of here.
And guess what? Even with 3 totally bum songs, I’d still put the new Strokes on, regardless of critical opinion. How 2001 is that, right?
Oh man, what a letdown. I was really pulling for this to be cool since I’m only gonna be home in the States for a couple of months this summer, but this is so paint by numbers Pitchfork it’s sad. Couple decent acts of course, but I really hope they rope some surprises for the remaining announcements.
I’m not asking they review 8 million String Cheese Incident live albums or anything, and I guess the fact that I’m distinguishing where to draw the line isn’t much better than what they do, but there’s a marked difference between bands that go out of their way to put out serious studio albums and the pure jam bands who barely even write songs.
To stick with the Crowes example, there’s no reason Pitchfork shouldn’t have reviewed something like their Before the Frost…Until the Freeze album, which was a great, diverse album with strong song-writing and the like. They review & treat Americana bands that they approve of with respect, especially older ones – they’ve covered The Band and even The Dead, but for some reason they’ve deemed an act like the Crowes unfashionable and uncool, so they ignore them.
Ditto someone like Claypool. If this were the 90s Primus would absolutely get reviewed on something like Pitchfork. But Claypool has made the wrong friends since, so they ‘ acknowledged the guy in like a decade. And he’s put out some serious clunkers, but come on, to completely ignore a new Primus album or something?
Do they even review Ween anymore?