Personally, I think that collection of Jai Paul's demos were the best "album" to drop this week.
If the rest of the songs filling out his real LP are on par with "Str8 Outta Mumbai," "Zion Wolf," "All Night," and the released singles, that album's gonna be special.
There's really no way that this could be the actual LP. My guess is that by releasing this, Jai Paul (or XL) is just building more hype, or testing the waters for the real debut. The audio quality definitely isn't clean enough to be a final product, and it sounds like many (if not all) of the tracks are still demos - the included version of "Jasmine" makes this, in my opinion, pretty evident.
That being said, if some of these ideas are fleshed out and polished up a bit more, I feel like the end result could be incredible.
Plans... is not bad. I enjoy Plans. But favorite album... of ALL TIME?
No offense, but in my (completely subjective) opinion, Plans would struggle to scratch the top 25 albums of 2005.
Additional note: I wanted to distinguish Transatlanticism as the clear #1, but that positioning was probably determined by a high school nostalgia trip.
This is - in my opinion - the best way to make this list:
1-2. Transatlanticism/We have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
3. Something About Airplanes
4-7. Draw from a hat
Note: Positions 1-3 may be filled by a different album if (and only if ) the list maker acknowledges that their chosen replacement's positioning was determined by a high school nostalgia trip.
Also, I'm not really sure what happened there - do you actually think that by citing Robert Christgau you just... convinced me to change my opinions?
...Whatever, I can play along. Just to further conflict your previous reasoning: Robert Christgau gave Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 and 2 (1973-1985) an A-; he gave The Bends a C. He probably prefers Billy Joel to Radiohead. Now what?
I love "Got Nuffin," but I think you're going to have a hard time convincing people that it, and "Mystery Zone" are more satisfying pop than "The Underdog" and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb." But hey, that's just my thoughts.
And yes, I know that the "Spoon sound" could probably be defined as very minimal, but that certainly doesn't mean that Transference, being such a sparse album, is automatically a musically superior record to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. I mean, hell, if the band released an album of Britt Daniel literally banging a spoon against a chair every thirty seconds, would THAT just be "Spoon being more Spoon?" and make it a better album? Of course not.
Spoon is one of my favorite bands - I'd like to think I have a pretty fair understanding of what they do, and I can still completely agree with this list. My opinion is that Spoon's "pop" moments are much more satisfying, and musically accomplished than many of their minimalist ones. So to say that somebody "fundamentally misunderstands Spoon" because they don't share your opinion... That's just silly.
And Radiohead is my favorite band; I don't even listen to Billy Joel. There goes your argument.
That "Yacht Rock" article you linked to? It put Steely Dan in the same musical musical context as Toto and Hall & Oates. I call shenanigans.
Oh and on a side note, yeah, this album's pretty damn decent.
A good troll is supposed to make people feel outraged, or offended, rather than simply inconvenienced.
This is trolling at its most amateur, Corky - I'm actually kind of embarrassed for you.
Oh wow... I came here to see some quality 'Gum discourse, but this comments section is an abortion.
http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/29/AbandonThread.gif
Jack's all about building the mythos - the sister/wife shenanigans, the all red (now blue) wardrobe, references to being the seventh son, adherence to analog recording, keeping the last name White, having both an all male and all female band, etc...
So basically, these kind of things don't need to make total sense, as long as they add something to the image. And I agree, I think it's pretty neat.
Oh, I was definitely trying to direct that towards Stereogum as a whole, not just you. There seems to be a decent number of gummers that have been taking undeserved shots at The Keys lately, as if they're not still one of the best bands around.
No hard feelings scruffyboo. <3
Remember when we all used to NOT become pretentious twat-waffles when a good band finally achieved commercial success, instead of immediately writing them off as "sell outs?" No... neither do I. Anyways, Brothers and El Camino are solid as fuck.
Hm, I saw that, but your comment seemed skeptical without choosing to write it off just yet, while I'm saying flat out that it's not very good. Slight difference.
Oh, I fully expect that most stereogummers will disagree with me, but nobody in here had voiced the minority opinion yet, so I figured I might as well brace myself for a few downvotes and step up to the plate. :)
Wow, so much MBV circle-jerking around here. Even without factoring in the stratospheric hype surrounding the album, m b v is decent at best - really, if it were dropped by any other band, there wouldn't be a single person on this site even suggesting that this is album-of-the-year material. It's almost entirely devoid of the passionate, beautiful melodies that defined Loveless, and made it into the classic that it is. Truth be told, Frightened Rabbit released a much better album this week.
...Oh, and "Nothing Is" is a completely bullshit experiment. Why did this all take 22 years again?
Wrong answer.
1. Listen to Channel Orange again.
2. Repeat step one until you are assimilated by the stroke fest.
In the event that you never end up enjoying the album, use doublethink when discussing it.
It's hardly as great as their debut, but Coexist deserves a spot in any list this year off the strength of it's first two songs alone, IMO.
...And outside of Beach House getting snubbed (again, not nearly as good as their last effort, but definitely deserving of placement), I'm totally cool with this list.
...As great as these suggestions are, I'll admit that Stereogum's recent entries haven't exactly satisfied my secret pleasure of viewing comment rage.
Can we get to the Best of Decade lists soon?
Graduation is definitely better than 808's
Graduation is probably better than Watch the Throne
Late Registration is slightly better than MBDTF
...Other than that, we're cool.
No - I stoutly defend Simon's credibility in all matters relating to shoegazer history, and dispute any accusations suggesting otherwise!
...But really, just because an album is amazingly original, doesn't mean it's an amazing collection of songs. I'd say it's just pretty good. The same goes for On Avery Island.
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