A friend of mine had a joke about the Cure — he called them “the Cure for Happiness”.
We lumped the Smiths in with that joke because back then fans of both bands came off as morose.
Morrissey’s moribund disposition preceded him — you didn’t need to hear him sing about how miserable he was. That was just a given.
So for years, I wrote him off, despite the fact I … actually found him kind of hot. (That immortal shot of him shirtless with his hand behind his head never fails to grab my attention.)
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I think I like this album because it’s the underdog.
October barely made it onto U2’s early career retrospective, The Best of U2: 1980-1990, and it didn’t even get a listed track!
The most casual U2 fan could probably rattle off song titles from The Unforgettable Fire, War and maybe even Boy. But nobody seems to talk about October, and the band itself doesn’t seem to acknowledge the album’s existence.
And that’s odd because October isn’t anywhere near a sophomore slump.
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I was introduced to XTC’s Skylarking through a rather unlikely source — the Hawaiʻi Public Library.
A branch of the library located by my high school had a cassette of Skylarking in its collection. I had just read a cover story about XTC in a music magazine, and I borrowed it.
I was blown away.
It became one of my favorite albums — not life-changing on the level of Kronos Quartet’s Black Angels but certainly comfort listening on the level of the Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good.
Funny thing is, I never owned a copy of the album until recently.
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In the documentary Fearless Freaks, Jack White of the White Stripes attests to the influence of the Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne by saying recent bands are ripping off his singing style.
White didn’t name any names, but Win Butler of The Arcade Fire could certainly be a candidate. Personally, the first name I thought of when I heard Butler sing was David Byrne of Talking Heads.
That immediate recognition at first didn’t warm me up to Funeral, the band’s debut album. But the sheer ferocity of the performance on this album is enough to shut anyone up.
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It’s hard to forget the first impression.
There was a time in my life when I was a Clannad fiend. A friend of mine from high school was enthusiastic about them, and it rubbed off on me. I had just about every album, including a number of permutations of their greatest hits.
But the album that was my entry point into the group’s work was Macalla.
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