Unsure

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Tell me about a record that you're not sure whether you like or not?

(erm, that you've actually heard)

Comments

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

That song by Jem - oh god I have totally forgotten what it's called. It's lovely shimmery All Saints pop but by CHR1ST she sounds like Dido and I don't know if the middle-class angst caused by this outweighs the pleasure of the actual melody. Also the production is utterly weedy, not that I usually pay attention to these things but it brings the Dido-voice into sharp relief.

I got the CD single for 20pee at a record fair anyway, so fair dos I suppose.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

is that 'They'? I quite like the music - for the first few bars before she starts singing it does sound like it's going to be All Saints doing two-step.

Then she starts singing and I fall asleep.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

YES it is "They" - I remembered this a split second before I refreshed the page.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I love 'They'. Bothered about anything else she's done.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

For me it might be A Mountain Of One, generally, but I gave it another try this morning and decided that actually I dislike it. The one song I still haven't decided about is 'Innocent Line', which has a lovely engulfing melody which breaks out of the...stifling attention to detail/atmosphere elsewhere on the album...and which also has some TERRIBLE singing on it.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

The Fall Out Boy record. I listened to "Hum Hallelujah" a ton for my paper and got to love it, and I love "Arms Race" too, of course, but I listened to the whole thing last night, and I dunno, it just doesn't grab me somehow. It feels like it should grab me, and maybe it just needs more time, but c'mon, a piano ballad? The hell? And I dunno, the Jay-Z thing just seems embarassing...

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

The Jay-Z thing is meant to be embarrassing, in one sense; this is them waving their massive merchandise-sponsored cocks in a lot of people's faces. A Jay-Z cameo seems a good way to do that. A lot of that song is really about the narrative of FOB themselves, and not about the narrative of the record.

Have you listened to From Under The Cork Tree? If not, I'd recommend it - it's worth seeing what they're journeying from. Take This To Your Grave is great, but less essential; it's interesting to see how they've moved from the straight up emo-punk stylings to the big orchestral ballads. And cock-waving.

Infinity on High is a few tracks too long in the middle, tbh; it tails off a bit. But the last four tracks on the UK release (including GINASFS) are really good, still.

I really need to write something substantial on FOB.

[koganbot]

I would read it, if you wrote it.

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

Alright then. I have begun. It is going to take some time and some structure. Provisional title: "Fall Out Boy Is A Gang".

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I heard about half of Cork Tree, and liked it. Before their latest albums, I definitely preferred FoB to MCR. I guess because I'm not that invested in the story of FoB as a band it doesn't grab me? I did really, really like the video for "Arms Race."

But yeah, what Frank said--I do feel like I could get into that album.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

PS I am also unlike most poptimists in that I really love hard rock and pop-rock, arguably more than I love dance-pop. (!!!) There's a very good chance that my #1 album for the year will be Electric Six.

[koganbot]

How about hard-rock-dance-pop (such as the first Electric Six single, "Danger! High Voltage")(though I actually preferred "Gay Bar")? I like the first two E6 albs, have yet to hear the next two.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The main one that springs to mind is P Diddy & Keisha Cole. There are so many awesome bits but some glaring NOEZ bits too. I'm being intentionally vague to avoid SPOILERZ innit! :)

Also, Timbaland & Keri Hilson's 'The Way I Are'. This is a real actual source of torment for me.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'Also, Timbaland & Keri Hilson's 'The Way I Are'. This is a real actual source of torment for me.'

why so?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

+ I love Keri's bits (her vocal line, the melody she is singing)
+ The individual noises are great (the main trumpet riff, that weedle-wee noise)

- I really don't like Timbaland's vocal inflections
- Or the 'body ain't Pamela Andersaaaan, struggle just to fit you in the caravaaaan' bit
- and i've heard this WAY TOO MANY TIMES

+ But bizarrely it has GROWN ON ME since I first heard it!

= UTTER CONFUSION

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Also, Timbaland & Keri Hilson's 'The Way I Are'. This is a real actual source of torment for me.

Yes. Christ. Also annoying: the fact that it is just made up of bits of other songs. I do love his inflections, though.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Usher featuring Ludacris - 'Dat Girl Right There'. It's clearly an admirable record in terms of how weird it is. But you can't dance to it, surely? Or do anything else?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I can dance to it!

After a couple of listens I really deliberately concentrated on Usher's vocal line when listening - always suspicious of weird noises covering up a non-song. Haven't totally made up my mind but I think underneath the drill it is still v good...

[koganbot]

Well, this is an easy choice but perhaps misses the point of the question:

Timbaland "Give It To Me" featuring Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake. Actually, I am sure that I like it - love it - when Nelly is singing and dislike it when either Timbo or Justin is vocalizing, leaving the distressing questions of (1) do I want to listen to it, and (2) do I put it on my year-end lists or not?

[koganbot]

Ashlee Simpson's "Outta My Head", which is at least as catchy as "Boyfriend" or "L.O.V.E." and I am sure that I like it - even love it, I suppose, and will put it on my year-end list, though probably top 30 not top 10 - but it distresses me anyway because:

(1) The Gwennish reggae mannerisms Ashlee uses on it are silly and funny in a good way, but they're not nearly as warm and emotional as her normal voice, so I don't find myself feeling a lot when I hear this.

(2) The lyrics have a great concept - someone else's words, opinions, criticisms, attitudes invading her mind like an infection, worming their way in at the expense of her own identity - except what I just said in description gives it way more than her own words give it (she's singing lines that are no better than "keep your opinions to yourself," though I do smile when she threatens to bite the other person's head off). I want more from Ashlee, much more - not necessarily profundity every time out, but vividness, the life of the world in her words, which in the past she's done better than any musical performer since Eminem on The Marshall Mathers LP. (I fear that the new album will reveal that she can't do it without John and Kara and Shelly any more than they can do it without her.)

(Tom, I will still try to think of a song that genuinely pulls me into both like and dislike.)

Poo Monday, more like

[koganbot]

New Order's "Blue Monday." This tremendous bamboo-on-steel flimsy disco, just the stuff I was scarfing up in Chinatown on three-for-a-dollar pirate cassettes out of Singapore and Hong Kong, this weedy cheesy march-dance. BUT then the singing starts, and energy drains away, joy evaporates, this voice which is THE WORST INDIE THING EVER bemoaning its poor sad predicament in a tone of total nonmusical ordinariness. BUT then I start humming along with that voice, and even do so after the song ends.

So it's not so bad. Except when I listen to it, or read it praised as one of the great, groundbreaking singles of all time, the record that gave "us" access to the dancefloor, finally (at the expense of millions of better dancers and thousands of better freestyle and Europop acts).

(I do like "True Faith," however.)

The Clash - London Calling

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

..the album.

I've heard this album since my early teens. There was a core of songs I loved, a core of songs I purposely skipped over, and a core of songs I would let play after the song I really liked finished. (I discovered The Clash via U.S. Pop radio in 1980 - "Train In Vain" was a huge hit here.)

Over time, the core of songs I let play melded into the songs I loved. And the core of songs I skipped over melded into the songs I would let play out.

Still though, after all this time, I feel this album is way too sprawly.

London Calling should have been a single album, and the rest should have been good EP or B-side fodder. Granted, I now appreciate the dub/reggae they were eager to explore which I initially despised in my teen years, so I wouldn't rewrite history.

Still though, London Calling should have been a single, solid album. Then I could understand the over-canonization.

Re: The Clash - London Calling

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

see, i think there's just the right amount of sprawl - none of this white album/sandanista scale nonsense

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

This is a tough question for me, because usually if I'm unsure, it means I like it a little, but not as much as I want to like it -- whereas in the event that I flat-out don't like a song, I have no problem disliking it. I usually have to dislike a song pretty strongly to call it "dislike."

I think the New Pornographers are a good group to single out. So often I listen to their songs and just get nothing from them, even though my brain keeps telling me to like it. When they all go solo, I have more solid opinions of their songs. There's some UK stuff that gets a lot of love around here that I feel similarly about (Girls Aloud usually) that I generally like enough not to be as conflicted about. (I don't need to care THAT deeply about a good pop tune -- maybe it's when there are pretensions to brainiacal cleverness or something that I sour a little?)

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Frank Cox "Clairvoyance" for cello - like it immediately at first. On reflection: yes, the playing and what he is able to get out of the cello is amazingly effective and visceral, but I wonder if maybe there is a lack of consideration for the notes.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Aly & AJ - the whole album, but especially 'Potential Break-Up Song'. They're creationists, they reek of Avril Lavigne-style evil, and they're disturbingly reminiscent of Prussian Blue. And yet sometimes I still find myself humming it, and I've kept the CD.

i agree

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with this one. I respect their record more than like it, though there are a number of songs I genuinely love. It's just that there is the sense that 16 or17 year old girls really wrote these lyrics and music without much editing from adults. This part I respect (teen pop written by and for teens = a good thing) but I have to admit that I (a 34 year old man) just don't identify with it much and a lot of the lyrics are awkward in the way that teen poetry almost always is. A little tweaking and the record would have been much better. I do have to say that the chorus to "If I Could Have you Back", while being completely awkward with its extra line of "on the other hand..." is also completely awesome and addictive. I can't imagin an adult professional musician/writer putting this in their song and this is why I love Aly & AJ.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Darren Hayes - Me, Myself And I

I want to love it because I love him, and it is one of his poppier songs, so I should, but... I just can't even be bothered to listen to it. It's sad for me.