The Album Review Club - Week #124 - (page 1478) The Magical World of the Strands - Michael Head & The Strands

Still listen to OK Computer and The Bends to this day.The only tracks i skip are Fitter Happier and Climbing Up The Walls.
Glastonbury when they headlined and did most of the stuff from OK and The Bends was an iconic set.
All downhill after bar There, There track from Hail to the Thief.
9/10.Poetry in motion
I'll defend A Moon Shaped Pool until I die. Probably prefer it to the Bends to be honest. It doesnt have any of the big highs like the Bends but maybe because I'm older I just want less noise :) it also feels like the most of its time album (after Pablo Honey) and I think that ages it
 
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I'm lactose intolerant.

But the pie order should be cancelled, because I just barely made it through "Exit Music (For A Film)" and recalled why I dislike this record so much.
Sheesh man i absolutely love this song. It's kind of fragile but masculine at the same time - like a Russian man wearing a tutu atop an iceberg. I love the atmosphere of it. Yes it's contrived and constructed but it's made so well
 
Sheesh man i absolutely love this song. It's kind of fragile but masculine at the same time - like a Russian man wearing a tutu atop an iceberg. I love the atmosphere of it. Yes it's contrived and constructed but it's made so well
It's unbearably whingy, tuneless, hookless, slow, arid like a desert, pointless, ugly and vague.

It's horrifying. All that rock and roll should never be.

In my opinion. :)

If he'd written a line that said "like a Russian man in a tutu atop an iceberg" it'd at least be a simile worth discussing.
 
Still listen to OK Computer and The Bends to this day.The only tracks i skip are Fitter Happier and Climbing Up The Walls.
Glastonbury when they headlined and did most of the stuff from OK and The Bends was an iconic set.
All downhill after bar There, There track from Hail to the Thief.
9/10.Poetry in motion
How can a 9/10 record have songs you skip? You skip 17% of the tunes!

This is kind of my point about "overrated". At the least, it seems grade inflation.

If this is how I scored records, I have like 683 10/10s.

Sorry mate -- I don't mean to be harsh. Maybe it's just me, but any record with songs I'd skip is a 7 at best.
 
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We're not even a day into this pick and it's doing my head in. Not the album itself which has some merits if you park it's cynicism and lack of authenticity. But because I've been reminded of the absolute torrent of garbage that is written about it and the associated baggage that comes with it; such as unanswerable questions like why is Jonny Greenwood lauded to the heavens when someone like Dominic Miller is ignored? Why do people say the lyrics and themes are prescient or profound but when you ask them to explain a bit more they can't actually articulate any proper detail? Why can't Thom Yorke be arsed to follow an idea through to a cogent conclusion? When did absorbing a few influences and bringing them together sometimes successfully sometimes not, constitute "reinventing rock"? I don't hate this album (at least not for purely musical reasons) but I do hate all the arseholes with a 2:2 in English Lit from Keele or wherever, who wrote rainforests worth of total shite about it.

It's put me in a foul enough mood to score it now. If I was scoring this purely as a few pieces of music I'd probably give it a 6 maybe a 5 because theres some interesting ideas on it with some decent playing; but i've been told plenty of times this is in effect an important piece of art. So it's getting scored as such and it's getting compared in terms of it's intent and execution against the likes of Guernica. And on that basis it's getting 1/10 because it's devoid of any artistic integrity.

Gonna go and listen to the playlist as I really do need to chill out now.
 
We're not even a day into this pick and it's doing my head in. Not the album itself which has some merits if you park it's cynicism and lack of authenticity. But because I've been reminded of the absolute torrent of garbage that is written about it and the associated baggage that comes with it; such as unanswerable questions like why is Jonny Greenwood lauded to the heavens when someone like Dominic Miller is ignored? Why do people say the lyrics and themes are prescient or profound but when you ask them to explain a bit more they can't actually articulate any proper detail? Why can't Thom Yorke be arsed to follow an idea through to a cogent conclusion? When did absorbing a few influences and bringing them together sometimes successfully sometimes not, constitute "reinventing rock"? I don't hate this album (at least not for purely musical reasons) but I do hate all the arseholes with a 2:2 in English Lit from Keele or wherever, who wrote rainforests worth of total shite about it.

It's put me in a foul enough mood to score it now. If I was scoring this purely as a few pieces of music I'd probably give it a 6 maybe a 5 because theres some interesting ideas on it with some decent playing; but i've been told plenty of times this is in effect an important piece of art. So it's getting scored as such and it's getting compared in terms of it's intent and execution against the likes of Guernica. And on that basis it's getting 1/10 because it's devoid of any artistic integrity.

Gonna go and listen to the playlist as I really do need to chill out now.
Brilliant commentary. I would guess my review and score will be somewhat more focused on the musical content now that you’ve articulated your feelings.

But I share your perspective on the inherent naked cynicism of this product and your mystification that more fans and critics cannot see what seems obvious to us (especially critics — they’re supposed to know better; some of RH’s more down-in-the-mouth fans are hapless and/or high, and this seems specifically crafted to hit them where they live, so that they’ve been sucked in is just bog-standard consumer research executed precisely).

I ascribe this cynicism in part to stupidity (the artists — I can’t be the only one who thinks Thom Yorke is, I’m sorry, kind of a dim bulb, and his self-knowledge meter appears to be pegged near zero) and greed (much of it corporate).
 
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We're not even a day into this pick and it's doing my head in. Not the album itself which has some merits if you park it's cynicism and lack of authenticity. But because I've been reminded of the absolute torrent of garbage that is written about it and the associated baggage that comes with it; such as unanswerable questions like why is Jonny Greenwood lauded to the heavens when someone like Dominic Miller is ignored? Why do people say the lyrics and themes are prescient or profound but when you ask them to explain a bit more they can't actually articulate any proper detail? Why can't Thom Yorke be arsed to follow an idea through to a cogent conclusion? When did absorbing a few influences and bringing them together sometimes successfully sometimes not, constitute "reinventing rock"? I don't hate this album (at least not for purely musical reasons) but I do hate all the arseholes with a 2:2 in English Lit from Keele or wherever, who wrote rainforests worth of total shite about it.

It's put me in a foul enough mood to score it now. If I was scoring this purely as a few pieces of music I'd probably give it a 6 maybe a 5 because theres some interesting ideas on it with some decent playing; but i've been told plenty of times this is in effect an important piece of art. So it's getting scored as such and it's getting compared in terms of it's intent and execution against the likes of Guernica. And on that basis it's getting 1/10 because it's devoid of any artistic integrity.

Gonna go and listen to the playlist as I really do need to chill out now.

C’mon , whilst this is a very good Fog inspired rant 1/10 is disingenuous and ruins the average score. Play fair!
 
why is Jonny Greenwood lauded to the heavens when someone like Dominic Miller is ignored?
I think the same thing almost every day when I look at the 5.27 average you lot dished out to King Swamp - an album on which Dominic Miller played some superb guitar :)
 
C’mon , whilst this is a very good Fog inspired rant 1/10 is disingenuous and ruins the average score. Play fair!
I'm expected threespires to row back on this at some point, but we'll see. This week is already interesting. It seems my Two Tribes post is, so far, very apt.
 

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