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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4037 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Can you expand on what you think is weirdness for weirdness' sake in MHtRtC? Although I love all BoC albums nearly equally, the reason I tend to put Campfire Headphase below both the first album and Geogaddi is basically yours but mirrored: it's exactly their greater amount of weirdness, not just for its own sake, but genuinely quirky, interesting weirdness, that makes those two albums the ones with the more lasting and deeper impression on me in comparison.

Second the request for more, love reading about music and being introduced to new material. The only two records I didn't know from this list (Big Star and Organized Konfusion) I liked a lot. If it's not too much work, I'd suggest adding a favorite & least favorite track mention for every album, opinions on that are always very interesting to see.

I went back and revisited MHtRtC today since it had been several years since I last listened to it and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss something the first time around. I've noticed my grading has gotten more lenient over the years and since that was like a 2014 rating there's a good chance I could have been wrong. But in retrospect, I still stand by my original evaluation. There are two essential weirdness faults. The first is that the synths are out of tune throughout most of the album. I understand the effect they're going for, but it's simply overdone. The other problem is that some of the individual quirky sounds are overdone as well. It's one thing to do something different, but electronic music is repetitive, and it's hard for something distinctive to have the same impact the 138th time you hear it. It's still a 4 1/2 star album, and I like it a lot, it's just that the weird aspects are enough of a flaw for me to keep it out of the pantheon.

If it's not too much work, I'd suggest adding a favorite & least favorite track mention for every album, opinions on that are always very interesting to see.

It's my contention that these albums are great because they stand as cohesive entities, so picking and choosing best and worst cuts isn't really in the spirit of the enterprise. A lot of these albums don't really have any cuts that would even qualify as best or worst because the quality at this level is so consistent that I'd really have to stretch to make that kind of judgment. There's also the problem that since I'm only doing this once a week and am limited to 10,000 characters I have to keep things concise if I have any expectation of getting through this list within the next year. I might get into more detailed reviews as I approach the higher numbers, but at this point I'm limiting myself to capsule reviews until I put a dent in this. That being said, if you have any specific questions about any of the albums listed or want to hear more, I'm happy to discuss these albums at further length in the comments.

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