Henry Spencer

I should have picked Hunky Dory instead of Transformer, as it really encapsulates everything I love about the Reed album, only better. Dammit.

My first choice where sentimentality has completely overwhelmed objective quality: I heard this album before I heard any of the VU's albums, and I was hooked immediately. This album is packed with songs that I would consider to be amoung my all time favorites (Andy's Chest, Perfect Day, Satellite Of Love, Hangin' Round) and no filler between. The whole thing is campy glam fun. Really, I know there are better albums I could have chosen, but I can't imagine life without this one.

If it's any consolation, The Queen Is Dead was going to be my next pick. So, y'know, turnabout is fair play and whatnot.

Here's one I figured I'd better take before it's snagged (by Edwin): Tom Waits - Rain Dogs The best album in a discography full of great ones, and probably the most complete portrait of the many moods of Tom Waits. It ties together the tough blues rock, the gutwrenching ballads, the instrumentals, the creepy beat poetry, and the sloshed piano musings into a musical journey of sorts that takes many twists and turns before resolving itself at the end with a pure pop song (Downtown Train) and a somewhat Randy Newman-esque New Orleans funeral march for a denouement. Really, I don't want to attempt to explain this album anymore, as I'm sure I will continue to do a woefully inadequate job. It's simply one of the most magnificent, singular albums ever recorded.

It seems like every hipster in the Kansas City area has been in some shitty IDM/electro-grindcore/abrasive noise nonsense group at some point. I've seen plenty of those, and they're pretty much universally boring shows. Like Mr. Macphisto, I don't think I've ever seen a blatantly bad headliner. Saturday Looks Good To Me came the closest, but that was more due to a sense of dashed expectations rather than the band's performance. I was unaware that they had dispensed of the female singer (my favorite part of the band) prior to the show. They weren't bad for what they were, though. Some of the more unbearable openers I've seen include Kristeen Young (extremely shrill, unpleasant voice), the Thrills (boring indie pop), Sons & Daughters (boring indie rock), and Dub Trio (uninspired riffing interspaced with thirty seconds of echo that I suppose was meant to constitute "dub").

Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand To me, the most complete, concise, and emotionally satisfying pop album I've ever heard. It's gracefully sequenced, so that each song is fully impactful both by itself and as part of a larger musical whole. The songs are incredibly diverse (this is almost the White Album of the nineties, except half as long), somehow sounding like the Beatles, Wire, early Pink Floyd, the Byrds, and the Who at various different points. It's incredibly consistent, though, with Hot Freaks being the only somewhat sore spot on the album. I love the way the album ends: as if Pollard has nothing more to show you in this strange world he's invited you into, and simply lets the tape run for a few seconds of hiss before shutting it off. Perfection from the very beginning to the end, and it even contains my favorite song (Smothered In Hugs), which I am required to listen to at least once a week.

EHME's interest in them pretty much confirms it.

I'm in!

The new Bauhaus album sucks. Oh my god does it suck. The early impressions I've heard of it compared the sound to T. Rex, which I don't think is quite accurate. I'd say they're more in Bowie territory here, specifically a combination of Aladdin Sane and Heroes (it even mimics the structure of the later album to a large degree). Of course, neither Aladdin Sane nor Heroes were as plodding and monotone as this. The only song that stands out (Saved) does so because it's significantly worse than the rest of the album.

I downloaded leaks today of the new Destroyer and Bauhaus albums. I'm about halfway through my first listen to the former, and it's really fantastic so far. Unless there's a huge dropoff in quality when I hit the second half, I think I can safely declare this my favorite album of the year so far.

The Times New Viking album sounds almost exactly like classic Guided By Voices. I dig it.

I love that Give Peas A Chance compilation.

That being said, I can think of at least five 2002 albums that I like better than In Search Of.

1. Age Of Consent 2. Bizarre Love Triangle 3. Ceremony 4. Temptation 5. Confusion My list was not substantially different enough from anybody else's to bother posting. I suck at this.

Lies is one of my dad's favorite albums. That half-assed acoustic ballad with some whistlin' in it isn't that bad, really.

Great album. Although the Neptunes can still yield a good backing track every now and then, by and large their glory days are behind them, so I agree. Tape You and Brain are probably the highlights. I love the synth line that comprises the chorus of the former song.

Milky Czech

I eat scrambled eggs at least three times a week, and hard boiled eggs at least five. Tabasco is a necessity.

I had to perform a few monologues from that book in my high school drama class. Never read the whole thing.

Mad Magazine was never really that funny. The appeal, to me, always lay in the artwork, but I haven't read it in years, so I have no idea if that's gone downhill too.

I heard Panda Bear's first album. It was a half hour of moaning and structureless guitar strumming. Is Person Pitch a departure from this?

Post that uploaded Black Mountain album at the other place, too. I enjoyed their first album, although certainly there was room for improvement. I'm curious.

Okay, now there's one post in this thread I understand. Thank you for putting these issues in terms I can understand, gary floyd.