What is the one album by a favorite band of yours that you love, but is criminally overlooked?
Are there any albums by your favorite bands that make you think "Why didn't I listen to this sooner?" Or "Why is nobody talking about this one?" My unfortunate candidate for this title would be Maladroit by Weezer. It's such a weird shift in tone from Green and moreso from Blue or Pinkerton. It's a lot of short and sweet songs but between the kickass solos and chugging metal influenced chords, the whole album is a banger. You have songs like Burndt Jam and Slave that have a much more mellow and poppish, feel; and then you have more aggressive songs like Take Control and Dope Nose (The most well known hit off Maladroit). It seems that in the wake of people not liking the Green album much, this stellar poppy, metal-y, strange yet great little album was panned over, which is a crying shame.
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island It's pretty well received in the indie community but most people have only listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Both are great albums but it surprises me that OAI is not more popular. It's a much more straight forward album.
I agree, but I don't think I ever would have put the time into OAI without my love of ITAOTS. The first couple of times I listened to OAI I just figured the band struck gold with ITAOTS, but as the personality of Mangum sort of got cemented with my listens of ITAOTS I began to appreciate how clearly out of the band's comfort zone OAI was.
In this vein I would say Ferris Wheel on Fire. More sonically like ITAOTS but with some of the incredibly weird lyrics and songs off of OAI. Really fantastic blend of the two albums if you haven't heard it. I personally enjoy it as much as Aeroplane at this point.
I think part of the reason On Avery Island is less popular is because it lacks the thematic tightness that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has. I would also venture to say that On Avery Island is generally speaking a bit less accessible since it has a rougher, more lo-fi sound and is just noiser in general. That being said, I do love On Avery Island. I just love In the Aeroplane Over the Sea more.
I agree! Naomi is my favorite Neutral Milk Hotel song.
I really like OAI. You have good taste. I feel the same about Arcade Fire. Neon Bible is definitely the lesser album than Funeral, but it is brilliant regardless.
Pink Floyd - Division Bell
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Nine Inch Nails's "The Fragile" is my all time favorite album, but it puts a lot of people off because it's essentially a requirement to listen to it as an album in order; No real hard hitting radio hit
This album is kind of a tragedy. Reznor had been rebounding from his post Downward Spiral problems and poured his heart into this damn album, part of the healing process if I remember correctly. His 'Dark Side of the Moon' if you will. But it was released in 1999 - the age of teenybop - Britney and Backstreet and all that bubble gum. While the album was more or less commercially (debuted at no 1) and critically (plenty of reviewers recognized its brilliance) successful, Trent felt like it was getting missed. And he wasn't totally wrong, it dropped quickly on the charts after week one, kind of the last gasp of that musical era. I can't find the quote anymore but I seem to remember that he was quite dejected about it, basically declaring it a sign of the death of music.
I think the real tragedy is that it was also the age of Napster, often very poor quality singles ruled the day so was it that surprising that such a sonically tuned 2-hour masterwork would get somewhat overlooked? Not that surprising I think, but sad, because to me there is nothing greater in art than such a beautiful expanse of music as the 'album experience' once was. The Napster era is today the iTunes era which promotes basically the same single song listening experience and I'm not sure albums like The Fragile will have the importance they once had.
Anyway, wow, I freaking love this album and I guess I needed to let that all out.
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I've never been a big NIN fan but I love this album. It's really the only one I've ever been able to get into.
“It’s Never Been Like That” by Phoenix. It’s not as immediately accessible as “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” but has all the songwriting depth of Wolfgang and more, in some ways. Highlights for me include “Long Distance Call”, “Lost & Found”, and “Consolation Prizes” (probably the easiest song to get into).
Consolation Prizes was great.
My favorite Phoenix song. This album kicks absolute ass on par with Wolfgang.
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At War With the Mystics by The Flaming Lips
and
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon!
Now Ive got the yeah yeah yeah song stuck in my head with ga ga ga ga as the lyrics. Great choices though! Ga x 5 is probably their masterpiece in my opinion.
Swans - The Great Annihilator - Swans has really become more known for their first album FIlth, the behemoth Soundtracks for the Blind, and their more recent stuff like To Be Kind and The Seer. The middle era of Swans with the two rabbit albums and The Great Annihilator often gets overlooked compared to the attention that reunion Swans gets.
Around the World In A Day by Prince.
Some solid psychedelia and still had all of the sex and guitar shreds that mid-80's Prince was known for.
One of my three favorite albums of all time is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones' Little Worlds: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlLPbdXYqkafybc_2lCg3sPsx3RP-enAi. For some reason it is just not generally regarded as one of their best albums. It's pretty indulgent - a three-CD set that meanders through a few different subgenres, with a number of not-very-structured tunes mixed in - but I just love the sound of all of it. I guess it is not as popular because it's not the kind of funk-plus-bluegrass aligned sound that the Flecktones became known for, but I wish more jazz fans would give it a shot. Highlights for me are "Off the top (gravity wheel)", "Costa Brava", and "Poindexter."
Bela's adventures into jazz are some of my favorite things, although I wish they had continued to occur in the Strength in Numbers group.
The whole jazz-grass scene is criminally small, consisting basically of Tony Rice, David Grisman and sometimes Sam Bush / Bela :(
I had never heard this particular album, so I'm giving it a spin. Thanks!
Edgar Meyer and Sam Bush are a heck of a combo. Really dug that - thanks for sharing. Let me know what you think of Little Worlds!
Did you ever hear the album Bela did with the Marcus Roberts Trio?
Nope, I'll have to check out it!
How I Got Over - The Roots
The Good Fight - Oddisee
Baptized in Dirty Waters - David Banner
Anghellic - Tech n9ne
I was actually going to say Undun by The Roots. I bumped that for probably 2 years and still come back to it. Phenomenal album.
Van Morrison - St Dominic's Preview.
Everyone talks about Astral Weeks and Moondance, but this and Tupelo Honey are absolutely incredible accomplishments. Or if you want to get a little more obscure, Veedon Fleece is a stunning work unlike anything else he's done. Well worth investigating.
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Cor Scorpii - Monument
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY-pubwDfoQ
Quite an overlooked black metal album. Even in it's own black metal subgenre, Sognametal, it's overlooked.
Sognametal is a tony offshoot of black metal that arrived in the late 90s when bands radically broke away from the strictly limiting low-fi style guidelines. It's characterized by layered guitars with lots of counterpoint, and the lead guitar has a strong clean tone that breaks away from the wall-of-sound and carries strong themes through the song. The songs are very long and complex and highly instrumental based. It was pioneered by Windir, and after their lead singer tragically died in a blizzard there has been a cult following for their style of music.
Cor Scorpii takes the folky melodies of Windir and instead focuses on a classical sound. The song composition is way beyond what most other technically inclined metal bands are doing, and I honestly think it's one of the best composed metal albums I've ever heard.
I'm not sure why it doesn't even have any popularity in the metal scene. It has the extremely harsh black metal elements with the vocals and intensity, and no extraneous orchestras/choirs/cheesy sound effects - almost all of the music is coming from many layers of guitar work and a simple keyboard layer. I think that perhaps the purist black metal fans want the simple, in your face style of gunmetal grey black metal, and the fans of the more lofty, melodic, transcendental stuff want more catchiness and gimmick. But I love it! It's the best of no compromise black metal and uses those tools to compose an album that absolutely blows 99% of "symphonic black metal" out of the park in both technicality and inspiration.
Duster - Contemporary Movement
Animal Collective - Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished
Unwound - Fake Train
Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
Criminally overlooked? Pet Sounds is one of the most influential and critically acclaimed albums of all time.
I'm in my mid-20's an it's amazed me how many of my peers have never heard of Pet Sounds. Maybe not criminally overlooked in general, then.
Life and in particular, exposure to music, is quite relative :)
Might as well say Sgt Pepper's.
While I get what you guys are saying I think he might mean more along the lines of pure surface level fans not knowing what a powerhouse the actual album is. Just the same you have a lot of Beatles fans that only know individual songs and hits off of other albums (I personally say Magical Mystery Tour is the most overlooked in that sense) and Radiohead casual listeners might only know 15 Step or Creep ugh.
OK Computer is so overlooked.
Probably Frank Zappa's -- Burnt Weeny Sandwich though depending on the fan you're talking to, A Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch or Crusing with Reuben and the Jets are a good substitute.
Burnt Weeny Sandwich is the closest thing to capturing feeling of the absolute magical experience that was the Mothers of Invention in 1968-69, a.k.a., the Lowell George Mothers. They could turn on a dime from long complicated jams into complete madness / noise and come out the other side into "covers" of Varese, Bratton / Wagner, etc. Zappa fans probably know BWS, but might not be super familiar with it as compared to Uncle Meat / Weasels Ripped my Flesh etc.
ASATLTSADW (someone double check that acronym please) got a bad rap because of the (in)famous hit single - Valley Girl but the title track is among the best of FZ's 1980s compositions.
Crusin' with Reuben is a divisive album among Zappa fans, you either love Frank's fanatical obsession with doo-wop or you just don't see the point. For my money, the song Anything makes the point better than anything I could say. Plus if you start digging into it, it's very difficult to separate out Zappa's doo-wop / blues obsessions from all of his early work
Lunatic by Kongos. "Come with me now" was the big hit but no-one knows the rest of the album.
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I really like OK GOs albums. All anyone thinks of is the song Here It Goes Again, but their first and second albums are brilliant. OK GO and Oh No.
Billy Idol's Cyberpunk, which was criticized by everyone (fans, industry & cyberpunks) at release but 25 years later still sounds good to my ears.
One album that I feel is always overlooked is RHCP's One Hot Minute. I really enjoyed the darker feel of it and the different sound with Dave Navarro on guitar.