Bands that had/have a "great sound" but rarely fullfiled their songwriting potential

Re: Curve, yes...they suffered from chronic sameyness (or at least through Cuckoo), but never seemed to be much of a problem.

Dan Perry said on the New Order vs Pet Shop Boys thread that NO have spent their entire career remaking the same ten songs, but those are ten fucking amazing songs. Well, Curve only wrote two songs and kept twisting them into different shapes but those are two INCREDIBLE songs. See also: Galaxie 500 (two, maybe three different songs), Stereolab 1991-4 (two, maybe three songs AND chords)

My point being that there's a fine line between bands that turn the same tricks over and over and bands that never came up with any good tricks. Maybe I'm already way off topic. Great thread, though.

I started off thinking about My Bloody Valentine...

And then the words RIDE smacked me in the face. I really should get a copy of that second album again. They needed a lot more aggression in the vocal department though tbh, maybe I lost it for a reason. And I suppose this is where Oasis picked up the ball that should have been theirs to bounce.

There's so much 'could have been' about this period of music. It just makes me hate Britpop and the sterilizing effect it had on any potential mainstream crossover of caustic/experimental guitar music so much more than I can express. Not to mention the acid-house/electronic/rock fertilization that just seemed to fizzle away after Seefeel & Chapterhouse.

It still amazes me that a whole decade of guitar music acted like (and still does!!) the 90's never happened until Radiohead showed the initiative (and imagination). Possibly this is where we'd have got to anyway in the end.

*ahem*

;-)

so does spiritualized

they can share ownership of it

Oh my god you're wrong. One of the greatest songs there ever was.

For me, the best example of this is the Cocteau Twins. One of the best sounds ever and when coupled with good songwriting it was magical shit, but I can't listen to a whole album of theirs really. The songs just start to blend together. Only like five songs--"Carolyn's Fingers," "Lorelei," "Sugar Hiccup," maybe one or two others--really stand out against the rest.

(I don't like a lot of sigur ros though, most of it actually)

spiritualized.

f*** me. surely one of the most critically over-rated bands ever never in the history of rock has 'pretty good, sometimes but usually boring' been upgraded to 'godlike' so often.

We're going to just have to agree to disagree, or there'll be lots of talk about nail-guns and immolation and cement shoes and being flayed alive.

Yep.

You mean chipmunk vocals+heavy quantized guitars+trevor horn beats? Eh, I would say they took that particular combination about as far as it goes.

FWIW, I believe it, though, especially these days - i'm sick of records that 'sound' good now but in five years will sound dated. Bring on the SONGS!

I don't see why a perfectly reasonable activity like this should be associated with "So Alive".

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), October 25th, 2004.

With Can (whom I luv) or Acid Mother Temple it's assumed that one isn't going to get traditional, hooky "songs"; Love and Rockets and Curve chose to work within the narrow limitations of pop songwriting but rarely reaped the benefits.

Anyone mentioning MBV or Cocteau Twins here is craaazy. It's their strong songwriting, more than their production, that sets them worlds apart from pedestrian fluff like Moose and Lush.