When I did a series of Writers Blocks last year that consisted of me making dream Eras tour setlists for several of my favorite bands, I came across something interesting about my music taste.
I love a lot of bands that have released small amounts of material.
I’m not quite sure why this is, if it’s because I like sad music or because my Autism skews my preference towards entire discographies that can fit in one playlist. Because I don’t find myself extending that preference toward newer artists whose discographies are pending.
So what I decided to do in a pinch before our print deadline is list off bands that I like that I cannot do eras tours for because the band dissolved or ended early because of a tragedy. I know, quite morbid, but maybe it says something about me.
Here you go. Take this as a recommendation for bands that are a little more eclectic than things on the radio. Or something like that. I’m not even sure, to be honest.
The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat are both amazing albums that sound like someone took a heavy object to several amplifiers and then recorded Lou Reed and his cabal. The self-titled third album is a quaint and delicate folk record up there with Cash and Lyle Lovett’s best.
Loaded isn’t quite as consistent, but is still a cool pop record that has Sweet Jane and Rock and Roll on it. And Squeeze isn’t actually a Velvet Underground record because Doug Yule, who joined during the third album, was the only member left.
Slint released two albums before literally vanishing from existence.
The first, Tweez, is what happens when you hand four high school boys prodigious musical talent and tell them to goof off in front of Steve Albini. It’s hilarious.
The second, Spiderland, is an utter phlegethon of slow, angsty magma that communicates 20-something isolation the best of any band I’ve ever listened to. Every word is carefully whispered like the songs depend on them for life. It’s careful, and crafted, and the band dissolved before it was released, essentially guaranteeing the creation of math rock and Slint’s future mythology.
All made by a band of youngsters from Louisville, Kentucky, that spoke lyrics like “tweezer fetish” two years earlier.
Unknown Pleasures and Closer are the best albums to get someone into post punk by a country mile. Peter Hook is a beautiful bassist who I feebly attempt to mimic on my Fender Precision Special for fun, while Ian Curtis was a very remarkably literate and very tragic lead singer with a baritone delivery no one has been able to mimic since, period.
The band eventually became New Order in absence of Curtis upon his death by suicide in 1980. They are still a band people go to when they need empathy in a tough spot in life, and to me, their legacy still stands on its own for that.
Yeah, your brain probably went to this band first.
Nirvana is most known for power-rock hits like Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are, but they also have a debut album entitled Bleach that sounds like Bleach, and they have a third album that I prefer to both entitled In Utero. And my god is that album a work of terrifying might, featuring Cobain pouring his soul open even more than either of the first two records.
(Cue the rapid internet mobs of memesters for this one)
IIIII LLLLLLOOOOVVEEE YYOOOOUUU JEESSUSSSSS CHRIIIIIIST
Neutral Milk Hotel disbanded and their album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea became an internet meme, inspiring people to yell the above lyric and overplay the album into cult reverence. They have a debut called On Avery Island that is just as good and no one talks about it as much. (I blame 4chan’s music forum for that).
Tool only releases an album once every century.
Actually, not even. When the moon turns into the right cycle, and the trees start whispering to one another, and God himself shows His mighty face and declares the start of another Maynardian cycle, the four members of Tool emerge on top of a pedestal from the ground beneath them and begin to summon the great aliens of Rosetta Stoned, and proclaim that everyone is one under the might of the universe. The wind and mountains and seas sway back and forth to the cue of the Fibonacci sequence.
And then Maynard James Keenan does a dance.
The effective launching point of every modern punk band since 1976 only released one album. I won’t name it due to profanity. They always got into fights at their own concerts and never ever seemed to really get along, based on what I have heard John Lydon, former lead vocalist, say about them.
Nevertheless, it’s easy to see why they made a mark-they were so off putting, their stage presence so shocking and strange and oddly powerful at the time, that it was like achieving charisma through anarchism.
OK. So a lot of these bands have either an obvious tragedy that ended their run, or are at least somewhat dominated by male ego-with the exception, possibly, of NMH.
I probably need to listen to more women.