This category alone almost made me sign up for the game just so I could submit [redacted].
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All of a sudden I’m thinking I may not have been noisy or depressing enough
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In tenth place with one point
Alice in Chains - Junkhead
Some of you want to make my life hard don’t you? I’m a nice guy. I genuinely listen to and like lots of music. I’m even pretty easily lead, if I listen to anything several times I’ll generally end up finding something to enjoy. But, Bohemian Rhapsody and now Alice in Chains? It’s like you’re doing it on purpose!
Anyway, all that to say I never warmed to grunge at the time (with the odd exception, more to come on that), and these guys were not a favourite. This was when albums were passed about at school on tape and there were plenty claiming Alice in Chains were great, and I feel like their reputation has been going up this past decade, so, again it must be me. I just can’t hear it, though. It’s too slow and I don’t really like the singers voice. I feel bad. I’m wrong, but sorry.
For balance:
Tough choice between Junkhead and Dirt which are back to back depressing songs on a great and depressing album. RIP Layne Staley.
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OK, now we’re on to nothing but hits from here on in. That means that some great stuff is going to get a bit shafted, but that’s the nature of the game when it’s played at a high level.
In ninth place with two points
Slayer - Angel of Death
I posted about seeing Slayer do Reign of Blood live and loving it a few weeks back. Sadly for the submitter here I also said how hard a friend had had to work to get me there, and that they were a band I’d not warmed to much before that. Thrash has never been my metal sub genre of choice and so, no matter how much I still enjoyed hearing this when it came on, I could not deny that everything left to come was more engaging.
There also isn’t any denying how clearly this is the pinnacle of their particular art, so it’s easy enough to hear why people love it. My problem with thrash is that to me it sounds a bit like simplified death metal, but I can understand how most find all the growling and guitar wankery in death a bit too much. To each their own and Slayer is the sort of band I wish I’d first heard when I was 13 rather than in my late 20s.
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In eighth place with three points
Nirvana - Lithium
I say I didn’t like grunge but obviously I liked Nirvana, I’m not an idiot. At the time I was mildly confused why they were good and the rest weren’t, but I think it’s clear now that Nirvana were just a different sort of band, taking their inspiration from alternative pop bands rather than hard rock. That’s in complete evidence on this track, one of their catchiest.
The lowish ranking here is purely a product of over familiarity and the numerous Nirvana songs I prefer. Lithium is still great, though, let’s not obscure that. Also, for alternative universes, if you wanted to rank high in this category with Kurt et al then best to have submitted “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter”, a glorious feedback workout that I used to claim was the best Nirvana song just to annoy people. What a fun guy I was!
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Ooohh, I haven’t listened to Lithium for a while, will be good to give that a play again now.
I think if I was submitting a Nirvana song for this category I would have gone with Tourette’s. One of my fave songs of theirs.
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In seventh place with four points
The Pixies - Debaser
Speaking of the sort of band Nirvana were here come The Pixies. I guess it shows my sensibilities that this song, presumably submitted in the loud category, would have been one I thought about for best pop song. It’s fantastic either way and Black Francis’s vocals are certainly not easy listening, shouting away about Un Chien Andalou above some insanely toe tapping guitar lines.
Once again the issue was how well I know it—I’ve probably listened to this song about as much as I’ve listened to any song since I first got it on tape from Rochdale library many years ago—and that everything from now on is either new or even better, often both. Again, though, I really like this song, being this low is not a reflection of disdain.
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Me. I was hoping to score more points thanks to it being so on point for the category, but shrug.
Can you tell that most of this forum were angsty teens in the 90s?
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Absolutely love the use of “Where Is My Mind?” at the end of Fight Club.
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In Sixth Place with five points
A Place To Bury Strangers - Ocean
A previous Walrus who shall go unnamed clearly didn’t follow instructions. The song must be listened to EXTREMELY LOUD. Otherwise you’ll miss half the stuff going on. If you don’t have a good pair of real headphones or car stereo - find one. No earbuds, no crappy laptop speaker.
I hope for the sake of future Walrus runners that I have finally done this song justice, though I’m worried that sixth place isn’t enough. In any case I can at least confirm I listened to this song loudly on a decent stereo and on good quality headphones, and I think I know what you’re talking about. I was a big fan of the intro and when it all got going properly it reminded me of shoegaze with the depth of stuff going on behind what at first might seem like undifferentiated noise.
I don’t really have anything bad to say, they plough a very satisfying furrow between noise and tune and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I even added the band, who I knew absolutely nothing of before the previous walrus, to my Spotify list. That might not mean very much, but hopefully it means something!
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For some reason I’ve never really checked out The Pixies, but that song is fantastic. Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do
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Finishing last in this category is obviously the winner
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I didn’t like Nirvana when they came out because they were just a new band for the kids (I was in my mid-20s). They grew on me later.
In fifth place with six points
La Dispute - Said the King to the River
As has already been covered in this reveal regarding Alice in Chains I have some prejudices I need to work through. This song was very nearly a victim of one of them too. I knew nothing about La Dispute, but the first few times all I heard was A.N. Other US ‘punk’ band I was ready to consign them to the foot of the table. I just don’t like that kind of thing at all.
However around the third run through I found myself enjoying the intro to some song I couldn’t quite remember, then the singer started and I thought, “oh, right, it’s that shit one,” but, once I’d actually paid attention to it, it turned out it wasn’t shit, it was actually really good. It was just that the singer’s voice (very ‘punk’) had activated my awful bigotry.
This is great stuff, loud, aggressive, skilfully played and with loads of variety in a song that still feels tight and concise. I would never had guessed something like this would make me want to investigate the band, but I will.
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Yeah I like this summary (and the song). Another one for my playlist.
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Awww yisss! This was me and I take great pride in breaking through your walls of bigotry.
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In fourth place with seven points
The Jesus and Mary Chain - You Trip Me Up
Some bands just sort of pass you by and you never know why. Back in the day I had an excuse, before the internet you usually had to pay cash money to hear bands like this (or catch them on John Peel), so that I never quite got round to them was just one of those things. I wasn’t made of money. But those days are long gone and all it would have taken was a few clicks on youtube. From descriptions and mentions by countless people I like I absolutely should have done it, but I never did. Shame on me.
This sounds like exactly what I imagined they would, a first class but beautifully simple guitar pop song buried under mountains of feedback. Like Teenage Fanclub with broken amps. I guess you either love them or don’t understand what they’re doing. I think I love them.
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Claiming 10th place. I stand by my choice.
Is this Walrus or Walrus Hi-Lo? Obviously going for a record low score at this point.
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