The TV Tropes Album Exchange Club

If you need help finding downloads or streams of one of the albums Wicked I could find a download for you.

Cause this hiatus just keeps getting longer man...

Not many people realize, 50 Cent is half man, half cossack. - Ross Noble

Unless I've missed something, I'm pretty sure the album I suggested (and gave a link for) hasn't come up yet...

edit: if that link no longer works, I can provide an alternate easily enough.

edited 11th Jun '12 7:32:54 PM by balrog1911

Wicked has handed the reins of the club back over to me. The next album is McLusky Do Dallas.

edited 17th Jun '12 1:42:47 PM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.

I could do this.

What're we listening to?

the cat got skinned again!

Awesome. I loved this album back in 2002, though haven't given it a good listen as a whole in years. Will listen in the next few days and report back.

edited 16th Jun '12 10:38:20 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

Hell yes I love Mclusky Do Dallas

http://www.last.fm/user/TRILLHOUSE_

Wow this is irritating stuff.

I didn't write any of that.

I can see this annoying someone if "noise rock" isn't their thing. Personally I like most of it, and even find several songs "catchy". The main appeal to me is the rhythm section holding things together as Andrew Falkous goes nuts with his vocals and guitar-playing.

By the way, I personally first heard of this band because of some flash-animated kittens rocking out to "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues"

edited 17th Jun '12 2:10:08 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOISE

*hides under a rock*

make it stop, mommy

make it stop

edited 17th Jun '12 5:10:12 PM by Hexagone

the cat got skinned again!

I liked that Fantômas album. I like The Monk's Black Monk Time. I like bagpipes music. I like Daniel "acquired taste" Smith.

I'm not entirely sure why I can stomach those brands of irritating, but not this album.

edited 17th Jun '12 6:19:02 PM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.

Having seen all the comments above me before I started listening, I was preparing for the worst.

I'm weirded out to discover that apprently I'm.... kinda enjoying it. I wasn't expecting that.

Gonna listen to it all the way through before giving opinions, but I will say this for the time being: lead singer sounds like if the Beastie Boys were a hardcore punk band (which yes I know they actually were originally)

okay I have to say that "All of your friends are cunts, Your mother is a ball-point pen thief" is the best opening lyric ever.

Okay yes I do like this. It'd got a nice edge to it. Very hostile playing and singing. The singer doesn't so much sing as he does screech his emotions out. If the lyrics are meant to mean/say anything though, I'm completely lost. I get the feeling this isn't really a band that goes for deep lyrics and subtely though, so I'm probably not mssing out on anything.

Given the style of the album, there aren't really many tracks that stand out too well, as they sort of blend into one, but my fav tracks include Lightsabre Cocksucker Blues (what a title) and Greath Brown Says. I wouldn't say the album stood out paticularily well really, probably wouldn't listen to it again, but i did find it enjoyable, especially compared to some of the opinions above. 6/10, would not bang again

edited 23rd Jun '12 6:45:23 PM by Drpepperfan

Not many people realize, 50 Cent is half man, half cossack. - Ross Noble

Upon second listen, I find myself agreeing with Mike K about the rhythm section being quite good. The slower songs ("Fuck This Band"; "Alan Is a Cowboy Killer") still don't work for me.

This band and I are very much at odds about what music's supposed to be. The arrogance in the image that the band presents—"We're awesome and you suck; we rock harder, do more drugs, and have more sex than you can even dream of"—quickly becomes irritating, even if it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. I like art that says "Look!"; I don't like art that says "Look at me!"

I didn't write any of that.

The only thing worse than people not liking the same things as you on the internet is people liking the same things as you on the internet.

I really like this album, hell, I bought it on RSD on sweet white vinyl. (The picture is now at the bottom because I hate formatting my posts with this blasted markup stuff)

Before I even give my personal review I'm gonna sling a little shit at you guys who reviewed it before me. I am a little surprised at how much this album irritated people, I never really thought of it as a noise rock album. It's really just a noisy post-hardcore album. Noise rock is more along the lines of Lightning Bolt or Boredoms. mclusky really aren't any noisier than bands like Pixies or The Jesus Lizard. I understand how the Phallically Underdeveloped Sufjan Stevens Youth could make that mistake.

Ha ha. All right, now on to my review. mclusky do dallas is one of my favourite albums and mclusky are one of my most listened to bands. This and the difference between me and you is that i'm not on fire are my favourite albums by mclusky (which isn't saying much because they only released 3 albums). I love this album for a couple of reasons, one is that it is a pretty straight-forward rock album, nothing to deep or experimental which is always nice for days where you want something to play in the background. But the biggest reason I love this album is because it genuinely makes me laugh. Lines like /cartoon monkeys got you hard/it must be the hair/, /my love is bigger than your love/we got more songs than a song convention/ and the entire second half of whoyouknow keep me entertained while I listen. Also, in response to the comment about mclusky's arrogance, I disagree entirely, in a lot of their songs, especially fuck this band, mclusky are taking the piss out of themselves. Even songs like the world loves us and is our bitch are clearly tongue-in-cheek. I read on a forum once that "mclusky are what dfa1979 would be if they were good" and as mean as that is I don't really disagree, it's high energy rock with a humourous bent to it.

Summary for the short of attention span.

I really like this album.

Favourite track: the world love us and is our bitch

Runner-up: whoyouknow

Least favourite: clique application form

and now to look at my post again so I can be disgusted at how bad my wiki formatting is. EDIT: it sucked EDIT 2: how can i be so incompetent at this? EDIT 3: wow that looks awful.

edited 25th Jun '12 8:01:25 AM by Somtt

edited 25th Jun '12 2:56:02 PM by Hexagone

the cat got skinned again!

>Vinyl

You total hipster you. I shoulda known this album was your pick the minute it started ahaha. The comparison to the Pixies is a fair one, although I can certainly understand why someone would find this album to be much noisier than the pixies. It's got a harsher sound to it in my opinion, less tune based than the pixies (although i've only ever heard Doolittle so I'm not too aware of the rest of their music.)

I'm not very good when it comes to lyrics though. Even though I fucking love rap, I constantly seem to have trouble actually understanding the words they say until like the 15th listen. And with something like this, where the vocals are often getting drowned out by the drums and guitar thrashing away? I don't stand a chance man.

@Hexagone Your post is just blank for me. Is their meant to be something there? If there is, it's not showing up for me.

Not many people realize, 50 Cent is half man, half cossack. - Ross Noble

I made a post pointing out assorted things, but then decided I don't really want to have this conversation.

I did not like the album and I don't think I need to say anything else about it.

[for the record I don't really care for The Pixies either]

the cat got skinned again!

Completely understandable, I had the same problem until I got the vinyl and I got the lyrics sheet and that made things a hell of a lot easier. Also you're right about the comparison to Pixies, it's more abrasive than Doolittle but I meant more along the lines of my favourite album, Surfer Rosa.

edited 26th Jun '12 7:31:24 AM by Somtt

Yeah, I think I was the first one to call this album "noise rock", and I was specifically thinking of something like The Jesus Lizard *

, and maybe other bands I've heard that were on amrep in the 90's, like say, the Cows

edited 29th Jun '12 10:38:15 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

As eclectic as my taste may be, this album just has no place in it.

The main problem I see with this is that it has no discernible coherency. The songs seems to be composed of various band members playing various parts with no sense of them all being on the same song. It's jumbled together, it's incomprehensible, and it's just not pleasant to listen to.

This one just gets a straight thumbs-down from me.

I think enough time has probably passed by now. Everyone seems to have given their opinions by now, this was quite the divisive album. Very love/hate. The Evangelion of albums.

If anyone still wants to add thoughts on the album, they can, but I think we've spent long enough on this album.

Not many people realize, 50 Cent is half man, half cossack. - Ross Noble

Yeah, very consistent, fun, energetic, endearing album to me. One of my all-time favorites, even. Favorite song is either "To Hell With Good Intentions" or "Alan Is a Cowboy Killer".

http://www.last.fm/user/TRILLHOUSE_

Next album is Protomen: Act II: The Father of Death.

I didn't write any of that.

Oh boy, I finally get to listen to the fabled Protomen of yore.

http://www.last.fm/user/TRILLHOUSE_

This'll be interesting - I've seen this band mentioned all over the place on this here wiki, but musically don't know what to expect, other than that it'll be the second time we'll be discussing a Mega Man-themed album.

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

So! I didn't know what to expect from this album considering that I've heard the Protomen's style referred to as power pop, indie rock, alt-country, progressive rock, hard rock, etc. but it never seemed like the kind of thing that would appeal to me regardless. I don't like rock operas. In my experience, the more attention is given over to the story, the more the music suffers. Hell, even concept albums can be dodgy and the best ones of that type only survive by leaving the story as vague as possible. When you make the story as explicit as you do in a rock opera, good things can't come of it. And, yes, it's a story based on Mega Man. Normally that's exactly the kind of obsessively nerdy concept that would drive me away on principle, but for the most part the characters and setting could be switched out for originals and it would still be a strong standalone story that touches on some complex themes, so I don't mind that part much.

The first half of this album is very heavy on tension and buildup, mostly through epic Spaghetti western instrumentation. It still suffers from the pitfalls inherent to the genre (in particular, switching the singers makes sense for the storyline but the music is less focused because of it), but it succeeds in several ways. "The Hounds", in particular, is a masterful stroke, since it's not only a fine song but also does a flawless job of incorporating the story and exposition into the lyrics without constantly interrupting the flow of the song as so many of these kinds of songs are wont to do (indeed, as several other songs on this album are wont to do). The first half doesn't always succeed, but neither does it always fail, and lots of interesting things are accomplished along the way.

The second half of the album is... when I stopped paying attention. The songs got longer, more 80s-rock-inspired, and several orders of magnitude more boring. All I got story-wise was that Dr. Light had broken out of prison and decided to create new robots to protect the city (I don't know from what, like I said I stopped paying attention to the story.... I'm going to assume it's Wily's evil Robot Masters from my knowledge of the Mega Man games). Music-wise, the only song I really noted here was "Light Up the Night" (the song chosen as the single, natch), which was very accessible but also didn't seem to go anywhere. In terms of how much I enjoyed it, the ending was very weak.

My complaints with the album, in the end, are mostly complaints with the rock opera format as a whole: when the story and not the music is the main focus, then the music has to fall by the wayside at least some time. To their credit, The Protomen are more adept at weaving the story into the music than most, but the constantly switching voices and styles just aren't something that would be present if they sat down and decided "let's make an album of really good songs". Moreover, rock singers are rarely superb storytellers, so rock operas don't usually tell incredibly compelling tales (you know Tommy by The Who? That story was really really stupid). The Protomen by and large avoid this problem by focusing on a dystopic world with themes about the power of man to create and the free will of machines and such. Not a theme that hasn't been explored better by science-fiction writers the world 'round or anything, and a lot of the times it feels like self-consciously 'edgy' Mega Man fan fiction, but there are worse tales to tell and worse ways to present them.

So, Act II: The Father of Death: as an album of music, I don't like it. As a story, it's okay. I have decidedly mixed feelings about the whole package. But it did get me out of my comfort zone a bit with something I wouldn't have touched in a million years beforehand. Interesting listen.

edited 5th Jul '12 12:01:06 PM by Trillhouse

http://www.last.fm/user/TRILLHOUSE_