recently, a friend took me through the bizarre and somewhat worrying journey of Genesis' 'A Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' album, surely one of the most totally overblown, pompous records in recent memory. What the hell is going on? And it was TOTALLY massive as well. And of course you can see why punk came along too....not to say it isn't, er, interesting.
Anyway, what other albums are worthy of a similar accolade?
Use Your Illusion
?
Hmm
That Flaming Lips album where you have to play all 4 discs at once to get the desired 'effect'.... 'Zaireeka'
Im sure Prog has a fair amount of easy targets
Anything
by The Mars Volta, I still love them though :)
truth
also muse albums
but I don't want to have a go at muse
they get alot of crap on here but they're a good band
Zaireeka
The pompousness of this record is mitigated by its sheer fucking brilliance, I think, personally. Also, there's any number of collated versions of the songs from that album floating around on the nets...
Bat Out of Hell
is surely up there
Everything Picture by Ultrasound.
My suggestion
although it didn't stop it being brilliant.
be here now
obv
The tripple disc Chilli's one
not musically overblown as such, more a mark of massive pomposity in believing they could justify 3 CD's of utter gash.
was 2 discs wasnt it?
yah
similar state of affairs with that double Foo Fighters one maybe?
I stand corrected
I remembered him saying it was Meant to a be trilogy but they canned the idea. My point is weak and sloppy now, I take it back.
(It remains a pretty dire record)
Yeah it was dire
although at the same I thought it was brilliant :(
Mellon Bollocks and the Infinite Amount Of Utter Crap
FRETWANK FRETWANK.
Here is your Dunce-cap.
Now sit in the corner like a good little monkey and stop disturbing the rest of the class.
Be Here Now
/thread
win
.
How about
Prince's triple disc 180 minute album 'Emancipation' when he was simple known by that symbol thing.
Wiki informs that it's also a concept album possibly connected with Egyptology and he appeared in public with 'slave' written on his face around the time of the album.
Pompous, pretentious, overblown, deluded....you name it
the black parade
Jetrho Tull - Thick as a Brick
wins. But it's a parody really so shhh
S&M - Metallica
A recent thread on 'Six' by Mansun
brought to light the overblown pomposity of that album. That would be my shout - and cover art spawned in Satan's underpants.
see my above reply to Bamos.
Six isn't pompous by any stretch of the imagination. It's too bat-shit crazy for any of that.
I started that thread on "Six"
Yeah it's totally overblown, pompous, bit pretentious, some un-intentionally hilarious lyrics. But all in the best possible way and that's why I love it. Cover art is deadly
my girlfriend and her dad
LOVE A Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
i fucking despise it, along with 99% of the music Genesis produce.
they know i hate it and play it alot as well.
Sunny Day
Real Estate's The Rising Tide. Very popmpous and overblown in comparison to the earlier work.
Oof
I LOVE that record
Sgt. Pepper
Rush
LOL
bloc party
a weekend in the city. full of pretentious, hideously cringe-worthy lyrics which aim for some kind of sociopolitical comment but end up sounding pathetic. 'the teeth of this world grind me..' blah blah.
suede - dog man star, although this isn't a criticism as they manage to pull it off: 'the asphalt world' is a dark, malevolent epic and 'still life' is one of the great album curtain-closers. they aim so far above their station that by all rights it should be a failure, but imo they pull it off.
coldplay- x and y. this IS a criticism.
^
Hunting For Witches being the best example.
^ this
AWITC = bad album
I kinda like Dog Man Star's pompousness, it's like, meant to be there. It's ridiculous but fitting.
Billy Corgan
is pretty much a master of this, but I vote for MACHINA/The Machines Of God - grindingly OTT production, ludicrous, quasi-allegorical narrative that was something to do with him being Jesus or something, not unlike pulling one's own teeth out by hand, save for a couple of moments on the first half.
There's a Yes album called something like Tales From Topographic Oceans that contains four tracks over two LPs, that's got something of a 'reputation', non?
that record, y'know
that one...
where i once lived, was a cash converters, and i picked up cds for a quid there some days.
one of these cds was "symphony or damn" by terrence trent d'arby. it was bad.
so that.
that silverchair LP
you know the one...
which
one?
all wrong so far
this wins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Wives_of_Henry_VIII_%28album%29
Made In Japan
by Deep fucking Purple is my pet hate
The Fall of Hyperion
A 1974 album by Robert John Godfrey (the person behind The Enid) - it is the most overblown, pompous rubbish I've ever heard, mixing cod Edgar Alan Poe lyrics with tons of grand piano and other nonsense.
Lamb Lies Down...
I think this is one of the least pompous of the Gabriel-period Genesis albums - it's got Eno on it for a start... How about "Selling England By The Pound" for pomposity?
Frances The Mute,
and the other one that followed it with the silly title.
Maybe i'm close-minded, but as technically impressive as it is, i just can't sit through an hour and a half of jazzy nonsense and 15 minute trumpet solos, with half the lyrics in spanish and the other half trying to force a ridiculous concept on me from the pages of Cedric Bixlar's thesaurus.
also
the cover art is just rubbish isn't it. i've considered this for a long time.
that flying gold head thing
gives me nightmares.
Yes
Tales from Topographic Oceans
4 songs on 4 sides of vinyl based on Shastric scriptures by Paramahansa Yogananda. Doesn't really get much more pompous and over blown than that.
Also Add
Atom Heart Mother by Floyd
i still love the 29 minute title track in patches, and Fat Old Sun is on the album and one of gilmour's best early efforts. Plus the cover is brilliant.
Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans
Can't believe he had the audacity to make music with instruments AND sing on it, what a pretentious twat