The Bicycle Tragedy
New Member
My favorite is Louder Than Bombs. Technically it's not an album but it was released during their lifetime and doesn't have songs that are on any other LPs so to me it counts.
The reasons why are many...
a) the economic aspect. So many tracks. And they're all great.
b) the fact that it was recorded over four years' time but sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon is outstanding. I truly do not think that any other band could pull that off. And I do not think that it's because all of the Smiths' music sounds the same; because there are significant differences in production and feel from record to record. I just that think that somehow for some reason, all of the songs on LTB came together in such a way as to sound sonically threaded.
c) it contains so many classics: Shoplifters, Half a Person, Panic, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Ask, Rubber Ring, Asleep, Shakespeare's Sister, Stretch Out and Wait, William It Was Really Nothing....to me these are unmissable Smiths tracks. And they're all on here.
d) it provides testimony to how powerful they were inasmuch as it is an album made up of b-sides and Non-LP singles and nearly every song kicks the living shit out of the best work of their peers. Including R.E.M., who as a band over all, regarding their 80s output, I actually like more than The Smiths these days.
My least favorite would be the debut.
a) I feel like Morrissey hadn't really found his footing lyrically; the words were good but too poetic and at times too aloof.
b) Good, occasionally great songs (Suffer Little Children, Hand In Glove, Reel Around The Fountain, Miserable Lie, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) ruined by flat, weak production. The Troy Tate treatments were so much stronger and more dynamic.
OK, that's it.
The reasons why are many...
a) the economic aspect. So many tracks. And they're all great.
b) the fact that it was recorded over four years' time but sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon is outstanding. I truly do not think that any other band could pull that off. And I do not think that it's because all of the Smiths' music sounds the same; because there are significant differences in production and feel from record to record. I just that think that somehow for some reason, all of the songs on LTB came together in such a way as to sound sonically threaded.
c) it contains so many classics: Shoplifters, Half a Person, Panic, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Ask, Rubber Ring, Asleep, Shakespeare's Sister, Stretch Out and Wait, William It Was Really Nothing....to me these are unmissable Smiths tracks. And they're all on here.
d) it provides testimony to how powerful they were inasmuch as it is an album made up of b-sides and Non-LP singles and nearly every song kicks the living shit out of the best work of their peers. Including R.E.M., who as a band over all, regarding their 80s output, I actually like more than The Smiths these days.
My least favorite would be the debut.
a) I feel like Morrissey hadn't really found his footing lyrically; the words were good but too poetic and at times too aloof.
b) Good, occasionally great songs (Suffer Little Children, Hand In Glove, Reel Around The Fountain, Miserable Lie, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) ruined by flat, weak production. The Troy Tate treatments were so much stronger and more dynamic.
OK, that's it.