As the title says

Repetition, followed by either Leaves or The Future of What.

Leaves is nearly perfect in many ways but I wish a few of the songs boiled over like on their earlier records.

Leaves, though really that feels like the first record of a new era of the band we never got (though I do think the Nocturnal Habits record returns to some similar stuff and is really fucking great).

I really love The Future Of What a ton, more than Repetition which has some filler that I tend to skip, and Fake Train will always be my favorite linkage to the early pre-KRS period, but honestly they never made a bad record.

Depends on the day. For a while I thought that Leaves was clearly the best and Challenge was the least best, but I kind of re-appriased Challenge with the numero re-ish happenings and liked it a lot more than I remembered.

Leaves is definitely the most interesting - it’s probably the best one overall. Repetition is the most coherent for me - it seems like the most concise and realized of them all. Fake Train is my first love for them, so special place for that one as well. So there’s 1a, 1b, and 1c for me.

penningtron wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 2:42 pm
Leaves is nearly perfect in many ways but I wish a few of the songs boiled over like on their earlier records.

Perfectly put! My thoughts exactly.

Repetition is pretty hard to beat but since I moved away from Olympia I probably play Leaves more than anything else. It feels like the perfect PNW-in-winter LP.

If Leaves was cut down to a single (?) album (gotten rid of all the filler stuff, and there's s quite a bit of it) and if production wasn't so big and pompous, it would be a great great album.

boilermaker wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 5:15 am and if [the Leaves] production wasn't so big and pompous

I get what you mean but the general complaint is how lofi (especially the drums) are. In some ways the layers of modulated guitar and synth help cover that up.

It's a fascinating, frustrating, ambitious, and naive record all at once, and for better or worse it wouldn't exist any other way.

Dicking around YouTube tonight I came across this, which is the last time I got to see Unwound, on the leaves tour in Denton right after 9/11. I’ve long claimed this might be one of the top 3-5 shows I’d ever seen. So interesting to see now and re-live the memory. Goddamn they were on top of their game for this show…

One of those I bands I find hard to pick a favorite album, since I love'em all.

But I have to go with New Plastic Ideas. Fully realized and personal sound, and John Goodmanson (or was Steve Fisk?) recording is great.

Repetition would be a close second, may be the better in terms of musicianship but I'm not very fond of how it sounds

Leaves could be condensed on one disc and it would be neat. Bought the numero LP reedition hoping to find some sound improvement over the original cd but I wasn't totally satisfied; Can't hardly sense any difference.