Gramsci wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 8:34 am Pornography, The Cure. A clichéd answer, but holy hell that album is unrelentingly bleak.

Seconded. Or thirded. That album is start to finish despair, utterly devoid of any sort of humor or playfulness or joy.

jfv wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 9:14 am

Gramsci wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 8:34 am Pornography, The Cure. A clichéd answer, but holy hell that album is unrelentingly bleak.

Shit, forgot about that one. I have it but haven't listened to it in a while.

It’s absolutely brutal start to end. Just a grind of misery.

I love it

Uncle Tupelo-Anodyne. It's like having a spectator seat for the total unraveling of a friendship.

Music For A New Society, John Cale. I can't think of one occasion where I've been able to listen to the entire thing without a break. It's quite something. I can certainly empathise with the impulse to rework the entire thing.

Fourth-ing Pornography. That record is a motherfucker.

"Watching from a Distance" is another good one. I saw them play it in its entirety.

Gramsci wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 10:11 am

jfv wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 9:14 am

Gramsci wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 8:34 am Pornography, The Cure. A clichéd answer, but holy hell that album is unrelentingly bleak.

Shit, forgot about that one. I have it but haven't listened to it in a while.

It’s absolutely brutal start to end. Just a grind of misery.

I love it

Yeah, it's unique in their discography. They sound like a completely different band a few albums earlier and a couple of albums later.

Nico's Desertshore, which I have to play when no one else is here because "it's too fucking dire".

jimmy spako wrote:All the more so because it is not an oppressive record, the music is not depressive in that sense, it's uplifting in its resignation.

This is exactly how I feel about Minnie, Minnie Ripperton's final album released a couple of months before her death from breast cancer. Even "Memory Lane," the most poignant song on the album is mildly breezy while contemplative. Her final statement tries its best not to be somber and knowing the state she was in while recording one can't help but to look at each song as her being sanguine.

Sings from Patty Waters is indescribably gloomy. Charlie Shavers trumpet-wail at the start of Billie Holiday's Lady Sings the Blues sets the mood perfectly. Zulema's self-titled debut is one heartbreaking soul record: do you find it hard to face me because your mind has erased me if I must step aside you know I'll step aside after all what are good friends for I don't know what I should do with this child of mine should I keep her should she stay should I give my child away

Being in love is dark. Parasitic. I'm having trouble thinking of love songs that celebrate self. They're usually about losing one's self in someone else or being foolishly in love or having one's happiness dependent on another.

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 7:32 am Not sure about a particular album mind. Most likely Heresie for UZ.

mon dieu...

And another vote for Pornography. So oppressive in sonics, but I'll usually throw on Seventeen Seconds or Faith when I'm in that mood.

Pornography has to be. Seventeen seconds and Faith almost sound to me like the Beach boys in comparison. Also closer. Some Burzum is genuinely suicidal stuff.

Nice Strong Arm's second LP give me sad and weird vibes although at the same time I wouldnt call it depressing.

But I normally don't gravitate towards that type of stuff.