Underrated albums?

[VerbalPuke]

Just remembered, X's third album "Under the Big Black Sun" is really fucking good. Most people immediately cite Los Angeles and Wild Gift as their top albums, the two go to albums for X. Realistically, I think their third album was their best, they maintain some of their style but branch out considerably. They have some stuff that feels like their own throwback to the 1950s, much as they did early on, but this album just feels a bit more focused and just tighter musically. Billy Zoom is great on this as well, as he always is. He's one guy, if people like to throw out the absurd "punk guitarists only do three chords hurrr" shit, you can always rely on the Billy Zoom argument. He was a genuinely skilled player that jammed with legit blues players in the early 70s, he had real guitar chops.

[Nick Adams]

Being a Weird Al fan, I find that a lot of people tend to underrate Alpocalypse and Poodle Hat. People like his older material, they know "White and Nerdy" from Straight Outta Lynwood, and there are a few songs on Running With Scissors that got attention, but the other two really go under the radar. It's kind of a shame, because there are some pretty clever songs on both albums. "Bob" is genius (a song written in palindromes totally works for a Bob Dylan style parody), "Hardware Store" has got to be one of the best examples of his vocal and lyrical skills I've heard (although there is a slightly disturbing lyric in there-"automatic circumcisers"), and "TMZ" is a great skewering of celebrity culture.

Of course, all of this goes ignored because Mandatory Fun is an amazing album which is the first comedy album to ever top the Billboard charts. I'm not saying that the album doesn't deserve praise (and the fact that I thought of it when I was re-watching an episode of Star Trek: Voyager speaks to that), but some people act like it's the only worthwhile album he's released this century.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I don't really know what classes as underrated as such, but "Gran Turismo" by The Cardigans is, to my mind, one of the better albums from the '90s.

 

Of course they seem to be remembered more for "Lovefool" from.....Romeo and Juliet? Psh. This is far better.

 

[METALMAN]

On 19/10/2015, 19:34:31, Big Hairy Man Face said:

I think this gets a lot of credit but maybe less so than a lot of the releases of similar ilk by bands at the time - Pulp 'Different Class'.

People talk about Oasis and Blur and who was best - whilst Pulp really were a fair step away from them both in terms of output, 'Different Class' is easily the best UK Indie (if that's what we want to call it) album of that time period. Just brilliant.

Oh come on. It's Belle & Sebastian's debut. :/

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I agree that Different Class is utterly fantastic, but I've also heard it said in numerous documentaries and in numerous articles that it is.

 

Underrated at the time I'd say, but looking back it's standing higher and higher within that time.

[apsham]

Fuck it, almost any Barenaked Ladies album.

Because I can almost guarantee that almost everyone who knows them from stuff like One Week or If I Had A Million Dollars most likely hasn't heard Break Your Heart, I'll Be That Girl or Life, In A Nutshell.

[New Damage]

The Toadies' Rubberneck and The Exies' Head for the Door. Neither are technical masterpieces, nor are (/were) they genre shattering albums, but they're just really consistent through and great for what they are.

[LittleDaniel]

Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment's album Surf got pretty panned by fans because everyone thought it was going to be a Chance the Rapper album.  It's not.  It just has Chance the Rapper on some of the tracks.  It's this really fun combination of hip-hop, jazz, and soul.  

Honestly, this post could go either in this thread, the Relaxing/Positive thread, or the best of 2015 thread.  Couldn't decide which, so I went with here because everytime I see people mention Surf it's never in a positive light.  But it's so good!

[RPS]

MGMT Congratulations. Oh man, what a great and fun record. 

[Hellraiser]

"The X Factor" by Iron Maiden. It usually gets lumped together with the terrible Vitual IX and ignored but it is a very good album if you get over the fact that Bruce Dickinson isn't singing on it. 

Dio's "Dream Evil". If people talk about great Dio albums they usually talk about the first three. But I think the first album with Craig Goldy deserves to be mentioned along with them. It is a very well done continuation of the more synth-heavy sound of "Sacred Heart": It also featured my favorite Dio song "All The Fools Sail Away".

Another underrated Dio album is "Strange Highways". I know the band received a lot of backlash because relatively slow pace and the doom and industrial influences of the album. But the thing is that it wasn't as much a Dio album as it was a continuation of what Sabbath and Dio did on "Dehumanizer" which was released a year and a half earlier. I think if Dio never left them and they did another record it would sound something like it. And I think Dio made it work. "Angry Machines" was shit though.

Helloween's "Pink Bubbles Go Ape". The general consensus amongst Helloween fans seems to be that the band stopped being good after Keeper Part II was released and didn't start being good again until Andi Deris and Uli Kusch joined. The two albums that were released in this time span (the above mentioned album as well as "Chameleon") are much maligned. But I think “Pink Bubbles” is a hidden gem. Yes, you could hear that they were trying to adopt a more accessible and radio-friendly sound (although let's be honest, apart from their first album they never were never that heavy to begin with) and the guitars get buried in the mix but the songs themselves are good for the most part. With a different producer and some song switched (like taking out the poppy “Number One” and replacing it with “Where The Rain Grows” which was supposed to be on the album but was cut because the producer didn't like it) they could have named it “Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II” and I doubt that many fans would've complained.

“Another Perfect Day” by Motörhead. I don't get why people didn't like this album when it came out. Yes it may be a bit polished due to Brian Robertson's involvement but other than that it isn't too different from the other albums they had released up until that point.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Hellraiser