Have you ever had a band or artist that for so long you didn’t get or actively disliked and then one day a penny dropped and you started to like, even love them?
I definitely hated Vampire Weekend when they first came about. That “Ey Ey Ey Ey!” in A Punk just made me think they were the worst landfill indie imaginable. Also, I new a couple of guys who were into them around this time and I thought they were pricks so that put me off even more. Then caught them on Glastonbury’s TV coverage the year Contra came out and it’s been nothing but love ever since.
In the 80s when they were around I was in my early teens, and their target demographic, but just couldn’t see what the fuss was about and couldn’t get past Morrissey’s voice. Then a few years later (after they’d split annoyingly) I had a cassette of Hatful of Hollow and it just clicked, I played it constantly, marvelling at Marr’s guitar tones and Morrissey’s lyrics and fell in love with their entire back catalogue! Loved them ever since.
For years I’ve thought they are the sort of band I should like, and when I’ve listened to them I’ve heard that there is something there that’s interesting but at the same time I’ve just found them a bit grating and irritating.
For some reason though they’ve finally just clicked with me and I’m now getting close to be being obsessed with them. Every time I find a second hand record shop I search for Sparks vinyl and I get more pleasure from listening to those records than almost anything else I can think of. They are strange, challenging and utterly wonderful.
It’s been a while since I’ve had this properly. I remember it happening with Autechre and Squarepusher when I was first branching out from Kid A into the Warp back-catalogue (like so many of us here, I imagine). I remember Aphex and BoC being easy to get into, but Amber and Go Plastic sounded, in different ways, too ‘experimental’ for my ears. I remember Foil playing for the first time and not understanding how anyone could enjoy it. In both cases, they clicked when I came back to them after listening to Incunabula and Feed Me Weird Things both of which are a bit more conventional. In the context of those albums, the others suddenly clicked and both are now firmly in my top 6 albums of all time (yeah, top 6, it’s a thing).
I still haven’t quite come round to Squarepusher. I think it’s because, more than with any other Warp artist, I struggle to separate the music from the man. Tom Jenkinson just seems so humourless and self-important, and I can’t unhear that in the music.
He definitely comes across as less playful than RDJ (although they were good mates, right?). That said, there are plenty of fun moments on his earlier albums (Come on my Selector, Red Hot Car, most of Hard Normal Daddy), but then there are some self-consciously serious artistic statements (Music is Rotted One Note or Solo Electric Bass). Then there’s that cover art for Ultravisitor which plays to your point (although that album is a masterpiece).
Feed Me Weird Things and Ultravisitor would definitely be in my top 50 albums FWIW.
The middle is bloated, but I kinda love that about it. And compared to the three albums of pure bloat that came afterwards it’s absolutely top-drawer. He’s not ageing as an artist as well as Autechre are…
The Flaming Lips. Although arguably I got them at the same time as a lot of people around the Fight Test / Yoshimi time. Didn’t take me long to stop ‘getting’ them either.
Took me years to properly get Aphex Twin though. I really quite liked Quoth by Polygon Window and thought Digeridoo was pretty cool, but I was never a fan during the “glory years” of Windowlicker, Come To Daddy etc.
It’s probably got a lot to do with how hard it was to get hold of records back in the day - you either had to buy them or tape them off a mate, so it was a lot harder to experiment when you already had a list as long as your arm of other records you wanted to buy.
Way back in the day I used to find the Ramones really boring and repetitive. After months of my mate telling me I was an idiot, and insisting I listen to a selection he’d taped for me, I finally got it. (“It” being that the Ramones are fantastic and repetitive).