Give Up vs Neon Golden vs Headphones

Music
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Welcome to another meaningless ‘which is better?’ thread. But really an excuse to crush on some favourites.

I’m making a fair whack of electronic/synth indie music for a friend to sing over late lately which means going through some heavy hitters. So it’s meant a fair bit of immersion in some absolute all-timers (in my eyes at least).

First up is Neon Golden, which dropped a year before Give Up, by German powerhouses Notwist.

Then there’s Give Up from 2003. Formative record for so many of us, and almost worryingly copyable as a style. Jimmy’s style is really hard not to emulate by accident. Also worth checking out his James Figurine solo effort if you missed it.

And then there’s Bazan in 2005 being incredibly fucking great. The usual bile and rage with some really thoughtful, sometimes wholly unique take on synth composition.

Anyways, if you’re bored this sunday, give em all a renewed listen with fresh ears and tell me which record comes out on top as a complete end-to-end work of music. Am interested for the aforementioned reasons. Have a good relaxing day y’all.

  • Neon Golden
  • Give Up
  • Headphones
0 voters

PS very into any other recs in this vein, so if you have eg some Casiotones to throw at me, have at it!

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Never heard of Headphones before, so am giving them a listen now. Not fully sure of the singing just yet, but may grow on me.

The other two albums are 10/10s for me. Hard to pick. Give Up is so catchy, and was so great seeing them perform it live the other year and singing along to every word. Neon Golden is definitely one of my favourite albums, so will give that the tiniest of bonus votes. Love The Notwist so much.

Hood’s Outside Closer would be another 10/10 album of sort of similar blips and sounds that I would recommend (from 2005?), but its own style.

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it takes a while to get used to the drawl, but it’s insanely expressive singing, when you hit Natural Disaster on that record I think it’ll have you

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also, was unaware. on it now. THANK you.

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The double whammy of The Lost You and Still Rain Fell from that Hood album is sooo great when you get to it. Enjoy!

Definitely Casiotone vibes from the Headphones album!

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aforementioned banger from Tamborello

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Heard a track from this on a mix recently, I had completely forgotten about it and how good it is. Need to find an irl copy really.

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they put out a vinyl and of course it sold out :cry: maybe one day on eBay goddamnit

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For a band named Headphones with an album called Headphones, I’m immediately very annoyed by the decision to pan a bass line way over to the right.

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I absolutely loved NG and GU at that time, but find both to be pretty boring now. Tamborello’s production helps Give Up I guess, but I’d really rather listen to the first Dntel album from that era.

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I’ve never heard Headphones and I probably don’t need to hear Give Up ever again, but my answer is Give Up.

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I am at least glad that DiS will absolutely never let me down…multiple people voting for give up will absolutely never have listened to the other two and that’s the way I like it

(This is said with gigantic love btw. More just the last two answers have made me grin in a good way)

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Tricky, fond of all 3 back in the day, I would pick consequence from Notwist as my favourite track on them but I would say give up to me feels less dated (harsh word maybe) on more recent listens. Pedro the lion is one of my absolute favourite vocalists and always been fond of the headphones album (despite snickering at pink and brown) but it would probably sit 4th or so in his album output for rne and not sure it can quite measure up to the other two in terms of impact.

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