💿 How Good Is It Really 💿 Untrue

[JohnM]

Mezzanine just misses out on the magic 8 with 7.98

This week is Burial - Untrue. The best album that Kieran Hebden never wrote but how good is it really?

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• 9
• 10

[JohnM]

Best track:

• Untitled
• Archangel
• Near Dark
• Ghost Hardware
• Endorphin
• Etched Headplate
• In McDonalds
• Untrue
• Shell of Light
• Dog Shelter
• Homeless
• UK
• Raver

[1101010]

Prefer @barleysugar

[JohnM]

I prefer Rio

[JohnM]

Leaderboard:

Position	Album	Rating
1	Spirit Of Eden	9.06
2	Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven	8.80
3	Hounds Of Love	8.79
4	Illmatic	8.70
5	It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back	8.51
6	Marquee Moon	8.47
7	The Sophtware Slump	8.45
8	Spiderland	8.44
9	Kid A	8.41
10	Illinois	8.34
11	Loveless	8.24
12	Mezzanine	7.98
13	100 Broken Windows	7.97
14	Turn On The Bright Lights	7.91
15	The Blue Album	7.71
16	The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill	7.54
17	Is This It	7.40
18	Definitely Maybe	5.90

[JohnM]

Next week’s album:

• The National - Boxer
• DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
• OutKast - Stankonia
• Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life
• Phil Collins - Face Value

[anon19035908]

Music for middle class white people to feel edgy and relevant to. 8/10.

[Scott_Chegg]

Untrue

[roastthemonaspit]

9. Was my commuting album for months so forever associate it with rainy bus journeys through London. Sounds incredible on headphones.

[wikihock]

Never really listened to it on Headphones, but also never really felt a desire to do so, as I’ve never lived in London while it rained.

I clicked 3/10 by accident but meant to abstain… might change it to a 7, as that’s less likely to make a difference to the score?

[hip_young_gunslinger]

Tried to get into it loads because I feel like it would make me a much cooler person if I liked it, sometimes stick it on as music when I’m working… but I get to the end of it and I remember nothing.

[jordan_229]

A Night Bus classic

[jordan_229]

Don’t know if it’s actually Proto-Night Bus?

[manches]

Surprised by some of the negativity in this thread, given that one of the things that always put me off being able to fully appreciate Burial tended to be the extraordinary levels of hyperbolic praise that would accompany his surprise releases. I go into that a bit later (since what inspired me to get the album was reading a single review) - but there’s always a little bit of a “predominantly London-based music journalists wanking themselves silly over how Burial ‘captures London’” that grates a bit for various, mostly stupid, reasons.

FWIW, it took me a while for all of it to grow on me: Shell of Light and In McDonalds were favourites from the start, but the album didn’t really stack up against the review I’d read that inspired me to pick it up (the music I heard in my head when reading that review was mindblowing - it’s one of those experiences I miss now that you can so easily and conveniently just listen to an album in full before buying it). As time went by though, I grew to really love it and the pretty singular atmosphere that it has (I grew to appreciate the R&B vocal samples too, which at the time was just “but this is just the shit I find annoying coming from people’s phones in the sixth form common room m8374”) and, yeah, it’s just an album that evolves over time and speaks to so much of what is special about the night-time - those kind of nights where you can’t sleep for worries, or for those overexcited late night plans for the future, or for that time when I accidentally locked myself out the house and walked around a sleeping city centre and watched the sunrise outside the 24-hour Tesco while remorsefully slurping at a thoroughly disappointing chocolate-flavoured Frijj milkshake.

I’ll give it a 9

[mrgrieves]

This is definitely not my kind of music at all. I’ve hated anything I’ve heard by Burial. I thought in the spirit of trying to keep an open mind I’d stick the album on but, no I just can’t do it.

[zanimos]

Definitely one of those albums where the hyperbole and descriptions of the music contrasted so much with what I heard that it was difficult to give it a proper chance. I have gone back to it a fair few times though with an open mind and nope just does nothing for me. Gets a 4.

[shrewbie]

it’s great, extremely evocative and unique sounding. actually amazing how well it complements a late night urban commute, wonder why that is

think he released even better stuff later on but i’m a sucker for the album format so it’s the thing of his i go back to most

[SunnyB]

Second 10 in a row. It is hard to think of an album that conjures and maintains atmosphere quite so perfectly. I used to listen to the whole thing during long dark winter commutes to winter night-shifts and arrived feeling like I’d spent an hour meditating.

It feels strange picking a ‘best track’, as it is much more effective to listen to the whole thing in one sitting. I picked Etched Head plate as it was my entry point when I first listened. It took a few goes to get what all the fuss was about but when it yielded the dam just burst. An absolute favourite record and a huge influence on the way I think about music.

Absolute 10.

(also, for the record, I have spent less than a week of my life in London - it’s not a London thing, it’s a night thing)

[Severed799]

maybe now but that’s not how it started man

[Severed799]

A modern masterpiece which changed music both for better and worse 9/10