Best Ever Albums

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Listmeister — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:28:50 GMT

Author: Listmeister

Posted: 08/14/2014 16:28

Too much exorcist, not enough sweet.

On The Beach 12-8 (1-0)

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 06:47:36 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/14/2014 10:47

"Sweet Exorcism" was a discovery for me. I'm not really into the genre, but I liked it. I think I should explore more of the artist's discography to appreciate it more, anyway.

"On the Beach", though, is incredible, one of my favourites. It's one of those Neil's intimate and delicate moments, and it keeps an approach in the balance between extremely melancholic (the closing track is a masterpiece) and hopeful (Walk On, See the Sky...). It's like a deep description of life in 40 minutes.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

NowhereMan — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:53:12 GMT

Author: NowhereMan

Posted: 08/13/2014 23:53

Going with the crowd; On The Beach.

Love the lyrics in Walk On; ''It all gets real, Walk On.''

Just another gorgeous Yong installment. Second half, as Skinny would observe, is dope.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:32:16 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/13/2014 19:32

sp4cetiger wrote:

Decided to vote Sweet Exorcist mainly because On the Beach doesn't need more love. Looks like I'll be voting for On the Beach in the next round anyway.

I've put it up to 7 votes for you 😄 Thats all the help I can give.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 14:33:28 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/13/2014 18:33

Decided to vote Sweet Exorcist mainly because On the Beach doesn't need more love. Looks like I'll be voting for On the Beach in the next round anyway.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

meccalecca — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:37:59 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 08/13/2014 14:37

Listened to Sweet Exorcist and thought I might swing that way, only to re-listen to On The Beach and be reminded just how incredible that record is.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 01:08:32 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/13/2014 05:08

sp4cetiger wrote:

Oh, haha, yeah. In the case of On the Beach I'm probably unfairly holding Young to the ridiculously high standards set by my other favorites of his (After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Rust Never Sleeps). "Ambulance Blues" is a great closing track, though.

Really, I like more than 2/3 of the albums here, so most of the time it's just a matter of distinguishing between different degrees of like.

Totally know what you mean on both points. If Rust Never Sleeps was Neil's only album, I'm pretty sure I'd hail it as a masterpiece. LOL. Fortunately, I have all those other albums to compare it too. 😁

And, yeah, this tourney has proved a long held axiom of mine - There are simply no bad years for music!!!

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 14:25:12 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/12/2014 18:25

RepoMan wrote:

Oops! I was talking about On The Beach! 🤣

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:46:59 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/12/2014 17:46

Oops! I was talking about On The Beach! 🤣

This isn't Mayfield at the top of his game imo. (But, I do need to give it a few more spins to be sure.)

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:38:52 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/12/2014 17:38

Skinny wrote:

Well, y'know, not everybody can be the Al Haig Trio. :wink:

Yes, well maybe "excites" was a poor choice of words, but I've been really disappointed with a lot of my experiences with Mayfield so far. I always like his stuff on a first listen -- it has that "chill charm" that RepoMan is talking about -- but I always seem to tire of it by listen 3 or 4. Maybe it's just that I don't like his melodies... I don't know.

Quote:

this site has been a real eye opener in regards to the subjectivity of music appreciation. I've hung out with a lot of music heads over the years, and we were generally in agreement on most albums.

Also this. It's remarkable how little consistency there is from one match to the next. Sometimes I feel completely in step with Skinny, other times RepoMan, other times mecca...

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:15:49 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/12/2014 17:15

sp4cetiger wrote:

This is pretty much my feeling too. I like both, but neither excites me. I haven't decided which I'm going to vote for yet... I may not even vote here.

so interesting since it has a lot of the same chill, soulful beauty of Clapton's 461 Boulevard but with superior songwriting imo. this site has been a real eye opener in regards to the subjectivity of music appreciation. I've hung out with a lot of music heads over the years, and we were generally in agreement on most albums. The fact that you BOTH don't feel the rush, beauty, and chill charm of this album (to me one of the best of the entire decade) is just so interesting.

I'll write up a review of this album at a later date because it's one my favorites of the entire decade.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Skinny — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:02:50 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 08/12/2014 17:02

sp4cetiger wrote:

This is pretty much my feeling too. I like both, but neither excites me.

Well, y'know, not everybody can be the Al Haig Trio. 😉

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 12:50:04 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 08/12/2014 16:50

Hayden wrote:

That's just the thing 🙁

I had my first listen of Sweet Exorcist during this tournament, and it was good, but it just wasn't as good as his other work.I'm having the exact same dilemma with On The Beach though. I've always found that album sub-par to most of Neil's work and often slightly overrated.

As great as both of the artists are, both of these albums get a 7/10 from me. Nothing fantastic, nothing great, but overall enjoyable. In the end I'm going to go with Sweet Exorcist simply because it's the underdog, but both albums are very equal in my mind.

This is pretty much my feeling too. I like both, but neither excites me. I haven't decided which I'm going to vote for yet... I may not even vote here.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Hayden — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 11:59:51 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 08/12/2014 15:59

Skinny wrote:

This is probably like Curtis' sixth or seventh best solo album

That's just the thing 🙁

I had my first listen of Sweet Exorcist during this tournament, and it was good, but it just wasn't as good as his other work. I'm having the exact same dilemma with On The Beach though. I've always found that album sub-par to most of Neil's work and often slightly overrated.

As great as both of the artists are, both of these albums get a 7/10 from me. Nothing fantastic, nothing great, but overall enjoyable. In the end I'm going to go with Sweet Exorcist simply because it's the underdog, but both albums are very equal in my mind.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Skinny — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 11:13:13 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 08/12/2014 15:13

Well, here's where the second of my nominations bites the dust (and I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the Weather Report either at this stage, though to be honest I'm rather more disappointed at the lukewarm reception to Pick a Dub, which I think is work of almost unparalleled genius, but it's whatever whatever). This is probably like Curtis' sixth or seventh best solo album (after Curtis, Curtis/Live!, Roots, Superfly, There's No Place Like America Today, possibly even Back To The World and Short Eyes), and is even further down the list if we start including Impressions albums (this isn't standing up to their debut or This Is My Country or The Young Mods' Forgotten Story), so I won't be surprised when one of Neil Young's finest moments wins this one by a landslide, but I figure I should say a few words on my nomination, as it is still a really dope album by one of the greatest artists to ever grace the enormous platform that is popular music. By now we get the idea - effortlessly sweet love songs, all twinkling chords and sweeping strings, next to urgent political numbers, all gutbusting wah-wah guitar and heart-attack-inducing percussion - but on this album Curtis changes up the formula, and we find love songs that sound like 'If There's A Hell Below' placed alongside socially conscious numbers that recall 'The Makings of You'. Curtis was basically just really fucking awesome at those two things, and his best albums find a perfect balance of the two, but the switching up of the messages and styles here is a pleasant surprise, and makes this album stand out if for no reason other than that. This album is also probably a little less polished than some of his better known releases (check the muffled organ that occasionally chimes in during 'To Be Invisible', or the tossed-off - in a good way - nature of 'Power To The People', which is incidentally probably the most Curtis Mayfield song title of all-time, or the verging on dirty funk of 'Kung Fu'), and that works both for and against this album. In one sense, it's nice to hear him sound so at ease (even if it doesn't quite have the same 'recorded in the living room' charm of the Short Eyes soundtrack), but in another sense it gives the impression that he's never really extending himself here. But, in the same way you can't really go wrong with any 1970s Fela Kuti album, any Curtis Mayfield album from this era is always going to be pretty fucking outstanding. 'Suffer' is one of my favourite Mayfield ballads, just a beautiful tale of unrequited love ("I can't understand why I never made a play", "... and now I must suffer ... what will I become? Oh, loneliness blends with sun", etc.), the aforementioned 'Kung Fu' is one of Curtis' stranger numbers, with an almost off-key horn solo that doesn't really sound like anything else in his oeuvre, and 'To Be Invisible' is just about the loveliest chord sequence he'd written since 'The Makings of You', or possibly even 'I'm So Proud', with wonderfully melancholy lyrics about feeling anonymous in your own skin, "just a plain old human being", where "today don't mean a thing". So yeah, whilst I wouldn't call it essential listening for the casual fan, Sweet Exorcist is still a fantastic soul album by a man who could do no wrong at this point. Given my predisposition for loving the sound of Curtis Mayfield, not to mention his massive underdog status in the matchup, I'm gonna throw my vote to him here, but whether or not I actually prefer this particular album to the wonderful On The Beach is questionable. But yeah, check out this Curtis album. It's dope.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Listmeister — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:30:54 GMT

Author: Listmeister

Posted: 08/11/2014 19:30

I was getting stares from other people in my office because I was unconsciously tapping my feet to the Curtis Mayfield album. I don't usually do that.

On the other hand, even though this is the most enjoyable Neil Young album that I've heard (to be fair, I've only heard a few of his earlier ones), his voice still annoys me.

Vote to Señor Superfly.

Re: [Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

NickVolos — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:00:11 GMT

Author: NickVolos

Posted: 08/11/2014 19:00

Sweet Exorcist is good but On the Beach is beyond...good. Exceptional. �'�

[Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

Listmeister — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 13:45:56 GMT

Author: Listmeister

Posted: 08/11/2014 17:45

Curtis Mayfield is one of the first names you think of when you think about 1970's soul. You've got Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and then Curtis Mayfield. Then you start thinking about other people. From 1974, here's Curtis Mayfield's Sweet Exorcist.

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Sweet Exorcist by Curtis Mayfield, nominated by Skinny

Recently I tried to do a list of Best Albums by Crosby Stills Nash and/or Young for the ongoing series "From the BEA Book of Lists". I soon abandoned this project, for the simple reason, that all but one of the top 15 were Neil Young albums, which makes a dull list.

Here's his 1974 offering, On the Beach.

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On The Beach by Neil Young, nominated by BEA.