I don't think Kill Uncle is THAT bad

I don't dislike it, but it doesn't compare to Your Arsenal, Vauxhall and Quarry etc...

I can see why such an album, songwriting wise, was a follow up to Viva Hate but I think its really badly produced.
 
I think it's a good album and always have.
It's a short album but I think it captures a certain English autumnal feel.
The songs have much better lyrics than some of his later stuff and LP cover alone is worth the money
 
Re: I don't think Kill Uncle is THAT bad.

It definitely has its charm .. ive always loved Our Frank and Driving your girlfriend home .. the KROQ version of Sing Your Life should is amazing, much prefer it over the album version which is a little flat. End of the family line is much goodness too. But As much as I love those songs it's the album which has the most songs of his on it which I just dont want to listen to .. Found Found Found, Tony the Pony, Mute Witness, Asian Rut etc .. So yeah I don't out right dislike it, but it's still at the bottom unfortunatly.

totally agree about the KROQ version of sing your life. the album version doesn't do it for me after hearing the live take...

http://passionsjustlikemine.wordpress.com/
 
It's possibly my fave of all his albums, an opinion which has always been controversial among friends.

It suffers from shit production, yeah, but there isn't really a duff song on there (ok, possibly Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye). I sometimes wonder if ever anyone will go back and do a Raw Power on it.


PS, can we not count Tony The Pony as a track, it's not meant to be on there and was a b-side FFS!
 
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I heard Kill Uncle for the first time a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised. Will have to listen more though.
 
People go on about the 'shit' production. I'll just say this..takes deep breath..I prefer Langer & Winstanley's production one hundred times over than the production on ANY of The Smiths records. :o
I'm not talking about the songs, I'm talking about the recorded sound of The Smiths songs. I must confess that I think it's shit. I know they were poorly served by re-releases over the years, which is why I was so greatly anticipating the re-mastering that Johnny oversaw. I got 'The Sound of The Smiths' and 'Singles Box'. And they still sound tinny, indie, AM and dishwater weak. I can only conclude that that is what they were meant to sound like ~ the antithesis of all the 80s bombast and over-worked sheen that surrounded them in their day. Fair enough. But 25 years on they sound mince.
Listen, even, to the leap forward in sound between 'Strangeways' and 'Viva Hate', albums recorded within the same year, by the same producer :confused:
Feel free to flame away....
 
People go on about the 'shit' production. I'll just say this..takes deep breath..I prefer Langer & Winstanley's production one hundred times over than the production on ANY of The Smiths records. :o
I'm not talking about the songs, I'm talking about the recorded sound of The Smiths songs. I must confess that I think it's shit. I know they were poorly served by re-releases over the years, which is why I was so greatly anticipating the re-mastering that Johnny oversaw. I got 'The Sound of The Smiths' and 'Singles Box'. And they still sound tinny, indie, AM and dishwater weak. I can only conclude that that is what they were meant to sound like ~ the antithesis of all the 80s bombast and over-worked sheen that surrounded them in their day. Fair enough. But 25 years on they sound mince.
Listen, even, to the leap forward in sound between 'Strangeways' and 'Viva Hate', albums recorded within the same year, by the same producer :confused:
Feel free to flame away....

While I don't agree entirely, I cannot help but praise you for making such a bold argument. :thumb:

Nostalgia causes so many people to view The Smiths as a perfect entity that did no wrong, but as brilliant as they were, they certainly had their ups and downs. I think Morrissey would agree with you that the production on The Smiths wasn't always as good as it could have been.

I think it must also be said that some of Morrissey's songs have been over-produced. Some of his material doesn't have the same raw power that it flaunted in the demos.

In my humble opinion, Vauxhall and I was the ONLY time in Morrissey life when an entire album was produced perfectly.

As for Kill Uncle, it delivers simplistic pleasures not found anywhere else in Morrissey's catalogue. :D
 
I never understood the Kill Uncle hate. I love it, not my favorite, but I like it much better than Years of Refusal, Maladjusted and *gasp* Quarry.
 
Reading back, perhaps I was a tad harsh but the basic point still stands.
But one thing I neglected to mention was the issue of money. It could very well have been the case that Rough Trade simply couldn't afford decent production back in the '80s. Does it sound cheap as chips cos Geoff Travis couldn't afford decent time in a decent studio, or was it meant to sound that way as an artistic/political statement? Who knows. I suspect it was intentional though as the re-mastering didn't solve my problems. Unless you can only improve so much and no more of a poor original job via the re-mastering process.
 
It's second best to Southpaw.
 
I dont think ANY Morrissey release is "bad". I can't seem to figure out why some folks hate certain tracks/records?
 
Nostalgia causes so many people to view The Smiths as a perfect entity that did no wrong, but as brilliant as they were, they certainly had their ups and downs.

"Perfect" is misleading. Everybody acknowledges the ups and downs. The point about The Smiths is that even when they were shit, they were still great. :rolleyes:
 
"Perfect" is misleading. Everybody acknowledges the ups and downs. The point about The Smiths is that even when they were shit, they were still great.

Fair enough, but I think the same can be said about Morrissey.
 
Fair enough, but I think the same can be said about Morrissey.

Said, but not quite believed I don't think. There are a handful of Morrissey songs so dull I've only played them once or twice. There are one or two, like "Sorrow Will Come In The End", that I wish I'd never played at all.

Meanwhile, the songs which are often mentioned as the bottom of The Smiths' barrel, "Golden Lights" and "Work Is A Four-Letter Word", are better than the entire back catalog of The Housemartins or The Wedding Present, and 84% of The Fall's (I'm picking bands at random here). They're also whimsical cover versions, which says something.

I am not reopening the boring old subject of "Who's better?" Just saying: The Smiths' worst was better than Morrissey's by far. Maybe that's a pedantic distinction, but what are discussion forums for, anyway? And if we're going to bring up the foggy lens of nostalgia, it pains me to point this out, but "Vauxhall and I" is sixteen years old. It may as well be "Meat Is Murder".
 
i honestly dont think its bad at all. it's actutally my favorite. King Leer, Driving Your Girlfriend Home, There's a Place in hell..., Sing your life. These are really sweet. Plus the Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye is whimsical and weird.. well that's the feeling i get from the whole album. which is why i like.
 
People go on about the 'shit' production. I'll just say this..takes deep breath..I prefer Langer & Winstanley's production one hundred times over than the production on ANY of The Smiths records. :o
I'm not talking about the songs, I'm talking about the recorded sound of The Smiths songs. I must confess that I think it's shit. I know they were poorly served by re-releases over the years, which is why I was so greatly anticipating the re-mastering that Johnny oversaw. I got 'The Sound of The Smiths' and 'Singles Box'. And they still sound tinny, indie, AM and dishwater weak. I can only conclude that that is what they were meant to sound like ~ the antithesis of all the 80s bombast and over-worked sheen that surrounded them in their day. Fair enough. But 25 years on they sound mince.
Listen, even, to the leap forward in sound between 'Strangeways' and 'Viva Hate', albums recorded within the same year, by the same producer :confused:
Feel free to flame away....

Don't be a fetishist of technology, joe. I agree the production is better on the recent stuff but great songs iz great songs. All of us would have to throw out 3/4 of our record collections (or 'drag them into the trash' for you younger kids) if we judged them on the basis of crisp production. So I counter your theory with one of my own: we're all obsessed with 'sound quality' because we desperately want to reassure ourselves that digital technology represents a new golden age in which machines have helped music and not killed it. :)
 
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Don't be a fetishist of technology, joe. I agree the production is better on the recent stuff but great songs iz great songs. All of us would have to throw out 3/4 of our record collections (or 'drag them into the trash' for you younger kids) if we judged them on the basis of crisp production. So I counter your theory with one of my own: we're all obsessed with 'sound quality' because we desperately want to reassure ourselves that digital technology represents a new golden age in which machines have helped music and not killed it. :)
I did not mean to suggest the discrepancy was down to age. There are vast swathes of recorded music that I love listening to that were recorded in the 60s, 70s...even the 1980s! Productions that sound far warmer and more 'real' and alive than most material I hear in these dull digital days. And I just wonder why The Smiths never sounded as good as that music. I think finance was probably a bigger factor than we'd like to think, but I do believe that it was at least in part an artistic and aesthetic decision. Them were rotten days in the 80s. It was a binary age. You had to take a stand on one side or the other, on everything, from Free Market Capitalism to Fairlight synthesizers. And part of The Smiths kitchen sink, anti-glamour aesthetic was their cheap as chips, MW radio sound. In opposition to yer Bob Clearmountain/Mutt Lange/Trevor Horn type sounds. As was the way with The Smiths this ended up actually becoming glamourous! But one quarter century on, it doesn't work.
But I can listen to Beatles, Bowie, Can, Roxy, Blondie, etc, from a half century ago and it sounds fresher than ever.
Yes, clearly, great songs iz great songs. And a great song was never made shit by bad production, but.....I'm never 'appy!
Aaah, if only they could have sounded as good as 'The Harsh Truth Of The Camera Eye'........;)
 
The US version benefits from having Tony The Pony, which is a little gem, a real beauty that is a snap-shot of Morrissey's skill as a songwriter.

P.
 
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