Favourite cult albums
Just to annoy Steven Wells’ stoat-eyed acolytes, The Guardian Music Blog has a thread in which we are invited to nominate our favourite cult albums.
There’s some discussion in the resulting comment thread about the definition of a cult album, and one person stated that “cult” is just a synonym for “obscure”. But it isn’t. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
A lot of stuff is obscure for a very good reason; it’s rubbish. I don’t think many people are going to consider Sledgehammer’s one and only album as cult album. I may be wrong, and there’s still a dedicated band of Sledgehammer diehards in Slough, but somehow I doubt it.
Cult albums should those you love even though they’re not that well-known. Often they’re the records that push all your personal buttons; since we’re all different, they’re likely to sell in smaller quantities than the mass-market stuff aimed at the lowest common denominator.
I remember an article in Sounds years ago that commented (correctly) that the huge-selling albums are always the good ones, not the great ones.
So here’s the list I posted to the thread. I would guess anything by any prog band that formed since punk forced the genre underground is ‘cult’ by definition, at least according to the mainstream; and all this list comes from that genre, or at least it’s penumbra. As you would expect, the York/Swansea scene features prominently.
Twelfth Night - Fact and Fiction
IQ - Subterranea
Marillion - Brave, Afraid of Sunlight
Spock’s Beard - Beware of Darkness, Snow
Dream Theater - Metropolis II
Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun
Ordinary Psycho - The New Gothik LP
Mostly Autumn - The Last Bright Light
Karnataka - Delicate Flame of Desire
Pure Reason Revolution - The Dark Third
Odin Dragonfly - Offerings
Breathing Space - Coming Up for Air
The last two are probably too recent to qualify, since they only came out last year.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
No, no, no.
I don’t have the slightest problem with someone having a list of favourite albums – it’s ranking them that strikes me as a bit anal.
The Guardian’s amusing suggestion that an album needs to appear in Mojo or Classic Rock in order to be validated is a fairly important one: anything is ‘cult’ from someone’s point of view. Some would say the entire ‘dark ambient’ genre is cult, but some artists are so popular as to be mainstream within that niche.
I suppose to a group of stereotypical teenagers Beethoven would be considered a cult artist….
August 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Stoat-eyed acolytes. I am so stealing that,
August 25th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Not my phrase originally - comes from here:
http://the-company.com/email/e2007-08-13.htm
August 25th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
stealing from the prog community, Swells? how un-rock n’ roll.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Take a Made Tim Laugh Point, Mr Beatmaster.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Totally agree about Fact & Fiction, and kind of agree about half of the others. The Guardian’s comment about Mojo & Classic Rock made me laugh - neither come over as particularly knowing where their towels are, and the latter seems to base its coverage on how much advertising a band has taken.
I’m going to add three cult albums as being among my all time favourites yet obscure…
Solstice - Silent Dance
The Enid - Aerie Faerie Nonsense
Sylvan - Artificial Paradise
August 26th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I was playing Fact and Fiction last night; great album and wonderful to hear it all played live a couple of months back.
re: Classic Rock, I think you’re right about their coverage being based on advertising; that and having their heads up Axl Rose’s arse to the same extent that the NME used to have their heads of Morrissey’s arse. Listing “Chinese Democracy” as their 2007 album of the year lost the last shreds of credibility they ever had. The one and only time I’ve ever made a point of avoiding someone at a gig, it was a Classic Rock hack.
I looked at Classic Rock in the newsagents a couple of days ago, and just about the entire bloody magazine was taken up with yet another of those stupid ‘100 greatest songs of all time’. It stayed on the shelf.
Sorry, you’ve set me ranting. I’ll go and take some dried frog pills and lie down.