JohnnyoftheWell
Hugh G. Puddles
Staff

Reviews 368
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Album Edits 659

Album Ratings 4410
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Last Active 01-01-70 12:00 am
Joined 01-01-70

Review Comments 60,332

 Lists
04.25.24 REC me glitch/downtempo/IDM04.16.24 All Blonde Redhead songs RANKED ♦
03.28.24 OED Japanese imports RANKED (Q1 2024) ♦03.22.24 Sputnik's Sacred Cows
03.14.24 POP ALIGNMENT03.09.24 Discogs that peak on song #1
03.07.24 new staff + contribs RANKED ♦03.03.24 MARCH of JAZŽŻ ♦
02.16.24 G L I T C H genre tag02.01.24 FEBRUARY of ambi2ent (REC me) ♦
01.01.24 well_2023: "YES" albums (2/2) ♦12.31.23 well_2023: "NO" albums (1/2)
12.27.23 (be)rate my LP 'collection'12.03.23 2023 BNM: cringedex ♦
12.01.23 New users :: REVIEWED ♦11.28.23 Your 5s choices reviewed AGAIN ♦
11.15.23 learn from my WORST REVIEWS ♦11.13.23 Tory stooge music
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20000 comments / 1500 ratings

Milestone list, hooray! Been a good ol' time since I made a proper return to this wonderful backwater of a site a year and a bit ago, so peace out to everyone who's made it so worthwhile (y'all know who you are). I think I made some crazy expansive top 100 favourites list for both 10000 comments and 1000 albums, but it's probably best to let more time pass before doing that again to see how things have changed. Instead, here are a few quality bands that don't the traction/discussion/consensus/whatever that they deserve on here :]
1Advantage Lucy
Fanfare

Absolutely wonderful jangle pop outfit with one of the most rewarding short but sweet discogs in the game. They have a rich songwriting chemistry with a kind of purity and magic to it, like they couldn’t put a foot wrong if they tried. Might review them someday, but the official description is already such a great summary: “They play songs influenced by 60s janglepop, Swedish pop, and pretty much anything else that makes people feel good.” Big thanks to Ghandhi for putting me onto them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFSG9UAV4jg
2Bleach03
Kibakuzai

Japanese all-girl power trio playing some of the nastiest hardcore you can treat your speakers to. Their bassist would go on to found 385, and she underpins their sound with a heavy, pretty technical slap tone that takes things up a notch. It’s intense as hell. They’ve got a pretty solid discog, but their debut EP is explosive as hell and a definite takeaway. Song I’ve linked from it is one of my all-time favourite hardcore numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6496sEfjJE
3Blonde Redhead
23

Another great trio! Blonde Redhead is one of that bands that I think a lot of people have heard of but a relatively small number outright love, but the breadth of their discography is really rewarding. Their early stuff is good quality Sonic Youth worship, which moved into Fugazi/Unwound-esque noise rock before they went turned into early Pitchfork’s wet dream and switched from dark alt rock to creepy as hell chamber pop to shoegaze to dream pop. Their latest album was a colossal dud and their general vibe is quite cold shouldered, but otherwise these guys’ style really delivers once you warm up to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCJPgAJOz2g
4Do Make Say Think
Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead

Pretty well-known within post-rock but not often discussed beyond. Do Make Say Think have hands down the best rhythm section in the game and a more sophisticated approach to timbre and dynamics than what the genre tag suggests; they’re more comparable to Tortoise or Bark Psychosis than, say, Mono or Explosions in the Sky. They’re also a sister band to Broken Social Scene and run off a similar melodic palette. Cheers to widowslaugh123 for getting me onto them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYW1dTIBcE
5The Gathering
How to Measure a Planet?

My favourite band as things stand. I’m cheating a little, since these guys do have a small but healthy fanbase here, but no amount of recognition for them will ever be quite enough ;] Their progression from a steampunk metal band to the Portishead of rock music to masterful dreamy alternative is impeccable and every album they did since bringing all-star vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen into the fold has a distinct magic to it. I’ve been listening to these guys for years and their sense of atmosphere and creativity holds up so beautifully, I can’t stop coming back to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PO6AGhFWBA
6Goldfrapp
Black Cherry

There’s a respectable number of Felt Mountain stans around and about on Sput, but not that many that’ll speak up for the Goldfrapp discog. This is a shame, since Black Cherry, Seventh Tree and (especially) Tales of Us are all fantastic albums in their own right and show a versatility few pop acts have pulled off so successfully. Trip-hop, chamber pop, folk, disco, synth-pop, dream-pop - this pair has done it all to a steep standard; even their consensus lowlight, Head First, is a fun, concise listen in its way. The fact that Allison Goldfrapp’s first studio gig was as a feature vocalist on Tricky’s debut makes for a cute easter egg to sweeten the deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wisI4tBArSw
7Life Without Buildings
Any Other City

One of the best one-and-done bands out there. These guys are probably best described as post-punky Patti Smith worship with a frontwoman who spits out vernacular scat like a parrot, but this hardly does justice to them. That vocal style is pretty much unique and gives the album a really enduring charm that’s batshit and weirdly innocent all at once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SL4_DsUlH8
8Macaroom
Homephone TE

Macaroom’s work in the past few years has revived the spirit of early glitch pop practitioners along the lines of mùm, Piana and Tujiko Noriko and drawn it into something more substantial and deeply impressive. Their masterpiece album Homephone TE runs a full gamut of styles and weaves such a complex, intricate atmosphere with such clarity and substance that I’m blown away every time I go back to it. Throw their cute, tentative debut and their more saccharine third album into the mix and you’ve got an exemplary discog.

https://macaroom.bandcamp.com/track/chess
9Seiko Oomori
Sennou

Obligatory mention for today’s indisputable queen of pop. I’ve raved so much about her elsewhere that I’ll keep it cursive here, but the strength of her songwriting, the development of her sound and the sheer force of her personality all make Oomori Seiko the best kind of acquired taste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOqYBwBmX-0
10Secret Chiefs 3
Book of Horizons

These guys are a real Those Who Know deal. Often treated as an appendix to Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3 is the project of ex-Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance. There’s a similar sense of insane genre-hopping going on here, but where Bungle always felt like parody and pastiche, Spruance burrows deep into a wide range of Middle Eastern and Indian (amongst others) genres and instrumentation with a striking degree of what I can only presume is fidelity. A lot of their stuff is batshit insane, but its so stylistically grounded that their albums are impressive and consistent throughout; it’s ‘fun’, but these are compositions worth holding on to.

https://secretchiefsthree.bandcamp.com/track/saptarshi
11Supercar
Futurama

Absolutely essential alternative band. There’s an excellent review for their album Futurama that maps out how lazy cultural analogies are bad but these guys can be viewed as the Radiohead of Japan so easily that it’s hard not to. Where Radiohead were maudlin and paranoid, Supercar are nostalgic and a little jaded; their sound is a lot warmer on the outside, but guarded and uncertain the more you pay attention. They had one of the best guy-girl vocalist combos in the game and their correspondent album to Kid A, Highvision, is a masterpiece and considerably better than Radiohead’s electronic output. Can’t recommend these guys enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Maz9z8a3b54
12Tera Melos
Drugs to the Dear Youth

I feel that this band is pretty valuable for Sputnik’s older guard but not so much for the later ‘10s kids. This is a unfortunate because their brand of math rock is a firm keeper. They’re whackier and ballsier than most of the emo-math bands more frequently discussed nowadays, but with a great knack for melody. Their debut epitomises most of what made the genre appealing to begin with for a range of people, while Drugs to the Dear Youth is one of the most essentially instrumental EPs of any genre. Their later work between the fields of math-rock and indie pop is fun but hit or miss, but 2017’s Trash Generator was a great show of confident songwriting and wild instrumentals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mORGAPrfs8
13The Veils
Nux Vomica

Ah, The Veils. In a site full of Brand New armchair hagiographers and Nick Cave devotees, it amazes me how frequently this band slips under the radar. Their fire and brimstone indie rock is full of a performance style indebted to Cave, but it’s delivered in an emotionally earnest and highly evocative manner with watertight songwriting that puts the likes of the The Devil and God… to shame. A gem of a band and one of the more memorable live shows I’ve caught in my time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HyHdGY7HRc
14Fishmans
Uchuu Nippon Setagaya

1500th rating
15Brand-new Idol Society
Who Killed Idol?

**this list is a Tentenko-free zone**
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