The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

This is weird. It’s like Wayne Coyne is the frontman of a britpop band.
Most of the songs from this haven't left my regular rotation since it came out over 20 years ago

I always thought it was interesting that this Irish band recorded almost an entire album about California but Wikipedia said they lived here right before it was recorded (in San Diego and San Francisco).
 
7/16/24
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The Thrills - So Much for the City




Absolutely love this album. An Irish band made a quintessential California album. It takes a bunch of blokes from grey skied Northern European isle to really appreciate what makes Sunny California so special.
 
On vacation and haven’t kept up so well on this project in the last month or so, but I will try to catch up.
This is another one of my favorite albums of the 21th century though, so I had to speak up. These guys made a huge splash when this dropped and then pretty much disappeared. I was glad to pick it up on vinyl on RSD a couple years ago!


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Absolutely love this album. An Irish band made a quintessential California album. It takes a bunch of blokes from grey skied Northern European isle to really appreciate what makes Sunny California so special.

I think I remember Morrissey was a big sponsor of them when they came out, he was back in the good books and popular again at the time after You Are The Quarry had come out. Off his bogging up the NME was all over them for the first album, had them pegged as a Beech Boys tribute act with the additional wistfulness of music from over here. By the time they came back with the second album that trick wasn’t as potent, Arctic Monkeys had just blow up with “Fake Tales Of San Francisco” and this type of band was definitely out of vogue.
 
I think I remember Morrissey was a big sponsor of them when they came out, he was back in the good books and popular again at the time after You Are The Quarry had come out. Off his bogging up the NME was all over them for the first album, had them pegged as a Beech Boys tribute act with the additional wistfulness of music from over here. By the time they came back with the second album that trick wasn’t as potent, Arctic Monkeys had just blow up with “Fake Tales Of San Francisco” and this type of band was definitely out of vogue.
They reminded my more of The Byrds (vibe wise) than The Beach Boys but any album with deeply influenced by Sunny California is gonna get compared to The Beach Boys.
 
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