Your 'most underrated' band(s)

BloodEagle

New Bomb Turks

JookyChap

@Reverend said:

@JookyChap

Not their song but I remember hearing a story about Arthur Lee telling someone the wrong lyrics and it was that version that Hendrix covered. 

Ah, not heard that one before

DanR

There's a good few bands I like that nobody ever seems to know despite having had a good few albums.

Birthday Massacre



Digital Summer



Devil Sold His Soul



Metric



Or I could just have shit taste in music.

equalsql

I think that Hiatus Kaiyote are just about the best 'unknown'  band on the planet at the moment.

Every member of that band is an artist in their right. Blows me away that a band can be that talented and original and be hardly heard of..  Nai Palm's fractured but controlled vocals are almost without peer.  Just truly astonishing.

thecolourbox

equalsql;1067023" said:

I think that Hiatus Kaiyote are just about the best 'unknown'[ band on the planet at the moment.Every member of that band is an artist in their right.Blows me away that a band can be that talented and original and be hardley heard of..  Nai Palm's fractured but controlled vocals are almost without peer.  Just truly astonishing.

I quite like the drummer, a nice sound.

Crap did I just say I liked a drummer?!

strumjoughlamps

Afghan Whigs
PAW
Velocity Girl
Pond
Bleach
Power of Dreams

I could go on but all the above hugely underrated mainly because of other so called better bands of their time.

daveyh

Bowling for Soup Sea Hags Jane's Addiction

ICBM

JookyChap said:

Love were brilliant - 'Alone again, or' was covered by the Damned I think at one point

And Calexico.

If we're counting solo artists, my choice is…

Yoko Ono

Yes I am really serious. If you think of her as only the woman who wrecked The Beatles, posed naked with Lennon on the cover of Two Virgins and was famous for screeching unlistenably… that's not all she did. Yes, the early atonal-shrieking-as-art stuff is probably only interesting to fellow avant-garde artists - but after that, she became a much more conventional and pretty good musician. She can not only sing, she can do so quite beautifully when she wants to - and her lyric writing, although sometimes too earnest and slightly awkwardly Japanese-into-English-sounding - is often thoughtful and emotional.

If you're brave enough to try, listen to Approximately Infinite Universe or Season Of Glass - the album she wrote immediately after, and about, Lennon's murder. Or her most recent, Yes I'm A Witch Too, which is a collection of reworkings of many of those songs and collaborations with a range of modern musicians - she made this album at the age of 82… the year after performing a set at Glastonbury. And I challenge you to have the same view of her afterwards .

And I fully confess to having only recently discovered this, too.

ewal

Such a subjective thread... The three for me that immediately come to mind are Efterklang, Versus and Autolux.

Efterklang have had critical acclaim at times throughout their career, however the live shows I saw when they were at their peak were awe inspiring. They've also done some brilliant film projects with Vincent Moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdhERA1oQf0

Versus - perfectly crafted early 90's noise pop from NYC with the marvellously named Fontaine Toups on bass and vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOLTMdKyx28

Autolux - such a unique sound and hugely creative band from LA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQeWa5PEan8

robwright

+1 for The Bible - Boo Hewerdine still writing great songs.

Saw Mike Peters this week - those Alarm tunes are still epic!

markblack

Deer Tick

Two Gallants

Blitzen Trapper

Haych

Del Amitri!

Why they were never bigger than they were in their heyday is beyond me.  Unfortunately, radio and TV seemed to latch onto the likes of Manics, 'Phonics, Blur and Oasis at the time.  IMHO Del Amitri were a better band than the rest combined.  Good songwriting, clever lyrics, thoughtful subject matter and catchy hooks and much better live than on record.

Saddest thing is how everyone knows their songs (and can sing along when they come on the radio) but nobody really paid them much attention at the time.

Funnily enough it was Del Amitri that first introduced me to how awful the music industry can be.  Russ Williams was/is a huge DA fan and was working for Virgin Radio during the late 90s/early 2000s.  I phoned him up one day and asked why he wasn't playing Del Amitri's new single.  He basically said that the station management didn't like it and refused to air it.

tbm

Dark Star!
Twenty Twenty Sound is a great record.

hobbio

Helmet. Awesome drumming, perfect riffage. I think the only thing that stopped them getting bigger than they are is Page Hamilton's voice, it's really marmite.

RocknRollDave

Big Country.
This is a wonderful piece of songwriting, IMO:

dogload

thecolourbox said:

I quite like a band called Love from the 60s, I'm not sure though if they were well known or not, or whether they were given their due credit or not at the time or since because I wasn't born until 1987 but generally very neat song writing, Little Red Book especially could have been written this decade. Good band.

Love are one of my favourite bands. Definitely no longer under-rated, but unfortunately not as successful as they should have been at the time.

My Little Red book isn't by them, by the way. It's a Bert Bacharach song that was originally in the film 'What's New Pussycat', I think.

SimonC

ICBM said:

JookyChap said:

Love were brilliant - 'Alone again, or' was covered by the Damned I think at one point

And Calexico.

And UFO, don't you know. Complete with great Schenker solo.

As for underrated bands, I always though Shed 7 would go on to much bigger things.

fields5069

The Triffids.

Also I guess The Black Keys are underrated, or at least Dan Auerbach is. Nothing to do with guitar really, I just think he's one of the best songwriters out there at the moment.

fields5069

EricTheWeary said:

Skarloey said:

@thecolourbox Lovecwere big on the LA scene in the mid 60s. They were Elektra Records' big act until the Doors hit even bigger.

Group tensions led to a split they never really recovered from post Forever Changes.

Arthur Lee drifted in and out of obscurity and prison for much of the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Late 90s on was rediscovered in a big way. Toured Forever Changes. I saw him playing it with a four piece younger band in N London in about 2003. Superb.

Was working on new stuff then died of leukemia. Shame.

The Love single '7 and 7 is ' was a minor hit but covered by the Ramones, Alice Cooper ( probably my favourite Cooper track, although I say that as not particularly a fan)and Rush. I'm guessing possibly the only song covered both by the Ramones and Rush! 

And is also included on the Nuggets box set and therefore considered "garage".

RobDavies

RocknRollDave said:

Anthrax when John Bush was fronting them (Joey Belladonna is gash) 

Hmmm.  Funny, because my choice was going to be Armored Saint.   Consistently good, but mostly ignored - mainly down to them being from LA in the 80's and refusing to become a Thrash band, or a Glam band.  

I always thought Joey Vera should have got the Metallica gig when Cliff died.

As much as I like John Bush's voice, I felt that he didn't fit with Anthrax - Belladona is a bit of a dick, but he kind of is the 'Thrax sound...

From their heyday....

And they still make very good records these days....and I can't wait to see them in July.