Painful [Import]

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Japanese version of the critically acclaimed U.S. indie act's 1993 album with 4 bonus tracks, 'Shaker', 'For Shame Of Doing Wrong' (Slide Version), 'Ashes On The Ground' & 'Double Dare' (Sominextraction). 15 tracks in all. 2000 release. Standard jewel case.

Tracks:

Big Day Coming
From A Motel
Double Dare
Superstar-Watcher
Nowhere Near
Sudden Organ
A Worrying Thing
I Was The Fool Beside You For Too Long
The Whole Of The Law
Big Day Coming
I Heard You Looking

Amazon.com essential recording

The long-running Hoboken, New Jersey, trio's favorite devices are neatly evidenced on this 1993 disc: barbed guitar freakouts by Ira Kaplan, breathily exquisite Georgia Hubley vocals ("Nowhere Near"), an obscure but excellent cover choice (the Only Ones' "The Whole Of The Law"), and a love for sonic texture that's backed up by first-rate songwriting. Subtle at its loudest and vital at its most subdued, Painful is built around a series of hovering, dreamy bass and organ drones matched by the singers' purr, but propelled by Hubley's insistent rhythms and Kaplan's prickly guitar leads. --Douglas Wolk

Customer Reviews:

Yo La Tengo's Second Best.......2007-05-31

Painful is actually a quietly brooding melodrama. Despite it's dreamy sound, Yo La Tengo's music is anything but apathetic or detached: it is drenched in reverb that sounds like pathos, distortion that sounds like anger, vocal harmonies that sound like love. In essence, Yo La Tengo found the perfect formula to paint love songs and heartbrake songs behind impressionistic soundscapes that only the skillful instrumentation of the band members could convey. Painful is probably the first complete Yo La Tengo album in this vein, and surely the first great Yo La Tengo album. The eclecticism is present - but not jarring - the compositions piece together like a ride on gently, swelling waves.
I must admit, almost everything you see in "Painful" can be found to an ever greater measure on "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As one". This later album, made in 1997, is Yo La Tengo's masterpiece. And while it doesn't radically shift the aesthetic established on "Painful", it is entirely essential - while Painful is by no means made obsolete.

To complete the YLT experience, also buy "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One" and "And Then Nothing turned Itself Inside Out"

Rating: 9.3/10

Yo la tengo best.......2006-09-12

I'm not into Yo la Tengo music so much that i'd own all their records. No, that I think they're bad or something. No, i really think their work is very good, and as people i think they are one of the coolest people around in music biz. But they use and recreate some formulas that doesn't touch my innerself and i need that in music. This record does it. That's why i have is this one that i think it their crown jewel. Their Velvet-SonicYouth influences are here but they went ahead of them - they created their own home coziness, typical Yo la Tengo coolness that they make in all their albums but unfornatelly only on a couple of songs, here is the whole album.

Almost their best.......2006-08-13

This album is a close second as best album in the band's ouevre (with "I can hear..." as #1). For anyone wanting to check out this band or not knowing where to go after "I can hear..." this is the album.

this is it .......2005-10-10

"The Whole of the Law" is an old Only Ones number, and that was the band that did "Another Girl, Another Planet," a song that some people from back in those nothing-but-fun punk/power pop days hold to their hearts as tightly their dear old moms. Yo La Tengo knows Only Ones leader/wreck Peter Perrett was a heroin guy and they make the song into a beautiful nod, with this droning keyb figure that sounds like one droopy eyelid somehow raising when somebody opens the door or rustles something in the room. The sound, however, must meet the song and there is some kind of hushed sanctity nearing desperation going on here ("Baby, baby I'm in love with you/I had to contact you")and, believe it or not, there is another vibe to it, a Peter Yarrow "Puff the Magic Dragon" thing going on with this song that I can't get enough of. "Painful" has so much insight into late-night insanity, which is great, but I always stop - cold -what I'm doing when "The Whole of the Law" comes on and just listen, like I've heard some majestic bird deep in the woods that is making a sound I've never heard anything like in my life.

"The greatest band in the universe".......2005-05-24

My Buddy Peter teases me about my obsession with this band. It's Okay, it's a healthy obsession and this was the album that started it for me! Although not as accessible as there '97 release I Can hear The Heart beating As One it cetainly has the power to pull you in and not let you go......nor do you want it to let you go.

It was 1995 or 96 and Yo La (as my buddy calls them) was on a Matador Records tour headlining for Pavement and Silkworm, two of my favorite bands at the time. That day I asked around "Who is this Yo La Tengo?" I didn't find out much so the next day I went out and bought Painful. I had the day off and decided to get high and run a few errands. It was a beautiful day in Atlanta so I popped in my new CD, rolled the windows down, opened the sunroof and took the backroads everywhere I went that day. From the dreamy organ of the opening track Big Day Coming to the distorted epic seven minute long emotional crescendo of the final track I Heard You Looking I knew I had discovered something unique, something imaginative, something perfectly balanced. I knew that day it was the beginning of a life long love affair. Like a drug, it was something I had been looking for all my (musically obsessed) life yet constantly kept coming up short. Painful floats and soares to exalting heights in and out of dreamy melodies. Stylistically placed organ interludes, rolling drums, Bass lines and Softly spoken guitars build up emotinal energy as Georgia Hubley's oohs and aahs hang in the distance. Am I dreaming or am I really this satisfied by this music?

I have to laugh at myself and include this quote I came across while reading a review on Pitchfork of Yo La's 1997 release I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One "Yo La Tengo is still the greatest band in the universe! Enough said".
-Jason Josephes, May, 1997

Pitchfork gave that album a rating of 9.7 out of 10!

Inspector Morse, Volume 3 (English TV Series)

Average customer rating:

Inspector Morse, Volume 3 (English TV Series)

Manufacturer: Blue Plate Caroline
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Sextets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Romantic (c.1820-1910) | Historical Periods | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

French | Languages | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

German | Languages | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music

Movie Scores | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

Movie Soundtracks | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

Television Soundtracks | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

General | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

1990s | By Decade | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

General | Vocal Pop | Pop | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B000003RV1
Release Date: 1996-03-05

Tracks:

Eirl Theme
Oxford
Duet: "Bei Mannern - Welche Liebe Fuhlen" from The Magic Flute
Cryptic Contemplation
Andante From String Sextet No1 In Bb OP 18
Reflections
'Traume' From "Wesendonk-Lieder
Generic Morse Music
Dark Suspicion
Adagio From Piano Concerto K488 In A
Apprehension - Confession - Resolution
Promised Land
"Hab'Mir's Gelobt" from "Der Rosenkavalier"
Painful Admissions
"Adieu, Notre Petite Table" from "Manon"
Quiet Awakening
Brunnhilde's Immolation from "Gotterdammerung"
Inspector Morse Theme

My Pain & Sadness Is More Sad & Painful Than Yours

Average customer rating:

The first from the best
The Birth of McLusky
McLusky, rougher than a sheeps nuts.

My Pain & Sadness Is More Sad & Painful Than Yours
Mclusky
Manufacturer: Too Pure
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B0000794B6
Release Date: 2003-02-03

Tracks:

Joy
Friends Stoning Friends
Whitelieberalonwhiteliberalaction
Rice Is Nice
Flysmoke
Rock Vs. Single Parents
She Come In Oieces
(Sometimes) I Have To Concentrate
When They Come Tell Them No
You Are My Sun
Rods On Crutches
Problem Posing As Solutions
Mi-O-Mai
Medium Is The Message
World Cup Drumming

Album Details

Mclusky's First Album, Originally Released on the Fuzzbox Label and Now Reissued on Too Pure.

Customer Reviews:

The first from the best.......2004-11-23

Want the recipe for the best rock band on Earth right now? Take some of the exaggerated dangerousness of British invasion bands like the Rolling Stones and the Who, add the schizophrenic genre-mixing of the Pixies, throw in the punkish aggression of the Ramones and the Clash, and top it all off with an outrageous cockney accent, and you'll have a fair approximation of Mclusky's sound. Their debut album, my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours, isn't their best work, as it's just a bit *too* reminiscent of the Pixies (some of the lead guitar lines on this album will have you wondering why Joey Santiago isn't credited in the liner notes), and there are a few less-than-stellar tracks sprinkled throughout. Still, the worst Mclusky album is better than at least nine tenths of what's out there right now.

Like Mclusky's subsequent albums, my pain and sadness is a musical roller coaster ride, highlighted by crazed rhythms, insanely catchy hooks, and surprisingly adroit musicianship. At some points, the guys will just beat you over the head with an incendiary burst of noise, such as the opener Joy and Rise is Nice. At other times, such as on When They Come Tell Them No and You Are My Sun, they'll betray their Pixies influence by injecting a sweet melody into the carnage, with an occasional "woo woo woo" that sounds like something out of the sixties. Whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction starts out with a sound similarly reminiscent of Black Francis and co. before morphing into a weirdness that is pure Mclusky. With a head-snapping time signature, guitars scratching at the surface, and vocalist Andrew Falkous sounding like a Welsh version of David Yow, the Jesus Lizard-esque She Come In Pieces proves further that these guys know whom to emulate.

Given how good this album is, it's a shame that few people have even heard of it, not to mention the fact that it's highly difficult to find at a domestic price. Fortunately, the success of Mclusky's last two albums, the utter classics mclusky do dallas and the difference between me and you is that i'm not on fire, have given them plenty of notoriety in underground circles of late. If you haven't heard this band by now, you have no excuse. So track down one of their albums, and be prepared to have almost everything you've ever heard seem weak and dull in comparison.

The Birth of McLusky.......2004-02-16

Not as staggeringly brilliant as "Do Dallas", the debut album gives the listener the groundwork for the McLusky sound. The songs use lean, muscular barbwired guitar trio noise to support screamingly surreal lyrics equal bits bile and humor, delivered with a little concern for politeness. To the band's credit, this brashness allows for startingly bits of mutilated subtlety and acidic pop. I can't say that it took me over upon first listen -- Do Dallas was such an angular assualt -- but, given a few spins it reveals itself as a great release. The inclusion of more mid-tempo sections and non-intrusive bits of female backing vocals (along the lines of Brix Smith or Kim Deal), threw me off at first.

With every subsequent listen, different songs have leapt out at me. This week, it is "You are My Sun" and "Medium is The Message". At the beginning, it was "Concentrate" and "World Cup Drumming". Next week who knows?

Somewhere between Steve Albini, Black Francis, and Mark E Smith, McLusky squats in a burnt out tenement where few bands live anymore.If you think that beaten and bashed up noise rock reached its peak in the early to mid nineties, this might do the trick. Three and half stars.

McLusky, rougher than a sheeps nuts........2003-04-15

If you've heard anything about this band you'll have heard comparisions to the pixies, lizards, even the Cult. Maybe there's a slice of the pixies in some of the later track, but i don't feel that gives a fair enough impression of what these guys sound like. This album is imense, you can't call their sound punk, you can't call their garage rock, infact I think a whole new discription is waranted for these fekers. McLusky does Dallas is a much cleaner, polished album this is the base for that, raw and unintentionally scratchy but in a good way, a really good way. Buy it NOW.