Bands That Need Repeat LIstens to Fully Reveal Itself
 

You guys know what I'm talking about? I think Mission of Burma is the perfect example of the phenomenon. Vs, OnOffOn and The Obliterati are all great , but many of the songs don't exactly hit you immediately. I didnt think much of the obliterati at first but when I gave it another chance i noticed all these great little things about the songs and now I love the record. I think some Sonic Youth records have this quality too such as Sonic Nurse.I lvoe that record even more now.

What bands do you feel have this quality? I feel like i might have given some bands the brush off when they deserve another look (captain beefheart, pil).

That's how I was with unwound.
I bought new plastic ideas and didn't like it. Then a few months later I listned again and they're in my top 3 now.

CLINIC comes to my mind. I bought Internal Wrangeler back when, thought it was dreck. Then heard them again, and bought into them. They don't have that many discernable great tunes per se, but their vibe and sound is spot on original..

they do rule.

new plastic ideas and fake train and challenge for civilized and

one band that took me many many listens, because i just did not dig what they wer3e going for, but which now are one of my all time faves is
MORPHINE

I could not understand the low-rock, with no guitar, but fuck is it awesome.

I would agree with the Mission of Burma mention. The first time I heard them was when I picked up a copy of Signals, Calls, and Marches from a used bin for like $2, and I didn't really like it all. I gave it a few more chances and its complete brilliance finally dawned on me. Now MOB are one of my absolute favorite bands.

Other bands that were kinda like that (for me at least) were... Xiu Xiu, and Sonic Youth to an extent. It's cool when you can immediately love a band, but it's maybe a little more rewarding when you have to work for it and you're constantly finding new things in the music that catch your ear and make you enjoy it even more. SY are still like that for me, sometimes I'll listen to one of their albums and catch some new thing I've never heard before and like it even more because of that.

I AGREE WITH ALL THE ABOVE. xiu, unwound, unsane too, i found mission of burma instantly likeable, mind you that was vs, onoffon is great too but the obliterati is poor, way poor...

other bands. battles- at first it waslike "um, ok, whaever. but wit repeated listens the magic flowed.... don cab as well, well no suprise there. recent sonic albums too demand repeated listens to justify their glory, sonic nurse and rather ipped are examples of this. animal collective is another, in fact most music are growers...

there are very few bands which impact on first lisens.. those personally speaking that spring to mind are mbvs loveless, slints spiderland, lcd soundsystems sound of silver and on a lesser extent the debut. any stereolab stuff.. in other words the truly great will hit home immediatly!

Sonic Youth were like that for me, originally. Their deviation from standard chords, etc. and now I'm a huge fan. A testament to stretching one's palate.

It took me a a fair while to get into Animal Collective. The fairly linear, but also absurd rhythms & sample sequences just take a while to attune the ear to I think.
Worthwhile doing though.

Pretty much everything already said above as well as Grizzly Bear. I saw them open for TVOTR after hearing Yellow House once or twice but didn't really get into them as much until a few months after that show. Lightning Bolt too, they confused me a lot when I first heard them 3 years ago.

how is grizzly bear,
I really want to check out some of their stuff.

When I go way back, I recall Pere Ubu being like that for me. Of course their music has all sorts of hidden qualities, so it fits. The weird thing is today, it's so familiar to me, I have to remind myself how really strange, obscure, and multi-layered the music is. I honestly always liked it, but it took quite a few listens to really hear it nonetheless.

Low also come to mind. They aren't exactly complicated, but there is something going on beneath the surface nonetheless, perhaps emotionally.

And this is going to sound a bit from left field, but Blue Oyster Cult's first record had that hazy, infesting quality too. The soon became a bit too FM rock, but the first record has a really haunting quality that definitely grows with repeats.

When I first heard Husker Du and the Replacements I thought they just sounded like average indie-rock. One day they both clicked and became two of my favourite bands.

Hmm..

I guess Beefheart is a good example, I heard Trout Mask Replica years ago and thought it was just a racket, just a bunch of people playing different songs at the same time, and then I heard Decals, which is like Trout Mask but a bit sparser... and I thought it was brilliant and I went back to Trout Mask and realized it was brilliant as well. Truely bizarre, and I've rarely found anyone who liked Trout Mask the first time they heard it (though I think one of the reasons I disliked it was the production, which is TERRIBLE; one of the only albums to consistantly give me a headache thanks to Zappa's lifeless production, yuck).

I can definitely see Pere Ubu taking a little while to like, you hit the nail on the head by mentioning all the hidden intricacies that make it work so well. I agree with a lot of the bands you guys mentioned taking a while to really enjoy -- definitely Unwound, Mission of Burma -- except perhaps Animal Collective (nothing too wild about it in my opinion, I latched on to the cool sounds and beautiful melodies immediately and I'm sure most of America will soon) and Unsane (amazing from the get-go! Though Cutthroats 9 are [were?] better..).

Ah, oh... BLACK FLAG took me a while to get into (rather, I'm getting into it currently), some guy made me a CD that he called "Black Flag's greatest hits" and it was a cut or two from all their CD's, and I remembered spinning it quite a bit and not really getting into it; a guitar part here or a lyric there would stick with me but it wouldn't really matter to me. Reading about microtonal guitar solos and Greg Ginn finally made me interested enough in Black Flag to hunt down thier albums and while I still probably don't appreciate them as much as I should, I'm getting there.

Everything I've heard from Einsturzende Neubauten has done nothing for me, but everyone I know whose opinion I respect has cited them as a favorite or an influence, so I could see myself end up digging them one day. Hmm.

Sway, all the early Pelican stuff is indeed awesome. Australasia is amazing.

Jeff Buckley
Radiohead
The Notwist
My Brightest Diamond
Television
PJ Harvey