Imagine if Geogaddi had not been released or condensed

[Daily Mail reader]

Into an EP.

You'd have a uniform bridge between Music Has The Right To Children and The Campfire Headphase which to me feels like the natural progression from the debut.

I remember reading letters on Planet Sound a teletext page in 2002 complaining Geogaddi was too long and the running time of 66.6 was tawdry and designed for shock effect. Compared to the two refined albums either side of it, Geogaddi is clichéd with occult motifs. For myself MHTRTC perfectly segues into the brightness of The Campfire Headphase not Geogaddi which is an oddity. Also In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country is a more eloquent commentary on the fanatical underbelly of US culture. It's a mini masterpiece which makes Geogaddi redundant.

After The Campfire Headphase and the EP which complimented it is when the mood should have changed. Tomorrow's Harvest still has some of the childhood innocence of MHTRTC and The Campfire Headphase but it is decaying and giving way to a Malthusian future of limits.

As for Inferno it feels completely out of step with this bland and uninteresting era we're living in. It's offbeat and looking back to the 1990s the same way MHTRTC looked back to the 1970s. When life and people were still real and not ridiculously dark and OTT.

[Widmerpool]

When life and people were still real and not ridiculously dark and OTT.

Mate, you deliver an acute and shaking commentary that resonantes with me in so many and contradicting levels. To wit, when I was younger, practically a teenager I made a pact with myself never to fall into the generation—spanning nostalgia of the past; it hearkens forward to me, like a straining check. In truth I find it hard not to agree with you utterly and heartfelt with each of your points —both from coldest logic and experience.

Daily Mail reader? Is that an ironic statement? I haven't been graced by being born a British citizen, but I like the Radiohead tune.

Great thread, fearsome premise.

[Daily Mail reader]

Daily Mail reader? Is that an ironic statement?

Half ironic. I do read it for articles by Peter Hitchens who I've met and the Mail online comments section which is priceless.

Also contrary to popular belief not everyone in the UK uses the word "mate". I'd always thought it was more Australian vernacular. Then again we do have a lot of convicts here still (joke..).

[jcnporter]

I think all of BOCs albums can be viewed as 'cliched' in retrospect, but only if you overlook the fact that they essentially created the context that they look 'cliched' in comparison to.

[Daily Mail reader]

Inferno definitely has an early 90s Crystal Maze feel to it on some tracks even if that wasn't the intention.

[Cupz]

I think all of BOCs albums can be viewed as 'cliched' in retrospect, but only if you overlook the fact that they essentially created the context that they look 'cliched' in comparison to.

I agree. Post-vaporwave80srevivalvaleriestrangerthings the old albums seem almost cliched. In the sense that if you listen to Bach now it sounds like "yeah well duh I know how music works!" but at the time it was the most mind-altering music that made strong ripples through all history of music since that it sounds kind of dated today. Good thing BoC was never -just- a nostalgia throwback project. There's a lot of that but it's also very futuristic, thoughtful, psychedelic, weird and personal. Will it become even more and more of an acquired taste over time?