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What is your favorite unheralded & obscure album?

They hardly qualify once they got nominated for a Polaris Prize, but I will always love The RAA, especially their debut: https://ruralalbertaadvantage.bandcamp.com/album/hometowns

This post got me to pull up hometowns and listen for first time in a while. It’s a great album. I saw them live in Atlanta at “The Earl” in 2011 on the tour for that album and it was such an awesome show. Dive bar with a 250 person music venue in the back. Great vibe.
 
Drifting Through- Spell

Driftin' Through played at Theta Chi the weekend I visited Wake as a prospective student in 1995. There was a guy dancing in the crowd with a back pack full of beer and he kept giving me some. I was really fun so I applied "Early Decision" and got in.
 
Driftin' Through played at Theta Chi the weekend I visited Wake as a prospective student in 1995. There was a guy dancing in the crowd with a back pack full of beer and he kept giving me some. I was really fun so I applied "Early Decision" and got in.

You narrowly missed an opportunity to meet the (much) younger version of a current prolific OGB poster (not going to out him).
 
I am going to go old-school in my recommendation...circa 1989! If any of you punk fans have not listened to this, it is a must.


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I posted one of their songs called "King's Dominion" in the CT last night and it got me to revisit this album from the early '00 DC scene. This band fucking rocked but it's not for everyone and some of the songs are a little too much; the screaming of the second singer can be hard to listen to. The opening track, "someone has his fingers broken" and "Deformative," at about 18:50, are awesome though.

 
Is Quasi a "heralded" band? Featuring Birds is an excellent album, an not just because of the title. Janet Wiess is one of the best drummers in rock music.

 


The album is Mondo. The first song is Holes (skippable). Highlights are This Head That I Hold, Awake, Waves, Troubleman. The album cuts are solid after Holes.
 
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I guess this counts, obscure but it's on a label and cataloged. :noidea: Boone NC band called The Husbians from the early 90s recorded in NYC on Mutiny Records. smokin







[video]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mAoG6n3aEihpwrxWqKUBek3VqlSt SFqCY[/video]
 
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In the early 90's, Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard had a side project with friends from the band Satchel. They were called Brad and they sounded completely different than anything coming out of Seattle at the time. I think they were pretty obscure, though their second album had a minor hit song and got some MTV air time. Here is one from the 1992 album "Shame":

 
Feel like I could post a million of these things, but a few older favorites that were out of print that recently surfaced on streaming that fall more into the "well-known artists later albums/side projects" category rather than total unknowns/obscure:

Chambers Brothers - New Generation

Great Speckled Bird (Canadian folk duo Ian and Sylvia's amazing country rock record, and the first album produced by 20/21 year old Todd Rundgren) - s/t

Lou Christie Sacco - Paint America Love. He is the dude that did that "Lightning Strikes" song as Lou Christie.

Dion and the Belmonts did an amazing record in 1967 called Together Again that I read described as "soaked in heroin and warped doo-wop influences, driven by garage-band drums and fuzzed guitars." It rocks.

Along the same lines, early 60s rock/country star Del Shannon (of "Runaway" fame) has a pretty crazy later 60s album called The Further Adventures of Charles Westover that is a good time. And Chubby Checker's later album "Chequered" is a departure from what you might think of when you think Chubby Checker.

These are a few things that popped into the brain.
Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow
Hoyt Axton - My Griffin is Gone

This is kind of funny, because it sort of combines elements of these two posts of mine on this thread and just came out today, and I had just been thinking about that Hoyt Axton record again. Synchronicity!

 
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