The Stone Roses

[monolith]

I think I must have listened to Daybreak once and forever deleted it from my consciousness. Just had a listen and thought maybe I had found a rare shitty demo version but no, this was on The Second Coming.

There is some brilliant stuff on that album but then there is.... This. I'm laughing as I'm typing this, I can't believe they released it.

Ian Brown really lucked out didn't he, not many worse singers to have done so well for themselves. I genuinely think I can sing better than him and I don't think it's in the least bit impressive to say that.

[sevendaughters]

imo it doesn't matter that he can't sing traditionally well, he was the perfect vocalist for the group, same as Shaun Ryder for the Mondays. soft spot for his good early singles too.

[monolith]

I think it might seem like that just because he was the vocalist and therefore you associate him with the excellence of the band. Think they would be held in even higher esteem if they'd had someone decent.

[sevendaughters]

I think it might seem like that just because he was the vocalist and therefore you associate him with the excellence of the band. Think they would be held in even higher esteem if they'd had someone decent.

i'm not even a big fan or anything. not everything works by adding technical proficiency; Brown directed the emotional register of the band because, at its best, it was an extension of his personality. the band simply doesn't exist in the same stratosphere without Ian Brown.

[Custard]

Daybreak gets knocked a lot, but I like it, me.

It came about at a time when their people were desperately trying to get them to work together again. They all bundled into a rehearsal space, began jamming together for the first time in ages, and ended up writing Daybreak on the spot.

It has the feel of a band playing and working together, rather than a bit of fret-wanking, with Brown doing his vocals one day two months later, when Squire has popped out to KFC

It's not a great tune or anything, but I'm quite fond of it for the fact that they wrote it together, unlike much of the rest of the album

[thraxx]

It did become a bit more interesting live...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUNg4R94_eE

I have grown to love Daybreak a great deal and that is totally badass.  A band at the peak of its powers.

[greenman]

I do think beyond the improvisation that version of Daybreak benefits from a rawer live sound. Not all of it but some of the bluesy rock on Second Coming I think suffers a bit from the production being a bit too slick, more Roachford than Led Zep.

Ian Brown really lucked out didn't he, not many worse singers to have done so well for themselves. I genuinely think I can sing better than him and I don't think it's in the least bit impressive to say that.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Ian Brown is the correct vocalist for The Stone Roses just as Morrissey is the correct vocalist for The Smiths and neither band would be improved by replacing them with Bono, or Stephen Duffy for that matter.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

He isn't a three pin plug, his voice has evolved (imo. not in a good way). Even in 5 years he had gone from delicate, boyish, a bit mumbly and, yes, melodic to confident but gravelly and monotone.

I agree with the comments that he is part of the identity and sound and simply parachuting in a more competent singer wouldn't be an improvement. Certainly wouldn't have improved the album The Stone Roses.

[dr beat]

Yes back in 2003 I went to a festival and saw John Squire.  By this time he had canned The Seahorses and was billed as a solo act but was backed by a full band. It was painful when he did Roses songs. Not that he was a particularly better singer technically, but more that he wasn't Ian Brown.

[Funcrusher]

Is some loony trying to suggest that Ian Brown is a better singer than Damo Suzuki?

[buzby]

He isn't a three pin plug, his voice has evolved (imo. not in a good way). Even in 5 years he had gone from delicate, boyish, a bit mumbly and, yes, melodic to confident but gravelly and monotone.

I agree with the comments that he is part of the identity and sound and simply parachuting in a more competent singer wouldn't be an improvement. Certainly wouldn't have improved the album The Stone Roses.

It could be argued that they already had a more competent singer in Reni (who is their backing vocalist and was the lead singer in his post-Roses band The Rub). I've always felt there's an element of rivalry between Reni and Brown, similar to the tensions between Hook and Sumner in New Order

[greenman]

He isn't a three pin plug, his voice has evolved (imo. not in a good way). Even in 5 years he had gone from delicate, boyish, a bit mumbly and, yes, melodic to confident but gravelly and monotone.

I agree with the comments that he is part of the identity and sound and simply parachuting in a more competent singer wouldn't be an improvement. Certainly wouldn't have improved the album The Stone Roses.

Yeah I would tend to agree, the more confident Brown from Second Coming onwards seemed to loose a bit of the boyish mystery the early version possessed. I do still think he works effectively on some of Second Coming, obviously the more melodic tracks but also stuff like Breaking Into heaven, Tears and Love Spreads but not so much on others.

On the same kind of subject I was always half expecting someone like David Coverdale to "discover" Second Coming and start doing the odd cover version of the mainstream rock market.

[phantom_power]

Is some loony trying to suggest that Ian Brown is a better singer than Damo Suzuki?

I think it was more a comment about singers who weren't technically proficient but suited the band they were in

[greenman]

One stuff like Fools Gold and Somethings Burning Brown is even playing the Suzuki kind of role isn't he?

[QDRPHNC]

I would just like to add that Begging You is indeed a "banger", and that the only Stone Roses album I've heard is The Best of the Stone Roses. Am I missing out on any exceptional deep cuts?

[greenman]

Standing Here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEcmKG1q9Ok

I actually tend to think that era between the debut album and going dance/kraut with the above, Where Angels Play and What The World Is Waiting For was the one it would have been nice to hear more of. That's I'd say a style that could sustain a whole album with more room for melodic variety mixed with greater density where as I tend to think Fools Gold, One Love and Somethings Burning is as much as we needed of lengthy atmospheric grooves.

[The Boston Crab]

Totally agree with that point. The coda to Standing Here is probably the high point of everything they did, to my tastes.

"I could have parked..."

That bit. Especially after that groovy country shuffle of a song. It's a total surprise and something more interesting structurally than anything else they did.

[MattD]

Yeah, Standing Here is outstandingly beautiful towards the end, and just generally in fact. I always thought however that the groove/dance laden approach was the ideal follow up to the debut.

As much as they are tagged with the Madchester sound, the debut is very traditional sounding. And yet for all the reverence it receives, it's not a perfect album; Elizabeth My Dear is pointless, Don't Stop is a just so lazy and dull while Bye Bye Badman blows. Throw in the likes of What The World Is Waiting For, Standing Here and Mersey Paradise - just three of their more traditional deep cut classics - and you'd have a perfect album.

What they teased with Fools Gold and One Love never came to fruition sadly, and after that, John Squire's ego got the better of him and he became another dullard thinking he was Jimmy Page - his gift for melodic pop riffs deserted him and in its place was self indulgent fret wankery. The Seahorses were utter shite and the less said about the comeback single All For One, the better. Who knows what they were thinking releasing that horror show - so bad I'm genuinely wondering if it was a pisstake. Sounds like the half arsed crap from your indie landfill shite. The follow up Beautiful Thing was a marked improvement but the damage had been done and any hope that Second Coming was just a blip turned out to be a fallacy; any magic they had had been completely lost.

[The Boston Crab]

It's been said a billion times, and probably in this thread, but part of the adoration and adulation around the time of the first album was these absolutely incredible B-sides that they seemed to pass off as nothing much. That Turns Into Stone comp could and perhaps should have been the second album, and even if they did subsequently go down the shitter, they'd have at least managed to get two records out. Obviously, Geffen was a terrible move, too.

On the other hand, a half-way house between Can and Led Zep sounds potentially amazing, so I can see how you might get carried away by the idea on five years worth of beak.

I haven't listened to the Stone Roses in years but I'm going to today.

[QDRPHNC]

Thanks for the recco, Standing Here is indeed absolutely gorgeous.

[greenman]

I would say the focus for acclaim tended to shift away from the following singles/B-sides as represented on Turns to Stone towards the debut over time because it was more easily digestible indie that suited the Britpop and the landfill years.

I love Don't Stop personally though, its not just a lazy flipping of the track but rather an interesting combination of backwards and forwards elements. Some of the other stuff like Suger Spun Sister does feel like its from the bands more c86 Sally Cinnamon years I spose though.

I'd disagree that they didn't follow up on the promise of the Krautrockish stuff, the problem was if anything the reverse with Fools Gold being incredibly well realised for a first effort. I don't think they had the ability to offer as much variety as Can did though, the outro to One Love and Somethings Burning are also very good but I'm not sure I can imagine an entire album of material like that holding up as well. The shift more towards Funkadelic with Breaking Into Heaven was I think a natural one and Second Coming would have been better off with more of that style material next to the pop tracks.

[Vodka Margarine]

'Second Coming' never sounds the way it should to me. In late 1995, my fellow early adolescent friend from a few doors down gave me a home recorded cassette of her older brother's copy of the album. Trouble is, she didn't know how to record from CD to tape properly so just played it at low volume from the living room stereo and set her tape recorder to capture 'all external noise'. I subsequently ended up getting heavily muffled renditions of 'Breaking Into Heaven' and 'Driving South', plus an exclusive remix of 'Ten Storey Love Song' featuring the sound of her dad loudly chiming in from the kitchen.

[Z]

I would say the focus for acclaim tended to shift away from the following singles/B-sides as represented on Turns to Stone towards the debut over time because it was more easily digestible indie that suited the Britpop and the landfill years.

Surely Turns Into Stone being out of print for absolutely ages  and a narrative that only one of their two albums is any good (ie buy an album, not a compilation) had a lot to do with it too

[Rolf Lundgren]

Surely Turns Into Stone being out of print for absolutely ages  and a narrative that only one of their two albums is any good (ie buy an album, not a compilation) had a lot to do with it too

It's madness that Turns Into Stone was hard to find for so long. It's worthy of so much more than a collection of B-sides and I've said on here before that it should be considered as their second album.

I haven't listened to the Stone Roses in years but I'm going to today.

Same, this thread has encouraged me to have a re-listen and I'm reminded of why I used to love them in the first place.