|
"In Utero" doesn't sound the least bit polished. Did you mean "Nevermind"?
.. Anyway..
Interesting thread.
To be honest, I can hardly think of any albums -- any band that's worth its weight probably doesn't WANT their albums to be overproduced. And in cases of something like production.. I mean, it's always good when things sound good... a lot of bands could benefit from better production...
However, OVERPRODUCTION... 500 layers of guitar on a song that only needs, like, 2... all kinds of ridiculous effects where there doesn't need to be any.. frequencies only your dog could hear.. I can think of a few.. right off hand: A lot of the late-period Wipers albums are way too slickly-produced, almost candy-coated. The songwriting's not that great anymore, but the production is just too... shiney? Also goes for the late-period Husker Du stuff... when you're used to a lo-fi, gritty, trebly sound, putting a bunch of gloss over it can either be used for a very good thing or just totally conceal some of the hard edge from the earlier recordings. I think with those two bands, the latter happened.
Another example I think is the Mars Volta. I don't think they'd be a good band to begin with, but their production is definitely very, very questionable... I've never liked vocal tricks like the same singer saying something in the left speaker and then saying something after that in the right speaker, a kind of ridiculous random call-and-response that usually makes no sense in the context of the song.. Mars Volta does this a lot... they do some other things that are questionable, but that is one thing that annoys the shit out of me...
I'm also going to nominate Jesu, who uses way too many guitar layers and pitch-corrects his voice so much that it seems to make the work too bright and poppy in parts -- usually the songs are good enough that that doesn't matter, but I can think of some specific songs where the production does work against it.
I also agree about Girls Against Boys' "Freak*on*I*ca" and some of the mid-period Fall albums that have too many electronica flourishes...
Honestly, though, good production or bad production doesn't hide a bad song, but it isn't a pleasant listening experience...
__________________
|