What is the best examples of the "4AD Sound"

Oh...sound. Sorry.

HELLO ROS!

WE ARE SIGUR ROS!

As far as the question is concerned Dead Can Dance, Lush and The Wolfgang Press come to mind.

And of course check out My Bloody Valentine, but I don't think they were on 4AD, actually. Their "Loveless" record is generally considered to be the archtypical of the shoegaze sound.

cc

Because I am a longtime fan of 4AD I dutifully checked out the recent compilation of covers. Because most of the new or current music I pay attention to is either techno and ambient or metal, this was my actually first exposure to a lot of the popular indie rock bands I hear people talking about, like Tune Yards, Future Islands, and Big Thief, and holy christ, people really enjoy these bands?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9gOQgfPW4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IOUJa7bv4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaOj0-nvkoA

I'm not aware of this album (and, tbf, unfamiliar with a lot of those bands) but iirc cover compilations are not typically the best way to first expose yrself to an artist's work.

(Either the coverer or the coveree's work, I should add.)

why you make This Mortal Coil cry

some of you may enjoy this mix of mine:

https://soundcloud.com/araho/colins-very-4ad-mix

"A little adventure inspired by This Mortal Coil's Filigree & Shadow."

This Mortal Coil is a good example of what I'm talking about, actually! Those albums are great but not a very good metric for sussing out what either the original songs or the artists covering the songs sound like outside of a TMC album.

iirc cover compilations are not typically the best way to first expose yrself to an artist's work.

For realz.

And that can be both a good and a bad thing (recalls first hearing Hootie & the Blowfish via their pretty good contribution to that Led Zep comp, subsequently recalls chagrin of buying and hearing Cracked Rear View for the first time)

It’s also useful to realise that the “4AD sound” ceased to exist when Ivo left the label in the mid-90s

Just listened to the "Junkyard" and "Song to the Siren" covers. The former was kind of ok, the latter I lasted about a minute.

They missed a trick not having a Rema Rema cover.

Breeders doing His Name is Alive is pretty good.

the new or current music I pay attention to is either techno and ambient or metal

Love when people who listen to the most insular shit imaginable have opinions.

if a person who used to like music hears Big Thief and goes "ugh, kids these days," then that dude has crossed over into "I like the music I liked when I was young" territory imo. Big Thief is fuckin astonishing

vocals were a dealbreaker for me and kept me from hearing anything that might have been astonishing underneath

and for what it's worth I like plenty of new music

just not this

vocals were a dealbreaker for me and kept me from hearing anything that might have been astonishing underneath

Had the exact same response. I thought it might be a one-off put-on, but then I tried one of their albums and every song sounded like that!

"Breeders doing His Name Is Alive is pretty good" - seconded!
My favorite example of "4AD covering 4AD" however would be HNIA covering Unrest's "Imperial" (since that Unrest album was released in the U.K. by the 4AD imprint Guernica):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM2d68ePINo

xp Not every band can have “cookie monster” vocals, you guys! :-D

xp Not every band can have “cookie monster” vocals, you guys! :-D

The singer for Big Thief does sound like a Muppet, though...

I like almost every artist in this compilation and the choice of songs to cover but the final product is a bit disappointing. This is not a good introduction to any act here obviously. We could recommend original songs by those artists to listen to instead but something tells me it wouldn’t change minds in here.

That said: Tkay Maidza, Atlas Sound, US Girls, Aldous Harding, Helado Negro, Jenny Hval, Big Thief are all great and I wont hear otherwise.

I've become quite smitten with Dry Cleaning.

Oh yeah they are good too. Actually all of them. Even Tune-yards.

Surprised Dry Cleaning haven't warranted their own thread.

I think they’re discussed a good bit here: best out of the current-ish crop of post-punk bands people and algorithms keep telling you to listen to

dif juz seem like the ultimate 4AD band to me, though they're certainly not the best