Wondering what bands/records have surprised you in audiophile listening quality? I’ve been getting onto Radiohead (OK Computer, In Rainbows esp) and I’m finding the soundstage to be populated with excitement almost like I’m listening to Jazz.
I'm not the biggest Radiohead fan, but I do dig 'em... and I first checked them out when they put out the OK Computer album. I didn't have anything special as far as audio gear when I got that album, but it certainly sounded really hi-fi nonetheless. The thing that inspired me to buy the album was an article in the New Yorker about them and I remember that the critic who wrote the piece described that album as sounding "tall." I had to hear what that was all about and so I bought the thing... and I wasn't disappointed. Besides being recorded really well, I really dug the theme of it of how technology has increased the sense of alienation among people. It's a theme that some 20 years after the album came out seems more prescient than ever.
If I really think about it I can come up with lots of albums that are "modern rock," in my case I'll say since about 1990, that were recorded in a way that gives them an immersive sort of quality and sound extra good when played on decent audio gear. I'm thinking of...
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot & A Ghost is Born (and surely a few others by these folks)
Beck - Sea Change
Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin
Massive Attack - Mezzanine (though one could argue that this one is electronic and not rock, I'd say that it fits in with definition of rock being a broad, general category)
Stereolab - Dots and Loops (and other stuff by this band)
...and some other records that are far less well known but are very cool in my book:
Steve Gunn - Eyes on the Lines
Sam Precop - self titled & Who's Your Professor
The Potato Eaters - self titled (A really cool album by a group who only made this and an EP - no one has heard of them but they're brilliant)
Pell Mell - Interstate (an instrumental group, but one that I would call "rock")
... and I'm sure lots of others that I just can't think of right now.
