So I don't think we've done one of these in a long, long time. Let's have some fun with this. Nook in the Brain has been out for a while now that we should have a pretty good opinion about it.

Now I understand this may be pretty difficult for some of us, but let's see where we're all at with our favorite albums. Rank the albums 1-21. EPs and b-side compilations don't count here. Because let' face it, if they did, AMAP would be everyone's favorite album! So let's keep it strictly to the 21 studio albums. If anyone really wants to add 90's My Life Returns to their list for some reason, I could see that being a valid addition.

But again, let's rank all the studio albums and see where are favorites are at now. I'll post my own list shortly.

1. Happy Bivouac
2. Living Field




3-21. Et al.

You're taking the easy way out! Come on, let's have some fun with this and get some discussion going on the band's discography. Let's think about it for a bit. Not much is happening in this subforum anyways, at the moment. After thinking about it for a while, here's my list:

1. Happy Bivouac
2. Little Busters
3. Runners High
4. Please Mr. Lostman
5. Thank You, My Twilight

6. My Foot
7. Smile
8. Living Field

9. Penalty Life
10. Good Dreams
11. Kool Spice
12. Wake Up! X3
13. White Incarnation

14. Trial
15. Stroll and Roll
16. Pied Piper
17. Moondust
18. Nook in the Brain
19. Horn Again
20. Moon Gold
21. OOPARTS


Obviously, kind of tough on some of these, but you'll notice I've divided the albums into 4 tiers. Let's call them "god tier", "friggin awesome tier", "pretty good tier" and "decent tier".

The specific rankings in each tier could probably move around a bit, but if hard pressed, I think the ranking I've given is pretty accurate. I still think that with the release of My Foot, we saw the end of the greatest era in the band's career, with a couple of relatively questionable releases in PL and GD. My Foot just had some awesome stuff, and could go into the "god tier", but I really think the top 5 albums I listed are on another level. I think the band hit it's lowest point with OOPARTS, but rebounded nicely when Trial came out. Stroll and Roll could be #14 for me, as the top of that last tier, but there is some really good stuff going on with Trial too, so we'll keep it at the top for best of the "newer" era, I suppose.

I'm completely serious. For me, those are the only two worth ranking because they are the peak, the culmination, the masterpiece of their respective era's. For the rest, ranking seems arbitrary. Literally [i]nobody[/i] is going to list anything post-2002 above the "holy trinity" and i'd be [i]very[/i] surprised if anything from the "westaboo cowboy sound" era was ranked above the secondary classics like PML/Smile/TYMT. To an extent, a lot of this will be predictable. I mean, with the exception of Moon Gold your "decent tier" list is just every album they've made since 2008.

If somebody said to me "I want to get into The Pillows" i'd send them Happy Bivouac. No heistation. If somebody said they were interested in their Jazz/Fusion days i'd send them Living Field. Again, for me, no question. That's how I created my list.

Beyond that, the ranking system totally breaks down. If someone wanted to explore their music further, i'd put Runners High and Little Busters on the same peg. Both are equally great, why seperate them? Then i'd put PML, Smile, TYMT, and My Foot equally beyond that, all of which i'd rank about the same with the possible standout being PML because even if that album was just Swanky Street repeated 10 times it would still be amazing. However, I would also put White Incarnation and Kool Spice on the same tier as those. They're equally good for different reasons but occupy an entirely different genre. Ranking one above the other would boil down to what style of their music you prefer rather than one being stylistically, lyrically, "better." That's why I think raking the albums seperately beyond that point is unnecessary.

Note that i'm not saying Happy Bivouac or Living Field will be everyone's favorite, obviously. I'm also not saying that they're better than whatever your favorite is. I'm saying that beyond the favorite album that we all have, why force them into seperate categories? You've got your waifu album, the one that defines "The Pillows" for you. For me, that's Happy Bivouac. At the same time, I think that Living Field is an equally masterful album but from another era made by a band chasing a totally different sound. Deciding which one is "better" depends on what kind of mood i'm in and what kind of music I want to listen to. I could make a list where I dump everything after Wake Up! at the bottom, but it just seems unnecessary.

4. Please Mr. Lostman
1. Happy Bivouac
8. Living Field
2. Little Busters
3. Runners High
5. Thank You, My Twilight
6. My Foot

9. Penalty Life
20. Moon Gold
16. Pied Piper
14. Trial
7. Smile
13. White Incarnation
11. Kool Spice

10. Good Dreams
12. Wake Up! X3
15. Stroll and Roll
17. Moondust
18. Nook in the Brain
19. Horn Again
21. OOPARTS

This is my hastily-made remix I made from Goshin's list as I procrastinate a final paper. I've done 3 tiers, akin to the original, the first is God-tier, the second is great, and the 3rd is...I want to say good, but toward the end that becomes more "Mediocre." So I should really do 4 tiers but I'll keep it as such. (Funnily enough, by chance it came out perfectly equal that each tier has 7 albums).

Honestly, the first tier is pretty much a toss-up. On any given day I'll say that any of those albums is my favorite (except My Foot but it is very very close to the rest for me). These are the first albums I ever suggest to anyone looking to get into them.

The second tier is also kind of an amalgamation, I didn't have any reason for putting one over the other except for a split second decision of like, "oh yeah, that one has this song which is great!" As I've mentioned before, I started to lose interest in their stylistic direction about after My Foot. This is shown here I think, as Trial and Pied Piper are the only post-2006 features.

The last tier is, again, a toss-up. They're all either "good" or "just ok". As such they also aren't in any particular order except that the ones towards the top have more redeeming qualities than the ones toward the bottom.

It's interesting that my bottom tier is comprised of mostly higher-end numbers, and is similar to Goshin's list.

hokay why not

1. Living Field
2. Please Mr. Lostman
3. Little Busters
4. Runners High
5. Thank You, My Twilight
6. Happy Bivouac
7. Kool Spice
8. Smile
9. Penalty Life
10. White Incarnation
11. Moon Gold
12. Good Dreams
13. Nook in the Brain
14. My Foot
15. Stroll and Roll

16. Trial
17. Pied Piper
18. Wake Up! X3
19. Rebroadcast
20. Horn Again
21. Moondust

22. OOPS (the poops)

Edit: added Rebroadcast

Ooparts in a tier of bad all its own in your heart. XD

lol i bet a few people would agree. can't argue it has the GOAT album art though. cowboy sofa racer hell.

kinda tempted to put TYMT as #2 just because it's such an original album for them and it's got that harsh noise. PML-HB had such obvious influences.

I'm pretty surprised to see Thank you, my twilight in a top 5. It's a good album, but there are a few tracks on it that prevent it from ranking that highly on my nonexistent "top list". Also, I agree with Last Dinosaur that PML-HB had some obvious influences, but TYMT is totally Smash Mouth.

Admittedly, TYMT's draw is largely nostalgic to me (the first I imported a physical copy of), but the title song is definitely on my top 10 list, and Robotman is one of my GOATs

I truly think TYMT was an amazing album, top to bottom. I suppose I can hear a little Smash Mouth influence on the record, but what I like about it is that Sawao and the band experimented a little bit here. They experimented with some more electronic sounds in a way they never had done before, and really, never have since, outside maybe Tokyo Bambi. Even the bottom track on the album (for me at least), My Beautiful Sun, has a great melody and does some interesting things with the instrumentation that haven't really been duplicated. The title track and Rain Brain incorporate minimal electronic elements very well. And then you got songs like Shiroi Natsu to... and Winona which are absolutely beautiful, the former being an overall top 10 song for me. I feel many of us can't help but to put it in the top 5!

I'd like to see the pillows try something similar to what they did with this album; experiment a little bit out of their comfort zone while still retaining their signature sound. We'll just have to wait and see.

I do find it interesting though that of the people who've posted so far, OOPARTS has been at the bottom for all.

Although I have to agree with Last Dinosaur that it has some of the greatest album art ever!

Ooparts is really more of an abortion (crass, sorry) more than anything. I'm not sure why it's considered a studio album when it's more of a "lost tracks and rarities compilation" that no one wanted or deserved.

I jest...

[quote="MyFoot"]Ooparts is really more of an abortion (crass, sorry) more than anything. I'm not sure why it's considered a studio album when it's more of a "lost tracks and rarities compilation" that no one wanted or deserved.

I jest...[/quote]
No it isn't. "[b]O[/b]ut [b]o[/b]f [b]p[/b]lace [b]art[/b]ifact[b]s[/b]" is simply just a title. It's a regular studio album just like the other 21.

You mean "My Foot" isn't literally a clone of Sawao's appendage??

I dunno, while Ooparts is in the bottom tier for me, I'd personally put Horn Again and Trial as actual rock bottom. And honestly, I can't decide which of them I'd rank below each other.

I have distinct memories of Trial being completely bland and unmemorable (like, to the point where I cannot remember any single song off of that album except for the first track spelling out some English word or phrase that has too many letters). Like, "oh god here we go with this shit again" is the memory I associate with Trial. On the other hand, while I have very specific fond memories of Movement (and, to some extent, Nobody Knows What Blooms), I completely forgot that Horn Again was even an [i]album[/i]. I mean, while I feel a little bad for saying this, I can't really think of a worse insult towards an album than "well it's so unmemorable that I literally forgot it even existed...."

Of course, I acknowledge the standard disclaimer ("yeah? well, that's just, like, your opinion man"). And, as less of a cop-out, it's possible that my salty, dismissive opinion of Trial just comes from weariness and emotional fatigue (consider: it's chronologically the last album released under Avex, after a string of albums that included the widely-reviled Ooparts...). Nevertheless, that's how I feel about recent pillows work. (With the exception of Stroll and Roll! Despite the title, stock photo, and impact font, I really legitimately enjoyed the music on that album: a breath of fresh air at long last!)

Now, I'm not going to even attempt a complete "ranking" until I've listened to Nook (and, to be completely honest, I'm not sure if I even want to construct such a ranking at all). That being said, here are my instant gotos as a pillows fan (i.e. my "god tier" you could say). Note: these are in no particular order!

- Happy Bivouac
- Please Mr. Lostman
- Living Field
- My Foot

(Not sure if these count, since they're an EP and a compilation of singles/B-sides, but these are also in my "god tier":)
- 90's My Life
- Disc 1 of Another Morning, Another Pillows

(And of course, this doesn't account for singles such as Tiny Boat, which might just possibly be my favorite pillows song of all time.)

EDIT: Wait, shit, okay I guess Moondust has to win the prize as the absolute "bottom pillows album" for me. Not only did I completely forget it existed until just now, I have absolutely no memory of any song off of Moondust; nor do I have any recollection of what it sounded like. I just sort of remember, "oh yeah, I guess I gave it a complete listen-through once... I guess it was just more same old, same old? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" So there you have it, folks.