The last new music you heard that left you stunned?

ELO's Time album. One of my favorite bands since I was 12 years old, but after Discovery happened, I gave up on their"newer" stuff. So it wasn't until about 18 months ago I listened to Time. And it kinda blew me away. I've also come to appreciate Discovery in recent years, though not to the same degree.

 

The drums on the new Mastadon album are pretty stunning.

Father John Misty opening his single with the line 'Bedding Taylor Swift, every night inside the Oculus Rift' had me stunned, too.

 

Amy Winehouse's Back To Black was the last thing to actually stun me. I couldn't believe how great that record was.

 

I don't know about stunned, but I really liked The Arctic Monekys' album AM. Come to think of it, Blackstar is probably my best answer, but I wanted to mention a newer artist as well.

 

The Mars Volta. There's been "good albums" by others more recently. But nothing mind melting to me. Mostly into "oldies" anyways.

 

Leonard Cohen / You Want It Darker.

 

The Aristocrats Tres Caballeros

 

Completely agree. I've listened to a lot of great music since , but Back to black was the last time an album got me speechless

 

for truly stunned, I'd have to vote this

 

2001

 

My favorite album from last year: Day Breaks by Norah Jones. Nothing prepared me for what a sensational album that is. The best thing Norah has ever recorded and so, so beautiful.

In terms of new to me music, I have fallen in love with Frank Sinatra this year thanks to Bob Dylan and a friend of mine from work who is a big fan. Frank has been consistently stunning me.

 

Way Out West by Marty Stuart. Just blew me away. Easily one of my top 25 albums from this century.

 

New music? Maybe the last one was Amy Grant's "Melancholy Christmas" from her 2016 holiday album Tennessee Christmas. I had heard about the song before I heard it, and I wasn't expecting it to move me as much as it did when I listened to it.



For a non-Christmas song, perhaps "Free" by Broods. This was the first song I ever heard by them, and I still stop everything and listen when it comes on.

Broods - Free

And in the "older, but new to me" category: I heard "'74-'75" by the Connells for the first time in early 2016, not knowing it was more than 20 years old and was popular enough in England to appear on a Now That's What I Call Music! CD over there. It immediately made it onto a new volume of my CD-R series A Few of My Favorite Things.

The Connells - '74-'75

 

There's still lots of good music being produced, but it takes a lot to "stun" me. I've been collecting music for more than 50 years! But if I had to name a real stunner to me, the most recent one probably was in 2007 when I happened to turn on the TV to "Live From Abbey Road" and The Killers were on. I knew them from "Mr. Brightside," but I wasn't prepared for their newer material, especially "Human," performed with a full string section. Absolutely breathtaking! I turned to my wife and said, "I didn't think anybody made music like that anymore."

Unfortunately, video of the performance is no longer on YouTube, but here's the audio. Sadly, you don't get the full impact.

 

Especially Me & Magdalena and Birth of an Accidental Hipster

 

Stunned isn't the word. Perplexed maybe?

 

Well, you could probably say that same thing about most of the selections in this thread, mine included, music appreciation is a very personal thing.

 

The most recent time I can recall being stunned by something new was Radiohead's "Paranoid Android". Jeez, that's 1997.

 

I might say Aurora's All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend, or Late Night Alumni's Eclipse. Or Imogen Heap's Ellipse. Above & Beyond's Acoustic, as well. Agnes Obel's Philharmonics...but I haven't heard it in order yet - I do have Aventine, and that's the stuff. AO Music's ...and Love Rages On! was a really cohesive statement of world music and percussive joy. Beck's Morning Phase was awesome, and it wasn't even Sea Change. Have I mentioned Bobby McFerrin's Vocabularies? No, because I haven't gotten that far down the alphabet yet.

The great thing about running your own internet radio station is, you're constantly on the hunt for new directions to take your audience. The great thing about having to shut your station down when the royalties become astronomic, is you finally have time to go through all those albums and absorb them as a whole, rather than track-versus-track.

And you should see my Yet-To-Listen stack(s)!

 

Stunned? Hmmm....

- Arctic Monkeys - AM
- Between the Buried & Me - Coma Ecliptic
- Anything by John Zorn's Dreamers ensemble
- Marc Ribot - Asmodeus - Book of Angels, Vol. 07
- Pat Metheny - Tap - Book of Angels, Vol. 20
- Radiohead - A Moon-Shaped Pool
- Faith No More - Sol Invictus
- Opeth's last two albums

 

Maybe not "stunned", but the last new music to really grab me was the album Ruination, released this year by the oddly-punctuated Finnish band Kairon; IRSE!. They have what might be called a uniquely progressive kind of sound that varies between a King Crimson/Gentle Giant-informed approach on the longer numbers to a very MBV-influenced sort of shoegazey rock on the shorter ones. Here's the track full of heavy ethereal fuzz that first got my attention.

 

That is a long time ago. I do actually remember being stunned seeing the video on MTV at the time. I'd pretty much given up on mass media coverage of modern rock music at the at that time, nothing I really cared that much for, but was at a friend's house, and watching TV, and there it was. Remember when they did The National Anthem from Kid A on SNL a few years later? That was a pretty stunning performance!