Wonder if there are any other fans here?
He's a polarizing artist. I think the commonest accusation is that he's boring. He's not, I think. He had a boring phase after Play when everyone knew him and his music, and therefore he was thought of as boring. But before that he made genuinely interesting 90s dance music and flirted with heavy metal.
There is something off about him that I acknowledge. He over hypes his experiences somehow which makes him seem like a fake I guess. He seems sometimes to hang off more genuine stars like David Bowie, David Lynch, Lou Reed etc. And he had that stupid thing with Natalie Portman.
And despite that he made brilliant music in the 90s before anyone knew him, and before he knew anyone. He became a true star in '95 with Everything Is Wrong and gave it up to tour Europe in a tiny van and play in empty small clubs because he wanted to make rock music instead of dance music. Then he made Play.
Idk, a strange person. I like most of his music, love some of it esp the 90s stuff. I also saw him in 2001 at a festival he was trying to mount called area:1. I think Roots played. It was a brilliant day. He came on last of course. Someone fired a message on stage asking if they could come up there. He read it out and said something along the lines of "yeah, that'd be great, I'd actually love if you could come up here, but unfortunately I probably wouldn't be allowed..." and he blabbed on for a little and then stopped and said "you know what, you can't come up here but I can go down there" and he ran and leaped off the stage into this huge crowd. Security were clearly caught off guard and freaked out. They had to wade into the crowd and rescue this little creature being held aloft. He went back up on stage to massive, massive cheers. The two people I was with knew nothing of him before the gig and were stone cold fans after.
Here's one of my favorite early 90s dance club songs Besame:
Here's grungy That's When I Reach For My Revolver:
And this is just beautiful and spacey, Hymn: