eg the Pixies, and Frank Black and the Catholics (Frank Black basically i guess).
i have all the Pixies albums and most of Frank Black’s albums and i find it takes me afew listens to start to like all his songs because on first listen my brain doesnt lock into the music properly. and i think it’s cos he uses unusual chords/rhyths.
anyone else notice this, also are there any other bands who are like them?
King Crimson
Dream Theater
Radiohead are very keen on unusual chord progressions and time signatures.
Not really “like” Frank Black, but Lamb also use unusual rhythms. They play a muscular take on drum and bass, but on live instruments.
A great deal of Jazz is conerned with new time signatures and melodies, so if pure jazz is not your thing, there are plenty of Jazz inflected musicians out there. Frank Zappa, for instance.
Well, I’m an amateur guitarist who loves playing along to Frank Black more than any other artist, so I feel well qualified to answer this one :D.
Frank’s songs contain mostly major, minor and sevenths, i.e. straightforward chords, but…lots of them, and often in several different keys (good examples would be “The Hostess with the Mostest”, “Ten Percenter”), also some of his songs contain multiple melodies (“Freedom Rock”, “Los Angeles”, “Parry the wind, high low”), while other songs have relatively few chords, but have the soft verse/loud chorus that he practically invented (“Monkey gone to heaven”, “Caribou”, “If it takes all night”).
Basically he has more tricks in his songwriting bag than almost any other artist, and he uses them brilliantly, and so it often takes more than one listen to “hear” each trick.
(PS hope you caught him at the Liquid Rooms in August ;))
System of a Down used a lot of unusual chords and riffs on their first album.
Liz Phair, oddly enough, while not a “great” guitar player uses some interesting chord phrasings. Come to think of it, so does PJ Harvey. Belew and Fripp of course, as already mentioned.
Don’t know if this counts, but Keith Richards usually plays with a 5-string configuration (but, IIRC, it’s pretty straight forward - just missing the treble E).
Leo Kottke - but he plays in a lot of different tunings.
Messhugah use amazingly complex chord progressions and polyrhythmic time signatures. Check out their album Chaosphere.
shit man i missed them. did you go?
I once read a quote from members of some “alternative” band (may have been Jawbox) where they said something along the lines of, “We don’t know any chords. We just move our fingers around on the guitar neck until we find something that sounds cool.”
I still can’t decide if that’s pure genius or pure stupidity. 
Don’t forget Steely Dan. When I was in high school, my best friend and I got ahold of some tablature for their stuff and tried to play the chords. Man! For some of those, your fingers would have to be freakin’ huge!
Steve Tibbetts. Imagine a Ravi Shankar/Jimi Hendrix love child. Truly mind-boggling stuff.
Yes, he was awesome. Seemed to be really enjoying himself. Played all but one track from “Dog in the Sand”, a few old Pixies numbers, and did a brilliant over-the-top version of “The Band Played 666” with power-chords instead of the jokey country-style guitar.
It’s an open G tuning. The bottom (bass) E is taken off and the A and top E strings are tuned a whole note down. He likes it because, to paraphrase his words, “It only takes five strings, two fingers and one asshole.”
The chords are usually triads, so I wouldn’t personally call them unusual. All the same, they sound nice, and the tuning helps you get away from the basic chords in that it’s easy to run bass notes or add notes.
KoRn get some interesting sounds out of their seven string guitars.
Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!
~Wrap yourself in black…Listen to the Cure… -Better Than Ezra
Depends on what you exactly mean by “unusual chords.” As Jinty stated Frank Black, the Pixies, et al aren’t terribly unusual in their chord choice…just the way they put it all together. Judging by the bands you’ve mentioned, I’m pretty sure Sonic Youth would fit the bill. You can also check out Steve Albini’s band Shellac for some aural weirdness (lotssss of dissonance, and odd rhythms.)
This, of course, does not translate into it being good music. I saw Messhugah open for Tool; it was unlistenable. Different time signatures ever measure, no theme was ever developed. It’s like listening to a really really loud and Swedish computer try to generate music.
I think Hendrix deserves some credit for bringing the very jazzy and outside 7#9 (think Foxy Lady, or Purple Haze) into the rock music lexicon.
I seem to recall Jim Croce using odd-sounding chords. Take the last chord on “Time in a Bottle” for example.
I’ll second shellac and throw in Black Flag, especially the Greg Ginn jams from Family Man.The pups are doggin’ it!
>>Different time signatures ever measure, no theme was ever developed. It’s like listening to a really really loud and Swedish computer try to generate music.
The Red Menace, well they don’t call it “Math Metal” for nothing. I think its great that a band like Tool brought them out for part of the tour. Obviously their music isnt for everyone but Rolling Stone magazine gave them good reviews (not that I bother with RS, but at least someone else agrees that there is value to their music). Anyhow, I still think it is the best example of “bands who use unusual cords”. Rock on !