I listened to some of the song Mezzanine, and I don’t know the right word to call it, but it certainly fits this thread somehow. Thanks.
Yeah, not that song specifically, but the entire album works. I would start with “Angel” the first track. “Teardrop” is the most well-known song from that album (being the theme song of “House.”) I don’t think it’s quite as dark as the other songs, but despite that song not having a single minor chord in it, it’s still depressing (and chances are, besides, unless you read the lyrics, you won’t have any idea what Beth Fraser is singing, anyway.) I still remember the first time hearing that song and just stopping dead in my tracks and wanting to cry.
Definitely creepy. Probably depressing. Very high energy in parts, but feels slow in others. Yeah. Thank you.
*Superman *by the Crash Test Dummies.
Just about every single Death Cab for Cutie song.
That really feels like a lesson in how subjective music is without context (which the lyrics often provide). I would call that piece relaxing, or pretty or sweet. “Depressing” wouldn’t be in my top ten adjectives.
Likewise, I’m not familiar with Hello but I listened to a karaoke version without reading the lyrics and, while slow, I could just as easily imagine it with uplifting lyrics or as a straight love song rather than a love-lost song (which I assume it is).
Probably just me but I find Personal Jesus really upbeat and positive. Big and bouncy guitar riff and all that.
TCMF-2L
If Down In The Park was unfamiliar to you then perhaps you are also unfamiliar with one of my all time favourite songs Are ‘Friends’ Electric? again by Tubeway Army (Gary Numan). Not as musically sonorous as Down In The Park although lyrically pretty bleak in a Sci-Fi noir way. I love it.
TCMF-2L
I think the CowboyJunkies invented this genre. Blue Moon is one that springs to mind.
This pretty much describes the entire Nick Cave catalog.
Yeah, they’re good for that, though a lot of their stuff just falls into that kind of folky wimpy indie pop category. (“I Will Follow You Into The Dark” and “When Soul Meets Body”–two of their more well-known songs–don’t sound particularly depressing to me. Just, I dunno, “sensitive.”)
Xiu Xiu is another band that comes to mind, especially the album “A Promise,” but I don’t know if I’d describe the sound as depressing so much as an album that inhabits the sound of somebody going through a nervous breakdown. Listening to that album just puts me on edge.
Also The Cure.
Funny how two different people can hear such different things in the same song, huh? To me the atmospherics are all gloom-and-doomy. And contra Ambivalid, to me the melody of “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark” feels like a lullaby. Nobody’s right or wrong in any absolute sense.
“D.O.A.” by Bloodrock. Yes, the lyrics are depressing, but the music alone is searing, fittingly for a song about a man slowly dying after a plane crash.
Couldn’t do a link before, but here is D.O.A.
that’s pretty much new orders catalog … and a lot of the pet shop boys too…
Look on Down from the Bridge by Mazzy Star
Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton
“Yesterday”?
I don’t find Wicked Game to be slow and depressing, more like slow and sensual/alluring.
There are a number of very popular songs from the early alternative rock era that might qualify for the OP’s description:
Plush by the Stone Temple Pilots, especially the acoustic version which I actually used to hear on the radio quite a bit.
Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana is a slow crawl through rather grim musical territory, accentuated by the notorious Lydian tritone or “Devil’s Interval” that is a recurring motif in the song.
Creep by Radiohead might fit the bill.
Rooster by Alice In Chains.
I’m sure there are others if I sit and think on it for a moment.
Oh - Weezer’s Undone (The Sweater Song), though it builds up slowly to the thundering power-pop chorus, has numerous long stretches of rather morose guitar noodling (accompanied by spoken small-talk blather that the song’s narrator is bored by.)