Comments

I appreciate your dedication to the motherfucking craft...but I don't hear it. To me her stuff sounds like a middling hit you'd hear on the radio in 1999 and her heralded lyrical profundity is suspect. But hey, that's just one guy's opinion!

These comments are the exact reason I'm so perplexed by Taylor Swift's critical approval. This song is totally fine MOR radio stuff. It does not "slap," it is not innovative, it's mildly catchy but not super interesting. And yet, like everything else she does, people get swept away by it. Granted this is a b-side written by a very young person, but that's how I feel about pretty much every TS song I hear. I just don't get it - the critical/indie love that is. I get why young people/radio people love it.

This sounds cool, I'll definitely be checking it out. Musically semi-relevant, CoS shared this new track by Mdou Moctar that absolutely rages... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6CUSa_laj4 Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to the new Flock of Dimes album, which has really been blowing me away. I think it's up there with Civilian as some of the best work Wasner has been a part of, and it's not really getting a ton of appreciation around here. Even though the production/songs can come across as mildly MoR, I found that sitting with the album as a whole is pretty damn moving.

"Stream 645AR’s New Avant-Garde Squeak-Rap EP Most Hated" Lol what.

Yep, MMJ, Tame Impala, Jason Isbell, Goose, Phoebe, King Giz, Yaeji, Uncle Acid & Pinegrove in a single day is alllmost enough to get me there. Those first 4 specifically - that's a pretty face-melting lineup for a festival Saturday.

Generally meh, underwhelming headliners overall, BUT 9/4 is my bday and also the best day of the fest...not that I can afford to go, but still, that's the day right there.

"Call Me a Fool" is a gorgeous song.

I haven't checked that one out so thanks for the heads up.

1) For Those I Love S/T 2) Shame, Drunk Tank Pink 3) Nick Cave, Carnage 4) The Staves, Good Woman 5) Black Country, New Road, For The First Time That's a lot of British/Irish going on there! And by a lot, I mean all of it. It's all British/Irish. Oh well, step it up America!

Hey, can't win 'em all!

Definitely - he mentions Mount Kimbie in one of the songs. I also love the reference to The Streets when he says something like "we can't just turn the page" and then says "they're sensing what I say" in Mike Skinner's exact tone and cadence. Awesome stuff.

I listened on a sunny Friday afternoon alone and then again with my wife on a rainy Sunday evening drive and I'm happy to report that it was great for both settings. A subtle but beautiful album.

I prefer this new iteration of prog-psych-jam Ryley, so I'm excited for this. On a different note, I mentioned it in a buried thread in SUD but I have to do another push for an album that's gotten no coverage around here and little coverage elsewhere that is currently my #1 AOTY (and will likely stay in the top 3) and contains two of the best songs I've heard in YEARS folks. It's the debut by an Irish producer called For Those I Love, and bear with me while I make comparisons because what I say may not sound like your thing, but give the track below a listen all the way through and try to not be blown away. The music is an Irish version of The Streets mixed with Orbital's song from Trainspotting and a little Caribou. Even though the album is about the artists' best friend's suicide, it somehow manages to be as uplifting as it is crushing. It's a gorgeous album, one of the best debuts I've heard in a long, long time, and I think a lot of people around here should hear it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFer0PFTbRE

Definitely. I only checked it out because I saw the positive reviews on Metacritic and two songs in I was like "well this is extremely my shit."

More concerned that NO ONE around here is talking about what will likely by in my top 3 AOTY list, if not the #1 spot, which came out this week: For Those I Love. It's like an Irish version of The Streets mixed with the Trainspotting soundtrack and a little Caribou. A stunning album about losing his best friend to suicide, and track 6 might just be one of the best songs I've heard in YEARS. I implore you all to check it out... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFer0PFTbRE

As someone who's never heard the entirety of a LNX song, I can still agree with everyone here that this song is, in fact, pretty fucking great.

Wow, and here I was just thinking to myself "man, if you liked Familiars you're going to LOVE this gorgeous album."

Ummm...that's a 10-year old.

Well this is exciting!

Well, I mean, who doesn't love bibimbap?? https://media2.giphy.com/media/SLspYPVNCYvTi/200.gif

I would definitely write for your blog, but I have to be honest with you, I made all of these up. As much as I'd love to hear what "boom-bap-meets-bibimbap" sounds like, it's probably not a thing. At least not a music thing? A food thing? Fuck yeah bibimbap.

I got you, itdok: • Xiu Xiu’s jittery, bombastic OH NO. • The Antlers’ shimmering return to form Green To Gold. • Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, & the London Symphony Orchestra’s triumphant Promises. • Armand Hammer & the Alchemist’s hard-as-hell HARAM. • Tune-Yards’ skittering, playful sketchy. • Lost Girls (Jenny Hval & Håvard Volden)’s abrasive experiment, Menneskekollektivet. • Tomahawk’s plodding Tonic Immobility. • Death From Above 1979’s raucous, loud comeback Is 4 Lovers. • Esther Rose’s quietly devastating How Many Times. • Genghis Tron’s electro-rap odyssey Dream Weapon. • Citizen’s Life tempestuous In Your Glass World. • Civic’s forward-thinking carnival music, Future Forecasts. • Clark’s ambitious but faltering Playground In A Lake. • Noga Erez’s tiny baby-voiced anthem KIDS. • Young Dolph & Key Glock’s wistful, sit-back-and-listen-on-a-cool-summer's-eve Dum & Dummer 2. • Rod Wave’s soulful, fly SoulFly. • Floatie’s spacey, Kidz Bop-indebted Voyage Out. • Anna Fox Rochinsky’s boom-bap-meets-bibimbap dreamscape, Cherry. • Kali Masi’s deadly serious [laughs]. • MJ Lenderman’s ode to Slenderman, Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo. • Carrie Underwood’s scorched-earth turn to metal, My Savior. • Evanescence’s ironically titled The Bitter Truth. • Jagjaguwar’s bonerjam 25th anniversary compilation Dilate Your Heart. • Joe Strummer’s weirdly apolitical best-of compilation Assembly. • First Aid Kit’s perplexing (yet arousing) live Leonard Cohen tribute album Who By Fire. • Tame Impala’s unnecessary InnerSpeaker 10th anniversary box set. • Real Estate’s sun-soaked, lilting, pleasant, graceful, playful, terry-cloth-covered Half A Human EP.

Surprised to not see The Antlers in this spot, so I'm hoping this means we're getting a PE and this isn't just a passive stance on its quality. I've never familiarized myself with serpentwithfeet, will definitely have to fix that. Still searching for the first album of the year to truly blow me away. The closest I've gotten has been Shame, which I think is a controversial take around here? I don't know, that album rules pretty hard.

I personally went out and bought 100 MR. Potato Heads and 100 copies of Hop on Pop. I will not be censored.

I remember seeing a 200-300% number at some point, but it definitely depends on the timeframe and source you're looking at. Either way, here are some numbers from two wildly different sources... "...Wallen’s fans appeared to want to send a different message. Sales of Dangerous: The Double Album tripled in the days after the TMZ video was posted." https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/02/morgan-wallen/618137/ "Billboard reports that his latest album sold 25,000 copies during the week ending Feb. 4, an increase of 102%, according to MRC Data." https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/morgan-wallens-album-sales-increase-racial-slur-controversy

I mean, you're not way off base.

You should stop listening to shitty music made by shitty people.

Yea I have a much younger brother (13 years younger) - who was trying to be a rap producer for a long period of time and works on car mods - and I can tell you this isn't true. If anything, that generation is more aware of language like this.

There's no way that's true. Maybe it is with your shitty friends, but maybe you should find new friends who aren't assholes.

Um, his album sales increased by something like 300% the week this controversy happened. So you're either saying that was a wild coincidence, or his fans (and probably a not-insignificant group of non-fans) participated in a collective act of "anti-cancel culture" activism which also, not coincidentally, looks like pro-racist activism. Hmmmm...

Fun fact - I told a racist to go fuck himself loudly in a local market this weekend. It sucks that this asshole is getting rich off of his shittiness, but the more these morons (his fans) continue to feel comfortable pulling their heads out of their creamy white asses and showing their true selves to the world, the more we get to shame them in public until they recede again into their smelly little glory holes. That's a win!

Nah Crah Brah

Definitely not the only one. The problem is that when someone like me comes along and says "I don't like her music and I don't like her whole schtick" people think I'm saying I think she's a bad person. Nope. I think her music is boring, her writing is faux-intellectual and her "act" is kind of annoying, but I have no reason to think she's a bad person or anything. On the contrary, she seems well-liked personally by a lot of artists I respect, and I wish I could get into her music more.

Agreed - though I'd argue that's worked out much more in her favor than against.

OK wait definitely not "nothing else" since the queens SvE, Angel Olsen and Brittany Howard are there, in addition to Bartees, Lord Huron, Khruangbin and Nap Eyes, but still too much filler and weird choices to justify an expensive ticket, plane ticket and weekend stay in notoriously affordable San Francisco.

That was my first thought - like, "oh shit, a real life music fest in Sunny CA on Halloween? Should I splurge and just go?" And then I realized that I was into maybe 5 of the bigger names and nothing else, and my question was whether I was out of touch or if the line up sucked. Still can't tell, but it reminds me of... https://media2.giphy.com/media/V9gjxvLnSSdA4/giphy.gif

Well obviously I'm going to listen to a song called "I Suck the Devil's Dick." That said, I really struggle with this "anti-genre" genre of music (ex: 100 Gecs) of which this kind of reminds me. I know this is where music is headed, and 22 year old Hartford would have been all about it, but mid-30s Hartford wants a more consistent commitment to the melody. Abrasiveness doesn't bother me, but sometimes it feels like they're trying to shove 1000 ideas into one song, and that usually doesn't work for these ears. Anyways, I'll probably come around and deny I ever said this - or I'll get older and more close-minded and will only listen to 90s rock radio or something. TBD!

I honestly don't know what they were related to.

See above for a case in point!

See? This is exactly what I was referring to below. My point was about being interested in hearing the SG community's thoughts on how the new album compares to their beloved Norman Fucking Rockwell! because I am anticipating some sort of backlash to the backlash to the backlash. None of it has anything to do with putting down anyone else's subjective tastes, I just think the "genius" moniker is being thrown around pretty loosely. Also not relevant to anything I said is me having a dick and her not having a dick - on the contrary, I find the fact that the discourse around LDR always gets pulled into her appearance super shitty and annoying because I'm only ever referring to either her music (which I don't particularly care for) or what I call her "schtick," (which I also don't particularly care for). But sure, make it about men hating women again, if you want. Also, note that my comment under that first paragraph was about New Pagans and Harmony Woods - both female fronted bands - being very good. Not that that makes me some sort of hero for feminism, but if you're basing your entire post on the two comments above, it certainly disproves your point since I don't mention any bands that are "men with guitars." As far as you know I hate bands fronted by dudes with guitar.