i can't take seriously the part in "Idoru" when she sings "you're so cool because you don't think you're cool" because this fucking guy:
[insert pic of elon smoking a blunt. you know the one.]
definitely thinks he's extremely cool.
J Mascis needs to be in this conversation. maybe "Out There" or "I Don't Wanna Go There" for classic shredding, or "Sludgefeast" for something gnarlier.
i can be convinced to hold my nose and vote for Biden but never in a million years will i vote for a billionaire. if Bloomberg is the nominee fuck it, let the world burn.
fans of avant-garde weirdo metal should definitely check out the new Thy Catafalque. i'm not even sure it's fair to call it a "metal" record overall though. there's black metal in there yes, but also lots of Hungarian folk music, prog, funk, disco, trance, jazz, and synthwave. it's quite a stew. harsh vocals only pop up a couple times, so if you're not a fan of extreme metal vocals but you do like adventurous, progressive rock music you would still probably find a lot to enjoy here.
i love the patterns that start to emerge after you follow the weekend playlist for a while
apache can always be counted on for some tasty garage rock
bsb always posts some breezy indie rock that sounds straight out of 2009
meat always posts something nasty and heavy
bookworms always posts something soaring and epic
lobster man doesn't care if that doom metal song is 20 minutes long, he's going to post it
qeeroh may or may not be trolling
bloc and ybb have time to post on every single article ever written on Stereogum, but never contribute to the playlist
the new Kvelertak is the most fun i've had with a metal album in a while. other than that, nothing has really caught my ear this year yet. fans of atmospheric black metal might dig Vengeful Spectre, a very solid atmoblack album with some Chinese folk elements. and somehow i missed the new Thy Catafalque album, i'll have to rectify that immediately.
Nowhere did come first, but i think it's fair to say that most people's introduction to shoegaze was Loveless (and obviously the early MBV EPs predate them all)
this was actually my first Pumpkins album (in fact, i think i still owe a copy to the public library where i grew up, because i never returned it) so i've always had a soft spot for it. "Age of Innocence" is still my all time favorite Pumpkins song.
also want to shout out "Real Love" from Machina II. now that's how you drown a song in distortion!
don't feed the trolls, y'all. downvote negativity and move on.
Phoebe is great. her voice has an otherworldly, faraway-gaze quality and her lyrics have a poetic specificity that separates her from similar sad-girl indie artists. i have a very similar skeleton onesie. very cozy, mildly spooky. kinda like her songs.
"Hypnotize" isn't about creeping on an underage girl. the lyrics might be vulgar, but none of it reads as non-consensual. it's also understood that BIG is playing a mafioso character and doesn't literally have someone tied up in a basement.
nothing has really wowed me yet this year besides the Frances Quinlan album but i'm a known Hop Along fanboi so that's to be expected. otherwise i've been listening mostly to black metal and Donna Summer.
Rap Tom is great too, i love his eagerness to engage with types of hip-hop that most indie-leaning critics (and most of the commenters here) would either scoff at or ignore completely
it's fuckin wild how quickly they shifted from being ironic and obscure in their own writing to spreading dumb ass takes like "irony is bad, Grimes should be more clear about her intentions" like the cognitive dissonance there is truly spectacular.
i get the feeling that ZJ believes artists should always speak sincerely, whereas Grimes is all about playing ironic characters, so i don't even think they disagreed as much as they were talking past each other.
that makes a lot of sense, the namesake of the song "Idoru" is a William Gibson novel about a rock star who marries an AI pop star. it's almost too on-the-nose for Grimes.
any chance of new music from YYYs? i know nobody cared about Mosquito but some of the other stuff Karen O has done in the meantime has been really good!
also great to see Hop Along get some festival placement, hopefully it gets them some new fans. everyone i know who has seen them live without knowing them beforehand, came away with their mind blown and a new favorite band.
i saw Thrice and Mewithoutyou last weekend and now i'm on my way to see some friends play in a battle of the bands thing. it's been a very high school week for me.
oh also i've been looking at wedding DJs and all DJ profiles sound the same? what does it mean if a DJ is influenced by Stevie Wonder and Beyonce but also Aphex Twin? any of the wife guys got any advice?
oh uh yeah i definitely agree that it has nothing to do with women's biology and everything to do with dudes being exclusionary. just saying i get why a hypothetical woman might feel excluded and be like nah, i don't want to submit my top 50 albums or whatever to some pitchfork thing.
i dunno man, given how aggro some dudes are about their musical opinion and explaining to women why they are wrong in general, i can understand why a woman would have either self-esteem issues about expressing her own opinion or just feel like sharing her opinion on music isn't worthwhile. you think it's just a weird coincidence that more women don't post here? i mean that whole Tumblr post is basically an expanded version of this meme:
https://i.ibb.co/P6KKGS2/boredgirl.png
that person didn't say that ranking stuff is chauvinistic and sexist, she said herself that she likes to rank things and her list had 70 albums on it. here's the rest of the quote:
"Honestly I think it takes some things to have the energy to make one of those: a) some degree of narcissism to assume that literally anyone cares what albums you like b) enough self esteem to believe your choices are correct or to not care if people disagree with you or think less of you because of which albums you like c) the fastidious patience to actually complete a task that is based mainly in narcissism.
I have some of these things, and there are many women who also have these things, but I would say in general that men are more apt to have all of them."
i think that's a reasonable assessment!
yeah i totally understand the "i hate talking about music (or movies, or video games, or comics, or...) with men" mentality because that is basically my fiancee to a T. i still catch myself sometimes, going off about some shit that i know she doesn't care about. the other day i almost started talking about the difference between black metal and blackened death metal. it's like it's in our nature to be insufferable.
Triplets of Belleville is awesome, check out The Illusionist (not the Edward Norton movie) too. i love watching the Oscar nominated animated shorts every year too. World of Tomorrow was a great one.
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