Yeah, Chance's music is very particular to a certain era in rap -- I would call it the "festival" era of rap between 2011-2016 -- and it just doesn't translate well into today's culture. Someone half his age could make this video on TikTok as well.
Every release week since the year began has felt like a paradox of choice where I find it hard giving all the music I want to listen to proper attention before there's another large helping in 7 days.
That IAN SWEET album is one I have been meaning to get around to listening to its singles, and always get distracted.
The mystery of Clark Huge continues. In the last video, he had tattoos on his rib cage and upper thigh, but here, he's got no ink. He's also in "show shape" here, though, so maybe he's used tanning spray and cover up.
Whatever the case, I still have no clue which members are real and which are merely stand-in actors.
Coloring Book ranked pretty high on a lot of people's year-end lists, and I remember in that moment, he was the hottest rapper out there. It was also released midway through 2016, though, when we are all so oblivious about Trump, and I think right after he got elected, it sorta felt like that feel good world Chance painted (not to get all pun-ny) just wasn't a reality, and since then, nobody's been up for his playful, PG-rated rhymes.
I friend of mine's brother worked as a talent rep for a music agency, and their team was trying to do some work with Chance, so he flew halfway across the country to meet Pat for a meeting. Pat had no interest in talking about anything related to Chance, though, and tried to sell him on other talent he was representing. Needless to say nothing came out of it, and the guy went home feeling misled by Pat and his agency being very disappointed. Seems to line up with some of the things Chance's team alleges with Pat using Chance's name to further his own gain.
That's very cringe, but not surprising. Maybe it's because Thurston Moore used to count himself as a local, but there's definitely a vibe of aging indie/noise rock musician men going after younger college age women in the Western Mass scene. Even before the pandemic, all the venues in Northampton were going down the shitter because the guy who owns them is one of those kinds of guys.
Yikes about Murph. Whenever doing some errands in the Amherst/Hadley area, there's usually a 50/50 shot of running into J in some form for some reason.
I can officially stop holding it in about how very good this album is. It's probably my favorite since Farm. I didn't realize Kurt Vile was behind it, though, when the label accidentally leaked it on Soundcloud back in January.
I enjoyed her early albums, The Blade was perfect in its balance of country traditionalism and countrypolitan. Sparrow was okay, but a little too bluesy for me. This one doesn't do much for me. There's too much LDR cosplay in it.
That's good of them. I take it the next phase of band break-ups is similar to couples who break-up, but continue having sex together, except it's making music together with no commitment to being a proper band.
I respect anyone's decision to listen to an album on its official release date, but I would stop short of saying that leaks do anything to harm an album upon its release. There was some discussion about this on Twitter some months ago among some more successful indie musicians and many said that leaks actually helped boost physical album sales. Nowadays, most albums don't leak until a few days before its release, if at all, and therefore, most listeners just end up collectively streaming it for free on Spotify or Apple Music, and then don't bother to purchase it.
I enjoy leaks because they provide me an informed decision to purchase an album before its release without all of the outside interference from big publication's reviews or advanced features on it where the writer's have clearly already heard it, but we as listeners get it dangled over our heads with a release date. I won't try to decipher my own psychology behind why it feels better, but there's something more gratifying about hearing an album before its release date prior to all of the coverage pouring in on at the same time, which these days has a way of sculpting public perception heavily. If I like it, I will likely pre-order it, and having it in my hands the day of or shortly after has an element of "newness" to it rather than streaming the album on its release, then waiting another two-three weeks for the physical copy to arrive in my hands -- which at that point, I've already moved onto that week's new releases. My purchase habits have definitely decreased in the age of streaming.
It's actually kind of a funny story and I am surprised it hasn't gotten more traction, but since enough information is out there on the Internet on forums, sites like Album of the Year, and Rate Your Music if you Google it, I will tell it.
Back in early January, their label accidentally posted the album up on Soundcloud in a playlist. It obviously was not meant to be public, but by the time they realized that, it was up long enough for it to leak.
https://soundcloud.com/jagjaguwar/sets/dinosaur-jr-sweep-it-into-space?fbclid=IwAR0cD-ZYiMeBFx0680qvLDCTKQUqQFheZ9tXdOw_GPyJa0rNcMzTTidnauMjaguwar
I'm not sure why they haven't just announced it already, unless the leak is forcing them or the band to change plans. If you ask me, it really made me miss the days when leaks like this would happen fairly regularly well in advance of an album's release date.
I probably should not be saying this out loud publicly, but I've really been enjoying the new Dinosaur Jr. album and think it's their best since Farm (although, it's not loud like Farm was.)
I'm not hating on her success or anything, but looking over all of the subjects being covered here atop of the mentions to doctor-guided mushroom trips and her own personal/spiritual growth since the huge success of 'Golden Hour', it reminds me a conversation a friend and I had about how having the resources of money and time (especially when you're a conventionally attractive person) gives you so much more freedom to explore relationship dynamics and sex on a much greater scale beyond the traditional monogamous marriage. I'm not sure what those potential three acts of the new album will entail, but mentally I'm preparing fo a polyamorous cowboy disco orgy jam in there somewhere.
Man, you would think people people getting so upset and defensive about what is and what is not emo would have stopped when we went through this drill the last five or six times when late '90s emo listeners were saying My Chemical Romance wasn't emo, or when all of the music sites decided to start covering emo bands again like Foxing, the Hotelier, and TWIABP in 2013/2014, but all those bands wanted to be called "indie rock" instead. It's fucking exhausting.
I don't think anyone is saying Phoebe Bridgers is explicitly emo or that Soccer Mommy is explicitly emo (I wouldn't lump Lana, the Weather Station, Sharon Van Etten, or Natalie Prass anywhere near that,) but what we are saying is that people who listen to fifth or sixth wave emo probably listen to or will listen Phoebe Bridgers at some point because that particular sound of indie rock is an extension of it. Picture a Venn Diagram where on one side you have emo and on the other, you have bands like Bright Eyes, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker, and in the center are all of the people who listen to both.
I'm not sure if I trust any of Britney's boyfriends at this stage, even if they come out in defense of her and against her father. She's exponentially more successful and worth more than he ever will be, and her track record with guys has usually been men who want to benefit from that under the guise of caring about her.
I would disagree with all that's being said in not drawing parallels between emo and Bridgers. During my emo heyday of the early 200s, bands like Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley were gateway artists between your Saves the Day and Get Up Kids fandom that meant a lot to you in high school and becoming a more "mature" college age indie rock listener. There has always been a huge overlap in fans of emo and "emotional" indie rock. Artists like Julien Baker, Pinegrove (unfortunately), Soccer Mommy, and Snail Mail have the kind of devout cult followings that they do because at its core are emo listeners, and emo listeners are incredibly sincere in their fandom.
I'm not saying that these things take away from her talent, and in fact I believe the reason she so successful is because everything about her -- her sound, her social media presence, her image -- hits a lot of very commercially-friendly checkmarks. There definitely is a bias/backlash against her by other indie musicians who choose to write her off because of these things, though. It's a strange double standard where indie artists are okay with acclaim/financial success/celebrity, but only if it's happening to them.
MGMT was my initial reaction as well. The last song sounded a lot like Bloc Party. It's almost like they discovered their older siblings' 2000s indie record collection and went in on the influence hard.
The thing is that it's not just an "old man yells at cloud" thing, although the tweets that have been the easiest to drag are ones written by boomers and dads. A large number of indie artists who are of Bridgers' own generation invested a lot of energy shading her on social media for this as well, but that's a more salacious subject that these kind of sites won't get into revealing how Bridgers hasn't been very well liked by many independent artists because they believe she is 1) privileged 2) comes from a wealthy background that has enabled her to succeed and have a career that continues to financially benefit even during the pandemic and not touring and 3) gets a large amount of press coverage as well as acclaim they likely wish they got as well.
How sure are we that it's going to be an LP? Petals for Armor was released over the course of three EPs, and not that I would be disappointed to hear a new EP, but a full album is slightly more exciting to think about.
It sounds like there's a revival of early 2000s new wave, dance punk and Brit rock lately (which was already a revival of other sounds in itself) that is resonating with younger audiences. The new Citizen album, for example, sounds like they were thrown into a blender with Bloc Party, Death from Above, and Arctic Monkeys.
Bartees is definitely a newer artist who would have benefited from playing his music live out on tour, but at the same time, the beginning of this year where we are typically hearing about SXSW made me wonder which new artists from 2020 may have actually come on stage as very green, underwhelming or had disastrous set that worked against them. And even as I write that, I must admit: I would kill to see a disastrous festival set right now!
I had bought tickets to Primavera Sound Los Angeles, which was slated to have its inaugural event in September 2020. I held onto my tickets for this year if by chance things somehow changed, but even if they do, I can't imagine that the LA version of the fest will kick off with so much competition from more established festivals (and I also don't feel at this very moment that September will be safe yet to hold gatherings of this size based on our current vaccination rollout.)
I don't get it, and I don't even think it's a case of me not being a target demo. It already sounds like a style that's been done to death, in a Rachel Platten/Echosmith way several years ago. Maybe it's the post-Billie Eilish factor at play. Contestants on The Voice will be auditioning to it forever now, regardless.
My bigger fear is that the next natural step from the right is going to be to intimidate, threaten, and attack members of the media for covering stories about "one of their own" in a negative light. I have seen Trump supporters tweeting out veiled threats against Mexican Summer and everything they do going forward, and these people are so unhinged that it just won't surprise me if it comes to the point where even a writer at Pitchfork or over here might attract very real, concerning threats that could turn into something far worse than just tweets from them.
Reading Trump supporter tweets on this has been one fucked up, sad, hilarious, bizarro thing. You've got these "patriot Christian moms" saying he seems like a nice man, feeling sorry for him, and how everyone should rally to support him, and it just goes to show you how that cult of people have absolutely no moral compass or idea what kind of person they are actually throwing their blind support behind. They just see it as anyone who supports Trump is a victim. Go ahead, have him. Take his destitute ass into your home and see how well that works out for you all.
A great subplot in all of the Eve 6/Stephen Jenkins tea was how Zach Lind from Jimmy Eat World went off even more about his own experiences with SJ.
https://twitter.com/zlind76/status/1340744477103702016?s=20
Zooey Deschanel really went from being the "it" hipster actress and having a relatively successful indie-pop music career to dating one of the Property Brothers, showing up in one of his TV shows, and starring in a late-era Katy Perry video. Yikes...
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