i am now hard at work at part two. while part one was very difficult, this one is turning out to be more compact, better written, and the plot is actually turning out to be exciting rather then a difficult tedious puzzle.
anyway, since i enjoyed writing about music my last post, i am just going to start randomly posting videos on here of new bands i find or favorites.
i just found out about this band today. they are called real estate and they are a very easy, breezy, mellowed out band with pretty shiny guitars and lo-fi vocals. good job real estate!
holy fucking shit, how did husker du exist and i not know about them? my indie cred shriveled to nothing. this song has great lyrics and it is a great punk song. i can see how people say indie rock was kind of born around the time of husker du. i mean, they influenced the pixies and rem. anyway i dont know anything aboout fucking anything but i love this song.
as anyone who has been in a car with me or just been anywhere close to me knows i am on a major sleater kinney kick. i always loved them dearly, but after i wrote that piece about corin tucker, where i listened to like 4 hours worth of their music, i am all bjork-fan-who-killed-himselfing out about it. which means i am in love with them. this song sounds amazing live, and shit, that drummer can play those sticks.
and this is just one of my favorites. too much can be said about the national. so just click it. good job national!
just found out about these guy as well. i guess they have been around for 500 years and everyone covers their songs and it turns out that they are pretty good. here ya go. yo la tengo.
i am staring to see that a little bit of a shoegazer trend going on in my tastes. well i better post this just to be safe, so i dont look like a sissy man girlie ass little girl, here is some real bad ass shit:
enjoy with your friends!
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
orginal voices in music
i am going to now write about of some of my favorite voices in the world of the singing and the dancing.
(i had a longer intro here but looking around on youtube i noticed something, that i am sure a lot of people have noticed/commented on but i just have to put in my three and a half cents: why the fuck would you put a cover on the internet that sucks, and not only that, acknowledge that said cover sucks. like magnetic fields, which i am about to write about, you get covers with titles like "really shitty cover of why i cry on the ukulele". why would you even put something out there with your face and name and suck that bad? if you like or admire the song, why would you butcher it in front of maybe millions of people? and you even admit it sucks? i do not get the kids nowadays. is being noticed more important then being fucking good at something???)
anyway. there are going to be a lot links here for you to feast on so fucking CLICK THEM.
***Corrin Tucker, lead singer and guitarist of Sleater Kinney.****
corine tucker has one of the best singing voices out of any body in any genre in any timeline. the only female i think comes close the heartless bastards, and while they are good, sleater kinney is pretty much the end all female voices in the indie/punk scene. you see a lot of bands that come out with a girl lead singer or an all girl line up and the press swallows it up like its something unheard of. "these girls can not only play music, they sing about blowing off guys, they sing about female empowerment!" and they use this hyperbole to talk about bands like fucking pink or no doubt or paramore or whatever, taylor swift, i dont know.
here was a band that was more true to their guns then most indie bands that i listen to. shit, modest mouse, death cab for cutie, even fucking sonic youth all jumped over the a major label. which is fine, i dont give a shit along as the music stays good, but sleater kinney stayed DYI till the very end. their music was always loud,raw, tight, deep, and beautiful, both on record and live. they were self referential in the way they would use classic riffs and vocal melodies from classic rock songs, and make it sound like some new found breed of sound that was about the crack the earth in two. the embodied female power and truth by just getting out there and doing it louder and better then everybody else. thats how you change minds, thats how you get respect, not by talking about how much of a pioneer, or how much of a role model you are, but by doing it.
but every time corin tuckers sings, her voice hits the bone right where it should. she is absolutly beautiful, singing about topics ranging from driving to the golden gate bridge to jump off of it, waiting in the hospital waiting to find out if her son is going to live after giving birth, to flat out calling out the guys with their guitars trying to be badass. after fans kept yelling for her to show her tits, she went on stage with a t shirt that said "show us your riffs". they were a great band, and while i understand why she stepped away from the music scene, to be a full time mother to her two children, its a shame for the rest of us.
an interview with corin
your no rock and roll fun
the swimmer
*** Stephin Merrit, lead singer and songwriter of the Magnetic Fields.***
i found out about these guys watching an old pete and pete episode. it was the one where artie leaves town , forcing pete to grow up. it may or may not make me cry. it doesnt. but it might. anyway over the credits played this way too gorgeous song for a nickelodeon show. i forgot about it until a couple weeks after the accident, and i looked it up and bam, like that, i found one of my favorite songs. i listen to why i cry a little too much. and like smoking weed for the first time, it was a gateway drug to a great pop band.
i have said that i would love to be stephin merrit. not because of his enormous talent, but because he is such an externally cranky and disinterested human being. one of my all time favorite interviews is with him and and this dorky emo kid. i dont know how this interview happened, but it is so funny and awkward that is makes me smile. i wish most people would react to such stupid questions with the same disdain. i wish i could get away with talking to most people with that kind of open boredom.
but the song at the beginning is actually a great little summary of his music. he is a morose gay man playing a ukulele singing about wanting to be a topless dancer and a playboy bunny and a backstreet hooker. it is funny, weird, and kind of sad. his music exists in this weird cloud of real, actual emotion and very dark ideas, but also this odd irony and detachment. one song could be a dark acoustic narrative about killing himself for no good reason, and the next song is a distorted epic about hating california valley girls. but the music is always poppy, catchy. the band is just natural genius, someone writing about love and loss and life and death, not calling any attention to himself, writing consistent and unpretentious pop songs.
100,000 Fireflies
I Don't Want to Get Over You
Too Drunk to Dream (the story of my fucking life)
*** Alec Ounsworth, solo songwriter, lead singer songwriter to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah***
Alec Ounsworth is probably the best example of someone following their own muse. the very idea of the audience digging anything he does never even pops up in the back of his mind, i am sure. his voice is a high pitched wail of something falling down a very long flight of stairs. his work with clap your hands and say yeah is a very urban and smoky indie rock sound, while his solo stuff is a little more neil young. but thats not to say that any thing he writes sounds like anything else. he is one of the most mysterious and baffling musicians that i listen to on a regular basis. his lyrics are fragments of a bigger and larger idea, but you are not invited to the big picture. the odd thing is, once you get past the vocal pyrotechnics, there is a kind of calm and serenity to all his songs.
i guess what i am trying to say is Alec Ounsworth is more about the mood and the feeling then a direct interpretation of what he is doing. if you get it, you get it. and if you don't, then thats perfectly understandable. you get the feeling that he is making music for nobody but himself, and that line of thinking breeds an unique and kind of insane creativity that you kind of have to just ride the wave on.
personal side note here: one of my most beloved memories is of me and lindsey drinking rum and smoking a joint, doing nothing but listening to music and talking about life and art and whatever song was on. lindsey took a while to warm up to the whole indie scene as a whole, but once she got the feeling behind the band or the song, she would love it, and not only love it, but interpret it in a way that would make me understand it better. i could say that i was "in" or that i "got" it, but i didnt really get something all the way until she did. anyway, we are high as fuck and drunk as fuck and this song comes on the ipod. and for some odd reason, we shut up and just listen to this song. it is scary and weird and demented, catchy and melodic but unhinged, and the last two minutes is easily some of the most grating, annoying, genius, psychotic verses put to record. and we just sit there and nod our heads, and when the climax comes, when the Alec Ounsworth loses his shit and starts chanting with the beat, we both geek out at how much it makes sense. we both understood something abstract and crazy at the same time for the same reason, and nothing needed to be said about it. that moment made the song a favorite of mine for the rest of my life, and every time i listen to it, i think of that moment and it makes the whole thing an infinite and bigger then life affair.
Holy Holy Holy Moses
Modern Girl(with scissors)
enjoy. i will start doing this type of thing more often, even though it takes me hours and hours, it is fun.
(i had a longer intro here but looking around on youtube i noticed something, that i am sure a lot of people have noticed/commented on but i just have to put in my three and a half cents: why the fuck would you put a cover on the internet that sucks, and not only that, acknowledge that said cover sucks. like magnetic fields, which i am about to write about, you get covers with titles like "really shitty cover of why i cry on the ukulele". why would you even put something out there with your face and name and suck that bad? if you like or admire the song, why would you butcher it in front of maybe millions of people? and you even admit it sucks? i do not get the kids nowadays. is being noticed more important then being fucking good at something???)
anyway. there are going to be a lot links here for you to feast on so fucking CLICK THEM.
***Corrin Tucker, lead singer and guitarist of Sleater Kinney.****
corine tucker has one of the best singing voices out of any body in any genre in any timeline. the only female i think comes close the heartless bastards, and while they are good, sleater kinney is pretty much the end all female voices in the indie/punk scene. you see a lot of bands that come out with a girl lead singer or an all girl line up and the press swallows it up like its something unheard of. "these girls can not only play music, they sing about blowing off guys, they sing about female empowerment!" and they use this hyperbole to talk about bands like fucking pink or no doubt or paramore or whatever, taylor swift, i dont know.
here was a band that was more true to their guns then most indie bands that i listen to. shit, modest mouse, death cab for cutie, even fucking sonic youth all jumped over the a major label. which is fine, i dont give a shit along as the music stays good, but sleater kinney stayed DYI till the very end. their music was always loud,raw, tight, deep, and beautiful, both on record and live. they were self referential in the way they would use classic riffs and vocal melodies from classic rock songs, and make it sound like some new found breed of sound that was about the crack the earth in two. the embodied female power and truth by just getting out there and doing it louder and better then everybody else. thats how you change minds, thats how you get respect, not by talking about how much of a pioneer, or how much of a role model you are, but by doing it.
but every time corin tuckers sings, her voice hits the bone right where it should. she is absolutly beautiful, singing about topics ranging from driving to the golden gate bridge to jump off of it, waiting in the hospital waiting to find out if her son is going to live after giving birth, to flat out calling out the guys with their guitars trying to be badass. after fans kept yelling for her to show her tits, she went on stage with a t shirt that said "show us your riffs". they were a great band, and while i understand why she stepped away from the music scene, to be a full time mother to her two children, its a shame for the rest of us.
an interview with corin
your no rock and roll fun
the swimmer
*** Stephin Merrit, lead singer and songwriter of the Magnetic Fields.***
i found out about these guys watching an old pete and pete episode. it was the one where artie leaves town , forcing pete to grow up. it may or may not make me cry. it doesnt. but it might. anyway over the credits played this way too gorgeous song for a nickelodeon show. i forgot about it until a couple weeks after the accident, and i looked it up and bam, like that, i found one of my favorite songs. i listen to why i cry a little too much. and like smoking weed for the first time, it was a gateway drug to a great pop band.
i have said that i would love to be stephin merrit. not because of his enormous talent, but because he is such an externally cranky and disinterested human being. one of my all time favorite interviews is with him and and this dorky emo kid. i dont know how this interview happened, but it is so funny and awkward that is makes me smile. i wish most people would react to such stupid questions with the same disdain. i wish i could get away with talking to most people with that kind of open boredom.
but the song at the beginning is actually a great little summary of his music. he is a morose gay man playing a ukulele singing about wanting to be a topless dancer and a playboy bunny and a backstreet hooker. it is funny, weird, and kind of sad. his music exists in this weird cloud of real, actual emotion and very dark ideas, but also this odd irony and detachment. one song could be a dark acoustic narrative about killing himself for no good reason, and the next song is a distorted epic about hating california valley girls. but the music is always poppy, catchy. the band is just natural genius, someone writing about love and loss and life and death, not calling any attention to himself, writing consistent and unpretentious pop songs.
100,000 Fireflies
I Don't Want to Get Over You
Too Drunk to Dream (the story of my fucking life)
*** Alec Ounsworth, solo songwriter, lead singer songwriter to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah***
Alec Ounsworth is probably the best example of someone following their own muse. the very idea of the audience digging anything he does never even pops up in the back of his mind, i am sure. his voice is a high pitched wail of something falling down a very long flight of stairs. his work with clap your hands and say yeah is a very urban and smoky indie rock sound, while his solo stuff is a little more neil young. but thats not to say that any thing he writes sounds like anything else. he is one of the most mysterious and baffling musicians that i listen to on a regular basis. his lyrics are fragments of a bigger and larger idea, but you are not invited to the big picture. the odd thing is, once you get past the vocal pyrotechnics, there is a kind of calm and serenity to all his songs.
i guess what i am trying to say is Alec Ounsworth is more about the mood and the feeling then a direct interpretation of what he is doing. if you get it, you get it. and if you don't, then thats perfectly understandable. you get the feeling that he is making music for nobody but himself, and that line of thinking breeds an unique and kind of insane creativity that you kind of have to just ride the wave on.
personal side note here: one of my most beloved memories is of me and lindsey drinking rum and smoking a joint, doing nothing but listening to music and talking about life and art and whatever song was on. lindsey took a while to warm up to the whole indie scene as a whole, but once she got the feeling behind the band or the song, she would love it, and not only love it, but interpret it in a way that would make me understand it better. i could say that i was "in" or that i "got" it, but i didnt really get something all the way until she did. anyway, we are high as fuck and drunk as fuck and this song comes on the ipod. and for some odd reason, we shut up and just listen to this song. it is scary and weird and demented, catchy and melodic but unhinged, and the last two minutes is easily some of the most grating, annoying, genius, psychotic verses put to record. and we just sit there and nod our heads, and when the climax comes, when the Alec Ounsworth loses his shit and starts chanting with the beat, we both geek out at how much it makes sense. we both understood something abstract and crazy at the same time for the same reason, and nothing needed to be said about it. that moment made the song a favorite of mine for the rest of my life, and every time i listen to it, i think of that moment and it makes the whole thing an infinite and bigger then life affair.
Holy Holy Holy Moses
Modern Girl(with scissors)
enjoy. i will start doing this type of thing more often, even though it takes me hours and hours, it is fun.
Monday, December 14, 2009
my favorite albums(from the facebooks)
i do this every year but this is the first time i have done it on the face book/my writing site, so here it goes, my favorite shit that came out this year
lets start with music! here are my five favorite albums this year. i could prolly do ten, but who has time for that bullshit???
5. Tegan and Sara-Sainthood: the chorus of the first song "Arrow" is the catchiest melody of the past 12 months. these chicks write tight, short, workman like pop songs with vague but not too pretentious lyrics. their last two albums were just as killer, so i think these girlies win the whole twin sister lesbian indie rock goddess award. i know its a tight race, no pun intended. my favorites are On Directing, Arrow, Alligator Tears.
4. Pomegranates- Everybody! Come Outside!: the seedy seeds would be like number one or two on the list but i think their album Count the Days came out in 2008, and that would be cheating. but i think i love this album better anyway. these are some local Cincinnati boys who are just amazing musicians. they put on a great live show and the two vocalist really balance each other out great. also their drummer is one of my favorite drummers beating it up nowadays. the album is supposed to be a concept album about ufos and time travel. i fucking love these guys. My favorites are Beachcomber, Tesseract, and the best song they have ever done, Jerusalem Had a Bad Day.
3. Sunset Rubdown-Dragonslayer: Spencer Krug is no doubt my favorite musician working. i love Wolf Parade like a daughter but for some reason his solo band is more close to the gut. their 2007 Random Spirit Lover is one of the all time best most epic albums, and if that came out this year it would be number one. The song Silver Moons is the best song ever about being too old to party like you used to and thinking about holding your ex-girlfriends hand outside of the school bonfire when you were 16. my favorites are Silver Moons and You Go on Ahead(Trumpet Trumpet Trumpet Part two).
2. Grizzly Bear-Veckatmist: i will always love this album because every harmony and jazzy scale will always remind me of Lindsey. there is something so easy, smooth, yet haunting and sad about this album that i can't help but think about her every time i hear the ending of Ready,Able. seeing them at bonnaroo was one of my highlights of the summer. on a side note: their guitar player is no shit awesome. he uses these guitars from the 40s and 50s, slaps heavy ass strings on them and uses these jazz chords, but strums it in such a way it sounds like a ton of pretty bricks made of rainbows slamming down. and ed droste has the best voice besides Panda Bear. favorites: Cheerleader, Southern Point, Ready, Able.
1. Animal Collective-Merriweather Post Pavilion: duh. this is the new classic. i am not going to rant and rave for hours about this album, but fuck it is great. i still listen to every song and i am never sick of it. their EP Fall Be Kind is just as good. for someone like me who has been down these guys since Feels and Sung Tongs, it makes me happy that they got so much praise and acclaim. i dont know what else to say, i love these guys. favorites: BrotherSport, My GIrls, Daily Routine, Taste, the whole fucking album.
other shit that came out that was awesome: Neko Case, Dirty Projectors, frontiers of folk nebraska, silversun pickups, mos def, the flaming lips, St. VIncent, atlas sounds.
man there really wasnt a whole lot of good movies this year. i havent seen avatar yet, so who knows, but now that i think about it, i am not sure if i saw five movies that came out this year that were great. hmm...Moon was great, Star Trek..
actually Star Trek was my favorite movie this year. there im done.
here are the best t.v shows this year:
Mad Men, season Three.
BEST SHOW EVER OMG LIKE LOL.
Jon Hamm is the new James Gandolfini. there i said it. Christina Hendricks is the most attrative chick on t.v. the writing is smart and deep. its a good show trust me.
lets hope next year is better.
lets start with music! here are my five favorite albums this year. i could prolly do ten, but who has time for that bullshit???
5. Tegan and Sara-Sainthood: the chorus of the first song "Arrow" is the catchiest melody of the past 12 months. these chicks write tight, short, workman like pop songs with vague but not too pretentious lyrics. their last two albums were just as killer, so i think these girlies win the whole twin sister lesbian indie rock goddess award. i know its a tight race, no pun intended. my favorites are On Directing, Arrow, Alligator Tears.
4. Pomegranates- Everybody! Come Outside!: the seedy seeds would be like number one or two on the list but i think their album Count the Days came out in 2008, and that would be cheating. but i think i love this album better anyway. these are some local Cincinnati boys who are just amazing musicians. they put on a great live show and the two vocalist really balance each other out great. also their drummer is one of my favorite drummers beating it up nowadays. the album is supposed to be a concept album about ufos and time travel. i fucking love these guys. My favorites are Beachcomber, Tesseract, and the best song they have ever done, Jerusalem Had a Bad Day.
3. Sunset Rubdown-Dragonslayer: Spencer Krug is no doubt my favorite musician working. i love Wolf Parade like a daughter but for some reason his solo band is more close to the gut. their 2007 Random Spirit Lover is one of the all time best most epic albums, and if that came out this year it would be number one. The song Silver Moons is the best song ever about being too old to party like you used to and thinking about holding your ex-girlfriends hand outside of the school bonfire when you were 16. my favorites are Silver Moons and You Go on Ahead(Trumpet Trumpet Trumpet Part two).
2. Grizzly Bear-Veckatmist: i will always love this album because every harmony and jazzy scale will always remind me of Lindsey. there is something so easy, smooth, yet haunting and sad about this album that i can't help but think about her every time i hear the ending of Ready,Able. seeing them at bonnaroo was one of my highlights of the summer. on a side note: their guitar player is no shit awesome. he uses these guitars from the 40s and 50s, slaps heavy ass strings on them and uses these jazz chords, but strums it in such a way it sounds like a ton of pretty bricks made of rainbows slamming down. and ed droste has the best voice besides Panda Bear. favorites: Cheerleader, Southern Point, Ready, Able.
1. Animal Collective-Merriweather Post Pavilion: duh. this is the new classic. i am not going to rant and rave for hours about this album, but fuck it is great. i still listen to every song and i am never sick of it. their EP Fall Be Kind is just as good. for someone like me who has been down these guys since Feels and Sung Tongs, it makes me happy that they got so much praise and acclaim. i dont know what else to say, i love these guys. favorites: BrotherSport, My GIrls, Daily Routine, Taste, the whole fucking album.
other shit that came out that was awesome: Neko Case, Dirty Projectors, frontiers of folk nebraska, silversun pickups, mos def, the flaming lips, St. VIncent, atlas sounds.
man there really wasnt a whole lot of good movies this year. i havent seen avatar yet, so who knows, but now that i think about it, i am not sure if i saw five movies that came out this year that were great. hmm...Moon was great, Star Trek..
actually Star Trek was my favorite movie this year. there im done.
here are the best t.v shows this year:
Mad Men, season Three.
BEST SHOW EVER OMG LIKE LOL.
Jon Hamm is the new James Gandolfini. there i said it. Christina Hendricks is the most attrative chick on t.v. the writing is smart and deep. its a good show trust me.
lets hope next year is better.
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