I just want people to know that I am a Merzboxee!!

I've been to fucking Swans shows.

I'm not yer Grandma. :)

Anyway....RTJ4 is fucking wonderful.

Pull the other one!

Eh?

That is what Beatrice Arthur said to Rufus Wainwright... minus one key word. Seriously: Rufus was a big fan, and one day he got to meet her and told her he loved to imagine that she/Dorothy from The Golden Girls was his grandmother. To which she replied, "I'm not your fucking grandmother!". True story.

OK, this is escalating beyond what is reasonably tolerable. :D I gave that TS thing a swift (sorry - for the bad pun, that is) run-through (sorry not sorry; I couldn't bear to listen to it all in full detail) and from what I could gather (please don't make me do it again) it's absolutely nowhere near the level of Tapestry, MUCH LESS Blue - I mean, unless you're comparing cheekbones, Joni and Swift might as well be different species. American Pie, meanwhile, is... these clusters of rhyme after rhyme that add up to a pool of nothingness. What can I tell ya, g.!

As for being too noise cool for pop school, anyone who reads the torrent announcements thread (I think there's, like, two of you who do :)) knows I certainly don't spend the whole week surrounded only by blasts of depraved atonal fuck-you rackets. So I'm off the hook on that front at least. ;)

ones that stuck with me, no particular order, definitely forgotten a few

graham lambkin + bill nace - the dishwashers
lisa lerkenfeldt - collagen / a liquour of daisies / a garden dissolves into black silk
jonnine - blue hills
etrusca 3d - s/t
cs + kreme - snoopy
autechre - sign
jim o'rourke - shutting down here
mark fell + will guthrie - infoldings / diffractions
romeo poirier - hotel nota
the gagmen - s/t
spivak - Μετά Το Ρέιβ
russell haswell - digital
magik markers - 2020
actress - karma & desire / 88
rian treanor - file under uk metaplasm
christina vantzou - multi natural
cavern of anti-matter - in fabric ost
dean blunt - roaches
cindy - i'm cindy
gabor lazar - source
helm - saturnalia
bill nace - both
elysia crampton - orcorara 2010
felicia atkinson - everything evaporate
nazar - guerilla
star searchers - avatar blue
jasmine guffond - microphone permission
dead c - unknowns

:)

I do look at that thread!!

I wasn't trying to say that folklore or evermore are just as good as Blue or Tapestry. I just wanted to throw out a couple of famous "singer-songwriter" albums. I thought (perhaps wrongly) that this was all about the kind of albums Taylor Swift made.

I love my Sonic Youth and Swans and Merzbow and King Gizzard and Electric Wizard, etc etc etc, but I will never be a snob about any genre or any artist if they make a good song.

Fucking Bee Gees have made many good songs.

Sue me.

Edit: I note that you gave it a partial, "swift" run through. Sigh....

Anyway...

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension seems to be on many year-end lists. Anyone here dig it? I spun it a couple of times. I'm not sure what I think yet.

I struggled to get into this one and I normally dig Sufjan.

I thought it was dense and suffocating. But it may reveal itself.

I have a grand total of 1 Sufjan Stevens song in my collection: his cover of "Ring Them Bells" from the I'm Not There soundtrack. I remember the first impression I had of it was that it was "too much"... Now that I read your post, "dense and suffocating" might have worked too. ;)

Speaking of Dylan, I am exactly 10% familiar with Obama's 2020 picks. How uncool am I!

Anyone check out Kid Cudi's new man in the moon album? Reviews have been generally indifferent but I'm really liking it.

It’s pretty meh, couple nice songs, but generally quite forgettable for me

Beatrice Dillion - Workaround
Big Blood - Do You Want to Have a Skeleton Dream?
Sarah Davachi - Horae
Arca - Kick I
Infinite Body - Clemency
Christine and the Queens - La Vita Nuova
Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now
Girls Rituals - Crap shit
Julianna Barwick - Healing is a Miracle
Sam Prekop - Comma
Christina Vantzou - Multi Natural
Jim O'Rourke - Steamroom 50
M. Geddes Gengras - Time Makes Nothing Happen
Eiko Ishibashi - Impulse of the Ribbon
Horse Lords - Common Task
Ana Roxanne - Because of a Flower
Ryan Garbes - Tabbed View
William Basinski - Lamentations
A.G. Cooke - Apple
Animal Collective - Bridge to Quiet
Drew McDowell - Agalma

Strangely very few favorites this year. Usually this list is like 50.

I myself prefer compact lists.

Still assembling mine, by the way, but it's more like "stuff released in 2020 that I've actually listened to" than a ranking... with the possible exception of Diane Cluck's Common Wealth, which I'm spellbound by.



Skuj, if you really are after a "singer-songwriter" album of quality and true heart, look no further.

"I'm a dad and I like Merzbow [...] Does that make Merzbow 'dad rock'?"

You’re trying to say you don’t know who kid cudi is and have to guess?

Don’t believe you.

50 is a tight list for me. I'd guess I average trying 5 new albums a week.

Five?!? Crazy. How many of those albums do you give more than one listen to see if it grows on you? Everyone has albums they've not liked at first and then forced themselves to keep listening which led them to loving it.

One of the virtues of growing older is becoming out of touch with current commercial cunting wankery.

The only new rap I've heard is those dj Muggs collaborations, Ghostface, and Czarface but it's always a nostalgic passing listen.

I'm guessing Kid Cuci is big in your country - moriko, multi-blow job, ameshika...Sorry I can't bring myself to say it. lol

I can usually tell right away, so some I don't even listen to all the way through. I still have the odd album I don't like at first that grows on me. I'll feel a compulsion to hear it again even though I hated it.

I thought I would try whittling down my list as much as possible to the ones I was absolutely obsessed with, then of that, only 5, and ranked to boot!

1 Girls Rituals - Crap shit
2 Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now
3 Arca - Kick I
4 Christina Vantzou - Multi Natural
5 Big Blood - Do You Want to Have a Skeleton Dream?

Edit: D slosh^^ said it better

I myself don't know who Kid Cudi is. Believe it.

Wow, Ok, I believe you.

He’s on the pursuit of happiness and he knows everything that's shinin’ ain't always gonna be gold, he’ll be fiiiiine once he gets it yeah, he’ll be gooooood.

Btw.

Yeah, Kid Cudi’s probably U.S./UK only in terms of popularity except for that one big song. He’s a singer guy who kinda raps and “influenced” a lot of rappers and singer-rappers but VERY RARELY releases anything that isn’t total garbage.

Interesting voice though.

Anyway, I’m guessing we’re probably about the same age, and I haven’t personally lost touch with new trends in commercial music *too much*.
Also, Cudi is on the last leg of his career, I’d say. He made good in like 2006 or something.
He was on Wesrworld too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by h8kurdt Five?!? Crazy. How many of those albums do you give more than one listen to see if it grows on you? Everyone has albums they've not liked at first and then forced themselves to keep listening which led them to loving it.

At first (and, in retrospect, almost incredibly) Lester Bangs didn't quite enjoy Fun House as much The Stooges, was one of the many critics who thought Exile On Main St was a murky mess (in the bad way ;)), and just plained hated On The Corner (called it "garbage"). Not long after those three initial reactions, he wrote the definitive pieces on those albums that hailed them as masterworks — and NOT because of audience or peer pressure; with the exception of a few reviewers, those records were still years away from being introduced to the commonly accepted rock/jazz/funk pantheon. He did it because he reconsidered them.

It's nearly impossible to imagine a figure like Bangs in our age, but one has to wonder whether he would have made such 180-degree turns had he just initially Spotifucked the albums and moved on with a damn click.

There is so much damn music these days. I don't see the point in listening to music I don't like.

New albums from Ono, Oranssi Pazuzu, Zombie Hyperdrive and Lightspear are all strong contenders for my year end list.

Ono’s “Red Summer” is probably number one.

I do not know any of those either! Gotta reveal my own shit soon just to see if the people around here are unaware of any of the ones I list... ;):D

The last two are synthwave albums, so if that’s not your bag you will find them tedious or cheesy but I love the atmosphere and don’t hold the genre-work piece against them. I’m even taking a stab at making that kind of music these days in addition to my usual activities. Fun rabbit hole.
Ono on the other hand are one of the greatest and most unique bands to ever live. Nothing like them, especially live. Highly recommended.

Without having listened to them it's hard to say anything, but I'll mention this: if retrofuturism is a key ingredient, you can't count me out soon enough. People I do love (to the point of having their whole discographies in physical format) like Julia Holter and Laurel Halo have in their palettes some of the same elements that synthwave acts claim as influences, but have come up with their own idiosyncratic art - one can always play spot-the-precedent, but ultimately it's Laurel Halo music and Julia Holter music.

Have you read Simon Reynolds' Retromania? (It's an actual question; I'm not being a jerk).

I have not, but thanks for the tip. And I understand the turnoff factor of the past-worshipping tail-eating pop culture of remakes, sequels, reunions and the like, and have very mixed feelings about all of it. For me, having come of age in the 80s, I know the 80s didn’t really sound like that and the new wave, metal and horror movie soundtrack worlds did not really mix at all. So to me it’s akin to Exotica, in that it creates an idea that never was and I enjoy it on that level. It might worship the past, but it is a new form from the past ten years and the past they revere just didn’t sound or exist in the way they present it. Plus all the sounds are in my vocabulary since I’ve always enjoyed these elements in their original form.

Until now, I was mildly amused with your criticisms of my musical tastes.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I cannot tell you how many albums I have "disliked" upon initial spins, only to love later. It takes me 5 spins to form a coherent opinion about most albums.

I hate to admit that I disliked Automatic For The People on spin 1, and I put it aside for months.

I know, right? WTF was wrong with me?

Dude, what the fuck is wrong with ME - now that you quote me I realize I typed "just plained hated". I shall bitch-slap myself now.

...