(no subject)
i've posted entirely too often in this thing. it just seems like the busier i am, the more i have to say.
i'm going through my parents' cds and finding/rediscovering a lot of great stuff. i'll admit that despite their being the poster boys for bro-dude/college rock, i still absolutely love dmb's "#41" and "Crush".
it's refreshing to go back in music. i've been so bummed out about all the stuff's that's out lately. i was legitimately hopeful about the pumpkins reunion, but that's just turned into billy corgan masturbating his guitar prowess all over a record, trying to rehash their heavy guitar rock when their truly great material lay among the mellow, sad, and eerie.
and i'll still follow ryan adams because he came into my life at a pivotal point, but easy tiger and his latest EP are wayy too polished to feel genuine. i had always hoped that he would redo "My Love For You is Real" but the Cardinals version doesn't resonate as much as the original did. maybe this whole stint was a favor to Lost Highway. whatever the reason, jamie candiloro needs not to produce the next ryan adams venture.
and the last velvet teen record took some getting used to, but how do you come back from "elysium"? i can't imagine what they're going to do now with only one original member left.
in rainbows didn't disappoint. it took some getting used to for me, but i never really listened to much radiohead before that. sure, i heard the hits, but i couldn't get into them primarily because of a guy i knew freshman year, a closet bro, who was nuts about them. those kinds of people will tell you that the band is great, that they're "fucking amazing dude," but they can't tell you why. i have a theory that those kinds of people may dig the music, but they don't really "get" it. maybe that's the inner music snob in me. i won't pretend to understand radiohead in its entirety, but i know that they are a multi-layered experience. look at "No Surprises" for example. at first listen, it's such a pretty and mellow song, but open it up a little more and it gets more satirical, more mundane, cracking jokes about people who give in to the rat race, people who's goal it is to get the office with the window, a sizeable pension. those harmonies at 3:07 are angelic but then you start paying attention. he's saying "get me outta here". i will say that "Reckoner" stirs me like no other. a friend of mine tells me that they use the "golden mean" in the track and supposedly where the golden mean occurs, it sounds like those harmonies are singing "In Rainbows". i'm still trying to wrap my mind around the meaning of this song, hah.
aside of radiohead, i can't really say i've been impressed with new music recently. i keep going back to fleetwood mac's "Tusk" album and steely dan's "gaucho," and i keep wondering where are these kinds of bands now? sure, mac's last album was really just a stevie nicks solo album and a lindsey buckingham solo album tacked onto each other and the dan's recent stuff is missing a lot of its charisma and character, but back in their heyday? what i would give to have been around when "Aja" came out! or to have heard "dreams" before becoming desensitized to a society bombarded by auto-tuned harmonies.
would a perfectionist duo like the dan even have a place in modern music? with the mp3 (a significantly terrible medium compared to the CD) being the must-have format, there's no such thing as a "quality" recording anymore. and no one is trying to aspire to that because only a select few want it. what happened to hi-fi? in the 70's and 80's, it was all about having the best sound system.
would a soup opera like fleetwood mac be able to exist? the media would destroy them. but i think if the band didn't have that kind of drama, there wouldn't be a "Sara", there wouldn't be a "Dreams". there certainly wouldn't be a "Go Your Own Way". don't even get me started on "Storms" or "Think About Me".
maybe my expectations are really high, but i seem to hear less boundary-breaking on new records, and more formulaic production. sure, "Tusk" didn't do well at all if you compare it to the monumental success of "Rumours" but buckingham's experimental production on that album still lingers in a lot of indie music today.
okay, i'm exhausted.
i'm going through my parents' cds and finding/rediscovering a lot of great stuff. i'll admit that despite their being the poster boys for bro-dude/college rock, i still absolutely love dmb's "#41" and "Crush".
it's refreshing to go back in music. i've been so bummed out about all the stuff's that's out lately. i was legitimately hopeful about the pumpkins reunion, but that's just turned into billy corgan masturbating his guitar prowess all over a record, trying to rehash their heavy guitar rock when their truly great material lay among the mellow, sad, and eerie.
and i'll still follow ryan adams because he came into my life at a pivotal point, but easy tiger and his latest EP are wayy too polished to feel genuine. i had always hoped that he would redo "My Love For You is Real" but the Cardinals version doesn't resonate as much as the original did. maybe this whole stint was a favor to Lost Highway. whatever the reason, jamie candiloro needs not to produce the next ryan adams venture.
and the last velvet teen record took some getting used to, but how do you come back from "elysium"? i can't imagine what they're going to do now with only one original member left.
in rainbows didn't disappoint. it took some getting used to for me, but i never really listened to much radiohead before that. sure, i heard the hits, but i couldn't get into them primarily because of a guy i knew freshman year, a closet bro, who was nuts about them. those kinds of people will tell you that the band is great, that they're "fucking amazing dude," but they can't tell you why. i have a theory that those kinds of people may dig the music, but they don't really "get" it. maybe that's the inner music snob in me. i won't pretend to understand radiohead in its entirety, but i know that they are a multi-layered experience. look at "No Surprises" for example. at first listen, it's such a pretty and mellow song, but open it up a little more and it gets more satirical, more mundane, cracking jokes about people who give in to the rat race, people who's goal it is to get the office with the window, a sizeable pension. those harmonies at 3:07 are angelic but then you start paying attention. he's saying "get me outta here". i will say that "Reckoner" stirs me like no other. a friend of mine tells me that they use the "golden mean" in the track and supposedly where the golden mean occurs, it sounds like those harmonies are singing "In Rainbows". i'm still trying to wrap my mind around the meaning of this song, hah.
aside of radiohead, i can't really say i've been impressed with new music recently. i keep going back to fleetwood mac's "Tusk" album and steely dan's "gaucho," and i keep wondering where are these kinds of bands now? sure, mac's last album was really just a stevie nicks solo album and a lindsey buckingham solo album tacked onto each other and the dan's recent stuff is missing a lot of its charisma and character, but back in their heyday? what i would give to have been around when "Aja" came out! or to have heard "dreams" before becoming desensitized to a society bombarded by auto-tuned harmonies.
would a perfectionist duo like the dan even have a place in modern music? with the mp3 (a significantly terrible medium compared to the CD) being the must-have format, there's no such thing as a "quality" recording anymore. and no one is trying to aspire to that because only a select few want it. what happened to hi-fi? in the 70's and 80's, it was all about having the best sound system.
would a soup opera like fleetwood mac be able to exist? the media would destroy them. but i think if the band didn't have that kind of drama, there wouldn't be a "Sara", there wouldn't be a "Dreams". there certainly wouldn't be a "Go Your Own Way". don't even get me started on "Storms" or "Think About Me".
maybe my expectations are really high, but i seem to hear less boundary-breaking on new records, and more formulaic production. sure, "Tusk" didn't do well at all if you compare it to the monumental success of "Rumours" but buckingham's experimental production on that album still lingers in a lot of indie music today.
okay, i'm exhausted.