Wanna talk about tUnE-yArDs?
You know when you hear something that hits so close to your softest innards that you feel like you’ve been suckerpunched and liked it? And like you kind of want to feel it again? Guys, I haven’t been this excited about an album in SO LONG. I think Merrill Garbus might be brilliant, but god is it hard to listen to a lot of her songs in a row. I promise you won’t hear another album so challenging but so rewarding for the rest of the year. Ready? Let’s go. Read more…
Let’s Get Out of This Country
Has anyone else been throwing up with rage after reading the news today?
Before I moved to France, I spent a lot of time listening to this one over and over and over again.
Let’s get out of this country/ I have been so unhappy.
What does this city have to offer me?/ I just can’t see.
Hey more blogging to come in the coming days, thanks for sticking with us.
All the World’s Best Things
Forgive me, this is not strictly indie-rock related, and please allow me to pretend I have readers who might be distressed by a minor content detour. Here’s a video of the protesters in Madison singing “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables and it features all of the best things in the world:
- A famous showtune with modified topical lyrics
- Progressive politics
- A slightly out-of-tune marching band
- Impassioned Midwestern theater geek men
- Colored posterboard
- Hippie drum women
- Misattribution (I don’t think Victor Hugo wrote this song, but if he did, woo he is even more dreamy than I thought!)
- Redheads in cravats
Ok, enough jokes, this video still gave me chills. Let’s not talk about THAT any more. But the video, we can talk about that.
Under Cover of Darkness
I like to think of my adolescent and early adult years as divided into periods when I am listening to The Strokes all the time, and the Dark Times. Even though it sounds like the whole band took a lot of adderall while writing this song–has there ever been a Strokes song that sounded so goddamn gleeful?–I pretty much love it. Please enjoy and bask in the sunshine of “Under Cover of Darkness.”
If you are obsessively following this album like I have been, you probably heard that other, weirder song that they leaded as well. Angles is gonna be ridiculous!
Hey Look Here I Am Blogging
Dear friends,
Chalk it up to the winter blues, or a severe chocolate deficiency (send me your stockpiles ASAP!), that I have been so grossly neglectful of this little baby here. In fact, it wasn’t until WordPress renewed my domain (and THEN sent me an email notification that it was going to happen—work on the order of those events next time, please, thanks) that I realized I had been so absent.
Sorry! But not that sorry because the drafts I have saved right now are all terrible and not even about music! As an apology, please accept a link to the new Lykke Li album, Wounded Rhymes, which is streaming on the Hype Machine. She is an Artist Widely Considered Good by the people who matter, but I hadn’t actually listened to her before right now. Too bad for me! This is so good! Her lyrics read like the diary of a remarkably wise but nonetheless disaffected teenage girl: “Sadness is a blessing/ Sadness is a curse/ Sadness is my boyfriend/ Oh sadness I’m your girl,” she sings, and oh my gosh because isn’t that something we’ve all written or a joke we’ve all made when in some Morrisey-dark mood only we would never actually say it because it is a little melodramatic and ridiculous? And then there are these drums that bounce around your head, and these crazy melodies all driven by a tiny, high voice without much range but that’ll still knock you flat. I imagine this is how people who are really into Best Coast feel, but she also reminds me a lot of Martha Wainwright vocally and angst-wise.
PS: I’m really looking forward to publishing this and finding out what else I’ve tagged with “Swedish Artists.” I assume it was about ABBA.
Trends Douchebags Swiped From Hipsters
A recent Guardian articled called London’s hipsters “agents of social change” and thanked them for being open and accepting of gay people. Author Anna Leach digs not only their androgynous fashion (the donning of which no longer identifies her as “a threatening gender-defying dyke” but the less-threatening “hipster”), but also their general acceptance and commingling of all sexualities. Ok, that is a subject for another day!
As is de rigeur in the douchebag community, the comments on Leach’s article quickly devolve into douchebaggy gloating. Hipsters are “elitist wankers”! UGH! “Nobody gives a shit what hipsters wear,” one rages, disproving his point simply by articulating it. AManCalledJayne makes the ultimate douchebag argument:
They may make it cool to be gay among them, but they have no influence outside of their peer group. The reality is that “hipsters” or as I prefer to call them “completely pointless dickheads” are universally disliked and don’t have the capacity to make anything cool.
Right, right. He hates gay people! Also, if hipsters didn’t have enough influence outside of their peer group to make them so widely disliked, Jayne wouldn’t have anything to bitch about on the internet. The irrational rage hipsters inspire in dudes like this suggests that just their existence grates on something in the mind of douchebags. That’s influence, and I’m just saying, you know who really doesn’t have influence outside of their peer group? PETA. They deliberately piss outsiders off because it’s the only way to call attention to their cause. But just mention hipsters and a certain segment of the population reflexively foams at the mouth and gnashes its teeth, apoplectic with rage.
Hipster and Douchebag are ultimately two sides of the same coin. Neither could exist without the other actively demonstrating how not to be to their respective rivals, who all dress the same, listen to the same shitty music, and hang out at the same shitty bars. No matter how they dress, a hipster or douchebag must berate the other, must reaffirm their commitment to not being the other. They are engaged in a cultural tug of war that dates back to the earliest clan rivalries: jocks vs. nerds.
All that said, I will throw my hat in the ring with the hipsters every time. That is just where my tastes lie, and where I am more likely to find my fellow nerds who like bands and books. Also, I am a snob. Though hipsters have not popularized, or for that matter invented, every trend that they’ve adopted, many, many, many former hipster touchstones have trickled into the populace at large. As their name indicates, hipsters know what’s hip before it’s hip, and the douchebags just follow suit. Don’t believe me? Let’s review a few of the trends that came to prominence among hipsters before being coopted by douchebags. Read more…
Venue Preview: Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR
It’s back!!!!!!
Background: Mississippi Studios is a small rock club located on very trendy Mississippi Avenue in North Portland. You can get married there! But more likely, you’ll see small, nationally touring bands, or party down at a karaoke event. The main floor is fairly small and open, but there is a seated section and a balcony that runs up one side of the club on the second level. This venue is starting to feel like one of my little secrets. Granted, I’ve only been there on Sunday and Monday nights, but neither time were more than 50 people in the room. They recently brought a new booker on board, but announced that they intended to stick to national indie bands. Hopefully it turns out better than the time I saw Candy Claws with three other people.
The Decemberists, “The King is Dead”
by Katie
Long live the spirograph!
Say you’re the Decemberists. You’re established in your career and can do no wrong in the eyes of fans and critics. You’ve traveled from simple British folk songs to extravagant rock opera, and you’re contemplating your next move. Bowie-influenced psych-rock? Daft Punk-style French electronica? Four minutes of silence as high art? What about beginning anew with rootsy American folk music recorded in an Oregon barn?
How Bands Can Appeal to Female Fans
Say you’re a band with an interest in attracting more female fans whether to 1) assuage your guilt vis-a-vis male privilege or 2) make out with them. Or maybe you haven’t consciously decided either of these things, but you’ve noticed that your audiences are predominantly dudes in khaki shorts, and you’d like to change that. Whatever the case, if you take the advice that follows, you’ll find that girls call you “frat boys” or “douchebags” much less often. They might even become fans! I didn’t put it on this list, but if you can swing being hot, that helps. As in all things.
4. Ladies Cut T-Shirts
Really. They fit us better, and we won’t go buying up all your “unisex” small shirts. That’s a fair trade-off, right?
I just looked at our front page…
and the first two videos you saw were Billy Joel and N SYNC. That is too uncool even for me. Cred… fading…
So here’s literally the only Arcade Fire song I’ve liked without complaining about Win Butler’s voice. Because he doesn’t sing it. And you know I’m generally forgiving of terrible voices, but I can’t deal with that guy’s for some reason. But this one is good. I wish I wasn’t writing at 3 am so I might say something other than “I don’t like that guys voice, but I like this song, because he doesn’t sing it. I really hate his voice.” I just wrote that inane, circuitous thought TWICE. Bad news.
Anyway it’s 3 a.m. and I saw a teeny tiny mouse twice now, so I need to go to bed and hope he doesn’t follow me and bite my toes while I’m asleep. Yikes.
