[noisereductions]

Haha i listened to the whole thing beginning to end on a commute.

I will relisten to the tracks you listed though.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

Haha i listened to the whole thing beginning to end on a commute.

I will relisten to the tracks you listed though.

Cool.

Also, y'know, part of the reason I think that new music in general has been so uninspiring to me lately is that I, for one, tend to listen to most records right around the time they come out, sometimes only for a couple of days, and then my ADD kicks in, or I just plain want to hear one of my go-to artists (mostly Kanye, Sonic Youth and DJ Koze for the last few years) and I sometimes never return to those albums.

Used to be a new album would come out, and if I liked it at all, or was a fan of the artist, I'd listen to it fairly regularly throughout the year. Even if I didn't like some of it. I think it takes time for a record to kind of grow its meaning around you, and that used to be what happened to me. It was really rare that I bought something new just to spin it for a day/week and let it sit on the shelf. I did that with albums that I thought were total wastes of time and money only, but now it's almost become my default.

Anyway, my point is, I think I (maybe you, maybe others, maybe not) need to make an effort to fight the impulse to access this 24/7 virtual library we all have in one form or another, and give albums a chance again. I hope you do so with an album by a band as worthy as the Lips.

[Severian]

Oh, hey, NR...
Re: FLips covers albums

I thought With a Little Help From my Fwends was a massive let-down with only a few redeeming moments. It was a let-down both because it was a waste of time and energy that the band could have applied to something that was actually new, and because it was just a lazy recording, adding nothing new or interesting to the original record (not my favorite Beatles record by any means, but still a remarkable and near-perfect album.)

About a year ago, I read a list Wayne Coyne did for Spin or Rolling Stone or something of his favorite "psychedelic" albums of all time, and he had some interesting choices. The man has great taste in music, really, so that's not surprising. But what was surprising was that for this list, which featured records by Can and Suicide and Television, he did NOT include Sgt. Pepper's, but did include both Revolver and The White Album. Neither of these albums are "psychedelic" in the traditional neon concept album sense of the word, but they're both weird as hell, and aren't quite as confined to one cultural moment as Sgt. Pepper. If he HAD to do ANOTHER complete cover of a treasured classic, I think either of these albums would have been more interesting and less cliché choices. But still... rarely are cover albums worth a shit. I'd rather have a couple new songs on a SIM card made of stem cells or whatever.

Anyway, back to With a Little Help From My Fwends...

I bought it, of course, because I'm a Lips completist but I feel like it was a missed opportunity. Like I said, I really don't tend to care for covers much. They're goddamn boring, especially when they're covers of big, iconic records and songs. But when I read about WALHFMF I thought, "Holy shit, the Flaming Lips are going to cover 'A Day in the Life.'" In my head, if was going to be so fucking epic. But the end result was extremely disappointing. It just made me want to listen to the Beatles. They turned this beautiful album into a novelty project, and I would rank Fwends below their cover versions of Dark Side of the Moon and the Stone Roses' self-titled (The Time Has Come to Shoot You Down... What a Sound is the oh-so-helpful title they went with for that one, by the way. Still, it at least attempted to preserve the spirit of the original album. Fwends was like an assassination attempt on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and it mostly just pissed me off.

In my opinion it's the worst thing this band I love has ever been associated with. Though I never did hear that Miley Cyrus album they played on, 'cause... why the fuck would I?

[noisereductions]

I really liked that Sgt Pepper album.

I also like a lot of Mileys output in the last few years. You never heard Bangers? So good.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

I really liked that Sgt Pepper album.

I also like a lot of Mileys output in the last few years. You never heard Bangers? So good.

Well, I heard at least some of Bangers because it was everywhere. But I was taking about the Dead Petz album, of r whatever it's called. The career-killing one. You know... she dressed up like Marie Antoinette and played some of it on SNL? Yeah. That one.

I'm pretty sure she's done being a big time pop star now. That album dropped like a dead body.

I don't dislike Miley Cyrus. She's not Drake. I'm pretty sure I liked elements of the songs I heard on SNL. But I don't like her. Her voice isn't terrible when paired with Wayne's though. And yet, I would not mourn her absence... from anything... ever.

[noisereductions]

I liked those SNL songs. I never heard the album tho.

[Severian]

 

Bonobo's new album Migration is a win in my book. It's a strong and consistent release from an underappreciated artist. Dropped Friday via Ninja Tune but I've been in Lips mode, so I just heard the whole thing today. Good stuff. Nice rainy day, relatively down-tempo electronic music.

I've been waiting for this for a while, though it hasn't been a front and center priority. "Flashlight," from the EP of the same name, was one of my favorite tracks of 2014, and I liked the last album The North Borders (2013) quite a bit. I'd say this new one is an improvement over that one, so far.

Filing under "best new albums" for 2017.

[selkcip]

https://www.facebook.com/22280405780...type=3&theater

[Severian]

Spoon - Hot Thoughts

 

Every time I think Spoon is done being interesting, this happens. Their mysterious new album takes form. It gets a kick-ass title, and reveal compelling album art that seems to fit perfectly into some previously unknown empty space in the Spoon universe.

Seriously, this is just great. It feels so Spoon.

This is now my most looked-forward to rock album of the year.

[guest]

Originally Posted by Severian

It's a damn good song, with a melody that has — consciously or not — inspired generations of synth tinkerers. Most of them shit compared to Kim Carnes.

Fleetwood Mac also kinda aped it on the song "Seven Wonders" from '87. As did that tune from ROCKY IV (y'know, the one that plays when Rocky's sad-driving, thinking about Apollo, and a montage of all his Apollo moments plays over that terrible synth-butt song?).

Also, I think Kim Gordon would probably say the lyrics are dope. "All the boys think she's a spy" ... I could totally see Kim writing something like that.

sorry to dredge this up but I mean I just don't get *how* exactly it is that you can listen to these 'credible' acts you've listed when nine inch nails are an assault on them, a complete pastiche of their values and therefore an obliteration of them. it's not about a pop vs. underground oppositional thing, more so that pop has an underlying awareness of its inescapable vacuity and as such is completely free from being quantified in relation to anything outside of its actual properties as organised sound -- it exists as nothing more than brain candy to fill in the gaps in one's membrane and does whatever it can to achieve that.

nine inch nails posit themselves as something more than the midwest strip mall goth-pomp that they unquestionably are, wearing on their sleeves the industrial tag while utterly bastardising everything that made that term have some sort of subversive meaning. I'm not saying that context is of utmost centrality to enjoying music, but when an artist is going to consciously situate themselves in a lineage I think you have to scrutinise that as it's a very unhealthy thing to do, especially one as singular and ideologically rigorous as industrialism. and to shamelessly don this tag while totally flouting all of these underlying principles, creating this facade of existing out of the norm while being the very definition thereof is patently fucking offensive.

I just see them as being perhaps the most heinously disingenuous band I've ever heard, and their music is to my ears pure shit, teen angst left to fester in a jar of piss and then sold back to poor unknowing kids in a coke can with a complementary nose stud.

[Severian]

Wow.

I've never met anyone who hated a musician as much as you apparently hate NIN.

You hate them/him MUCH more than I like them, just so you know. So, you're not going to get an equal response.

Jesus man. I really hate some artists (Drake) but I can't imagine goingas nuts on him as you are on NIN.

Sorry you can't believe it or understand it, but I like NIN as well as Sonic Youth and Throbbing Gristle (Genesis P-Orridge likes NIN too, just saying), and the Melvins and Einstürzende Neubauten, and Velvet Undergeound and Big Black andall the "legit" and "cool" other bands out there. Again, I like music that makes my ears and brain feel good.

There was a time, around age 18 to 21-22, when I decided NIN didn't match up with my increasingly cool and exclusive ( ) standards for music. They weren't, y'know, actually repulsive to the average listener so they HAD to be just too low brow for me.

Eventually I realized that this was just a symptom of early-adulthood assholism and exclusivity syndrome. I realized that, hey, come to think of it, Pearl Jam isn't the devil either. Not great, but they had some good songs and it's okay for me to think that and still be a John Cage-listening, chin rubbing, musical elite-type guy.

Sorry my friend but you and I think about music far too differently to have a productive discussion here. You come across sounding, like, really snobby even though I don't think that's what you're going for. Also, have you nothing to say about Kim Carnes? Fleetwood Mac? Meh?

Here's some more unworthy, establishment type music whose that I don't hate completely:

The White Stripes (love them actually)
Madonna (she had some bangers... Mostly shit, but that shit was flecked with fuckin' bangers)
Janet Jackson (Control.)
Phish (they have at least 3 great albums. Can't hate them completely, despite the 13 awful ones)
Jane's Addiction (this should piss you off as much as, if not more than, NIN. Jane's was THE catalyst in the rise of mainstream rock bands that stole from the underground and took the basement to the arena. They preceded NIN and were instrumental in helping NIN launch. So, in theory your ire should be seven fold for them)
Faith No More (see above! Mind you, I don't like all FNM, and what I do like is generally pretty accepted by my underground fanatic friends, but holy wow, these guys really walked the tightrope between awesomeness and absurdity.)
Nirvana (What do we have here? A multi-platinum band that started in the underground and rode a trend to the top of the charts while Sonic Yough and Mudhoney toiled away in the clubs. Shouldn't Nirvana essentially be very picture of everything you loathe? Re-write your ablve speech and substitute "Nine Inch Nails" for "Nirvana," and "industrial" for "punk," and it should work just fine.)

But I don't think you hate Nirvana, because I'm pretty sure you, like me, are a white guy between 35 and 40 who grew up with them. Ditto for Jane's and FNM. Why should these bands get any kind of pass? Why should NIN be evaluated only on the most awful elements of their look and "scene?")

There's also this one thing you don't seem to be getting: Trent Reznor is a music NERD. He grew up in Peter Frampton, Kiss, Van Halen. He somehow loves RUSH as much as he loves Savbath, and Depeche Mode as much if not more than Joy Division. He loved the Cure as much as Ministry, that's for sure.

He set out to make fucking dance music. Like, awful dance music. And yet, somehow, he adapted his disco sound to allow for the influence of Throbbing Gristle and New Order and Kraftwerk. Then made a reductive metal album that's heavier than all of Pantera's catalog combined. Then he added Pink Floyd and the Beatles to his list of bands to run through a blender, and he made textures and melodic "concept" records like Downward Spiral and The Fragile. Then he made some poor choices, yeah ("The Hand that Feeds" is oh my god so bad) ... but he managed to turn that to his advantage, and made anotrher reductionist, well-crafted, gem with The Slip before bowing out for a bit.

Then he got into scoring films, and the feedback has been pretty unanimously positive.

Blah. I said you wouldn't get an equal reply, and I guess I lied. But seriously, if NIN is the worst band you've ever heard, or somehow the most "offensive" to your DIY punk n' stuff ideals, then I'd say you need to broaden your horizons as listen to more music. There's a world of polished, mass market shit out there that makes NIN look like fucking Fugazi.

ALSO: if you're telling me that you genuinely dislike the song "Closer," not because of over-saturation, but because it is SO offensive to your musical, ethical and cultural sensibilities that that infectious, decade-defining groove elicits nothing but disgust from you.... then I say you're a goddamn liar.

Sorry. I must insist on being antagonistic as hell here. You've pointed to some vague, abstractions to argue that NIN is, presumably, worse than KoRn and Coldplay and Metallica and U2, but you haven't talked about the actual music. And while sure, some of it is embarrassingly bad, you're gonna have to look me dead in the eye and tell me exactly why "Closer" is NOT one of the best pop singles of the '90s in order for me to even concede one point to you.

I'd love to hear what's wrong with "Into the Void" and "The Perfect Drug" too, but I can't spend all day on this.

[Severian]

What is music, ultimately, other than the feelings it inspires in the listener? Throwing anything else into the mix is and ultimately confusing the issue. "High Fidelity" is fun, but that's not life. In life, if you hear something and it makes you feel a certain way, that's the experience. Muddying the waters with philosophical rhetoric about the nature and taxonomy of the music (i.e. Well, that's [style x] and I've decided to identify as a [style y] type of person, so I have to hate [non x-adjacent] things on principle!") is completely unproductive, and ultimately harmful to cultural discussions of art.

But if you're going to be a hard-liner about this kind of thing, you really need to condemn like 90% of recorded music. Does Al Green line up with your outsider/alienation thing? Does Eric Clapton? Led Zeppelin? The Beatles? Michael Jaskson? Prince? BOWIE? None of them should. Assuming they don't, does this mean none of these artists have any good music to their credit? Shouldn't.

I kind of hate Led Zeppelin. They seem to sort of represent a lot of the things about music that I hate most. But I would be insane to suggest that this means they never kicked out the fucking jams.

Anyway, wow. You hate NIN a lot. I thought I hated Drake, but you apparently think NIN is so offensive to "The Pure" that any memory of true "How did we ever get there?" head-scratchers like Limp Bizkit and Nickelback seems to have escaped you. Like, really? NIN's the worst? Worse than its own severed conjoined twin acts like Filter and Marilyn Manson? Ohhhhhhhhhhnononononoooo, I think not.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Severian

Spoon - Hot Thoughts

 

Every time I think Spoon is done being interesting, this happens. Their mysterious new album takes form. It gets a kick-ass title, and reveal compelling album art that seems to fit perfectly into some previously unknown empty space in the Spoon universe.

Seriously, this is just great. It feels so Spoon.

This is now my most looked-forward to rock album of the year.

This appears to be coming out March 17, on Matador by the way.

Spoon hasn't been on Matador since Telephono (also know as "Spoon' Pablo Honey") in 1996. I don't actually think the label matters much. They released They Want my Soul on Loma Vista after a decade plus with Merge, and it still sounded Spoony.

Gotta say, that record (TWMS) was the first Spoon album that didn't really turn my crank on first listen, and didn't eventually grow into a staple. I haven't listened to it since the year of its release. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it certainly wasn't bad. It was good, just not immediately memorable (despite great art, title). It was no Ga or Sneaks. So I'm hoping for something that hits the spot right away.

[pepper_green]

NIN are just fine. it's the Korn, Limp Biscuit, Creed, Nickleback, Emeniem contingents from the late 90's that worried me the most and I was right to worry. a whole generation of dumbasses weened on rap-rock and post grunge = gross individuals, redneck views of the world, and extreme morals on how to live life. thanks to all those fuckers I listed above. those fans are grown up and in society in their 30's making decisions.

and you thought Pearl Jams was wrong. ha.

[pepper_green]

yes, loser Emeniem was apart of the whole post grunge white trash "hate my parents, girlfriend angst, and I want to put a gun to my head" as any band.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by pepper_green

NIN are just fine. it's the Korn, Limp Biscuit, Creed, Nickleback, Emeniem contingents from the late 90's that worried me the most and I was right to worry. a whole generation of dumbasses weened on rap-rock and post grunge = gross shit!!!

NIN was lumped in a bit with Korn for a while. Specifically, I remember a group of kids in my high school who alternated between Korn, NIN and Tool shirts... maybe a Manson every once in a while, or a Nirvana (because deep, obviously)... sometimes even a Submie tee, which I always found really incongruous on several levels, but whatever.

Anyway, because NIN had dark videos that were played late at night and kinda looked a bit like the "ADIDAS" video mixed with the "Ænema" video (divided by Depeche Mode), NIN was somehow thrown in with that trinity of pre-rap rock, post-grunge whateverthefuck. Really, Trent didn't belong in that company. I don't think those kids ever listened to Pretty Hate Machine all the way through. Surely if they had the music would have seemed totally gay to the lot of them.

I always thought of Nine Inch Nails as a peer of Jane's Addiction, Rollins Band, Faith No More, Ministry, Coil. Dark, weird, ambitious, heavy, a bit artsy... Not the same stuff the Korns of the world were made of.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by pepper_green

yes, loser Emeniem was apart of the whole post grunge white trash "hate my parents, girlfriend angst, and I want to put a gun to my head" as any.

Nobody's arguing with you. I'm not anyway. Eminem is an awful, awful thing.

[The Soup Nazi]

 

Anything Could Happen — Bash & Pop (January 20, so at least something cool will happen on Fascist Takeover Day). If you've never heard Friday Night Is Killing Me or don't even know who Bash & Pop were/are, you've lived a seriously miserable life and I can't help you.

[Severian]

You know the Sleater-Kinney live album is also dropping on Jan. 20, right?

[Severian]

I recommend that everyone here who is into weird music, from noise to drone to electronic and ambient to pretty much everything else subscribe to the Boomkat mailing list.

Boomkat has been one of the most reliable places for new music for me in recent years. Great site, great selection, weird music. What's your poison? Archival reggae? Metal so fucked and weird and underground that a reissued LP has no base audience (so why the reissue? Doesn't matter!)? What about, like, Himalayan grime-folk? Or just the usual stuff like Basinki, O'Rourke, Anbarchi, etc.?

They have excellent prices on everything, and if you create an account and sign up for the mailing list and buy an album from them, they send you info every couple days about new music that you might like based on that purchase.

It's rare that I get excited about a company that distributes music, but Boomkat the exception. I'd dig a PR job there. Check it out.