Your mom!

Hey you're pretty sure your mom is your mom and I'm pretty sure this song is out of control. Out of fucking conterl. Good Christ thank you for rocky music.

Mount Saint Helens Vietnam Band - Albatross Albatross Albatross

Fratster is an artist

Haven't been hearing a lot of good shit lately/always. Went to David Bowie or Byrne or something concert at Radio City and it was really white like...the blackup singers were the only non white folks there. I knew about two songs and pretended to know two or three others. I was lying mainly because I had to justify spending $50 on the ticket and because the 50/50 Sprite/Vodka's told me to.

Hot?

Or Alien?

I've been digging Ellie Goulding and Bombay Bicycle Club. Thats not even new news. More British stuff - dunno why I'm into that scene lately - maybe its cuz the Americans are all experimentally lately and shit and its bugging me out!

That Junior Boys track Parallel Lines from the last post is also turning out to be pretty epic.

Becoming an artist!

Available now for free download!

Also decided to f around with some mixing software and make a few tracks. If this sounds like I spent all of 45 minutes making this song, its because I actually spent 15 minutes and am just really gifted.

Fratster - Morethananhouristoolongtospendmakingasong

Ellie Goulding - Guns + Horses

Bombay Bicycle Club - Cancel on Me

Lazy Bitch

I'm not sure how to phrase this any more delicately, but I've been a bit of a lazy bitch lately. Plus all the love throughout the blogosphere for shitty weird-fi bands like Animal Collective, DumDum Girls/Mayfair Set, Wavves has been depressing. Bonus plus, I've also been having sex on a consistent basis with some chick but she left me to go to Mexico with some other dude which is apparently just the sort of inspiration it takes for me to put together a post here.

Seriously WTF guy

Groakies?

Anyhow there is some good new shit out there, so here are a few of the things that I've heard lately worth listening to.

Fanfarlo

Stupid fucking band name that makes shit that sounds way too much like Arcade Fire and Beirut but is actually phenomenal.

Fanfarlo - "I'm a Pilot"

The Answering Machine

You're so money and you don't even know it.

Ma'am, where do all the high school girls hang out around here?

Another pretty much pathetic attempt at a band name. Name aside, they busted out the hook of the year in this track Cliffer. Their other stuff is really good too.

The Answering Machine - "Cliffer"

Phoenix

I am bizarrely in love with the band Phoenix. Basically, if I had to describe the median 50% percentile mean or whatever of my musical spectrum, I'd put Phoenix right there in my sweet spot. Sense any did that make? Anyhow, looks like they have a new track out and it's wonderful.

Phoenix - "1901"

Junior Boys

Another band that's pretty much in that sweet spot for me. Sometimes they miss, but they never shank, and when they nail it (In the Morning), it makes me wonder how 10,000 years ago, their ancestors didn't manage to crush any organism that I could have possibly descended from. Their new tracks are actually sounding pretty good, with this one being the best.

Junior Boys - "Parallel Lines"

Here we go Magic

This ring is not a metaphor.

This jam was the first real cracker of the year for me. Much more interesting rhythmically than Luke Temple's solo stuff. If not for the aforementioned lazybitchiness, this woulda had a full post a month ago, and I'd have perfect abs.

Here we go Magic - "Tunnelvision"

On the radar (I've been sitting still for too long to write anything more about any more bands): CFCF, The XX, Fever Ray, I Blame Coco, Heartless Bastards, Pains of being Pure at Heart

Animal Collective

I still don't get Animal Collective. I don't get the blogboy fascination. I don't get the critical darlingness. I'm more likely to successfully explain string theory to a retarded nine year old Chinese than make any sense of the common obsession with AC.

Rejected album art 1:

Or wait: I have one idea. Have you ever had that feeling that like you're lost and out of touch with shit and can't make sense of life and you tried reading Camus and Judy Blume and Harper's and tripping acid and smoking pot and searching for some experience that felt real or something like there was some piece of information out there that if you could just get your hands on it that maybe then things would all work out?

There is no book out there that everyone else is reading that makes them get it. There is no drug. There is no band. Animal Collective is not the second coming of jack shit. Their music sucks and I can't imagine a single working thinking person out there hearing AC and having any other thought than "What the fuck was that?"

I read the unreadable Pitchfork review and it's not that I disagree or think it to be bad writing or anything but I don't see how anyone who has ever read less than 100,000 words of music criticism could have made it through a paragraph. I didn't just pull that number out of my ass. Indie music has this stupid barrier to entry that punk and metal and rap and electronic and... don't have.

Lower it? Well maybe not, but let's save our exaltations for something that everyone can appreciate.

I guess that's all I really got.

Kanye

Someone stopped Kanye from chewing on his lo-fi vocoder for just long enough to record one really good jam. I dunno if I really really like this song or if I'm just so shocked that it's Kanye doing R & B really well that I think it's a really good song. Really.

"La la la Luke

I am your faaaaa-ther."

Kanye West - Streetlights

Glasvegas

Sometimes it takes a while for me to get something. Sorry. I'm not the bleeding edge. Music has to percolate through me for a bit before I can come on here and post about it. I'm not into wasting mine and everyone else's time to write something just for the sake of bumping my blog every eight hours. So when I do put something up here, you should be reading it, listening to it and then talking about it with every person you know. I'm doing all the goddamn legwork here.

What the hell is that thing get it away from me!?

It's just a digital camera Sanjeep.

I'm like your barber. You can visit me every few weeks and be fine. Stay away longer and risk turning into a social outcast. Come by every day and it'll be hard to hide the fact that you're unemployed and living above your parent's garage.

There just aren't five good songs / bands /events / (What else is worth blogging about?) a week that are worth writing about. Other times I just literally don't hear shit until months after its release. Which is sort of the case with Glasvegas. Full disclosure: I think I did hear them once on WOXY but I actually looked into them with earnest after I saw them ranked highly on NME's year end list. Ya I'm the guy that reads that shite.

So here it is, some quality Scottish tunes in the vein of The Twilight Sad. Sorry, the comparison is just too obvious.

Glasvegas - "Geraldine"

Mamma Sia!

Believe it or not I somehow entirely missed the album released by Sia via Australia via the Starbucks imprint this year. Of course I've also been inside of a Starbucks store for about ten total minutes in my life.


I was reading up on the top albums of the year and I found a list which had the error of having Sia at number one. I think it might have been a joke list because it also had Fleet Foxes and Coldplay up there in the top ten. So I had to check me out some Sia and I found out she used to be in Zero 7 which gave her at least some credibility. First song I found is the below linked jam "Buttons" which is super catchy (Thank You CSS) and spuriously lifted my expectations.

So then I wasted 30 seconds of my life walking over to my living room to visit one of the three Starbucks locations in my apartment where I was hoping to find her album. I either did that or I wasted 30 seconds downloading it for free from soulseek. Either way I'm never getting those 30 seconds back.

Before I fell asleep 11 seconds into the first track I remember starting to think that this was quite possibly the most unobjectionable music I've ever heard in my - and then I fell asleep - which is also to say that it is also probably the most unlistenable album of 2008.

But somehow CSS remixed this song "Buttons" and turned it into a really killer track worth checking out.

Acting is hard

I'm also throwing in "Breathe Me" because I'm pretty sure it was used to score the montage in the recent Ben Affleck/Hugh Jackman/Richard Gere + Goldie Hawn Jr./Jennifer Aniston/Julia Roberts film during the part where the male lead storms out of the Hospital/4-Star Restaurant/Wall Street Skyscraper/Crackhouse where he has been neglecting his female lead for far too long and sprints (tracking shot) through the rainy streets of New York/Seattle/Boston/Philadelphia, darting through the offices of the up-and-coming fashion brand/chocalatier/newspaper (editorials floor)/ where he finds the initially impassive female lead who puts her thin well-manicured hand to her mouth, doesn't know to laugh or cry, does both and just as Sia rasps "Be my Friend. Wrap me up. Hold me. Unfold me. I am Sma-a-a-a-all and Needy. Warm me up and Breath me," they embrace each other, make out and roll credits.

Sia - "Buttons" (CSS Remix)
Sia - "Breathe Me"

O wait looks like Coke has already used Sia. It's the one where the retarded kid wins gold and cries about it. LOL I thought this was some Ben Folds song LOL.