February 2012
103 posts
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Guess the Tweet: Lana Del Rey or Horse Ebooks? →
Thanks to Maura for indulging me on this one. Bet you can’t get more than 5 right!
unrational reblogged your post: unrational replied to your link: The Boston…
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Haha, fair enough. I wasn’t serious about thinking less of myself. (It was kind of a weak attempt at an emo joke)
I know no one actually means it when they say it, but the mindset comes from somewhere. Shame is a useless emotion in music listening and we need to destroy it.
I just read there are 40 million active Call of Duty players. That means 40 million people bought the game. Probably multiple games in the series.
Now imagine if you could convince that many people to buy your album or go to your movie. Or maybe you’re in the wrong business.
unrational replied to your link: The Boston Phoenix’s Top 100 Emo Songs
Does it make me a bad person that I love about a third of this list?
Of course it doesn’t. At least a third of the list is terrific. Can we please stop talking about music in terms of how it negatively affects our self-worth or self-image? Everybody?
I’m not going to ask again.
Breaking: Actress exercises five hours a day, eats... →
People magazine should be outlawed
A well-deserved love letter to the Bill Callahan... →
No mention of Adele’s weight.
As the writer of an SXSW survival guide
The existence of numerous other SXSW survival guides makes me worry about ridiculous attendance numbers this year. Hope it’s not up another 40%, or that if it is, all of those people come to our party.
This SXSW Pinterest thing →
Admittedly: probably useful. I had to ask my fiancee why Pinterest was different than having a Tumblr. (“It’s like having a bunch of Tumblrs.”)
meltedspinningplastic replied to your post: Turns out I still like Hootie and the Blowfish’s…
Those guys are back together??? I thought Darius Rucker was a country singer now.
He still is. This is a song from 1998.
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The Boston Phoenix's Top 100 Emo Songs →
It gets worse the higher you go. Where is the Spotify playlist?
Edit: Here it is!
Abandoned Thinking Catalog Parody Article
How I Feel After I Eat An Entire Pint Of Ben & Jerry’s
Maybe I should actually pitch this to Thought Catalog.
Also, “What To Do When Your Mother Calls”
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@daverawkblog @weareyourfek How I Plan On Motivating Myself To Actually Write A Post For My Parody Tumblr
— thinkingcatalog (@thinkingcatalog) February 9, 2012
!!!
Danny Bobbe nails the problem with "back in my... →
I have a feeling those five year ago’ers you speak of have kids now and want to hang their memories like trophies.
This is why he writes the lyrics
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Turns out I still like Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Answer Man” better than pretty much any 2012 indie jam
'90s Acoustic Bros Hierarchy
Dave Matthews Band > Counting Crows > Hootie and the Blowfish > Goo Goo Dolls
The latter-day Counting Crows catalog is the steepest drop-off, though Dave has way too many shitty records, too.
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There's probably nothing funnier than wildly... →
Somehow when people have these discussions about bands they carry infinitely more weight to me. They’re just fucking pants, bros!
I should say that I love that people are passionate about this stuff, but it’s weirder to me that people would assert their taste against other people in the realm of what makes individuals look good. Especially on a “no homo” level.
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Related:
There are dozens of classic indie-pop albums and obscure bands on Spotify, which is really amazing. I’ve been cruising through them. None of them sound quite like the Softies (or come even close). I guess the best comparisons would be Elliott Smith, Jens Lekman, the Clientele — in other words, my other very favorite bands. I have a type. Will have some discoveries on Rawkblog in the...
Just finished the "serious writing" portion of my...
It’s the most I’ve ever written about anything. I worked really, really hard on these: if there’s an interview with Jen and Rose on the Internet, I’ve read it. I can’t say if the critical insights are on par with the research, but I think you’ll find some thoughtful ideas in tomorrow’s entries. I’m pretty sure this is the most thorough body of work...
The "Downton" Christmas special, oh man
[spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler]
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barackobama:
Yeah, we had to.
If the Barack Obama Tumblr encourages a nation of 18-year-old Internet addicts to get out the vote, I will stand and salute this marshmallow gun GIF.
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That kale post got more actual responses (read: not “likes”) than anything I’ve posted about music here, ever
FOOD IS THE NEW INDIE ROCK
(Also, no bros came forward as kale fans, c’mon, dudes! Being healthy is masculine!)
Kale: having a moment
Feel like it went right into “thing people make fun of” and skipped right past the “hot new artisanal food fad” part. Am I wrong?
http://twitter.com/#!/thinkingcatalog →
This is really special.
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Pitchfork's Standard Fare review →
On their promising debut, The Noyelle Beat, the young Sheffield trio Standard Farestruggled to nail a wobbly sound, one that veered between wide-eyed Rainer Maria emo and tart-tongued, caffeinated indie pop. I saw them at New York City’s Cake Shop, ground zero for still-forming indie pop bands, and they were bursting with energy that didn’t quite make it into their record. The...
putthison:
“We could all look silly and disheveled, or dull and boring. Some men choose not to.”
—
G. Bruce Boyer (via voxsart)
matthewtowles asked: Have you listened to any of Katy Davidson's new Key Losers stuff?
I listened to all the Dear Nora albums
This is the one you want. The songwriting starts cracking on the second album and then falls apart on the last one, which seems almost purposefully self-defeating given how assured the debut is.
“What’s wrong with being me? I like myself the best.”
Brief thought on uniqueness
jakec:
…
But I do think the idea of rebelliousness was perverted almost immediately by the image of the rebel and then continuously perverted until to be a rebel meant being a destructive and sullen piece of shit, and obviously everyone who proclaims themselves a rebel now is completely naive. That reactionary aspect does not account for the fact that sometimes popular things are good and...
Giving myself a new productivity rule
One login to Facebook per day. Once I log out, I’m done. We’ll see how this goes. (Probably badly.)
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Brief thought on uniqueness
I feel like it’s a surprising conundrum of my generation, that we were raised on self-esteem programs that taught us to value ourselves, and yet we place our cultural self-worth in the concept of being different — in being a “rebel,” in being in opposition to something. We are terrified of being cliche, as if it’s somehow not cliche to eat sandwiches or drive a car or...
Rick Santorum's primary wins →
That this happens on the same day a judge strikes down Prop. 8 is a reminder that there is a long, long road left for equal rights — and for freedom from bigotry — in this country.
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I'll take "Unbelievable Quotes" for 600, Alex
Explaining the decision to allow Brown back on the show, Ehrlich told ABC News Radio, “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”
It definitely wasn’t Rihanna. (via)
Daydreaming of SXSW
mbmelodies:
rawkblog:
Anyone from Tumblronia going this year?
I am flying from Japan to go to my first SXSW. Terrified/excited!
You’re going to have a blast. Get ready for so many tacos.
(If you are going to SXSW obviously we should hang out)
Daydreaming of SXSW
Anyone from Tumblronia going this year?
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Highly recommend streaming the new Tennis album →
Life is full of surprises
yrouttasight replied to your link: The number of comments discussing Pitchfork in my A.V. Club of Montreal review
You’ve read other comments sections on the A.V. Club, haven’t you? You’re lucky they even mentioned the band you were writing about, and not Dawes.
Reading comments generally makes me unhappy so I don’t read them. Unless they’re about me and then I can’t help myself.
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The number of comments discussing Pitchfork in my... →
Talk about a dour percentage, amirite?
There are 80+ comments and I think one, one (!), addresses my review.
If Pitchfork had comments, people would just sit on the site for hours, insulting each other and drinking liters of Mountain Dew. It’s probably a national service that they don’t.
Prop. 8 struck down →
This is fantastic news. Go, equal rights, go!
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One Week // One Band: You and Only You →
oneweekoneband:
We’re about to get into Favorite Albums of All Time territory for me here, so an overview of my Softies fandom may help contextualize the inevitable gushing. Recently, I told the story of the first time I heard the band to the Vancouver Observer for the paper’s Rose Melberg appreciation:
Click through for the first of today’s Softies posts, a brief history of my...
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"Fearless Karoake" →
This Spotify subscription just paid for itself!
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This Taylor Swift live album that I didn't know... →
The delay of the crowd’s sing-alongs makes them sound like a strange, terrifying echo. Despite the Auto-Tune rumors and that faltering Grammy performance, Taylor’s voice sounds terrific. (I can confirm her live proficiency thanks to Jay Leno’s summer concert series. Don’t ask.) Her albums are so spotless that I’m not sure why you’d need this, except as a...
Noise for Pretend - Happy You Near →
A great, noir-y lost record from 2002. It sounds like Broadcast with an upright bass, maybe? There are so few albums in this vein and I love them so dearly but don’t adequately know how to describe them. It also reminds me of the Bird and the Bee if they didn’t sort of suck.