October 2010
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Holga
Bought a Holga; took it out last night for the first time. Both fun and infuriating taking shots and not knowing how they’re going to turn out, but since you don’t have a lot of settings to play with, you just shoot and hope for the best. Will post when I get them developed.
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NYT: Wingtips - Beloved, Classic & Now Trendy →
These are the prettiest shoes on Earth and I am the proud of owner of multiple pairs, but if someone says “They’re classic, yet modern” ABOUT ANYTHING in another style article, I’m going to blow up the blogosphere
What you’re trying to say, dogg, is “My grandpa wears these but they’re still cool, fuck you!”
Halloween in L.A.
The best holiday? Anywhere? Especially on the east side? So much madness already.
The Deerhunter album
In one sitting, on headphones, their most coherent piece of work. Not sure how high I’d rank it overall yet, though.
Update: I think I want more from it. After the Atlas Sound record and seeing them live, my standards from the band are pretty high — and too many of these songs are good, but just good enough, ’50s/’60s rockers with a little noise on top. Kind of the...
Euphemisms
From Pitchfork’s Warpaint review:
“Frothing to a natural climax”
“Their chemistry is inexplicable and fascinating to behold.”
“With Kokal and Wayman often singing on either side of a central Lindberg— who commands attention with her spaced-out sway— the live attack is engrossing. Together with drummer Stella Mozgawa, Warpaint speak a sultry,...
Mixtape: Witch Trials: Halloween 2010 →
One final word about these awful "hipster"...
The through line seems to be that hipster culture in the 2000s is shallow and unproductive, a trust-funded faux bohemia largely concerned with the appearance of outsider cool. In this perception’s vacuum, the overwhelming awfulness of mainstream culture is never taken into account. Celebrity drug problems and sex lives scream at us from the grocery store check-out line. Reality shows...
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THE INTERNET NEVER FORGETS
In high school and college, I posted on a series of message boards: Tabcrawler, as I started learning guitar and discovering indie rock, then Anyone Seen The Bridge, a Dave Matthews Band board with higher aspirations, and finally, Ufck.org, an ASTB spin-off with all of the standard Internet forum dramas: real-life romances, absurd rivalries, bannings and moderator power-plays, leaked nude photos,...
2010 ties 1997 for highest number of Alternative Songs No. 1s by new acts since the chart adopted Nielsen BDS-monitored data in 1993. The six acts that ruled on their first tries 13 years ago: Third Eye Blind(“Semi-Charmed Life”), matchbox 20 (“Push”), Sugar Ray (“Fly”), Smash Mouth (“Walkin’ on the...
This ridiculous N+1 bro hipster article
Here’s the thing about articles about hipsters: if there were actually enough hipsters to justify them, Animal Collective would have a billion YouTube views. Instead, Lady Gaga does. There’s plenty to write about re: indie music, fashion, tech, youth culture/etc. over the last decade (and again, I’m putting a book proposal together on the subjects), but talking, over and over,...
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MP3 premiere: Pepper Rabbit - "Babette!" →
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My interview with Ross Flournoy, formerly of the... →
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for every new band DiS champions, we still end up getting 1000% more traffic on slagging off the Kings of Leon or getting into a row with Brian May over Mika. it’s utterly depressing that one bit of negativity is worth an infinite amount of positivity. a lot of this has underlined a lot of my issues with what DiS currently is and makes me wonder what it could be in the future. sticking my...
"SoundOpinions liked your post"
If this means DeRo and Kot are reading this, gentlemen, please let me refer you to http://www.rawkblog.net, home of what Snoop Dogg might describe as “the good shit.” Also, Jim, I own two copies of Milk It! I’ve only read one of ‘em, though.
Or, more obviously
I don’t understand why it’s O.K. to say “This band is good” but it’s not O.K. to say “This band is bad,” as if endorsing something with potentially little value is somehow better than dismissing that same thing, because one of the two SUPPORTS THE ARTS
This is a through line I’ve seen for years in online conversations ranging from piracy to...
Deep Thoughts On My 2010 Bands You Can Ignore List
This list was intended to do a handful of things:
1) Present a sort of Rawkblog taste state of the union: These are bands I don’t like. I’m not going to be writing about them on Rawkblog. As a Rawkblog reader, I’d like you to be aware of this, in case you were expecting paragraphs of gushing about Teen Inc. or whatever. Consider it a full disclosure.
2) As a response to the...
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Rawkblog: 2010 Bands You Can Ignore: An Exhaustive... →
This is inspiring quite a lot of angry (!) commentary in the comments and Twitter, which I’ll probably respond to at length at some point. But not quite yet.
The new Walkmen album
Really strong stuff so far, actually, but it doesn’t have that sense of importance or essentialness that I almost have to have to get through an album now; it is just a nice Walkmen album
Should probably force self to listen to 2-3 more times but there is so much else to listen to and I don’t think this will suddenly elevate to a 4.5 star album so I may just toss it like perfectly...
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The problem with 2010 music, as a music geek, is...
It is too much good or “relevant” music
The list of albums that I, a pretty discerning/cranky critic, am actually interested and want to listen to 3-4 times is a mile long. Much longer than any previous year, which is a combination of more good new bands (woo!) and more “catalog” acts sticking around and trying to make careers out of this thing. I haven’t even...
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2010 5-star songs
Not in order (OK, maybe in order)
Warpaint - Undertow
Scott Bartenhagen - Beacons
Radio Dept. - Heaven’s On Fire
Sky Larkin - Still Windmills
Sally Seltmann - Harmony to My Heartbeat
Young Hunting - Into Yr Mind
Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Everlyn
The National - Conversation 16
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti - Round...
Wish I was at the CMJ blogger panel right now
2k11 I guess
Elliott Smith
Tumblronia, on the seventh anniversary of his death, I hope you’re aware he has like 4 albums worth of b-sides/unreleased studio/live tracks that are all as fucking amazing as his records and you should download every single one of them
also you should download all of his records and if you don’t have them all and you’re listening to literally anything that came out in 2010...
summerofmegadeth:
Blogs ruined music and the way people discover, consume, and enjoy it. There, I said it.
Yeah, FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BLOGGERS
Pretty sure everybody else is enjoying music just fine out there.
The Joanna Newsom "Simpsons" statement
So totally baffling
Indie rock = Us Weekly
I have 192 Tumblr followers
If this Tumblr was an MP3, it would be of acceptable audio quality
Not to get mad envious and it’s awesome that 10,000 people read Yvynyl and I don’t want 10,000 people to read this Tumblr because Jesus Christ, but dear 10,000 people, you should read Rawkblog because we bring the jamz
Love,
Dave
Watchamritsingh:
Here’s a segment A Different Spin With Mark Hoppus did on Brooklyn/Williamsburg and its “scene.” The National and Woods are in it, as am I. We talked for an hour on a roof (fun fact: in Queens, which is not in BKLYN) and I gave shine to lots of worthy/weirder new BKLYN bands (like some of these), but they took what they needed. Fair enough (and you’re welcome, MNDR, if in fact people...
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"Mad Men" S04E13
For the record, I loved last night’s episode. For practically the first time all season, there were moments of genuine levity — it was so purely pleasurable to see Don jump into that California pool. And I think he made the right choice re: marriage — maybe that particular jump’s a little too hasty, but she’s open and warm in a way that Dr. Faye, who I really liked,...
“And why do we want them to support us, why do we want them to buy the new Sufjan...”
– Asthmatic Kitty’s Michael Kaufmann, essentially calling Sufjan his label’s Mariah Carey or Lady Gaga. Fascinating.
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Manchester/London/Deep Thoughts
This has been a pretty great trip. Highlights: Not embarrassing myself at the panel, being called “a famous blogger” by a publicist tonight and part of the “kings of the Internet” on Wednesday, having some pretty tremendous bro-downs with Sean and Dev and Ryan (!) and Cokemachineglow’s Alan Baban, meeting some really great, enthusiastic U.K. bloggers, and on the...
Download/stream my In the City Blogging in the... →
Photos coming!
C'mon, Sufjan
The size of [The Age of Adz] is a response to all the theatrical clutter that characterized all my previous work. I was getting tired of that self-conscious, rambling psychobabble. I got really sick of myself and my own flawed, epic approach to everything.
He said of his new 80 minute album, also presumably including his 60-minute Simon & Garfunkel semi-concept EP
Can you put out another...
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Verizon reviews reviews
Highlights from my horrendous conversation this morning to attempt to resolve my ongoing pursuit of a standard service they offer:
“My address is… Los Angeles, California.”
Later:
“Is that central time?”
Followed by: “I’m on East Coast time, so 3 p.m. would be 1 for you?”
“Noon.”
(I draw attention to this because Verizon reps seem...
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Fader Reviews Reviews
For a while, Aleks Martray lived in a punk house in Philadelphia where the Sun Ra Arkestra once performed. That’s a metaphor for his band Grandchildren
THAT’S NOT A METAPHOR
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"[Redacted's] new album boasts deceptively simple...
What does this mean? Are the melodies secretly played by Peter Frampton’s wah pedal? Jesus Christ.
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Mad Men this week
DON, KEEP IT TOGETHER, BROSEPH
Rawktumblr: Does everything have to be a feud →
rachael-maddux:
rawkblog:
Steve Albini sez, Sonic Youth are my friends, but I think they made an embarrassing, wrong-headed decision (which they have since moved on from)
Media sez, Steve Albini goes off on Sonic Youth
Where’s the nuance, writers? Frankly, Steve’s mostly right, though hindsight’s 20/20 here and…
Oh, nice. This gives me an excuse to write about how I was just reading about...
Does everything have to be a feud
Steve Albini sez, Sonic Youth are my friends, but I think they made an embarrassing, wrong-headed decision (which they have since moved on from)
Media sez, Steve Albini goes off on Sonic Youth
Where’s the nuance, writers? Frankly, Steve’s mostly right, though hindsight’s 20/20 here and Thurston’s been able to use the label connections to do a lot of good w/ Ecstatic Peace...
I saw Bob Pollard last night
Then he saw my review today.
Life: currently the awesomest
Matador 21!
Jams! Drinks! Gambling! Friends!
I am having as much fun as I expected to. Which is a lot.
