What are you listening to?

[doldrums]

heard Guy Picciotto pay tribute to Vic Chestnutt on the radio...RIP...

[armor]

The xx
Beach House

[business]

Listening to:
- the XX
- fever ray

and right now this delightful little number http://hypem.com/track/653479/ Mariah - Shinzo No Tobira

[caahtatonic]

Little Dragon - Dream Machine
Oneida - Rated O

Remastered Get Your Ya Yas Out coming in the mail :D

[scott.m]

dream machine is a good album, her self titled is far better in my opinion though.

[caahtatonic]

Cool. Will definitely check out.

[lowrey]

it's charlotte gainsbourg, faust

sometimes it feels like there are still no girls here

did you like it lowrey? i only got through a couple of songs,
but they were nice....

yea, only listened to it once through so far but sounds very good

[klangspiel]

heard Guy Picciotto pay tribute to Vic Chestnutt on the radio...RIP...

picciotto toured and played on chesnutt's last two albums, as did members from godspeedyoublacksilvermountzion or somesuch canadian gobbledygook :). an underrated songwriter. from recent memory, i think this might be my favourite chesnutt song.

anyway, '09 sure wasn't much of a year to speak of but there was at least one bright light: the return of charles tolnay's grong grong!! i don't know if the name "grong grong" rings any bells for some of you here but surely "charles tolnay" would? tolnay was of course a member of a bunch of illustrious outfits such as lubricated goat, king snake roost (the main member in fact), tumor circus (with jello biafra and members of steel pole bathtub), bushpig (with folks from mudhoney) and probably a few more i can't remember. lub goat and king snake roost were imo the lynchpins of the amrep roster. certainly definitive of a particular sound ("noise rock") that gave the label an identity of sorts. well, before lub goat, ksr, and the rest; tolnay ran the business with grong grong out of adelaide, south australia.

man, these guys were legendary, and undoubtedly unsung, in more ways than one. how to describe them? here's me being lazy and flippant: like a vulgarised sonic concourse of beefheart, flipper, birthday party, pop group, and early butthole surfers, with some no wave sax skronk ala contortions thrown in for good measure. alt tentacles put out their one and only LP back in the mid 80s. so the story goes that jello went absolutely nuts for them when they supported the dead kennedys adelaide show back then. he most likely wasn't expecting to find something as musically beguiling and idiosyncratic as those guys in an aussie hickville hinterland. haha.

official site:

http://www.myspace.com/mentaltortureband

fan site (with cuts from the alt tentacles lp):

http://www.myspace.com/gronggrong

[Enaml]

Not to say p4k is good by any means, but I'm glad to see Minneapolis band Solid Gold finally getting some national attention:

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/13721-matter-of-time-tanlines-remix/

Also, lots of The xx, Pictureplane, Telepathe, and Toro y Moi.

[BBYY]

The XX

Everyone seems to listen to them, but damn, that's good.

[Enaml]

I wouldn't call them incredibly creative or something by any means, but (in my opinion, at least) it's good pop music that's much more mature than a lot of what's been hyped recently. It's still to be seen whether they'll have any sort of longevity. Also, going to a liberal arts school full of hipsters, it's kinda a nice change to hear something that isn't rehashing m83, mgmt, animal collective, grizzly bear, etc.

caahtatonic, what do you think of Rated O? I haven't had the chance to check it out yet but I keep hearing good things.

[DRRRK]

I'm with you about the XX. I've already had a discussion about them earlier in this thread. They do nothing new and are just pop in terms of commercial aspects. The whole decade in "indie" was dominated by the sounds they use. They are quite good but boring at the same time. I need my music to be more difficult to like. The outcome with complex and angular music can be so much more rewarding than the hyped "indie" (=pop with indie sounds) bands every music mag or website raves about simultaneously.

listened to xx for a bit, since numerous people in the thread were of such high opinion.. i'm sincerely confused. though i don't mean to start a fight of the subject and tastes of the sort are highly subjective, i can't for the life of me understand the high acclaim. these guys make interpol & associated post-punk revivalists of the early 00's sound like a breath of fresh air by comparison, and some of those were pretty atrocious.

[Aleks]

soap & skin

[hamletpowpowpow]

Yeah, I dunno about this. That comment sounds pretty "indie rock" to me. Full disclosure - I have absolutely no interest in the XX. When I was 17, I was all about being "indie" or "hardcore" - and didn't want my music to be "easy"...but eventually, when I pulled my head out of my ass, I realized there was a lot of brilliant music out there that I was ignoring. John Fahey is easy to listen to, Neil Young is pretty easy to listen to, Townes Van Zandt is pretty easy to listen to. Does that make them any less valid than a band like whitehouse? And two very mainstream acts put out two of my favorite records last year...portishead and fever ray. just cus I listen to tape-hiss filled black metal doesn't mean I can't enjoy the mainstream either.

I'll agree that some of my favorite records were things I initially hated at first listen. but i dunno man, yr closing yrself off. I'm not saying your missing the heavenly glory of the XX, but I'm sure there's some music out there waiting to blow yr mind.

now pardon me, i'm gonna continue being sick in bed with a fever and let my man bruce do the talking for me.

I need my music to be more difficult to like. The outcome with complex and angular music can be so much more rewarding than the hyped "indie" (=pop with indie sounds) bands every music mag or website raves about simultaneously.

[endersgame]

dan deacon, ohio
i can't believe this made it on local morning tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eMb_kh_glw