Random Music Talk CXXVII: Crickets

[mikal]

Mine so far, alphabetical order:

Cable Ties - Far Enough
Ellis - Pringle Creek
Hum - Inlet
Mint Julep - Stray Fantasies
Myrkur - Folkesange
Pure Reason Revolution - Eupnea
Purity Ring - Womb
Soccer Mommy - Color Theory
Solkyri - Mount Pleasant

My favourite release, full stop, is Sleepmakeswaves - No Safe Place EP. The best thing they've ever made. They're releasing three EPs this year, which will also function together as an album.

I feel like I should draw mikal's attention to Hum. Not sure if you've listened to them? I think you might like them, they were an amazing nineties alt-rock band that sounded quite unlike their contemporaries. I love their guitar tones, thick and shoegazy but with a meatiness that's almost metal. Downward Is Heavenward is their finest album... and suddenly they've dropped this new one 22 years later that picks up exactly where they left off. It sounds like they recorded it in 2000, not 2020, in the best possible way.

Crazy you say that. I just listened to the Hum album last night. Really good. I actually saw them live in ‘98 opening for Smashing Pumpkins of all bands. ?

 

[Axver]

I actually saw them live in ‘98 opening for Smashing Pumpkins of all bands. ?

Fuuuuuck jealous.

I'm hoping that post-covid Hum might make their way down here, one of those bands I just could not imagine having the opportunity to see live. Downward Is Heavenward is an album that has reliably remained in rotation for me for... so long. I probably first heard it around 2005 or 2006 and it sticks with me so well. Funnily enough, though, I've never got into You'd Prefer an Astronaut, I feel like there's something intangible missing - perhaps if I had the musical vocabulary of someone like LM or iYup I'd be able to articulate it.

 

[cobl04]

I'd love Bob Seger to finally fucking come here.

 

[LemonMelon]

This has been my favorite year for new music since 2016 and it's only half over. Here are the albums I would say are really special:

Spoiler

Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now
Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?
Natalia Lafourcade - Un canto por México Vol. 1
A Girl Called Eddy - Been Around
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Alfredo
Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind
Rina Sawayama - Sawayama
Tennis - Swimmer
R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages
The Strokes - The New Abnormal
Jeff Rosenstock - NO DREAM
Destroyer - Have We Met
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Lido Pimienta - Miss Colombia
Dan Deacon - Mystic Familiar
The Necks - Three
Makaya McCraven / Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Again: A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven
Mac Miller - Circles
Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways
Laura Marling - Song for Our Daughter
Pejzaż - Blues
The Mountain Goats - Songs for Pierre Chuvin
RAY - Pink
Shabaka and the Ancestors - We Are Sent Here by History
tricot - 真っ黒 (Makkuro)
Against All Logic - 2017-2019
Bambara - Stray
Ian William Craig - Red Sun Through Smoke
Ka - Descendants of Cain

 

[Joey788]

It's been a really strong year so far. I have about 20 albums I'm really enjoying and listening to repeatedly.

Here are my top 10 in alphabetical order:

Eve Owen - Don't Let The Ink Dry
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Hayley Williams - Petals for Armor
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Porridge Radio - Every Bad
Soccer Mommy - color theory
Torres - Silver Tongue
Ultraista - Sister
Waxahatchee - St. Cloud

 

[gump]

LM, I really like that Tennis album too. They've been such a consistent band (and consistently overlooked, I'd say).

 

[iron yuppie]

Every Tennis album has a few songs I really like, but I don't think they have put together something that really works from front to back yet.

 

[lazarus]

The lack of mentions for Carly Rae Jepsen's latest pop masterpiece is unfortunate.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

The lack of mentions for Carly Rae Jepsen's latest pop masterpiece is unfortunate.

Have you seen her live? I went to her concert a year or two back and it was an absolute blast.

 

[LemonMelon]

Every Tennis album has a few songs I really like, but I don't think they have put together something that really works from front to back yet.

I felt the same way until this one. A perfectly consistent and charming album.

Have you seen her live? I went to her concert a year or two back and it was an absolute blast.

Can confirm. She's an absolute pro and obviously the setlist is superb.

 

[iron yuppie]

I saw her at Pitchfork a few years back. I have never seen a crowd go so apeshit when a song began as they did for Call Me Maybe. Baba O'Riley for The Who is the only contender.

 

[LemonMelon]

I saw her at her own show, so the reaction to Call Me Maybe was actually on the muted side lol I think the fans are tired of it like we're tired of Pride.

Everyone lost their shit over Cut to the Feeling though, which was interesting.

 

[lazarus]

Call Me Maybe isn’t even in her top 10 best songs.

Cut To The Feeling is aural crack and among her catchiest, so that response is deserved.

 

[iron yuppie]

At the record store today, I stumbled upon a 2-LP "Best of Pink Floyd: The Later Years" sampler, i.e. the post-Waters years. This is apparently a companion piece to a 16 (!) LP set covering those years. Who in the hell is the audience for either of those things?

 

[Axver]

At the record store today, I stumbled upon a 2-LP "Best of Pink Floyd: The Later Years" sampler, i.e. the post-Waters years. This is apparently a companion piece to a 16 (!) LP set covering those years. Who in the hell is the audience for either of those things?

Cashed-up boomer men.

I have more than a few 60/70-something uncles and family friends who will splash cash on anything with the Pink Floyd name on it, especially now that they won't be taking their annual European river cruise or Cook Islands getaway or whatever.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

Yeah, Call Me Maybe the festival crowd pleaser, while Cut to the Feeling is the hit among her own crowd. My personal favorite is Run Away with Me.

 

[bono_212]

Run Away with Me and Cut to the Feeling
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Everything else.

This is my once-a-year attempt to promote older Brazilian music. You cannot convince me that this is one of the best songs of the 1970s:

Hey! I'm actually familiar with this group!

I would really like to hear people's thoughts on Court and Spark, please.

The first album I heard by Joni. I have VERY sentimental attachments to it, like every album I got into in college, around the time Travis and I started dating.




Meanwhile, another random thought: I really wish "Video Killed the Radio Star" wasn't so strongly attached to the launch of MTV and this poster child for new wave. It's lost basically all meaning, and I actually think it's an incredible song.

 

[Hewson]

Meanwhile, another random thought: I really wish "Video Killed the Radio Star" wasn't so strongly attached to the launch of MTV and this poster child for new wave. It's lost basically all meaning, and I actually think it's an incredible song.

Would be interesting to see if it would have had any legacy sans the MTV connection, but it was the perfect song to kick off MTV.

 

[bono_212]

It was absolutely the perfect option, no doubt. It's just so overplayed that I sometimes wonder if anyone actually listens to the song anymore, you know what I mean?

 

[namkcuR]

Meanwhile, another random thought: I really wish "Video Killed the Radio Star" wasn't so strongly attached to the launch of MTV and this poster child for new wave. It's lost basically all meaning, and I actually think it's an incredible song.

I kind of feel this way about Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". That stupid, stupid meme ruined it.

 

[Hewson]

I kind of feel this way about Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". That stupid, stupid meme ruined it.

That song sucked to begin with.

 

[bono_212]

Travis and I were reminiscing about YTMND the other day and I mentioned how much I love "Tarzan Boy" and he discovered a lot of people on Rate Your Music discussing how that song was a meme just a bit too early into the internet. It sometimes surprises me that it didn't become as much of a joke as "NGGYU" and "Africa."

But I agree with Hewson, I've always hated the Astley track.

 

[cobl04]

I would add Imagine to this list. That song has been reduced to a flaccid, vapid soundbyte for celebrities who want to pretend like they care about the state of the world.

 

[namkcuR]

I would add Imagine to this list. That song has been reduced to a flaccid, vapid soundbyte for celebrities who want to pretend like they care about the state of the world.

I don't know if you'd have any way of seeing it in Australia, but every year on New Year's Eve, our network NYE celebration shows in Time Square always get some contemporary pop artist to do "Imagine" after the ball falls. Every year, I complain that John is turning over in his grave at the use of the song as a NYE anthem. And it also occurs to me that Yoko/whoever is in charge of John's estate has to be giving permission for that happen.

Anyway, I don't let it ruin the song for me. It's too great of a song.

 

[lazarus]

There was talk recently about replacing the USA's current National Anthem (which has racist content in its usually-ignored later verses) with Lennon's Imagine, which is pretty amusing considering one of the lines is "imagine there's no countries".

However it's been co-opted by idiots over the years, the lyric is still the purest distillation of a humanist utopia, and not a single word rings false. There's no one who could ruin this song for me, because it's such a lovely declaration to the world. As an atheist, I particularly appreciate the suggestion that people living with a bountiful afterlife in mind are not the ones likely to make the present world a better place.

 

[LemonMelon]

I don't think I've ever enjoyed Imagine, but celebrities transforming it into a turgid "let's be nice to each other and everything will be fine" anthem does make it worse.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I would add Imagine to this list. That song has been reduced to a flaccid, vapid soundbyte for celebrities who want to pretend like they care about the state of the world.

I thought it was always that.

 

[bono_212]

For some inexplicable reason, ESPN is playing an Eagles concert from 2018. It's cool that Glen Frey's kid is playing in his stead, but man this feels like one giant ego stroke. I've been watching for an hour, and they played "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley, which...OK, but they have played THREE Joe Walsh songs. WTF?

I'm trying to think of a comparison and decide if I'd be really annoyed by that if I saw the band live. Like, I know that Fleetwood Mac plays "Stand Back" sometimes, which I think is a good fit for their setlists, so that's fine. And obviously the Heartbreakers used to play Tom's solo stuff, as well, but that's always been his band, so whatever?

I like Joe Walsh's solo music, so I'm trying to decide if I'd feel cheated in the moment or not.

But THREE?! Wow.

 

[bono_212]

Holy shit, I just checked the setlist from one of the three nights they played here that year (2018). They played FIVE Joe Walsh tunes:

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/eagles/2018/the-forum-inglewood-ca-33e9a479.html

 

[bono_212]

OK, sorry to post about this three times in a row, I'm just going down a Google Rabbit hole on this, without actually searching for, "Why do the Eagles play so much Joe Walsh music live?" and I think I've figured it out: He only sings lead vocals on five actual Eagles tracks and ONE of those is "In the City" which is his own damn song. I'm assuming the only way they can get him to still tour with the band is if he gets to share mic time with Vince Gill (!) and Don Henley.