Hard News: The music I listened to
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JacksonP, in reply to
(If someone can tell me how to embed I'll embed it here instead of linking. Can't work out how right now!)
Just paste the YouTube link in full with no embed tags and it should automatically embed. Like this, hopefully...
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Rich Lock, in reply to
the minority who can see the absurdity of the genre while still obviously being devotees.
Oh, I think most fans can see how bloody stupid it all is. Unless you're Norwegian and spend your spare time burning down churches and murdering your fellow fans...
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nzlemming, in reply to
Why aren't you out sandbagging the town?
Seriously, how's it going down there?
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I reckon it's been an excellent year for music.
Locally, I've listened to @Peace a lot this year. Also finding the Pajama Club a lot of fun - most interesting thing Neil has done in a long time IMHO. Was Phoenix Foundation's Buffalo this year? Never tire of that.
Internationally, I haven't got tired of Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), The King is Dead (The Decemberists), Metals (Feist), Slave Ambient (War on Drugs) and The Whole Love (Wilco).
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This past year I missed more gigs I wanted to see than I ever have – but at leaset I saw the Clean – they are always amazing.
I really enjoyed Canadian songwriter Robbie Robertson’s song with the Crazy Horse Singers providing the backing music to Leonard Peltier’s message from prison. I remember the siege and ensuing military full scale assault at Pine Ridge Reservation, the deliberate attempt by the American media to discredit the American Indian Movement, the illegal extradition by the USA of Leonard Peltier from Canada, but I had almost forgotten about him until I was reminded by this:
Robbie Robertson and the Crazy Horse Singers – Never Forget
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This year, I saw Phoenix Foundation live for the first time every, at the Power Station. I was struck by how very Pink Floyd Wall of Sound they were live. Otherwise, my brother tried to educate me musically from afar with Lykke Li, Cut Copy, and others. But I just didn’t get it. Angus and Julia Stone were a revelation though.
2011 will always be, to me, the year I got my first iPod. And discovered playlists, and such things. How did I ever walk without music? I don't know how others do it, but I walk in time with the music, and over the year, my walking pace has increased so that this is my speed.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
Why aren't you out sandbagging the town?
Seriously, how's it going down there?
Emergency Ops Centre will go into its 5th day on Sunday. Biggest event I've ever seen down this way.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Rather you than me, mate. Take care.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
sadly (being a dance music lover) not one DJ floated my boat this year... oh well Greg Wilson in March to look forward to
No shit!? I will look forward to that too.
I still harbour dreams of getting Leftside Wobble over for a Great Blend.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Slave Ambient (War on Drugs)
I kept feeling like I should be really into that but it didn't quite gel for me. Ah well ...
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This is the year in which I discovered less music than any other. Not enough radio, not enough trawling through the internet's virtual crates of MP3s.
That said, I rather liked Radiohead's King of Limbs; subtle, rich, dense. Plenty declared their disdain, but Radiohead are simply getting more interesting. Feist's Metals was delightful. Did Cults come out this year? I loved, absolutely loved their album. Oh, and James Blake, if he was this year too.
The Justice album, or what I've heard of it, was probably the biggest disappointment.
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Pete,
And the worst album?
http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/middle/2011/12/01/198509-lulu.jpg
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What, no mention of Tom Waits yet?
Kind of like English folkie June Tabor's + The Oyster Band version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
Wooden Shipjes and The Felice Brothers too.
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I’m getting increasingly excited about Laneways as I familiarise myself with the artists. M83 mentioned above, and also…
Feist
Austra
and many others besides.I’ve also just discovered She’s So Rad, and their Georgie’s Song is just about perfect, and this ain’t bad either.
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Simon Bennett, in reply to
Slave Ambient is a feeling thing for me. I haven't a clue what the songs are about but the music sweeps me along. Great driving soundtrack.
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Easy. Far Skies Deep Time
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Dave Patrick, in reply to
does anyone else think that Pitchfork has got it's head stuck up it's own arse?
Pick me - I really don't get some of the stuff they rave about - twee "indie by numbers" nonsense most of it seems like.
I can't remember too much that I've bought this year, but Beastwars' album has been immense - Call Out the Dead and Damn the Sky especially. WOLD's new album came out 3 days ago, so I haven't heard it yet but will probably buy it like I have all their others - if you want to listen to some unlistenable black-metal-noise, they're your guys :)
The Bats, Victoria Girling-Butcher, Cairo Knife Fight, Gillian Welch, Primordial and Subrosa were also all excellent release. Black Boned Angel's The Witch Must Be Killed was last year, otherwise it would have got a highly commended as well.
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Pete, in reply to
If anyone gets a chance to see Cairo Knife Fight live, do it - Heap Big Mighty Good
Also Ms Welch has been reliable for years
On the metal front, is Mastodon's "The Hunter" as good as people say?
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I've been enjoying Peter Gabriel's rendition of My Body is a Cage
In other other year-in-reviewy goodness, Google put out their Zeitgeist video today
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I thought Wire's Red Barked Tree was quite unfeasibly good. It hasn't ended up on too many end-of-year best ofs, though, which is a shame. Here's the tunefully nihilist first track, "Please Take":
and the gothy "Down to This," which reminds just how much early Headless Chickens were influenced by 154:
What else? The Dum Dum Girls second album was fun, but perhaps not that durable. Best track:
I finally managed to catch Kristin Hersh's "Paradoxical Undressing" book tour/live music thing this year, which was great:
Her performance -- "one tiny woman and her guitar" -- to a little audience in a little bookshop in Hertfordshire in January wins my personal live gig of the year award. Sad, sweet, raw, beautiful, and profoundly unsettling: like all of her music. Her book's pretty good, too. -
On the metal front, is Mastodon’s “The Hunter” as good as people say?
Well, I think so: Crack The Skye may've fallen into the 'prog-metal' category due to song length and concept, but The Hunter does so by more competently - and excitingly - using complex time signatures and confident song structures. My favourite Maston album thus far.
On that note, I really enjoyed Opeth's Heritage as well. The album's been derided a lot by metal fans for being, well, too soft, but the confidence and playfulness by which this once Black Metal band inhabited the seventies progressive rock style (a style that needs a lot of confidence to be playful!) was really fun for me.
Away from metal, two surprising favourites for me have been Feist's Metals and La Dispute's Wildlife.
I haven't been a great fan of Feist before, but Metals is stunningly good, chamber pop music at its intelligent best. At moments the songs and arrangements would make Bacarach proud - if ol' Burt had been a Canadian indie kid.
And La Dispute shouldn't be my cup of tea - shouty emo post-hardcore confessional lyric stuff. But with Wildlife there's a near perfect mix of complex, dynamic, punkish hardcore music sitting alongside heart-on-sleeve spoken/shouted word, where the lyrics are observational rather than just awkward. When the lyrics reveal themselves with tales of drive-by shootings, children dying from cancer, the delapidation of a neighbourhood church, I find so much going on that's rewarding. And in the song 'Ken Park', when the vocalist (speaking as a terrified young gang-banger negotiating his surrender to police) screams "Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself? Can I ever be forgiven 'cos I killed that kid?" is one of the most intense musical moments of the year.
But album of the year for me is PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake". Even ten months on I can't be react viscerally to her musical poems about war and its costs. I wonder if part of the reaction comes from hearing her sing about Gallipoli - names and events driven into my psyche from childhood - by more likely it's the combination of slightly off-kilter instrumentation and arrangement combined with her new vocal style and those powerful powerful lyrics.
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Oh, forgot to mention Pajama Club and Wilco, too. Two albums that show that 'dad rock' doesn't have to be a negative term! Great to hear two great song writers being comfortable and confident enough with what they do to play with it, have some fun, and end up producing their best respective albums for year.
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For me, Mogwai 'Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will' and the 'Earth Division' EP were great (as were Mogwai live). Wilco's 'The Whole Love' was their best since 'A Ghost is Born'. The Mountain Goats 'All Eternal's Deck' and Decemberists 'The King is Dead' were great too. Antlers and The Low Anthem released good albums.
Some more obscure stuff: Slow Down, Molasses (a Canadian folk/shoegaze/indie band who cover My Bloody Valentine and have a song that reminds me a lot of the Clean). Half Man Half Biscuit probably had the song of the year ('Rock and Roll is Full of Bad Wools'). Girls, Slow Club, Jeffrey Lewis, Scroobius Pip and Real Estate deserve honourable mentions.
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Tanking? Yeah right!
Keeping it Chchch crunchy - T54 took off this year
even got signed to some almost middle-aged
local shoe-gazer record label!
:- )and ex-pat Cantab export, Trillion (aka Jody Lloyd),
gets his instrumental groove on with the new release
Sky is falling - part 3Russell already recently plugged Blair Parkes' Saturations
but it is well worth mentioning again...and whatever happened to The Ragamuffin Children?
I think vocalist Anita Clark has joined the rest of
Lyttelton in the growing The Eastern family... -
..and I meant to say Gin Wigmore has done well!
I saw two TV shows in a row the other night
(one Aust and one American) that had her songs in them...
Good on her!
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