Topic: The Music Thread

This is the one I currently have on repeat.

@Kidfried Good question! been a bit all over the place recently, but these two have been a fairly consistent feature the last couple of years…

Surprise Chef - All News is Good News
Mildlife - Phase

Edit: Fever Ray - Radical Romantics is worth a mention, and anything by De Staat, their latest Red Yellow and Blue series of songs are great.

@Pizzamorg True Colors has a fantastic soundtrack. Kinda didn't notice the Novo Armor, Bon Iver similarity until your post. Really just know Anchor and Haven though, by name anyway... I know I've heard others while listening to Spotify.

@Kidfried speaking of female folk supergroups, I presume you know about I'm With Her? Find that I like about as many songs by them as I do boygenius.

@Kidfried cool. I also really can't recommend Sara Watkins enough. Aoife O'Donovan is also obviously very good but I feel like the former really doesn't get the praise she deserves. Her album Young in All the Wrong Ways is definitely recommended if you haven't heard it.

And I definitely know of Bonny Light Horseman as they seem to come up a lot on any kind of Spotify recommendations playlist but it's more of a passing familiarity as I couldn't name any of their songs. They're kind of on my "I'll get to them" list as any music lover knows there's just so much at any given time you're bound to let some slip through the cracks. Streaming has somehow both compounded and mitigated this.

Anyway also gotta give a shout-out for Joan Shelley for anyone who digs that delightful intersection between indie folk and country. Like literally any album but her eponymous album from a few years ago is a good place to start.

@Jimmer-jammer Also, how are you? Did you ever get round to listening to the Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus? If so, what were your thoughts? it's easy to find on Youtube I believe.

He even does that like low voice thing Bon Iver does, which is weird.

@Kidfried Oh man, that’s very cool though, they’re such a creative and exciting band to listen to. I can totally understand them starting to lose that special something for you over time; too much of a good thing and all that. Aren’t they like the Beatles in the Netherlands? Glad you liked Surprise Chef, they scratch a very particular satisfying itch for me. Lots of great music coming out of Oz!

I’m not normally a big musicals person but Starlight Express’ original cast recording is simultaneously one of the worst and best things that I’ve ever listened to. Like I guess it would be different when you see the people on roller skates pretending to be trains (????) in real life but it’s just so earnestly bonkers that it’s hard to criticise. They really need to chuck hundreds of millions at it like that rubbish Cats movie.

Listening to Andrew Bird this morning got me reminiscing about how 20 years ago or so I would follow music blogs religiously and some would be a work of love, there’d be a little thumbnail of the album and a little write up and a link to a few tracks or in some cases a megaupload of the full record that would take days to download. I discovered quite a lot of music this way, things like Grizzly Bear, The National and the aforementioned Andrew Bird to name a few. It felt like a nice extension of the physical record buying experience which I was still avidly doing at the time. I kind of miss those days, everything feels distinctly unsentimental these days.

Anywho, have a wonderful day everyone 👍

@AgentCooper I used to write a little blog, mostly about gigs I went to as I went to a LOT while at uni in London.

Now, I find following certain labels really useful for keeping up with some new stuff I might have missed. For instance, Big Scary Monsters in the UK release loads of stuff I seem to like so I’ll often check out their new artists.

I also listen to the Radio 1 Rock Show and the Future Alternative playlist/show too and find loads of new stuff through them.

I’m also signed up for emails from Banquet and Drift record shops and find some stuff through them too.

I don’t stream anything though. I buy most stuff through bandcamp and then have two playlists on my phone; one with the most recent albums I’ve bought (with a one in, one out rule when I get something new) and a second that I rotate albums every week or two for ones I haven’t listened to for a while.

I was listening to The Ape of Naples by Coil and I can’t stop picturing this guy

@Kidfried I can’t argue with any of what you said, it was beautifully written too. I was more musing on a different time due to the sense memory/ratatouille moment listening invoked. I do try to make it ‘magical’ on the whole, music is incredibly important in our household and we’re doing our best to pass that onto our children, although with our record player being broken, the children’s experience is more ipad speakers than a tangible experience. I struggle with the duality of both missing the hunt and discovery of the old way as @Thrillho alludes to and enjoying the shear freedom of listening to almost any recorded piece of music ever, all at my fingertips. My eldest son is in his element with playlists, naming and tailoring each one to certain tastes and moods, which reminds me of making mixtapes for my dad when I was his age, albeit they took much more physical involvement swapping tapes, vinyl and cds around and such. Sometimes the illusion of choice can create diminishing returns, where “back in the day” I would listen to maybe 2 or 3 albums for months until I could afford more and even if they weren’t incredible I would still take time to digest and appreciate them and create fond memories or unlikely new favourites. Whereas now even albums of the year or records by my favourite artists may not hit me the same due to it rotating within a sea of hundreds of records a year. I have tried your method @Thrillho but it’s just really difficult from a financial aspect at the moment to allow the whole house to enjoy their music this way, though I still have reservations and massive pangs of guilt about using streaming as it’s a sh*te deal for pretty much all artists.

@AgentCooper I've felt the same for many years. When I was a kid buying music on vinyl, cassettes etc felt really special. I knew it was something that I wanted to experience and would spend ages digesting the sleeve notes and religiously listening over and over again until I'd memorised the play order and names of all the tracks. Even now if I hear a song from those days I'll start humming what would be the next track on the album.

I still listen to music mostly as albums now but I struggle to even remember album names now let alone track names and play order. I guess I just listen to so much stuff and usually while I'm working that I just don't process it in that way anymore. I also have less memories memories associated with those songs so it's not as easy to file them in any meaningful way. I guess that's not just down to not buying physical music any more though but is generally because this midlife I'm in is more mundane than back when I was a kid 😅

@AgentCooper Reading my uncle’s royalties was pretty grim. You can basically put a lifetime into music and get pennies in return.

@nessisonett oh yeah? What kind of music does your uncle produce? I take it has been a tough career for him. It really is naff the way things have gone, especially for more niche or emerging artists and then on top of that venues are taking outrageous cuts from merchandise sales. I try and buy new records by artists I love when finances allow but I fear it’ll never be enough.

@AgentCooper He was part of that whole wave of British post-hardcore/math rock in the 00s alongside Johnny Foreigner, Los Campesinos etc. We used to wind him up and say he was Inbetweeners-core, as in the sort of band that would turn up in the Inbetweeners. Honestly though, got great memories of watching them play live on BBC 2 and it’s pretty cool that his music is forever immortalised in the soundtrack of FIFA 10. However, that doesn’t pay the bills! It just goes to show that you really do have to make it like proper big to have any chance of living off the royalties. Touring Japan, the States, Australia and stuff is a short term deal, you basically have to land a single or two that gets used constantly in TV shows or the radio.

@nessisonett haha yeah there was definitely a certain flavour to guitar music at the turn of the century. I know it sounds trite but having those experiences can’t be bought and to have those memories is more important than anything because for most, especially the creative industries, the money never comes. Cold comfort I know.

I'm hoping this does not start a new craze of bagpipe renditions of classic hip hop tunes! 😂

I know a lot of people disregard anything Pulp before His n Hers but they still have some great tunes from the 80s. Really wish I could have justified tickets.

@Kidfried That’s incredibly short notice for tickets for somebody as big as her!