Just sitting here, listening to some indie rock, realizing 80% of it is just garbage with intentionally bad production, out of tune guitars and bad vocal harmonies, so that it can seem "raw" and "edgy" and it makes me miss old punk and new wave and shit, back when you didn't fake a lack of talent, compensated by power of emotion, you just had that shit. I already did a tribute to old school punk, I'm not gonna go rehash it all over again, but it really can't be said enough that there's a definite and obvious difference between bands who learn just enough musical ability to finally get their anger out on record and bands who spent years practicing how to sound like they just learned how to play so they can get their carefully crafted faux angst down with just the right amount of roughness around the edges to seem like they're too cool for school.
Ok, so I'm getting old, so fucking what? I'm 35 and I'm reaching that point in my life where "The music these kids are listening today is shit compared to the stuff we listened to." At the same time though, I do still like a lot of new stuff that's coming out, so it's not as if I'm fully retracting into fuddy-duddy mode, but... ok, perfect example, Arcade Fire just came on and they won like album of the year didn't they? Fucking song sounds horrible. Nothing particularly memorable or impressive about it at all. Certainly nothing that says "This is the best album I've heard all year!" In fact, it's one of the shittiest songs I've heard all day, next to that fucking Vampire Weekend song earlier. These guys remind me of a band that was formed when a groups of dudes said "What should we sound like?" "I got it! Let's be a cross between The Beatles and Radiohead and when we can't think of lyrics, we'll just go "ooooohhh ooooohhhh" all high-pitched and reverby and people will just think we're off on some way out there experimental shit and think it's brilliant!" And fucking presto-sucko, album of the year...
I guess I really need to thank Grooveshark for giving me my material today. It's a pretty cool little site. I guess from what people have told me it's kind of like Pandora Radio, but I never used that, so I'm not sure if it is or not. All I know is I went on there today, made a profile, selected "indie" from the genre list and shit started playing that I never heard before and some stuff that I had heard before and I am realizing that a lot of the new indie rock being made today just sounds like a combination of two older new wave or classic rock bands. It's like the new "indie rock" formula is to take one rock band from the 60's or 70's and combine it with a new wave/post-modern band from the 80's and make the production sound intentionally cheap and hurried. Right now I'm listening to a band called Foals and they sound like The Cure
and Pink Floyd
, and before you say "That sounds pretty awesome!" it's The Cure from every album made after Disintegration
and Pink Floyd during The Final Cut
, right before Roger Waters left, when he was all pissed off and going through his daddy issues... Now, see, right after that comes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
, and they kind of kick ass in my opinion. Their song "Maps" is a favorite and it's in my iPod. In fact, check it out:Also, I like Muse
. In fact, I really like them. I can think of at least 5 or 6 songs of theirs right off hand that I can sing my ass off along with in the car by myself, and that's good enough to make me a fan. Another band I like and am not afraid to say it, Kings of Leon
. Don't care if they're trendy, I like em. Sex on Fire rocks, catchy as balls. They remind me of Journey
kinda, and that's good to me because I like Journey.Damn, this blog post is rapidly degenerating into an elaborate informercial for Grooveshark. Oh well, it's the new toy I discovered today that I'm playing with and it's keeping me mellow, and that's the key word for today, mellow... In a way, this whole post is kind of like that indie rock station, mostly disjointed crap, a few snippets of something good and then a whole lot of shit you just skip over, ultimately feeling a little jipped and left with the impression that you could do better. Well, tough shit, here I am and there you are!
Ok, that's enough typing for today. It's Friday and I need to "decompress" now, you know, from all the hard work I've been doing all week. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, hate me because I fucked your mom. Later bitches.
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