Aaron Sprinkle: Moontraveler — Didn't grab me. Aaron Sprinkle: The Kindest Days — DID grab me. Definitely more rock than Moontraveler or Bareface. Also there's a new recording of "Based on a True Story", a song that I had completely forgotten how much I liked. Now I need to find out where I first heard it. [researches] Ah, a demo version was on Five Minute Walk's Take Time to Listen Vol. 3 compilation. Fleming & John: The Way We Are — Fleming sings like an opera diva trying to do punk. John plays darn near every instrument in existence. Somehow, this is a pop album. The Choir: Chase the Kangaroo — The platonic ideal of white 80s music. But with the melodies and lyrics to actually make it work.
re: Maroon 5: I legitimately cannot get behind the idea that Adam Levine is a bad vocalist. He's got annoyance potential for sure, but that'd be more from being overplayed than any fault of his own.
Overexposed, their last album, had really slick production values and some really good singles (and one song I am pissed that never got a proper radio release) but it was too pop for its own good and made the band seem less band-y.
I'm hoping they find a good middle between the Overexposed and It Won't Be Soon Before Long sounds for their new work.
I don't mention it much here, but I'm actually fairly big on CHVRCHES
"Lungs" has to be one of my favorite pop numbers in years, and I like a good number of the rest of the tracks
I do agree that their male singer isn't as engaging as a vocalist, but I was never particularly bothered by it
It's worth mentioning that all three of the band members sing on their work, but one of them—his name is escaping me; I remember him as "large fellow in snapback hat"—takes the lead on any of the tracks on the LP. Their bassist provides a good chunk of the backing vocals, but I think the only song he sings lead on is "ZVVL" from their first EP.
I like them, too. And yes, "Lungs" is delightful. Such dissonance between the melody, the instrumentation and the lyrics.
Got linked to an editorial about Luxury, a band whose music has never really grabbed me (beyond a song or two). But the very last paragraph raises an interesting point, which really ought to be the subject of its own essay:
I have the feeling that the wrongest thing you can say about popular music – apart from the canard that writing about it is like “dancing about architecture” – is that it has to in some sense be “evil.” Sure, a lot of the best rock music in history has been prophetic, or shocking, or angry, or sensual, but above all, so much of it has been so beautiful. There is no need to restrict rock and roll to a one-dimensional caricature of 1980’s sex-and-drugs hair metal. The alleged “transgression” of so much popular music strikes me as utterly conventional, a rehashing of tired tropes about rebellion, excess, and social deviance. Maybe this is just me, but I’d rather listen to a band that makes me flirt with the idea of selling everything I own and giving it to the poor. And maybe the most transgressive thing a rock band could do is to serve the Eucharist.
As someone who is both a Christian and a huge music fan, I have never heard any pop Christian music that has struck me as anything but soulless marketing.
The marketing machine is omnipresent, but sometimes a musician with genuine vision gets heard.
That said, the scene seems to be slowly dying. The marketing machine seems to be focusing more and more on pushing formulaic "praise & worship", so the musicians with any creativity are deciding to throw their hat into the mainstream or the "indie" scene, rather than trying to work with the major Christian labels. There are a few independent Christian labels, like Velvet Blue Music and Sounds Familyre, but they're becoming rarer and rarer.
It's probably for the best. Christians are supposed to engage the world, not hide from it in their own subculture.
Follow the links to sample songs from those albums. The albums sound pretty consistently like these songs, and I think the overall sound of them is fairly self-explanatory:
Hmm. Interesting: A four-and-a-half-minute power electronics breakdown in the middle of a black/doom album and it fits perfectly. I dig that. The first track is still probably my favourite: It uses every minute of its runtime to its full murderous, hellish potential.
This is the the first time I've ever released a record that's not dubstep or drum and bass. It's not house or techno either - I tried to create 5 fun tracks that fit into no genre, or maybe a whole new genre altogether!
To be fair, I don't dislike the track, and it doesn't sound like it's trying to be any one thing in particular, but I have definitely heard that kind of sound before.
Oh, hey, there's a new LP by A Sunny Day In Glasgow. I forgot that they existed. I liked their début a lot.
EDIT: A bit more upfront on this new single. And they're using the same organ as The Blue Orchids, apparently. I'll have to hear the rest of this to say how I feel about this, but their production is still pretty enjoyably bizarre.
EDIT #2: Well, that went in an odd direction. Don't want to spoil the surprise, but that was an interesting digression.
EDIT #3: What I first heard of theirs and enjoyed was actually Tout New Age, not their first LP. Silly me. Still, great little album. Very strange.
I'm surprised at how many items on that list I recognize. Of course, it's ordered by blog-post pageviews, so it's as much a measure of popularity as of weirdness.
I think Starflyer 59's Easy Come Easy Go 1994–2000 is simultaneously the worst "greatest hits" compilation ever, and the best. But only if you can get a physical copy. Worst because they just took the first three songs from each Sf59 album (at the time) and stuck them on a disc. That is not a joke; they actually did that. And the best because there's a second disc containing nothing but really great, obscure Sf59 tracks, many of them not available anywhere else. And the liner notes have a very in-depth and opinionated history of the band, written by a professional who also knows Sf59 frontman Jason Martin.
So it lazily and hilariously fails at its alleged reason for existing, but it has enough great stuff that it's worth owning anyway.
Comments
I liked it because it's catchy, and also it gets points for mentioning a payphone.
Aaron Sprinkle: The Kindest Days — DID grab me. Definitely more rock than Moontraveler or Bareface. Also there's a new recording of "Based on a True Story", a song that I had completely forgotten how much I liked. Now I need to find out where I first heard it. [researches] Ah, a demo version was on Five Minute Walk's Take Time to Listen Vol. 3 compilation.
Fleming & John: The Way We Are — Fleming sings like an opera diva trying to do punk. John plays darn near every instrument in existence. Somehow, this is a pop album.
The Choir: Chase the Kangaroo — The platonic ideal of white 80s music. But with the melodies and lyrics to actually make it work.
"Lungs" has to be one of my favorite pop numbers in years, and I like a good number of the rest of the tracks
I do agree that their male singer isn't as engaging as a vocalist, but I was never particularly bothered by it
Overexposed, their last album, had really slick production values and some really good singles (and one song I am pissed that never got a proper radio release) but it was too pop for its own good and made the band seem less band-y.
I'm hoping they find a good middle between the Overexposed and It Won't Be Soon Before Long sounds for their new work.
I will look into it.
Maybe that's my problem, I dunno.
Plus I'm always deeply skeptical of anything to do with mainstream American christianity. I worship in my own way thanks.
can I hear why, though? :P
at the moment though i am listening to some legendary pink dots and they are really good
So it lazily and hilariously fails at its alleged reason for existing, but it has enough great stuff that it's worth owning anyway.
http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/07/death-grips-have-broken-up/
(*woo-woo noises*)
because it's death grips y'know?
idk why you'd bother to respond to that honestly
(*shrug*)