Bit of an indie dweeb cliche, but my favourite guitar solos are the Dinosaur Jr ones, melodic but also feels like J Mascis is basically just assaulting his guitar. 10/10
Bit of an indie dweeb cliche, but my favourite guitar solos are the Dinosaur Jr ones, melodic but also feels like J Mascis is basically just assaulting his guitar. 10/10
Greatest band of them all.
My dad loved em so I got into them very early. I actually listened to Dirty Pretty Things the other day too as Gin & Milk popped into my head. You could have done both.
I'm the same. My dad was a huge fan. As a result, my taste in music is Floyd, Stones, Zappa, Beefheart and then what I grew into myself which is 90's trance. Always a bit jarring for people who are in my car when Spotify is on shuffle.
I should probably re-try Pink Floyd. Tried a bit about 20 years ago and absolutely hated it, but worth another spin.
I saw them for the first time at Glastonbury in 2013. I knew about them, and had an inkling I'd like them, but I don't think I'd ever actually heard any of their music before they came on stage. They opened with The Lung and once they'd dispensed with the first couple of verses and choruses, I absolutely lost my shit when J Mascis started soloing like no one I'd ever heard before. It remains to this day just about the most enraptured I've been at any gig ever. I just love how unassuming their songs are – sweet pop song, sweet pop song, sweet pop song, Earth shattering solo for two minutes, back to sweet pop song. Etc.
Mascis is the man. Definitely up there with my favourite guitar players. Top five for sure. I love that era of guitar music especially.
I'm pretty sure Mascis himself must be an actual savant of some description. You only need to see a few seconds of any interview with him to establish he's definitely somewhere on the spectrum. I could absolutely picture him picking up a guitar as a child, getting the grips with it a little bit and then just knowing how to do that.
Amusingly I'm sure he's on record more than once as saying he much prefers playing the drums. And during the period where Dinosaur Jr was basically just him playing everything in the studio the drums were noticeably better too.
I was always back and forth between Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and Animals when I was in that massive Floyd phase. And still am really. Animals is probably the one that fits together as a whole the best though. I think it's Waters' best overall "concept album" (and God knows he loves them) in terms of it all slotting together.
Pigs is such a tune too. The fucking talk box bit.
The Wall is the most overrated. I'm not saying it's not good, it's great. But it's not on that top level for me. Most underrated is Division Bell for sure! I would have really enjoyed more of that Gilmour-era Floyd.
Wish You Were Here for me.
On a sort of related note @igor_balis your bumping of that Floyd post has prompted me, in turn, to start listening to Porcupine Tree, who are another band I've never delved into whatsoever. I haven't yet got past "Up the Downstair" because I've had it on repeat for most of the day. Cracking album.
Last edited by Alex; 25-05-2023 at 07:13 PM.
I'm probably more a Gimour man than Waters (if I had to pick) but obviously appreciate the need for both! You ever seen him (Waters) live @Giggles? I'm going soon. Week after next, I think.
He will probably just play that solo re-working of Dark Side of the Moon he has been threatening front to back or something.
Yeah seen him twice. Amused to Death and some later one I can't remember the name of. I love his solo stuff too so they were class.
I saw Waters do The Wall about 2012/13. Amazing gig.
There was a review of his show in Germany doing the rounds on twitter earlier which made it sound like a Nuremberg Rally.
He was good. The stage show itself was impressive and he played a good mix of stuff. "Wish You Were Here" live was pretty special. "Have a Cigar" was another personal highlight, I fucking love that song.
He does like a rant though. He had a right pop at Gilmour's wife (who called him an anti-semite earlier in the year on Twitter apparently) which ended with him saying "imagine waking up next to that every morning". Fair to say him and David are probably never reconciling this time.
That Drake verse is horrendous.
The whole thing is. Don't get me wrong, I'll be vibing to it all amongst my London bredders but what a fucking state of affairs music is in.
Drake sounds instantly horrendous there. His voice is so grating.
J Hus just shouldn't collaborate with big artists. His song with Skepta was meh too but everything he touches is usually gold. Last week's single was classic Hus.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1SEJP...Q0mPsJnQWWGbLw
Just seen this from last year, BODEGA release of the same song in nine different languages. A bit boring that they're mostly samey romance/germanic ones but still quite a funny idea. Pronounciation on the Greek one is pretty bang on apart from the accent of someone who's clearly never spoken a word of Greek before.
I'm seeing them in a few weeks I think. Good band. Massive "New York hipster" vibes but a couple of solid albums behind them. "Jack in Titanic" is an absolute tune and a half.
I know one day it will stop happening, but it absolutely amazes me that nearly twenty years after his death, new Elliott Smith stuff is still being unearthed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/elliottsmit...t=2&utm_term=1
Someone who had Heatmiser at their wedding found the tape from 1992. Even Neil Gust (the other singer) has commented asking for a full version of it, that’s how rare this is!
I'm a twit
Elliott's brilliance is lost on these plebs, Baz.
Since I've always felt there's a lot of music from the past I should know/I would like, I've been doing a little listening project and have been setting aside days (mostly using home office days) to listen to several albums released in a specific year, starting with 1970. I'm pulling albums from Scaruffi's (for the pretentious stuff), Christgau's (for the more traditional rock and hip-hop) and rateyourmusic's best of the year lists. Which albums I choose is somewhat random, mostly I just look up if it's available on Spotify and then listen to around 5 albums per year.
I've arrived at 1980, favorite discoveries so far:
Aphrodite's Child - 666 (bloated, pretentious and sometimes just weird psychedelic rock, but despite all that just a lot of fun)
John Fahey - America (possibly some of the most beautiful instrumental music I've ever heard)
The Roches - self-titled (extremely charming and catchy folk-rock)
I'm also quite liking John Cale and Brian Eno, though I tend to only go back to specific songs with them rather than entire albums.
I've got a decent little list of drill crossovers into house/techno and it might be the best thing of all time. Afro themed anything is top drawer at the moment too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/4fFlS...T8SyAyJuS4E9gQ
Somehow not on YouTube but Hagan - Welcome to Ghana.
Maybe lovely isn't the word. Good stuff.
This is so good lol. Everything pops.
I appreciate that I'm about 20 years too old for it, but I fucking love Sueco.
You may be familiar with his ten second "feature" as Sueco The Child on the Sonic 2 movie song, but I like screaming along in the car to lots of his songs.
I'm a twit
I've recently discovered a band called Hop Along. It's excellent indie rock with a really unique sounding lead vocalist. Think Built to Spill in terms of sound but with less straightforward melodies. These are a couple of highlights for me, but really every one of their albums is a banger with very few lowlights. Last track here is from her solo album. Dare you to listen to One That Suits Me and not end up with the chorus in your head all day.
When she hits those screeches.
Also, listen to Javelin by Sufjan Stevens. It's a modern classic.
Up there with his very best I would say, which is saying something. He's had a rough old time of it lately buy the sound of it, but it's certainly inspired some very strong music.
If we talk "regular" studio albums (discounting the electronic experiments etc, which I have nothing against) has he ever really missed? A Sun Came is noticeably a step down from everything that came after it I suppose. But from then on everything is excellent.
On a totally unrelated note, I have gotten really into Blur lately. Fuck knows why, it just happened. As daft as it sounds it very much passed me by at the time. Obviously as a card carrying northerner I was very much team Oasis.
I mean I'm aware of the hits, obviously. I wasn't living under a rock. They were inescapable. But I have only recently made the effort the go through the albums. I think it was them releasing a new one (which I thought was decent) that prompted it. Such an interesting band.
Later Blur is certainly my favourite and I would maintain that early Blur can still be a bit annoying in places. Although also very, very good in places too. There was still a lot of very strong work. I'm not knocking those albums. But they were just leaning a bit hard into the "cheeky cockney chappies" thing in places and I think were almost verging on self-parody by the end of that phase, which I think maybe they themselves realised.
Once they ditched this and went went all moody and alternative they were absolutely mint. Blur, 13 and Think Tank is a very strong, very cool trilogy of albums.
I watched the documentary (No Distance Left to Run) and I really like their whole dynamic. Obviously Albarn will always be the main man I guess, but Graham Coxon is a very fascinating (and very talented) character.
This Is A Low is probably in my top 50 songs, especially if you were to limit it to one per artist (there's one for the xmas break). Like you I can do without the awright awright stuff which was rightly left in the mid 90s.
Yeah, I like the early stuff but it's definitely too 90's for comfort. What even is a Quango, Damon?
From a purely musical point of view, no, but I’d say there are people who enjoy his more folksy output who would consider the likes of Age of Adz (banger after banger imo) and The Ascension to be misses.
Javelin really runs the gamut of his musical output to date. You have the finger picking fragile bits, the nearly tribal sounding drum bits, actual recorders, the soaring orchestral swells. It’s so good.
New Sampha record is immense.
New song by up-and-coming boyband The Beatles:
I really like it. Video got me in the feels a bit too.
Total Oasis rip-off.
I had a moan about it in another thread, but a mawkish video with hologram George and John only makes me redouble those protestations.
I hadn't seen the video til now. Horrific force ghost bullshit. The other Beatles coming in for the chorus (and only the chorus) just reiterates how it's just a Lennon track. A Lennon track John Lennon himself didn't think good enough to polish up.
Speaking of music from the olden days I recently heard Marianne Faithfull for the first time and I love this song:
Song of the year 1979 or whenever it was.
I'm a twit
He told Mark David Chapman and that's why he was shot.