Some Musical Notes

Sim­ply amaz­ing. Still in heavy rotation. 

I’ve become the sort of crit­ic who likes spring releas­es. Give them time to mar­i­nate, I say. That new Liars album is still reveal­ing new things to me.

Ready for a stun­ning admis­sion? I still haven’t heard the new Arcade Fire album! I’m still aghast that Spoon opened for them.

What’s even cool any­more? I’m so old I remem­ber when an 8.1 on Pitch­fork meant you hit the big time.

6 Comments

  1. new arcade fire is real­ly good, much bet­ter than neon bible. not bet­ter than funer­al tho. but you’ve nev­er liked them. I remem­ber com­ing into the TLA when they were play­ing at the oth­er TLA and you said “Bright Eyes” as a descrip­tor of AF. Spoon haven’t had a con­sis­tent album since Gimme Fiction. 

    Also, what do you think of the Pitch­fork 90s list so far? I don’t under­stand why they put a one-song lim­it. They always go out of their way to point out how cer­tain artists dom­i­nate a stretch of years and then they do this. Try­ing to do a list of best songs by decade is much more fraught with prob­lems than a best albums list. 

  2. I real­ly enjoyed *Neon Bible* to be hon­est. Thought the con­cert at the Tower
    was great, too. Best Spring­steen album in ages!

    I was dis­ap­point­ed in *Trans­fer­ence*. I think it has some amaz­ing moments,
    but gets hurt by track sequenc­ing. For what it’s worth I real­ly loved *Ga Ga
    Ga Ga Ga*, too!

    About that ’90s list. First impres­sion: it makes me feel very old. Didn’t
    real­ize each band could only appear once, but I guess that’s how they let
    the *High Fideli­ty* aspect of their edi­to­r­i­al process creep back in. I
    missed that. I’m sur­prised TLC’s “Creep” was so low, but I think I’ll be
    more emo­tion­al­ly con­nect­ed to these selec­tions than any­thing else they’ve
    ever done on the site. I’m more inter­est­ed in see­ing which songs they make
    rep­re­sen­ta­tive of artists like Metal­li­ca, U2, R.E.M., and Radio­head. I’m
    sure peo­ple will be up in arms over their hip-hop selec­tions as well. It’s
    the first list of theirs I’ve looked for­ward to read­ing in quite some time.

  3. wow, very cir­cum­spect response. guess I should­n’t pigeon­hole you. got­ta go back and lis­ten to gagagagaga. 

    here are my guesses:
    Metal­li­ca: the Unforgiven
    U2: One
    R.E.M.: Los­ing My Religion
    Radio­head: Fake Plas­tic Trees
    Pave­ment: Sum­mer Babe
    Nir­vana: Smells like teen spirit

    I will be real­ly dis­ap­point­ed if they don’t have:
    low: “starfire”
    sebadoh: “spoiled”
    spoon: “not turn­ing off” or “met­al detektor”
    out­kast: “skew it on the bar b”
    dave matthews band: “two-step” (okay, that’s not real­ly going to be on there, but it’s a great song”)

  4. Real­ly torn on that Radio­head pick. You don’t think it’ll be some­thing from
    O.K. Com­put­er? I’d love it if they chose some­thing from In Utero for
    Nir­vana. Was thrilled to see “Inter­state Love Song” on the list, just a
    lit­tle sad to see it that low. Also, “Yel­low Led­bet­ter” was a sur­prise for
    Pearl Jam’s sole entry. Hard­ly emblem­at­ic of their work, but an interesting
    choice.

    You’re prob­a­bly right on with R.E.M. It’s easy to write, too. Always about
    the man­dolin. And Pave­ment. That’s a mor­tal lock. It would be fun­ny if they
    ignored Metal­li­ca alto­geth­er, but they real­ly can’t. They might choose
    “Enter Sandman.”

  5. wow, total­ly wrong on REM which leads me to believe my oth­er picks might be less like­ly (and my favorites total­ly unre­al­is­tic). But Nightswim­ming just isn’t the best REM song of the 90s. Also did­n’t like the picks for Stere­o­lab (Miss Mod­u­lar), Super­chunk (Shal­low End), Archers of Loaf (White Trash Heroes), Jim O’Rourke (Ghost Ship In a Storm), Wilco (One By One), Son­ic Youth (Lit­tle Trou­ble Girl) and Fugazi (Small­pox Cham­pi­on), though some you cer­tain­ly could’ve guessed. I put my choic­es in paren­the­ses. Radiohead–I like OK Com­put­er a lot more than the bends, but OK is such an “album” and this list has been geared large­ly towards big sin­gles (withs some obvi­ous excep­tions). Which is why I think SLTS will be the Nir­vana song. It would be neat if they chose some­thing else tho.

  6. Radio­head will prob­a­bly be “Kar­ma Police” in a walk, but they could pick
    some­thing from the much maligned The Bends. “Nightswim­ming” caught me
    off-guard, but I should’ve expect­ed some sen­ti­men­tal favorites.

    I should have my Top 20 Embar­rass­ing ’90s Songs post up short­ly. Check back
    this evening to see all the awful songs I absolute­ly adored dur­ing my most
    vul­ner­a­ble decade!

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