so, i had a good weekend, and i will have reviews up for xiu xiu, trail of dead and three nights of parties at movement (friday, saturday/sunday, monday/tuesday) as soon as i figure out whether i'm doing anything this weekend or not.

right now, it looks like i'll be out two or maybe three days.

pile. has. evolved. run.

https://pile.bandcamp.com/album/green-and-gray

so, did i get caught up this week?

well, i lost wednesday looking for a bicycle and i think that was fairly decisive, as i'm about a day off from catching up. i have hundreds of event listings to sort through still, but i've at least organized them into separate tabs and removed myself from them, and that should make the process much quicker. but, it was very time consuming to set up...

hundreds of tabs to sort through might not seem like much progress, but i know that 75% of them are going to get immediately discarded, and that does actually clear the list out from facebook's end. so, instead of having 500 past events that i didn't go to marked 'interested' to sort through and remove myself from, i have 500 tabs to sort through, and mostly discard. it's a big step there. i got through roughly 10% in just a few hours this morning.

but, i'm going to take a nap, now, and when i wake up i'm going to be getting ready for the weekend.

did i catch up? it depends on how you define it. and, when i get back to it on wednesday, i should be able to more effectively multitask.

unlike punk rock, which is so heavily reliant on just getting the right guitar tone and being able to play fast enough to keep it pushing forward, the electronic pop music of the early 80s (variously called new wave, post-punk, darkwave, coldwave, post-industrial, etc) has demonstrated itself exceedingly difficult to emulate in an interesting manner. the fundamental problem seems to be that the form has been so disastrously reduced to empty fashion, leaving little more than a set of gimmicks to string together; whenever somebody has decided to sit down and make music in the style over the last 30+ years, and we all know that many have, the intent has almost always been to recreate the moment through whatever romanticized rose-coloured glasses are being dragged in, rather than to try to add to the existing body of work.

by simply not being the same bland knock-off that almost every act that has operated in this space has been for what seems like forever, this is mildly exciting. that is, however, an extremely low bar - and i'm not sure they transcend much further than it. but, if this is suggestive of a long overdue surge to actually evolve the style out of the cultural stagnation our grandparents have left us, that's reason to look forward to something.

i like this style, but i'm very critical of the acts that operate in it and i've long been frustrated by the reality that you're better off looking for 80s bands you don't know yet than listening to something contemporary, if you want a style of music that at the time was very futuristic, and today actually sounds badly dated. there are things they should think about, including updating the synthesizer technology. but, just getting something that is passively listenable is so unusual that i'm not going to push the point too far.

https://secret-sign.bandcamp.com/album/night-rituals

these guys seem to know what they're doing.

http://backbitersband.bandcamp.com/

a couple of the faster tracks are in the style of punk that i like, whereas the bulk of the material is at a slower tempo and isn't.

i never go anywhere in windsor except phog. it's nice to see a second venue open up.

https://heavypetter.bandcamp.com/album/such-a-drag

the smart money always knew it was a matter of time before jacob bannon went full prog.

my dad would have liked this. myself, less so.

https://wearyourwounds.bandcamp.com/album/rust-on-the-gates-of-heaven

for what this is, it's actually pretty top notch.

warning: the following link contains pop music.

https://sunkofficial.bandcamp.com/album/bleeding-hearts

when i made the decision to skip this show in early april, i didn't have a lot to go on, but the samples i found seemed to be dauntingly disappointing. what the fuck is this, really?

i'm not going to pretend that i know what happened or stoop to filling in details i have no understanding of, but it's clear enough that efrim & jessica aren't happy with each other right now and mt. zion is potentially dead as a result. that leaves efrim long overdue for some interesting rants, at least.

while i don't think that this medium is conducive to housing what i want to hear from him, the full ep is not as disappointing as the samples initially suggested. i still wouldn't have gone to hamilton or toronto to see it, but there are at least some lush moments that present a proof of concept, even if it doesn't really accomplish anything, in the end.

it's not clear to me why he's shunned his guitar; that would probably be the easiest way to reintegrate the tension that is currently missing.

when austra shifted tonality a few years ago, they badly lost the plot. this is the first i've heard of this, so i may have missed it come through here, but it seems like it's a return to the basics of the austra sound. these aren't the tasseomancy singers, are they? i saw austra several times, and i'd see this if it came through here.

but, i hope this singer can perform in real time a bit better than kate stelmanis could. the fact is that she fluctuated between bad and awful in a live setting.

https://ghosttwin.bandcamp.com/

this is maybe a bit adolescent, but it is very dark in the process, and the darkness is more up my alley. it's maybe not there yet, but massive potential, here.

https://lovelaceloud.bandcamp.com/

this is at least a little bit more interesting, even if it's stale and overdone, but a first demo like this broadcasts an immediate fork in direction as well. if they move in the direction of funky space-out jams, there's some potential here for something more interesting; if they move towards a poppier aesthetic, they will get horrifically boring very fast.

https://jemmihazeman.bandcamp.com/album/kozmic-maze

and, bowie would hate you for being stale.

i'm going to make a general point rather than a specific one, because i'm no doubt completely ignoring things that people probably think i ought to like.

i've actually been pretty explicit in my absolute disdain for the hippie movement, and if you look at the things i like from the 60s and 70s, there's really almost no overlap with anything "hippie" or "mod". i have a soft spot for beatniks specifically, and i am of course vocal about my affinity for punk rock, but i would have gone out of my way to avoid anything at all to do with the hippies if i had been alive in the period. i've stated this before: i would not have been at woodstock, but i may have had an initial pressing of come out.

the music from the 60s that i actually connect with was in the realm of cultural satire like zappa, jazz fusion like davis or mclaughlin, minimalist classical music like glass and reich and progressive rock like floyd and crimson. there is a small amount of more ordered psychedelic music (like hendrix) from the period that i'm fond of, but the stuff i actually like tended to be disliked by hippies, and the creators tended to dislike them just as much.

i can't stand bowie's hippie period, or his glam or disco phases for the matter, either. he was best with the spiders, or with eno. i think his high point, artistically, was actually in the 90s.

so, the reality is that i wouldn't have liked any of that stuff the first time around, and i have absolutely no interest in it at all in it's fourth or fifth incarnation, when it's gone beyond farce and into novelty territory. you should really be sort of embarrassed for your own generation's lack of creativity.

so, i'm not going to even bother slamming it as done or boring or cliched. it's just, like, "ugh, grandma rock. next.".

yeah, this is too cock rock for me.

they could be pretty good if they'd tighten up and focus, though.

https://dearlybeloved.bandcamp.com/album/enduro

if i'd heard of this band previously, i don't remember it. a quick survey of past tour dates suggests that while they've been near me, they've also been associated with a type of garage rock that i don't spend much time listening to. sloan, for example, is a band i'm well aware of but don't have much time for. it is possible that i'd skipped through sound samples and forgotten about it; more likely is that i wouldn't have even gotten that far in an interaction with the marketing.

further, the write-up on the record suggests they're shifting their sound and, without surveying their entire discography, i could hypothesize that i'm reacting positively to the new direction.

even with that stated, this newest record of theirs seems to be pretty front-loaded. if their older material sounds more like the second half, this is not in my sphere of interest.

but, i'll always have a space for dynamic punk rock performed by playful musicians and there is something here, even if it's accidental, or regretted in hindsight.

https://dearlybeloved.bandcamp.com/

i am continuing to deal with headaches that i think are a consequence of air inhalation issues in the basement i'm in.

i am going to try and push forward with this this afternoon...i'm back to being ten days behind....

so, am i going?

i'm going to shower and then decide.

i have not seen them previously. 

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2012_12_03_archive.html

my dad would have liked this.

too cheesy and too 80s for me.

i bet their dads like it, though.

https://dizzymystics.bandcamp.com/album/wanderlost

luge are weird enough to take note of in a list like this, but i'm not convinced that they're actually very compelling. it's more of an example of what happens when you're into being weird for the sake of being weird, and as a result end up both certifiably weird and overwhelmingly boring at the same time....

but, perhaps a more compelling criticism at this point is that it's actually more like it's Weird (tm), in the sense that it's actually not even that weird, but actually sort of cliched. i mean, this could have been released in 1982.

https://hugeluge.bandcamp.com

likewise, this was in ypsilanti, which is a suburb just outside of detroit city limits. i'd be planning an overnight,  clearly - and i'd at least need nicer weather for that.

so, i'm learning that there are interesting things happening around detroit still, it's just the downtown core that has gone to absolute boring bourgeois shit.

but, you'd think this would be a good match for trinosophes, if not for cliff's bells.

https://submerser.bandcamp.com/releases

i wouldn't have gone out to hamtramck to see this on a rainy thursday night, knowing i'd get stuck overnight with nothing to do for hours, but it is the kind of punk i like, and would have gone if it was at the ufo factory or something.

https://scrunchies.bandcamp.com/album/stunner

on second thought, i am cutting that off; i can't really approach the thing objectively now that i know that it's religiously focused, and i don't expect to actually like any of it, anyways. it's pretty clear that they got pretty boring pretty early in their career and never really reversed it. i'm not going to find that lost record like i did with cursive.

as mentioned repeatedly, my sole interest in the band was it's influence on other things i like, and i think that ran it's course after the first few records, if not strictly the first one.

apologies if anybody really wanted me to go through with this, but it's just not the kind of music i listen to, and i wouldn't have even walked down this path at all if they weren't touring with cursive, and i hadn't done the survey on cursive.

or, to put it another way, the survey has come to a clear conclusion that i'm not into it and am not going to waste my time on it.

you can trace the jangle chords back to the byrds, but the syncopation the guitarist from mewithoutyou is using is all over early u2 records and generally attributed to the edge.

so, i'm not shitposting. it's obvious.

now, somebody is going to accuse u2 of stealing their tonality from the middle east [u2 were also clearly a massive influence on early our lady peace].

you probably just haven't hear u2 from the period i'm referencing.

this was the early 80s, and is widely seen as their best record. if you beef the guitars up a little bit, you get something similar to mewithoutyou.

as mentioned, i've done this before, so i was expecting them to exit my sphere of interest in the opposite direction almost immediately, delving directly into a kind of poppy indie rock that almost sounds like an edgy u2. i think the last time i did this was around 2012 or so, so it's just the last few records i haven't heard. i know they mellow out and further commercialize for a few records.

you can't unhear the comparison in vocal styles here to the singer for la dispute, even if any musical overlap instantly evaporates with this record; la dispute haven't done anything remotely like this, musically, and probably never will. and, i'm not denying an influence, either - i mean, i'm sure he's acknowledged it. i just want to temper the issue of the originality of the vocals here. this guy clearly listened to a lot of lee ranaldo, who himself listened to a lot of lou reed. i'll drop the point, now.

for what this is, it isn't awful. it's just not really in my sphere of interest.

C.

https://mewithoutyou.bandcamp.com/album/catch-for-us-the-foxes

i'm going to point something else out, though: i did not know until right this minute that mewithoutyou were signed to tooth & nail, or that they are arguably a "christian rock" band. that's another good reason why i hadn't run into them - and another good reason why i wouldn't have spent the time looking into it.

i'm going to carry through with this and have an open mind about it. i don't actually care if an artist is religious or not, but i'm not likely to respond well to open evangelism. i'll let them speak for themselves, and react to their work as it comes up.

but, i'll plead ignorance - i did not know that.

time has taken the edge off of it, but something you'll notice about a lot of the rock bands that were labelled "punk" or "hardcore" at the time is that they actually based most of their respective sounds around boneheaded sabbath and motorhead riffs, via whatever intermediary, rather than fast, aggressive chord work. you might think this is trivial or not even notice it as a defining difference, but it gives this record more of a testosterone feel and less of an adrenaline feel, which is how i've tried to explain my interests in punk in the past: i like high energy adrenaline-fueled punk, but have little interest in the kind of dumb brutality that punk produces when you let the testosterone take over.

and, i'm sure a lot of the people that liked this at the time will talk about how awesome the riffs are, too, whether that's really true or not. i can get into riff-based rock music if you tone it done a little, but what these guys are doing is the exact opposite - they're tweaking what is essentially cock rock into something that is even more pelvic-focused. if you're going to get into this, you're going to feel it in your groin, not in your brain.

the drum machine interludes are unusual, but they're just gimmicky and pointless, overall.

it's not the worst record of this type that i've heard, but i'd actually classify this as some kind of crossover metalcore. i don't want to say it's too hardcore, and it's not bad enough to call it brocore, but it's certainly very much a cock rock record and consequently not something i'd want to listen to.

is this where la dispute got their sound? well, you can hear an influence, but if this were la dispute then it would be a half-assed demo. they've never released anything quite like this. and, i don't hear anything particularly original on this recording, either.

D-.

https://mewithoutyou.bandcamp.com/album/a-b-life

so, what am i expecting out of a survey of mewithoutyou?

i again had absolutely no interest in this when it was coming out around the early 00s. i mean, i had some vague understanding of what was then contemporary hardcore, but i just wasn't into it and couldn't have had much of a conversation around it besides articulating a broad, general dislike of the form. i remember asking around for punk that was specifically political in nature and getting blank stares like i was missing the plot. i mean, that was partly why i liked post-rock a bit better - i could actually relate to the subject matter. these emo kids were speaking greek; i didn't understand their perspectives very well. the people i was around were more into nu metal and glam rock, as well, so the exposure i had through them was on the other side of the genre.

i don't expect that i would have liked them much at the time if i knew they were there, but i may have had a better opinion of them than the stuff i was exposed to. as it is, though, i wasn't around the kind of people that were into this...and wasn't into it myself, either.

so, despite being alive and of age at the time, my understanding of mewithoutyou is mostly through a back rec via bands like la dispute, which i've been able to connect with more readily.

that said, i don't actually expect these records to sound like la dispute, or for me to connect with them on the same level; i've surveyed this before, and not come to that conclusion. rather, i expect to find them mildly interesting, but ultimately be turned away by the same things that turned me away from most hardcore of the period. it's probably going to be a string of Cs, and maybe a few weak Bs.

i don't know if i'm going to like them more or less as they mature. we'll find out.

so, where does that leave the new cursive record, really?

it actually leaves it near the top of the pile.

Bs: decent records: {vitriola, happy hollow}
Cs: unrealized potential: {domestica, ugly organ, i am gemini}
Fs, Ds: boring emo: {1,2,6}

it's going to warm up this weekend. finally...

this is at least on the right side of the partition of their discography (it's not boring, mopey emo), but it kind of careens between being overly cheesy and being borderline psychotic. they just can't seem to win, eh?

i'd like this to be better than it is. really. but it isn't.

C+.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-gemini

this is a return to the boring emo sound that defined their earliest records. and, he's trying to sing again, too. yuck.

if they had done this while attempting to retain some of the more adventurous tendencies of the then most recent discs, i could maybe give them a bit of slack. but, they aren't even really doing that, it's just straight regression.

so, this gets an F for turtling or ostriching or however you want to say it.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/mama-im-swollen

well, ok. i'm listening to this a bit more, and religion and music is...

i was raised as an atheist, but i went to a catholic school, and i know people that struggled with faith, and either eventually discarded it or fell back into it. i never had such a struggle; i was a self-identifying, conscious atheist by the time i turned 10, and i've never had any serious doubts about it.

there was certainly a time when i was a kid where i identified with specifically anti-religious music, but it was on an anti-authoritarian basis and not a question of struggling with a faith that i've never had. i can still enjoy a good fuck you to religion; i'm not any less anti-authoritarian, and not any less interested in poking fingers in the eyes of religious types. i still enjoy watching them squirm. but, nowadays, i'd rather listen to something like bad religion than something like nine inch nails; i'm more into the elevation of reason than the denigration of faith, even if i think there's a place in my playlist for both.

i've been through this with other records as well. i just don't have all of this catholic guilt and repression. but, like i say, i get it, abstractly. so, i'll just say that it would follow that some of the tracks on here are more interesting to me than others.

that last cursive record reminds me a little of this old cop shoot cop record.

this is a much more dynamic, playful sound but it's still just barely interesting. in some sense, they've just replaced the cello with the horns, kind of confirming that it was a gimmick to begin with. but, the shift from the cello to the horns comes with a shift in tonality and song structure from dourness and sterility towards a more fun, almost ragtime kind of sound. it suits them better, but they're still hemmed in by a disinterest or inability in taking it to the next level of abstraction and intensity.

again: i'm not going to spend any time deconstructing the lyrics because it's not musically dynamic enough to pull me in. it's getting closer to being able to do it, though.

B.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/happy-hollow

so, there's the cello - and this is supposed to be the high point.

what was i listening to in mid-2003? mostly constellation records stuff, and a bunch of dying rock bands from the 80s and 90s. i'd pretty much had it with rock music at the time. i would have been open to a good punk or grunge band if i stumbled upon it, but the minimal exposure i had to the term 'emo' did not generate much interest in me. i thought it was trash, as a form. you would have been more likely to find me at a jazz festival than an emo concert. if anybody mentioned cursive to me at the time, i don't remember it. i didn't go back and try to sort through this stuff for the first time until stuff like la dispute and defeater started coming out, which piqued my interest in the form for the first time since junior high school, which was roughly fifteen years earlier.

so, my memory of this record is precisely zero: i don't remember it at all. i wasn't remotely into this kind of music, at the time...

i'm going to give it a careful listen, but my first impression is that it sounds like larks' tongue in aspic watered down for the masses in the sense that it's opaque and sort of ugly, but not in a complicated or abstract enough way to be interesting. it's like weezer doing crimson covers, which is not a very exciting prospect.

i'll give it at least two listens, though. promise.

.....and.....

no. it's a boring C. at best.

they have enough instruments on stage at this point to be doing something more interesting than this, but they just aren't doing it. the cellist is just hanging out, really. it's better in the parts where it's referencing the cure, but this term i previously used - pedestrian - remains the best description of it.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/the-ugly-organ-2

maybe he started screaming because he came to terms with the fact that he can't sing worth fucking shit. or, maybe it was catalyzed by the replacement of the guitarist. i dunno.

it's another baby step overall in terms of being interesting, but it still broadly sucks. it might have been better if pared down to an ep....

that said, i'm not going to deconstruct the lyrics. i don't have the time; it's not interesting enough to hook me.

but, if the first record was an F and the second was a D-, they at least eek out a weak C- for the first time, here.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/domestica

the vocals on this one are worse than the vocals on the last one, but the song structures are a little more interesting. it would probably be better as an instrumental recording.

i'm not going to make it very far if these vocals don't ease up. it just really sounds like autism; and, i don't mean that as an insult or in a derogatory way, it's just a literal description - the slur on the totally tone-deaf vocals is what an autistic person sounds like. the thing is that i don't thing the guy is actually autistic.

i don't know the ultimate origin of the style, but it was widely copied in this period, and in fact still is. maybe the initial progenitor actually was autistic. i don't know. i know this vocal style needs to die...

yeah. no. i'm at track 5 again and i think i'm done. it's a baby step in terms of composition, even if the vocals are worse; even as an instrumental, this would be pretty weak.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/the-storms-of-early-summer-semantics-of-song-remastered

ok, so, i'm only a few songs in, but record number one by cursive is pretty generic 90s emo, complete with autistic vocal tone. why did they all do this in this period? anyways....it doesn't seem as though there's much worth mentioning here, and i'm not even sure i'm going to make it all the way through before i skip to the next one.

i was going to skip after track 5, but track six got interesting. briefly. then, boring again for track 7...

aaaand, cut.

when did they get a cello player? well, we'll find out.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/such-blinding-stars-for-starving-eyes-remastered

actually, no. let's do this. i used to do this, years ago, and it will be posted here in time - let's survey cursive, from the start to the end, and put it in context...

and, let's survey mewithoutyou after, too.

when i did this for thursday, after being surprised by the turn they took on what i think ended up being their last record, i concluded that they really did suck all along. when i did it for the trail of the dead, i decided they were actually getting better, but hadn't yet released a substantive record yet. then, i didn't pay attention, after all. that was like 2011 or 2012.

i'll be clear with my views on cursive before i start: i think they're alright, but just alright. but, i think they could be great. i'd give them a string of C+s, kind of thing - i may pull out a B, in the end. as i haven't heard that potentially awesome record, i never got into them, i've just been passively listening a few times and moving away for years. it's time to backtrack and put it in context.

so, we'll start with the first record and move forwards on it.

so, my general perception of cursive hasn't changed: i could imagine them releasing a string of really strong records at some point, but the rather substantive potential that they're hinting at never gets realized. there's a bunch of bands like this from the same period - thursday, ..trail of dead, the dear hunter, muse, etc - that just don't seem able or interested in getting past this level of abstraction, or conversely of just resorting to a more primitive rock sound. so, you get this kind of not-really-art rock pasted into this not-really-punk rock song structure, leaving something that isn't even pretentious, really. i mean, i'd actually probably like it a little bit better if it was actually trying to be pretentious.

a better term than pretentious is pedestrian, in the sense that it neither really rocks very hard nor gets very artsy. it's more like mildly abstract pop rock. by straddling things i like without really committing, i'm just left unsatisfied with it. it's just lacking, all around.

as mentioned, i've listened to a lot of their work, but i don't know the ins and outs of their discography well enough to compare this to their other records. it strikes me as stasis - it's not good enough to pull me in, but not bad enough to get me to go away and leave them alone, either. so, i guess i'll have to wait until the next one to see if they've clicked, yet.

i need to start getting out of the house a little bit more; if i was feeling better, i may have gone, anyways.

and, i need to listen to mewithoutyou now, which were also on the bill, and are in roughly the same category.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/vitriola

"good music....what's good music?

good music is good, and you know it's good music when you hear that it's good."

i like all kinds of music, as long as it's good.

conversely, i'll trash anything at all, if i'm sure that it sucks.

i kind of like this, actually - although if it were any poppier at all, i'd find myself tuning out. if i'm going to listen to this kind of pop, the production and horizontal detail in the layering is really key, and this is a good ways in the right direction.

https://silverpools.bandcamp.com/album/memoirs-of-an-oblong-sphere-2

aimless, perhaps, but kind of intense, too.

https://notthewindnottheflag.bandcamp.com/album/the-starmaker

what about me and cursive?

well, they're a known entity, but i've actually never taken the time to explore the discography all that carefully. i've heard a number of their records a number of times, and keep putting it aside for later, but have never gotten around to it. it always seems like i might or might not like it, and i've just never been certain.

but, it seems like i'm not going anywhere tonight, and i'm pretty overcome with a feeling of overall shittiness right now, so i'm going to try to sleep it off and see if i can wake up clear-headed and sober-minded or not.

it's just incredibly frustrating to be unable to focus on something simple.

i've been trying to listen to this record since yesterday and haven't been able to do it. i'm having difficulty focusing and i'm also having difficulty sleeping. i keep getting these feelings of really powerful anxiety washing over me, and the only way to stop it is to sit still for a few hours. i then get these powerful feelings of negativity wash over me: anger, sadness and a feeling like i want to start crying. i'm also extremely hungry, but i eat on a schedule, and i'm not going to break it due to some kind of adverse reaction to something that i don't fully understand. i will sit in hunger, instead.

i want this feeling to go away.

this is very unusual for me, and what's frustrating about it as that i don't have any experiences to compare to it, excluding the feeling of being through hormone therapy. i don't have any history of suffering through depression. i'm not bipolar. i'm not schizophrenic. i have no reason to think i have any kind of chemical abnormalities, although it sure feels like one is being introduced.

the only way i know how to describe what i'm feeling right now is to compare it to the feelings i had when i went through hormone therapy a second time about ten years ago.

i simply can't listen to music in an anxious state like this, it's not possible to focus on it or analyze it, and because music is an intellectual experience rather than an emotional one, it means it's not possible to enjoy it, either.

why is this happening?

frustratingly, it seems to be because my neighbour is smoking something. again. it smells like government pot. he doesn't go to work any more, either. they seem to have turned him into a zombie, and i'm downwind from it and getting affected by it, too.

so, i was maybe going to venture out to see this tonight, but instead i'm going to have to sit inside and deal with a sudden onset of unwanted anxiety. and, i just want all of these drugs i'm surrounded by to go away....

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/vitriola

kids nowadays seem to think it's funny to take pictures of themselves with landlines. it's some kind of meme, or something. i dunno, really. but, it's widespread.

i've skipped over a bunch of stuff like this, but this caught me for some reason. i think it's the attention to detail. but, what i'm going to say is this: you kids can have this. it's not going to be mine, and that's ok. but, i can tell you what's well constructed and what's haphazardly thrown together in an attempt to prevent you from harming your impressionable young minds with monotony and numbskullery, and i will subsequently instruct you that this is a little bit better than the pile of stuff i'm ignoring.

https://kitzl.bandcamp.com/

i guess that material girls is what comes after theoretical girls. was madonna at one of those shows? james chance wants his sound back, kids.

i'm not going out tonight. really.

i could take my bike over now, though. i don't need to rely on the one that may or may not still be there.

https://materialgirls.bandcamp.com/

the singer appears to have misplaced her nose in her throat, which is making it difficult to understand what she's saying, and what she's trying to say.

i like the guitar tone, though.

this kind of thing is usually better live, but it's not worth the trip to hamtramck for tonight.

https://teener.bandcamp.com/releases

as for like fictional hollywood movies, one of my old friends dragged me to see the second or third lord of the rings in the mid 00s. i don't even remember which one it was.

i think that's the last hollywood movie i've seen. really. and, it might have been years since i saw anything before that.

i legitimately do not think i've seen a single film released in the 2010s.

i'm trying to remember the last time i watched a movie.

i think it was something about gandhi at the frequently arrested activist's house in 2012 or 2013.

i watch a lot of documentaries on youtube, of course. but, i don't think i'd even be able to sit still long enough to actually watch a film, at this point. i'm going to get bored and go do something else...

a lot of people don't like music or can't handle listening to a lengthy set. that's fine. personally, i just don't enjoy film, don't think i ever did and don't think i ever will.

this is that same classical festival. it's substantially less abstract, but the unusual nature of the ensemble - two stand-up basses, vocal and very sparse drums - doesn't have much option but to provide for some unusual sonic templates. something else up front - even a piano - would be useful at points, but she's actually able to carry it fairly well with her voice.

https://betsysoukup.bandcamp.com/releases

there's a classical festival in ann arbor this weekend that i'm not considering going to. this caught my attention, though.

https://kirsten-carey.bandcamp.com/album/the-ulysses-project

i clicked the wrong link, actually. i was searching for a synth-pop band from toronto called ferarro.

i suspect this is a bit more interesting.

and, in fact, i think i need a break from sorting through the dregs of the current toronto music scene for an hour. so, i'm going to let this play.

the name is vaguely familiar, i spent a lot of time sorting through music of this style around 2010 or so, only to more or less abandon it. i recognize things here and again, but i don't have a memory of this. sounds interesting, so far...

https://jjamesferraro.bandcamp.com/

i don't want to come off as a metal purist or something, because i basically despise everything about metal to it's core, from the pretentious musicianship to the silly satanist themes. there's not much i like about hip-hop or folk or opera, but i don't have the same kind of visceral dislike for them that i have for metal.

i really hate metal.

and, because i wouldn't normally go anywhere near the genre, i don't know if this is novel or not. i mean, maybe there's a hundred pop-rock faux-metal cheese rock bands like this with autotuned female vocals and heavily photoshopped photo spreads. i really have absolutely no idea. and, i don't really care, either.

but, because i want my survey of toronto to be deep, i'm going into dark, foreboding crevices that i would normally avoid, and i bumped into this. i'd never listen to this under normal scenarios, but i feel like i need to mention it.

again: maybe it's not novel to have a talentless taylor swift wannabe (she sounds more like celine dion) fronting a watered down dream theatre cover band like this. maybe there's all kinds of stuff like this out there. but if there is, i don't know anything about it and i don't want to.

my reaction is just that's it's really comically awful. and, so, if you want a laugh, check this out.

https://cecilemonique.bandcamp.com/album/genesis

i have a number of records by these musicians in my collection, and it's the kind of thing i wish i had more of an opportunity to see early in the night, even as a pre-show. i wouldn't cross the border solely to see it under the best of circumstances, but if you're in the eastern market tonight you should stop by trinosophes.

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/fly-or-die

should i be at cmw?

well, i've never been there before. i've known about it for a while, but never really looked into it before. i guess we'll see.

likewise, i'd interpret this as a kind of guilty pleasure, although if you're going to be obnoxious you should go overboard with it. really. what's the use of being moderately obnoxious? so, they could - and probably should - take it up to that next level and just be ridiculous about it. it's on the right track to get to what it's trying to get to, though.

https://joansmithandthejanedoes.bandcamp.com/releases

this is a little bit cliched, but as far as introductory singles for corporate rock bands are concerned, it's relatively promising.

whether you like this or not - and i think it's mind-numbingly stupid - the question of whether it ought to qualify for an artist grant or not can't be up for serious debate. it's objectively not very artistic; it's quite clearly designed to sell units on the radio by dumbing itself down to the lowest common denominator.

but, i mean, this isn't news. whatever used to exist of the grants system in this country has been long replaced by what is essentially a form of corporate welfare for the music industry. they may throw some money at things they consider to be legacy projects, like an attempt to prevent native american music from completely disappearing, and that has it's own value for what it is. but, what the system really does is operate as a research department for the major labels.

i'd rather see this kind of money go towards just about anything else, and let emi or sony or whatever fund this kind of trash on it's own. but, whatever.

i wouldn't have even mentioned this, otherwise; there's nothing worth mentioning about it.

https://partnerband.bandcamp.com/

it's just like inner speaker period tame impala...

....except, totally boring.

i think you can put off the question as to whether it's actually any good or not, because i could imagine it sort of working as background music in an after hours bar. so, it's detailed enough that it isn't totally useless. but, as an active listening experience, i think i'd end up pretty bored pretty fast.

https://vinylwilliams.bandcamp.com/

i'm now caught up to the end of last night. if i skipped your band, it's because i think you suck. sorry.

i'm going to want to push forward at least a few more weeks and ideally until i can find a show to hit until i start writing. right now, i'm looking at either touche amore in june or screaming females in july, bands i've seen repeatedly. i'd like to maybe hit something i haven't seen before. and sooner.

almost there. this was friday night in toronto.

...and, it seems entirely pointless, but probably worth a couple of beers.

https://thecosmicrange.bandcamp.com/

this was the friday that just passed, in detroit, so i'm almost caught up. and, it's more up my alley, certainly - enough that i may have gone, if the situation were more ideal.

but, there's a kind of constant with the material in that it doesn't really go anywhere, and it kind of sputters around in circles. there's all kinds of buzzwords being thrown around on the bandcamp site, but the term you usually see attached to music of this sort is "post-rock", a term that i will acknowledge has been shunned partly due to it's association with bland repetition. the thing is that this kind of perpetuates the stereotype rather well. something you'll notice listening to this is that every time it seems like they're about to break it open, it just falls back into the repetition of itself.

i'm consequently reminded of an 00s acts called warpaint that showed up right at the bottom of the last cycle, and seemed to turn a lot of heads before kind of evaporating. they were exciting in the way that made sense to people at the time, namely they were the perfect aesthetic, the perfect fashion choice - an accessory, if you will. but, their actual songs were not very well constructed, and they couldn't hold an audience as a result of it. the sudden realization that a band of this type must write actually interesting music that has some actual depth beyond the aesthetic in order to keep an audience seems to have taken a lot of people by surprise, including the band. you don't get much of a crossover into pop culture with something like this, and you can't market it like it's a pop band.

they were a turning point, though. the industry kind of hit rock bottom with warpaint, before it corrected itself.

don't get me wrong: with enough marijuana in my system, the aesthetic would have dominated, and i would have enjoyed the show. but, it's not actually very interesting beyond the surface atmospheric, which wears off before the record finishes.

if we're stuck on this perpetual wheel, let's at least hope we're bottoming out.

https://mintfieldil.bandcamp.com/

the production almost saves some pretty weak songwriting. there's potential here, but it's not even close to being realized.

https://summerliketheseason.bandcamp.com/album/thin-today

a key aspect of what i'm trying to do is separate music from fashion.

music always suffers when it finds itself attached to any kind of fashion....it's the death of any serious art....

so, i don't just not think i'm cool, the whole point of what i'm doing is trying to look for things that aren't cool, because that's what i actually like. and, as soon as it gets cool, i don't like it any more.

you don't really think i think i'm cool do you?

anyways...

this is too poppy and upbeat for me. i'm not joking.

the more underground variants of this style were never this catchy and arena-ready, even if this probably isn't going to hit an arena any time soon. or, maybe i'm wrong....maybe we'll never get out of these cyclical 80s revivals...

if i was going to listen to something like this nowadays, i'd want it to be a lot noisier and a lot darker.

as it is, it's just kind of repetitive and predictable and ultimately just sort of boring.

https://actors.bandcamp.com/album/it-will-come-to-you-lp

this sad girl bullshit is worse than corporate emo.

most of what i connect to most effectively is pretty noisy, but i'm extremely picky about noise on it's own; this is legitimately interesting, and that is very rare. you never know what a show is going to be like when you hear a demo like this, as they essentially have the choice between running the tape and doing an improv session. but, i would have certainly gone to this under normal situations, even if i would have walked away disappointed from it.

https://suntrash.bandcamp.com/

if you want to understand zappa, you should just watch portlandia.

it's basically the same thing...

to be clear: in zappa's universe, everybody is stupid.

it is true: the women are often portrayed as not so bright, but they aren't generally portrayed as less intelligent than the men, who are also generally portrayed as fairly daft. at the least, they tend to have names and personalities...and they often win out in the end....

so, if you're just focusing on his treatment of women, you're really missing the plot. it's a total attack on the 60s culture in general, not a targeted attack on the women within it.

you know how tv shows have spin-off series? like, frasier is a spin-off of cheers? i haven't watched tv since the 90s, and that's probably obvious...

....but, this is what one might imagine it would be like if one of zappa's misanthropic takes on 70s women decided to start their own band. and, you consequently want to interpret it tongue-in-cheek, except that it actually appears to be taking itself seriously.

it's poorly recorded, and broadly absurd, but there is at least some attempt at musicianship, even if it's hamfisted and largely cliched. in the end, this demo may be better left forgotten, but there may be some reason to check back here in a bit.

https://catlung.bandcamp.com/releases

this is utter pretension, and fails as a consequence of it. but, i take it it's also a first record, and there's enough potential hiding inside of the pretension to maybe hint at something....

https://joeypecoraro.bandcamp.com/

the noise trade site is working again.

the relevant links are:
https://books.noisetrade.com/j/082013-deathtokoalas

and

https://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-082013-deathtokoalas-22

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

the readable version of the august, 2013 archive for this blog is now available as a standalone in the music journal package at bandcamp:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/08-2013-music-journal

...or as a component in the half year archive at smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026620

...or as a component in the first reconstruction phase archive, available in the following places:
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-deathtokoalas-blog/ebook/product-zrgr94.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10DbwOVdqWt73rHNzWJWgEfduzREogExX/view

the chronologically ordered pdf file for the august, 2013 entry of this blog is complete, but the noise trade site is currently broken, so it can only be accessed as a bonus file in the bandcamp download of the music journal from the same period.

i am currently expecting the noise trade site to eventually fix itself. when it does, i'll post the link to the download here. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/08-2013-music-journal

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

the readable version of the august, 2013 archive for this blog is now available as a standalone in the music journal package at bandcamp:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/08-2013-music-journal

...or as a component in the half year archive at smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026620

...or as a component in the first reconstruction phase archive, available in the following places:
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-deathtokoalas-blog/ebook/product-zrgr94.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10DbwOVdqWt73rHNzWJWgEfduzREogExX/view

this is, stylistically, a little bit outside of my sphere of influence; i neither grew up near a corn field, nor do i have ancestors that did, so this whole rural/roots thing is just not culturally relevant to me. it's one of the annoyances i'm dealing with right now in this era of reactionary white revival: my ancestors are mostly catholic, and mostly came over in the industrial revolution, so, while i'm firmly lower class, i'm neither interested in white slave music nor am i interested in black slave music. it's not that the rock era transcended any of this, so much as that it just leapfrogged it. it's beyond it, temporally. so, if you're going to try and go back and run a principal component analysis on it, i'm going to end up listening to sinatra and klezmer and ethnic sounding irish folk, rather than country or blues - things nobody is interested in.

but, i'm always going to stop to listen to an interesting guitarist, and i'd stop if i overheard this one.

for one beer, anyways. maybe not two...

https://raddleshack.bandcamp.com/

nobody wants to listen to tom petty anymore.

no, listen.

i don't understand why anybody who is not a musician (or maybe a poet) would listen to rock music in 2019. the larger social decline of the guitar should be interpreted as a bottleneck in the genre. that doesn't mean you need to sound like steve vai, and i'd actually rather you didn't. but, so long as the instrument exists, it is going to maintain an audience around it...

the whole "rock music will never die" thing is bullshit. it's been on life support for decades. but, what the death of rock music should mean is the death of boring rock music - catchy rock music, popular rock music. and, to that, we should all sing "good riddance".

let the thugs listen to hip-hop and the idiots listen to techno and the teenage girls listen to pop. fine. great. it opens up the space at the rock bar for more guitar music, even if the rock bar shrinks in size. and, that's fine, if it does.

what that means is that you need to play, or go home.

there's no audience for pop rock anymore, regardless of how you're doing it; the audience that remains is focused on lyrical prowess and instrumental virtuosity and has a lot of overlap with prog and jazz.

i just want to make a general point.

when it comes to music, it's been clear for a long time that the millennial generation does not have anything original to offer. it's the retro generation; they pride themselves on being derivative. and, contrary to the public perception, you can pull out how inherently conservative they are in their obsession with the past.

throughout the 00s, it was just depressing to be stuck on the edge of the most musically boring and most generally uncreative generation in eons. after the year 2010, there started to be some evidence that the next generation may be a little bit more artistically inclined, if they can find a way out of the shadow of the demographic boom. but, it never fully materialized.

it may be a little bit early still. but, i fully expect to find far more creative and challenging music from the post-millennial generation, and an eventual historical clarification of what we all intuitively know: millennials are fucking boring.

there's some potential here, but it needs to break itself outside the box.

https://dizzyspellz.bandcamp.com/

the second entry in the music journal series, which is the whole month of august, 2013 and is 220 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/08/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over august, 2013. it includes facebook posts, messenger chats and emails with friends and family members, in an attempt to tell the story of the move from ottawa to windsor. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 17 separate txt documents (essays, notes and scripts) that are referenced in the journal.

the events documented in this journal occurred in august, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed on april 30, 2019. released and finalized in doc and pdf format on may 1, 2019. doc0813.

credits

released September 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

esa - participant
mom - participant
sister - participant
nana - participant
step-mother - participant
the surviving uncle - participant
d - participant
jeff - participant
rli - participant
ms. jeffreys - participant
mackaye - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/08-2013-music-journal

this is silly fluff, but it's the kind of silly fluff i can enjoy in an opening band, because it has a little bit of quirk. the fluff:quirk ratio needs to be set properly in order for it to work, and it's pretty good here, if not fully anthropic.

there is a universe out there where this is a bit more abstract. alas.

also, i bet bbqed pope would be delicious, if presented with a side of funny hat kebob.

https://bbqpope.bandcamp.com/album/bbq-pope-lp

somebody will tell me i'm missing the point, but she must tone the vocal hysterics down a little. that's not optional. we can talk about whether there's some potential here after she chills out a little.

it's objectively too much.

https://hextoronto.bandcamp.com/

this is a good start, but where's the virtuoso guitar work?

that's supposed to be what this is about. isn't it?

https://theslowdrags.bandcamp.com/