Wednesday, October 16, 2019

what this reminds of a little bit is actually early siouxsie, which is probably something nobody wants to hear. but, at least i didn't say patti smith, right? it's interesting how the old new york sound - which was created when the city was an artist's haven, because it was actually cheap to live in - has reasserted itself through the haze of bad indie rock gentrification. and, whether i'm citing siouxsie or branca or sonic youth, the point is that it sounds like late 70s new york - something i'm a fan of, or was a fan of, when i was a little younger.

if it was a little nicer out, and i had a little more cash on hand, i could see myself checking it out. but, again: i'm not braving the cold weather. not this week....

https://golddime.bandcamp.com/album/my-house
the show at the dso this weekend is mahler's 4th, which is kind of beethoven-lite, firmly romantic and yet ultimately still too "classical" for me to really find compelling. i'm going to make the bold claim - and you can label me ridiculous if you insist - that actually claiming you enjoy this at this stage is just ultimately pure pretension. you're not serious.

he neither lays the bottom end down the way ludwig (isn't that such a bassists' name?) does, nor does he ever get into the kind of lush soundscapes that a debussy or ravel (or a schoenberg, to stay austrian) would. he's just basically still writing by-the-book classical music, and throwing a few wrong notes in for colour. maybe it seemed like it had a point at the time, but it hasn't really aged well.

i'm going to argue that if you want to listen to mozart, then you should listen to mozart, although i'm not sure why you'd actually want to. on the other hand, if you want to listen to beethoven....

that said, the long range for the rest of the month looks pretty awful, and i'm thinking about it as a way to get out of the house on saturday night - maybe for the last time in a good while.  i'm just checking the rest of the month, first.

again, this is just...

if you're going to do feedback and building, make it bigger and more cinematic. if you're going to do gaze pop, pick the tempo up. if you want to do ambience, make it deeper. if you want to focus heavily on the lead guitar parts, you need to be better than this, too. as it is, this is kind of more like a country band with a fuzz pedal. they used to call that "cow punk", but, even so, the style would descend into hoe-downs and stuff...

the ambivalent atmospherics have their place, but there's no tension, here. there's no collapse. it's just kind of prodding and sort of boring.

https://diivct.bandcamp.com/
this is a frontloaded record that's caught me a little off guard and i've consequently come back to it a few times in planning the week. who is this, exactly? it seems to be the new project of somebody i should know of, but it's not something i've heard of before, in any way at all.

on it's surface, it initially reminded me a little of caddywhompus, perhaps with a john mcentire production flair. there's a sea and cake vibe to this, and i can get into that. but, as i listened to it a few more times, it exposed some just awfully cringeworthy emo (in the i'm-a-sad-loser-with-a-guitar sense - that word. it's complicated.) songwriting, and also placed itself in the genre that has probably been most prominently presented by speedy ortiz, in the period this band has existed.

so, i took a flip through their back catalog, and it's that emo bent (they use the term 'slowcore') that seems to be dominant, which probably explains why i've had no exposure to this. that's a style that i strenuously avoid.

but, that doesn't negate the interestingness of their new record, or the interestingness of the half of it that doesn't sound like their old material, anyways.

if this is a transition record, there might be something here to check out in a few years, if the idea of john mcentire producing a caddywhompus record has some appeal to you. as it is, i'm not keen on venturing out in the cold, tonight.

i would at least suggest checking out the first couple of tracks, here, though - just the first three would have been a killer ep.

https://peaer.bandcamp.com/album/a-healthy-earth