Anyway, in music related news:
- I have been on a huge The Killers kick lately. I know I've mentioned in the past how much I hate that I like them. Nevertheless, Day and Age has made it's way on to my car cd (which is a huge deal for me, because I spend a ton of time in the car for work, so I do a lot of my less critical listening there).
- I bought tickets to Moogfest 2010 and am eagerly antcipating it. It's a really fantastic lineup of electronic and electronic related artists. Super looking forward to seeing Girl Talk again, the set he did at Bonnaroo '09 was one of the two highligts of the festival for me (the other one being NIN's final North American show). Also Pretty Lights = win.
- I've been checking out artists on the Moogfest lineup whom I'm less than familer with, for two reasons. Firstly, I am always up for broadening my musical horizons. Secondlly, I hate it when I have a chance to see a group live and pass it up because I don't know I like them. This happened to me with both MGMT and Phoenix at Bonnaroo '09, and is even more likely to happen at an electronic festival.
- I really need to do another album review. I actually have a couple that I have been thinking about for *ages* and just haven't gotten around to writing. Part of the reason why I update so erratically is because I don't have a lot of readers...but I won't get readers if I don't have something interesting to say.
From the Moogfest lineup, I've discovered Cee Lo Green. Totally not typical music for me, but I am really liking what I have heard so far:
Cee Lo Green - Fuck You - Cannot stop listening to this song (and also watching the extremely entertaining video). Not quite how to describe the sound - the best I can come up with is modern soul meets hip-hop with a pretty solid dose of electronica and backup vocals thrown in. Just check out the video. You'll know in the first minute if it does anything for you (and if it does, I promise you won't even notice when the first minute has gone by).
Cee Lo Green - Fuck You (Paul Epworth mix) - Another good song with a great video. This one is definitely more soul and less hip hop, again with a healthy dose of electronica. I do have a little bit of a harder time with this one as I am not sure if I would have liked the song as much if it didn't have an absolutely fantastic video (I adore music videos, so it's a real treat when one is as well done as this). With that said, I still have no qualms about recommending it. Check it out, and see if you can guess the part in the video where I cursed out loud at one of the protagonists.
Some more typical stuff for me:
YukSek - Extraball - Great synthrock with a healthy dose of rap vocals (thanks to an appearance by Amanda Blank). I don't know much about these guys - the Extraball video was actually recommended to me on YouTube, and I clicked on it on a whim and was completely entranced. I haven't had a chance to listen to much more of their stuff in detail, but I have liked what I have heard.
Phoenix - 1901- I'm pretty sure I'm the last person on the planet to figure out that, hey, Phoenix is pretty good. I actually caught part of their set at Bonnaroo '09 but at the time I was focused on drinking as much Magic Hat as I could to try to get fucked up before Crystal Castles and Girl Talk started. In retrospect, a poor decision, but what are you going to do. Anyway, Phoenix is a solid synthrock group, and 1901 is the highlight of it's album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. This one has also earned a place on my current car CD. Side note: Wikipedia classifies these guys as "alternative". What the hell? I could probably write an entire post about how overused and abused the alt-rock label is, but I can tell you right now, when I think alt-rock, Phoenix is not what I come up with. Perhaps I am not familiar enough with the rest of their stuff (beyond Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix), but I just don't see how you could apply that label to them.
Death Cab for Cutie - Cath... - Ok, confession time. I am not a big fan of pure "indie" (which, incidentally, is a term nearly as abused as alternative). I can stomach Death Cab and I like maybe one Modest Mouse song, but beyond that I get bored at best. I actually tried to seed a Pandora station using the two Death Cab songs that I really really do like, and at the end of maybe four or five hours of listening, I had thumbs-downed practically every other song and hadn't thumbs-up'ed anything.
Anyway, Cath... is one song that I really do like a lot, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's entertaining and well-done musically. Secondly, it's a pretty easy song to relate to - while I'm not about to run out and get myself into a meaningless marriage, it certainly does speak to me about falling into the trap of doing meaningless things just because you feel trapped by circumstance. I feel like I'm possibly not explaining myself as well as I could here but hopefully I'm at least making some sense.
Death Cab for Cuite - Your New Twin Sized Bed - Again, a case of "wow, I totally relate this this". Confession again - I do in fact have a full size bed, and while it's at least partially because I like the space (and because I've always had one), there is certainly the thought of "well if I meet somebody it might come in handy". So far, that has not happened. There's sort of a theme of resignation and longing here that I am right with.
Death Cab For Cutie - A Movie Script Ending - Ok, confession the third - I only kind of like the song here. But I love love love the video. I had actually forgotten how much I liked it until I ran across it in my YouTube favorites while I was writing this post. Again, a case of themes I can relate to, albeit in a more removed way this time (rather than missing a person, I miss having a person to miss (and here I go again into complaining about being single, which is something I generally try to avoid)). Anyway, main bullet point here - solid indie rock, great video. Check it out.
Going to close out this post with a couple of more bullet points:
- I am a big fan and user of last.fm, which I have actually been using since it was still called Audioscrobbler. If you don't know of it, the key feature for me is Last.fm scrobbler, a piece of software that sits on my computer, tracks the music I listen to (via Winamp - I think it also supports Windows Media Player, iTunes and foobar 2000 as well as possibly some other players) and gives me access to that data as some nice charts, as well as making recommendations as to new stuff I might like. My page is here if you are ever curious as to what I'm listening to. The "all time" charts don't quite reflect what I am listening to these days, but that's what happens with over 7 years of data to play with. Sometimes I will go a little bit without using it, as I do quite a bit of listening via Pandora at work, in the car or via my MP3 player at the gym but generally I'll catch up and hit some stuff through Winamp at least a few times a week.
- If you haven't seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World, you need to. End of story. Great movie, which got me into the rest of the franchise, which is great. The novels (at least the two I have read) are muchly enjoyable, and the art makes me happy. I've also been playing the video game a ton with my roomates, and while it's a bit unpolished (things that hardlock my XBox are lame), it's a *ton* of fun.
- On a similar token, I recently discovered the webcomic Alone in a Crowd. The writing is great and the art makes me smile muchly. At some point I might need to do a post on webcomics (I had actually thought of doing that here, but I don't really want to do a giant "super-post".
