You're A Woman, I'm A Machine

Download: Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine (mediafire)

Awesome.

Sweet.

Download: Death From Above 1979 - Heads Up EP (rapidshare, sorry)

Washington DC in the late 90s and early 2000s

When music in Washington DC comes to mind, I immediately think of two bands: The Dismemberment Plan and Q And Not U. Both of these bands released 3 albums that were very similar: the first energetic and impulsive, the second more refined and catchy, and the third more mature and contemplative. The difference is that the D-Plan did it all about 2 years in advance of Q And Not U, who were not as popular and I personally don't like as much.

Since the discographies of the two bands are very similar, I'll post my favorites of each of the 3 sets of albums in order:

Q And Not U- No Kill, No Beep Beep (2000)

Download (rapidshare)

The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I (1999)

Download (mediafire)

The Dismemberment Plan - Change (2001)



Download (rapidshare)

Out of all of these, Emergency & I is definitely my favorite. It got 9.6 Pitchforks, and it has a place very close and near to my heart.
The end.

We'll build skyscrapers together...

The St. Louis indie rock "scene" is considered by some to be almost non-existant, but this post is meant to show that it does exist, and at times can be very strange. Here's a list of indie bands that are currently playing (with varying degrees of success) in the St. Louis area. Click on the pictures.

So Many Dynamos

The best band in St. Louis, in my opinion. Dynamos have released two albums already and their 3rd (recorded by Chris Wall from Death Cab for Cutie) is set to be released on Vagrant Records on April 7th. The band's style can be described as a mathy, dance-rock mix of Weezer and The Dismemberment Plan, which happens to be totally rad n stuff.

Download: Progress (from Flashlights, 2006)

Target Market

Used to play music similar to that of So Many Dynamos: spazzy, melodic dance rock. Then they got obsessed with Pavement and drifted off into non-productive land. Last time I saw them live was about this time last year, and they kinda sucked.

Excercise

Used to be called Berlin Whale and play music similar to that of So Many Dynamos: spazzy, melodic dance rock. Then their bassist and drummer moved away and they drifted off into non-productive land. Last time I saw them live was about this time last year, and they kinda sucked. Hmmm...

Gentleman Auction House

Kindof popular in other places besides here, I guess. They go on tour sometimes. Last time I saw them was around Christmas time last year and they were actually pretty good.

There are other indie bands in the area, of course, but none that have grabbed my attention the way these ones have. There are also tons of other bands I chose not to mention that play lovely genres like screamo, modern rock, and ska.

Awesome New British Bands

Two music styles that have become increasingly popular in England over the past year or two are:

• Angular, melodic, guitar driven post-punk rock, and
  

• British Anti-Folk.

The first of these two was established by bands like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party in 2004 and 2005, and has since been enhanced and re-defined by folks like Klaxons and Meet Me In St. Louis, among others. Two bands new to this genre are Elle Milano and Johnny Foreigner, both of which dropped their debut albums this year.

Download: Elle Milano - Acres of Dead Space Cadets (2008)

Elle Milano is a three-piece that incorporates mathy sounding stop and start structures into their songs while still managing to sound extremely catchy and awesome. This is very impressive, especially for having a girl bassist.

The second band is Johnny Foreigner, who approach the style with a more straight-forward, guitar driven style. Their guitarist has some ridiculously sweet riffs, especially on "Our Bipolar Friends" and "Hennings Favorite."

Download: Johnny Foreigner - Waited Up Til It Was Light (2008)

There's not quite as much to say about the Anti-Folk genre, since it's pretty self-explanatory. Mainly acoustic, soft folk music that slightly goes against its traditional roots and at times even mocks itself. This band, Noah and the Whale, is really awesome.

Download: Noah & The Whale - Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down (2008)

The next example of Anti-Folk is Lightspeed Champion, the new project of Dev Hynes, who used to play guitar in the electronic dance rock band Test Icicles. He recorded it at Saddle Creek studios in Omaha, Nebraska with members of Tilly & The Wall and Emmy the Great on vocals.

Download: Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge (2008)

Jay Clark and Johnny Whitney are both awesome, but Jay Clark is cooler.

Let me explain.

Jay Clark (the black guy on the left hand side of the picture) used to be in a band called Pretty Girls Make Graves, which took its name from a song by The Smiths. He played really awesome guitar riffs all the time, and PGMG was a really solid band in general. They played post-punk influenced melodic indie rock and released 3 albums before breaking up in 2006. Élan Vital is the most well known of these.

Download: Pretty Girls Make Graves - Élan Vital (2006)

Johnny Whitney (the pasty guy in the middle) was the singer in The Blood Brothers, and his voice has been described as "a ten year old boy screaming while being strangled." When my friend Taylor first heard Whitney's voice he thought it was just a beefy sounding woman.

Download: The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes (2006)

There was a lot of hype surrounding the breaking up of both PGMG and the Blood Bros, and speculation about what projects the members would be working on next was all over the place. When I first heard of Clark and Whitney combining forces to make an album under the name Jaguar Love, it sounded almost too good to be true. The album mixes the two band's styles together perfectly, implementing both PGMG's melodic indie rock stylings and The Blood Brother's hardcore, distorted attitude. Here it is. Awesome.

Download: Jaguar Love - Take Me to the Sea (2008)

Phil Elvrum

I saw Mount Eerie here in St. Louis about a month ago, and it was incredible. The only actual member of the band is Phil Elvrum, who used to record under the moniker "The Microphones" but recently changed his name to Mount Eerie. The photo above is from the show, and Phil can be seen on the right playing acoustic guitar. To his right is Julie Doiron providing additional vocals and Fred Squire playing electric guitar. It was a very small, intimate setting, and on one song Phil even sang without a microphone. They played some old classics as well as this entire album, which came out this year:

Download: Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom (2008)

Phil Elvrum has been around for a while. He started out working at a record studio in Olympia, Washington and recording stuff by himself around 1995. He used old tape recorders and over dubbed instruments a lot, giving his records a very natural and earthy feel. He released The Glow Pt. 2 in 2001, and it has since become very popular and one of my favorite albums of all time.

Download: The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2 (2001)

Math Rock

Math Rock can be best described as angular, dissonant, guitar-driven experimental rock that often lapses into odd time signatures and stops and starts suddenly. I've been getting into it quite a bit lately, and here are some of my favorites:

Battles - Mirrored (2007)

Download (rapidshare)

Battles are from New York, and they are really, reeeally awesome. Mirrored was one of my favorite albums of 2007 because of the different experimental sounds they achieve with their instruments while still being very rhythmic and catchy. It's incredible what these guys can do with sound.

Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern, also from new york, is a young-ish hipster girl who happens to be ridiculously good at guitar. She has two albums out (both named here in chronological order) and tours with Zach Hill, who is also ridiculously good, and drums for the band Hella.

Download: Every Single Line Means Something (From In Advance of the Broken Arm, 2007)

Download: Transformer (From This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That, 2008)

Foals - Antidotes (2008)

Download (mediafire)

This album isn't as mathy as Battles and Marnie Stern; what Foals do is mix math-inspired guitar work (all notes above the 12th fret, barely any chords) with insanely catchy british post-punk drum beats, basslines, and vocals. The result is this album, which has become one of my favorites of this year.

Joy Division and New Order

Download: Joy Division - Closer (1980)
Password: radiobutt.blogspot.com

Few bands that have only released 2 albums and an EP carry the influence and reputation that Joy Division d0es. The reason for this, in my opinion, was their proportional mix of professionalism and bravado, as well as Ian Curtis's attention-grabbing epilepsy followed by his suicide at the age of 23.

The band was originally called Warsaw and existed as a simple punk band that was fairly popular in the Manchester area. Ian Curtis then joined the band and made his vision of morbid, dissonant, energetic post-punk music a reality. Curtis's lyrics often covered serious topics such as depression and drug use, giving the band's music a dark atmosphere. An example of this is the song "She's Lost Control" from the band's debut album "Unknown Pleasures".

Ian Curtis had some psychological problems and was diagnosed with epilepsy, and after the success of Joy Division's first album, his symptoms started getting more severe. He had seizures on stage all the time, so he danced in a very strange, unnatural looking way when he wasn't having seizures in order to cover it up. On May 18th, 1980, he hung himself in his kitchen due to his depression, stress, and failing marriage.

An image from the film Control, which told the story of Ian Curtis's life

After Curtis's death, the rest of the members of the band formed New Order and took their music in a more poppy and electronic direction. They were very popular, released several albums, and are considered to be almost as good as Joy Division. Their song "Blue Monday" from 1983 was the best selling 12" single of all time.

Download : New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)

Hipsters

This photo is super indie.

One way that I think the media has impacted our culture in the past few years is the existence of the Hipster. (read the 1990s and 2000s section)

Hipsters are also defined here in the Urban Dictionary (I know... not the best source, but read definition number 2).

Actually, I'll just paste it here since definition #1 sucks:

2. hipster

people in thier teens to 20s who generally listen to indie rock, hang out in coffee shops, shop at the thrift store and talk about things like books, music, films and art.

I saw a bunch of hipsters hanging uot at the coffee shop today.

The stereotype of hipsters is that they are snobby, don't care about anything, and judge you with sneering remarks to their savvy cohorts from their comfy seat in the coffee shop window. However, having been called "hyper indie" and a hipster myself, I know that stereotype to not be true. (I don't even like coffee.)

The truth is that a large amount of young people, myself included, are simply immersed in our media and that of other countries (namely the United Kingdom) enough for it to change our manner of dress, music choice, and sometimes attitude to match what is popular. Out of this also arises the desire to not care about what the mainstream American media has going on because there is an entire "indie" subculture out there that offers music and movies of much greater interest to people of my age group. Hipsters often adopt these styles as their identity and reach out to other individuals that have done the same. This, I believe, is where the snobbiness (new word?) begins. These social groups become cliques and stop associating with people who aren't indie. Eventually, the situation I described above, where the hipsters are sitting in the coffee shop window judging people for their lack of cultural awareness, becomes a reality.

All of the guys in this band think they're better than you.

I don't really have any suggestions for changing this, because it cannot be changed. In a few years the next big thing will happen and everyone will switch to that. It has happened with every decade in America since the end of WWII and i believe it will continue to happen with every generation in increasing severity. (or maybe not...)

Either way, hipsters are being affected by many different media outlets, such as the following:

-Blogs, like the ones linked on the right side of this page, that share popular new music with their readers
-Music reviewing websites such as Pitchfork Media
-Albums released by bands (as well as merchandise and promotional items featuring images of the bands, which young people are constantly bombarded with and influenced by)
-TV shows and advertisements, which have recently become more involved in the Indie culture (an example being this commercial for car company Saturn, featuring the song "5 Years Time" by British band Noah & the Whale)

New York band Animal Collective wear masks in their photos in order to alienate their fans and make them feel inadequate.
(Not really, it's just their way of being different, something most indie bands try to do.)

All of these sources of media encourage the viewers to conform to what is acceptable to society. In this case, being hip and not caring about anything. The result is the modern hipster, a pseudo-bohemian, latte-sipping, internet-savvy individual who simply wants to be different than everyone else. The only problem is, everyone else wants to be different at the same time and ends up doing the same "different" things.
Doesn't make much sense, does it?


A few links to check out:
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
Hipster Olympics

My Favourite Band

To say that I am passionate about Radiohead is almost an understatement.

In my opinion, Thom Yorke & Co. have made the most honest, beautiful music of the 21st century, in addition to being extremely intriguing while doing so.

First of all, let's talk about the media fiasco Radiohead started last October when guitarist Johnny Greenwood entered this post on the band's website, Dead Air Space:

"Hello everyone.

Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days;

We've called it In Rainbows.

Love from us all.

Jonny"

Shortly after the media was alerted of the upcoming album, Radiohead released more details of its release, including the fact that it was available as a download online starting October 10th and that you could decide how much you wanted to pay for it. This was a previously unheard-of method for releasing an album, and hundreds of news sources published articles about it shortly after its announcement.

With the online, pay-what-you-want technique of releasing their album, Radiohead blazed a trail on which many others would soon follow. Several popular bands including Nine Inch Nails announced in the following months that they too had dropped their record labels and were going to be releasing their albums online. Just last week, British band Bloc Party made their 3rd full-length album available for download online prior to a physical release of the record this October.

The greatness of Radiohead, however, started long before their revolution of the music industry as we know it.

Radiohead started as a band called On A Friday, playing in local clubs and venues around Oxfordshire, the town in England where all of them grew up and went to school together. Prior to getting signed to Capitol records, their producer, Nigel Godrich, suggested that they perform under the moniker "Radiohead", taken from a Talking Heads song of the same name. Their first album, Pablo Honey, sucked.

Pablo Honey included the song "Creep", in which Thom Yorke sings about his odd physical appearance and how people usually don't accept him right away. No one in England really liked the song, but it was a big hit in the States. To this day it is Radiohead's most popular song in the mass media, while at the same time being the band's least favorite song to play live.

After Pablo Honey, Radiohead turned in a more awesome direction and started writing songs like Just, Fake Plastic Trees, and My Iron Lung to go on their album The Bends. That album made them pretty popular across the world, and prepared their fans for, in my opinion, the best album ever.
OK Computer was released in 1997, and included the songs Paranoid Android, Karma Police, and Climbing Up the Walls. Popular music website Pitchfork gave the album a perfect 10 (which is insane) and fans across the world soon realized how awesome this album really was.

After OK Computer, Radiohead took some time off to reinvent themselves, and did a wonderful job, as is evident in their next two releases, Kid A and Amnesiac. The two albums were recorded during the same session at Nigel Godrich's studio in the year 2000, and had more of an ambient, electronic feel to them. Kid A was really really good and also received 10 Pitchforks, while Amnesiac was less successful. Their next album released in 2003 was called Hail to the Thief, and was also really really good.

So there you have it.
Radiohead.
They're my favo(u)rite band and they should be yours too, if you want.

Check It!

First post.