Everyone who regularly reads the blog already knows that I'm a huge fan of the Hard Lessons, the indie band that everyone should be talking about but doesn't. But what I've never mentioned before is that I like to collect things, and one of my favorite things to collect is buttons, or, as the British call them, badges.
So imagine my delighted smile when someone pointed me over to the Hard Lessons tumblr, which yes, includes this little post featuring buttons the band's giving out in connection with their upcoming Christmas album. I'm really loving the one in the middle and the two on the left. The one in the middle has a great shade of blue. I guess I'm going to have to get out to one of their upcoming concerts if I want one of these.
My friend Caryn tipped me off to this band she recently discovered called Stroller Coaster. I'm listening to them now, and I have to say, I'm really impressed. They sound like they're in love with a lot of bands I love: The Hard Lessons, AC/DC, Cato Salsa Experience, Metallica, even The Beach Boys. I approve of this band, though I'm not impressed with "Drink my Purple Kool Aide," which sounds like something one of my high schools boyfriends would have written when we were in the 9th grade, and not in a good way. I'm always keeping an eye out for a new band to love. I love discovering bands no one has heard of, since it feels like you have some great secret to share with only those who are cool enough to appreciate certain things. In the last few years, I've been crazy about indie-folk-cool Robert Francis, Spitzerspace Telescope and Double Saginaw Familiarity. And The Outer Vibe, The Hard Lessons and The Javelins, which are not so much folk but rock. One of the few things I love about myspace is how easy it is now for a band to start a page on themselves and how easy it is for me to find them and listen to their stuff. I'm old enough to vaguely remember a time before myspace when finding cool bands was such a struggle. I fell in love with Silver Bullit's "People Get Real," Papas Fritas, Spoon, Ted Leo's "Parallel," The Action Slack's "Joan of Arc" and a whole other slew of bands or songs when I was thirteen. Trying to find more information and songs by them online back then was a massive pain. If they were American, I could sometimes find them on Amazon, but almost never just in a store. If they weren't American (I'm looking at you, Cato Salsa Experience and Silver Bullit), I'd be forced to get whatever I could, which sometimes was just a brief mention of a label's website. I still don't have the album I want from Cato Salsa Experience (The Fruit is Still Fresh) because it would cost 48 dollars to import it. Suffice to say, myspace makes me happy, since at least I can legally stream some of their other stuff.
I love albums. I love it when an album comes together perfectly, each song awesome but each of them fitting together well to make one cohesive work. This is no way a full list, but simply some suggestions of great albums that aren't meant to be listen to as single songs but as great, full works.
Korn's Issues. Considering the above answers, this seems totally unexpected, but I've found that when the mood is right (which is to say, really wrong...), this album is totally necessary. Critics rightly talk about how Nirvana's mastered the quiet/loud dynamic that The Pixies famously started, but Korn takes it to it's inevitable conclusion.
And if you're into bands like Korn, then maybe it's time you discovered Planetstruck and their Mild Chronic Inflammation. Especially if you miss Kurt Cobain.
Paul McCartney is always going to be the cute Beatle, but for only being the cute one, he still puts out some fabulous stuff. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is one of those albums. It sounds exactly how you'd expect a McCartney album to sound, but in no way is that a bad thing.
I've never met anyone who's heard of Sandor Lakatos, but after hearing Budapest at Night, an album of violin-dominated Hungarian folk music, I really didn't care. It's waltzing music, but there's something slightly dangerous about it.
Every once and a while Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings pop up on a commercial or a tv show. Their Dap-Dippin' is soulful and fun and retro in the best way possible.
Spoon has several flawless albums. Gimme Fiction is one of them. Few things are like this album on a rainy night.
I am always interested in geography in art. This is probably what I find so interesting about the work of various musicians, like Sufjan Stevens and Spitzer Space Telescope and Frontier Ruckus and The Hard Lessons, who are so much about centering their work on particular places.
I was thinking about place when I heard Jump, Little Children's "Mexico." I was thinking of a very old friend, so old now that I'm not sure she would consider me a friend any longer. I had heard through some friends that she was newly in a relationship with an old colleague. She had recently moved to Chicago, but he was out in Los Angeles, and they were both from Detroit, and the first bits of lyrics made me think of hard it is, in a relationship, to deal with geography. Obviously, being far away from the people you love is hard.
I've been thinking about geography because I've become rather nomadic lately, and I'm in the preparation stages to pick my bags up and move again. On one hand, I love traveling, but I think I'm starting to suffer from fatigue. I want to settle down or at least not have to move again, at least for a while.
This is all a very round about way of saying that I'm going to be leaving New York soon, and that my posts about museums and other stuff will probably come to a temporary end.
