I was a little distressed to find Bill Simmons' latest online chat featuring recommendations of Bloc Party and Arcade Fire. Those are both good bands, but a little 2005 at this point if you know what I mean. Which inspired me to offer my own outdated recommendation that various people and impersonal computers have been telling me that I would like Mirah for some time now and it's true -- I do like Mirah, or, at least, Advisory Committee. Will have to examine her other albums. What's more, several readers had recommended The Thermals to me and I get good results with that. Better, however, is The Blow and their album Paper Television a simply awesome, awesome thing. The Clipse record is good, too, but I'm so ignorant of hip-hop I hesitate to speak on these matters.
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14 Jan 2007 10:45 am
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Do you really like Bill Simmons? I can't stand him. It's like a poor impression of a witty person. "Hoho! I combined sports analysis with fart jokes and random pop culture bric-a-brac like the Real World! How clever." The guy's been writing the same column for five years. It's such a tired formula. Here's a fun game: when he publishes his mailbag, see if you can detect any difference whatsoever between what he writes and what his fans write. You'd think that being so expertly aped would make him feel a sense of shame. But I guess not.
I think the thing to do would be to determine what the exact opposite of his musical tastes are, and listen to that. But, no, Bloc Party, yeah. Rock on.
"Do you really like Bill Simmons? I can't stand him. It's like a poor impression of a witty person"
He's witty about pro hoops.
Both Arcade Fire and Bloc Party have new releases coming out, so maybe he's just waaay ahead of the curve?
Each have a single from their new releases currently playing on Minneapolis' public radio indie station, The Current. (The singles are not that good, though.)
Both Arcade Fire and Bloc Party have new releases coming out, so maybe he's just waaay ahead of the curve?
Could be. I thought the pre-release Arcade Fire single I heard was okay, but okay is disappointing in light of expectations. On the other hand, Arcade Fire expectations are so high that disappointent is inevitable.
Well, your first mistake was turning to a SPORTS guy for music recommendations. You should give him some credit though: I would have assumed his musical tastes didnt go much further than "We Wzl Rock You" and "Cotton-Eye Joe", preferably blared over a stadium's sound system. That his taste is ONLY 2 years behind is a tremendous achievement for a jock ;)
It's amazing that nobody can mention Bill Simmons without somebody complaining about Simmons. Obviously he can be annoying, but he can be laugh out loud funny. And there isn't a sportswriter in America that frustrates me less. That's the bar we work with here, who frustrates you least.
Matt, it's important to remember that Simmons is almost 40. He writes about the Real World and such, so it's easy to forget, but that will take its toll on anybody's music tastes.
As for the Clipse, yes it's that good. The Neptunes produced the whole thing, as they have in the past, but the beats aren't as consistently Neptun-ish as in the past. There is still the same strong, simple, percussion, but there is much more than there used to be in addition to that. Moreover, Malice and Pusha have developed a lot. It really changed with the mix tape they dropped as they were getting screwed by Jive. I can't remember what it was called right now, but it's quite good. Trill is one of the best songs of the year.
I might add, however, that Lil Wayne's Dedication 2 is superior.
"And there isn't a sportswriter in America that frustrates me less."
Peter Vescey is god.
Shtick doesn't bother you? Look, you can predict precisely the mix of worn out tropes he uses in every column. And given that it's the contrast between those tropes that is supposedly entertaining-- he just mentioned Bel Biv Devoe right after talking about crying over Red Auerbach's death! wow!-- it's even more baffling that people keep coming back to the trough.
(Malcom Gladwell-style pseudo-intellectualism)+(talking about poop)x(lame ass Spin magazine approved "indy" rock AND/OR Pearl Jam)+(incredibly ham-handed statistical analysis)/(Gregg Easterbrook)^(the kind of bogus Everyman, "we all just love football and girls" posturing you might find in a Coors Light commercial)+ (Dane Cook)= the same goddam Bill Simmons article he's published 1000 times.
How can you fall for that? Again?
"Shtick doesn't bother you?"
Good lord. Being against schtick is like being against puppy dogs.
Bah. Well, I can't speak for 2007 but if you'd like to try some really good, but different, 2006 music:
Róisín Murphy - Ruby Blue [echo]
Sultry, smoky vocals mingling with eccentric dance, jazz & funk; description doesn't do it justice. It's frustrating how few people have heard this album, it's so good.
Negative Ken - Harder Than It Looks
My friend's band finally released an album. Yeah, "my friend's band" - but really, they're pretty good, particularly the original songs like "My Friends (Are Better Than Yours)," "Someone Like You," "The Birthday Song" and "I Wanna Do You." Most songs written by my friend, Bayard Russell, who also has a solo album out.
Yagya - Will I Dream During The Process? [sending orbs records]
Not sure how you feel about instrumental almost-ambient techno music, but if you're open to the prospect of it being good, this album is astounding. Exquisite, heady and intoxicating.
V/A - Squadron 2 [merck records]
Miami-based Merck has been an excellent, silently influential electronic music label for the past 7 years and is now closing shop after 50 releases. This recent compilation showcases some brilliant instrumental electronic hip-hop from unreleased artists. Merck is/was a great label and lots of their stuff is worth checking out, particularly Proem, whose 2006 You Shall Have Ever Been is a bittersweet love-letter to his genre, and Machine Drum, aka tstewart and Syndrone, all of whose albums are outstanding, particularly Living Exponentially and Salmataxia.
Also: Arctic Hospital's "Citystream" and Anders Ilar's "Nightwidth" are excellent techno albums, Kano's "Home Sweet Home" is a great rap album out of England, and Jimi Tenor's "Sunrise" single from his forthcoming album "Joystone" is not to be missed.
But you may not want to pay attention to me, this is all from a guy who liked Placebo's "Meds" and Scissor Sisters' "Tah-Da"
Mirah's "Jerusalem" might be good music to play next time you post a denunciation of Marty Peretz.
Last time Jenny Lewis came to Austin, she had The Blow as her opening band. I was really excited to see Khaela... but my friend told me the wrong time for the opening acts and I missed her completely. *sigh*
I'm really into the whole cute clever K records girl thing.
Since when was hiphop something you could be ignorant about?
"I was a little distressed to find Bill Simmons' latest online chat featuring recommendations of Bloc Party and Arcade Fire."
I just actually read the Simmons chat in question, and I retract my previous defense of his musical taste. It was a commenter who recommended Bloc Party and Arcade Fire. Simmons responded by recommending Built to Spill, which is definitely more his speed.
I enjoy Simmons' writing on the NBA tremendously, but he's always had highly dubious musical taste.
The three Bloc Party songs that have been leaked from their forthcoming album are all quite good. I'd look forward to seeing them this year, if they come around, although the venues they play in are getting a bit big for me now. I saw them back in 2005 at one of their stops in NYC (hey, I guess if they were so 2005, and I saw them in 2005, then that makes me not old yet?), and they put on a good show. I like the Clipse album, although my interest in hip hop is kind of ideosyncratic - Danger Doom and Ghostface Killah and RJD2, if you call that hip hop. I'd reiterate the recommndation of Voxtrot, which a few of us recommended on Matthew's top 10 2006 thread of last month...
It's Marah, isn't it? Me, I'm not sure people properly appreciate My Morning Jacket.
Peter Vescey is god.
Oh. My. Lord. Vecsey isn't even the best sports columnist in his family. And George sucks, too. (Or so I recall; I think he's Times Select now.)
Simmons's shtick can be annoying, but I agree with whomever said that he's the least annoying of the available sports writers. And every now and again, he's marvelous. Cf. Ewing Theory. His belief in the Celts younglings is a joke, though.
BSimm blows away pretty much every other sports writer out there (fine, a lot of why I believe that is because he's around my age). What he does--write a shitload of words in the e-conversational style--is not really that easy. And as lesser sports pundits love to cliche, the great ones make it look so easy. Yes, he recycles a lot of jokes and references and what have you, but that's because he's your buddy (his schtick), not some generic sports writer schmuck who thinks they're a Sports Writer.
Quibbling about specific musical or other tastes seems to me like a waste of time.
And anyone who hates the Yankees and Republicans can't be all bad.
Here's a (hopefully) slightly ahead-of-the-curve recommendation:
Check out the Mae Shi's new album when it comes out this summer...
"Those are both good bands, but a little 2005 at this point if you know what I mean."
Given that both have albums coming out in the next couple months, I don't know what this sentence means.
Bloc Party's "Silent Alarm" was a wonderful album, one of the best in recent memories, and still listening to it. "Positive Tension" is amazing, love the last minute and a half.
From what I've heard of the new album, though, I am tremendously disappointed-- they've really gone in the wrong direction. My hope is that they return to form for their third album.
But I like The Hold Steady, so what do I know...
Some of us were too busy with that whole grad/professional school thing to find Arcade Fire until late 2006. And too busy debating whether the Crane Wife is the best or worst thing the Decemberists have done.
It's Bill Simmons, what do you expect? Anyway, being hyper-up-to-the-minute on lame (or even decent) indie rock bands isn't exactly hyper-up-to-the-minute itself, you know.
Clipse is hip hop for music blog geeks who pretend to like hip hop, by the way. They're a minstrel act.
Simmons is a poor man's Buccigross. Helene Eliot is quite good also.
I think Mirah's first album, "You think it's like this, but really it's like this," is by far her best. As a diehard Phil Elvrum fan, "Advisory Committee" has its charms. But "You think..." is more consistent -- do you actually enjoy tracks 6 through 11 on "Advisory Committee"? -- and feels more immature, girlish, and directly Mirah. Her third album is overrated.
That said, as far as I'm concerned the early Microphones albums are the K records motherload. Obviously "The Glow, pt. 2", but also "It was hot, we stayed in the water" and "Don't Wake Me Up," my personal favorite. While inconsistent, many of the singles on "Song Islands" stand among Elvrum's best work. And track 2 on "Mount Eerie," with Mirah plaintive in the background, almost redeems the rest of that record.
Ah man, haven't listened to Mirah in a minute, but she is good. Also The Blow's older stuff makes way more sense live than on CD...she basically did anti-concept albums that deliberately chopped up coherent narratives into discrete chunks distributed across different CDs. The music's still good, but seeing a piece put together live is like a revelation. Or it was in the dark days of 2004, anyway.
Love Mirah but haven't listened to her stuff in a while - Marah is a completely different band that I have not listened to. The Blow album was my album of the moment last month. VOXTROT are amazing. Another album that i think was rather overlooked last year was the Hidden Cameras - Awoo. Poppy goodness. The submarines are also cute.
If you want some music recommendations, check out my thorough if otherwise unremarkable year-end review: http://www.printculture.com/item-1145.html. Short version for those who aren't going to click on the link: Don't miss Destroyer's Rubies or Joanna Newsom's Ys.
& meds pet
Comments closed January 28, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"I was a little distressed to find Bill Simmons' latest online chat featuring recommendations of Bloc Party and Arcade Fire. Those are both good bands, but a little 2005 at this point if you know what I mean."
Dude's old. He gets props for getting to the right place even if it takes him a while.
You're always 18 months behind on politics, but we cut you slack.
Posted by Petey | January 14, 2007 11:02 AM