best of...

2008!
Since everyone else is doing it, I guess I'll go ahead and list my favorites of 2008. Categories will include albums, artists, tracks, and shows, I guess. Some of them I'll divide into the best that came out in 2008, and my favorites in 2008 (not necessarily released in 2008).

For this I used my Last.fm charts for the past 12 months, and filtered albums in my music player for 2008. Hopefully I didn't omit any.

(Well that's great, the list I was compiling was wiped out when I had to restart my computer because it stopped responding. Remember to save your fucking documents.)

Anyways on to the lists!

Released in 2008

Artists:

1. Fleet Foxes (last.fm) - Okay yeah I'll be unoriginal and say that the Fleet Foxes are the best new band this year. That's cause they are. Really. I personally like them better than MGMT because I feel that Fleet Foxes are a lot more authentic, less of a hipster fad, and the album is much stronger overall. I'll be talking about the album later on.
2. Land Of Talk (last.fm) - I might be slightly biased in Land Of Talk's favor because I saw them live, when they opened for Broken Social Scene. It doesn't hurt that they were pretty awesome live, and that was the first I'd heard of them. Also Elizabeth Powell gave an awesome rendition of Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl (watch) for BSS. (I think it was better when they played it at The Moon than in this video). Also their album has some really excellent songs for a variety of moods. More about that later.
3. She & Him (last.fm) - I found She & Him when I was in a folky mood, and instantly decided that they were worth listening to. She & Him is composed of Zooey Deschanel, an actress/singer (she's in a lot of new movies such as Yes Man) and M. Ward, a folk artist. I generally dislike actresses who try to sing, but I guess Zooey succeeded because she didn't try trashy pop music or decide to cover Sinatra.
4. MGMT (last.fm) - Haha so after trashing them for Fleet Foxes I decide to add them on the list. Irony, huh? Anyways their album had some good tracks like Time To Pretend and Kids, but they became such a hipster fad that I was turned off. The hype was definitely more than the music.
5. Bon Iver (last.fm) - On here simply because I loved the track Skinny Love. The rest of the album is ehh.
6. The Submarines (last.fm) - Only number 6 because technically they're not a "new" band, but they only came to prominence recently due to the Apple commercial I guess. They would definitely be either 1 or 2 for me if they weren't an honorable mention. On a cool note, Blake Hazard is the great granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
   

Albums:

1. Sad Robots (Stars) - Sound the bias alarm! A new Stars album is basically guaranteed the number one spot, even if it's only an EP. However, I did listen to this album obsessively over a period of time, racking up 841 plays (for 6 tracks, 2 of which are mostly instrumental) since it's release. And I'm pretty sure most of that was in the span of a week or two.
2. Fleet Foxes (Fleet Foxes) - Okay tracks like White Winter Hymnal, Your Protector, Blue Ridge Mountains, and others show that this album is strong throughout, and though the tracks are all similar, they have enough distinguishing features to make each one unique and stimulating.
3. Honeysuckle Weeks (The Submarines) - I do like the previous album better because it is more thoughtful and sweet, but this album is still really good. Tracks like Swimming Pool (there's something about swimming pools that I adore. The Múm track and Banshee Beat by Animal Collective come to mind.), Submarine Symphonika, and You Me and the Bourgeoise were my favorite, though almost the whole album is enjoyable.
4. Something For All Of Us... (Broken Social Scene) - This is one of their albums in the "Presents..." series, this time featuring Brendan Canning. Though some people thought it was more of the same, I really liked Churches Under The Stairs, Hit The Wall, and Love Is New. The other tracks were good but did not stand out as much.
5. Some Are Lakes (Land Of Talk) - Sorry no link but this album is for a variety of moods. It's Okay when you're down, Young Bridge when you're not. Elizabeth Powell has a peaceful, pretty voice that completely suits the album.
6. Skeletal Lamping (Of Montreal) - One of my most anticipated albums, and it didn't disappoint. While each of the Of Montreal albums seems to have a distinct sound, this one has a lot of different sounds, from jazzy to edgy. Listen through the whole album for full effect.
7. Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum End (Sigur Rós) - Don't ask me what it means, I don't know. However it's a Sigur Rós album, and it's great. Also it has their first track that is sung in English. I've heard that Sigur Rós is a very "happy" band live, and I wouldn't doubt it.

8. Volume One (She & Him) - Folky, quirky at times, awesome most of the time. I'm definitely looking forward to Volume Two.
9. Censored Colors (Portugal. The Man) - I've listened to PTM on and off, and while I'm not completely familiar with this album I know that it's good overall. It has some interesting vocal effects not present in earlier albums.
10. Crystal Castles (Crystal Castles) - Some electronica that I actually like! Probably because it's not the generic indietronica that is so much more prevalent. Crystal Castles has some more experimental elements, which really helps it along.
11. Grow Up And Blow Away (Metric) - Again another honorable mention or else it would be much higher. Too bad it's not really a release, more of a rerelease or something.

Tracks (yeah I'm not going to describe individual tracks for you unless I have something interesting to say; I'll link them and let you listen):

1. 14 Forever (Stars) - Not a biased decision, really my favorite track of the year.
2. On The Sly (Metric)
3. Churches Under The Stairs (BSS) - hmm I also filmed this. It's on my Facebook video if you're looking for a more rock-driven version. However the sound quality isn't quite as good.
4. It's Okay (Land Of Talk) - Sorry couldn't find an original audio version. I have it on my computer but idk how best to link it. I'll put it up if I figure something out.
5. Skinny Love (Bon Iver) - <3
6. Your Protector (Fleet Foxes)
7. St. Exquisite's Confessions (Of Montreal)
8. All Alright (Sigur Rós) - Makes me think of somewhere cold and icy.
9. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (She & Him) - Weird video.
10. Swimming Pool (The Submarines) - A nice live version.
11. That's Not My Name (The Ting Tings) - Late addition, sorry!
    

Personal Favorites of 2008
well I'll probably just include some of the older thing I think should be mentioned. In no particular order also, cause it's not really as interesting as the new materials.

Artists:

1. Stars - Yeah. This one is really first.
   
2. Okkervil River - Probably second.
   
3. The Submarines - Probably third. After this there's no particular order.
   
4. Murder By Death
   
5. Modest Mouse
6. Broken Social Scene
7. Metric
8. She & Him
9. The National
10. Land Of Talk
    

Albums (ordered)

1. Sad Robots (Stars)
   
2. Set Yourself On Fire (Stars)
   
3. Declare A New State! (The Submarines)
4. Down The River Of Golden Dreams (Okkervil River)
5. Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See (Okkervil River)

Notice how much I like those 3 artists?

Tracks (no particular order, also probably omitted some, just wanted to name some other tracks I liked):

1. Galaxies (Laura Viers) - Thanks Mel!
2. 14 Forever (Stars)
3. Sometimes Stop, Sometimes Go (Ms. John Soda)
4. Skinny Love (Bon Iver)
5. Killbot 2000 (Murder By Death)
6. Churches Under The Stairs (BSS)
7. Peace & Hate (The Submarines)
8. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 (The Flaming Lips) - I heard this a long time ago, thought it was weird. Didn't know how good it was then.
9. It's Okay (Land Of Talk)
10. Calendar Girl (Stars) - probably my all time favorite track ever. EVER.

And there you go! Hope you enjoy it. Watch some vids and listen to some music.
Happy new year!

heh

Merry Christmas everyone!
Though I'm not particularly religious, I think a little love is always appreciated.

This is a cover of The Pogues' song Fairytale of New York by Stars.



Lyrics:

It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
Ive got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
Ive built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

hooray

30 000 tracks scrobbled on last.fm!
what a milestone.
I've been listening a lot to a playlist I put together.
You can look at it here, though you may not be able to listen to it (Last.fm says it's for subscribers only).
I've had music playing almost constantly recently, cause I've been in a sorta shitty mood. I think music is a better remedy than drugs in some cases. Antidepressants I just plain don't agree with unless it's a severe case.

I'm still trying to learn to bend notes on the harmonica. Slow going I guess, but it should be worth it. I think I can get almost a half note bend on some holes, but it's not quite there. I also need to start thinking in terms of music theory, instead of just playing shit.

And fuck I still haven't talked about Of Montreal or Broken Social Scene yet. I just haven't been in the mood to think really.

bands to see live

I've been to a lot of shows that I really liked in the past semester, and some of us have been thinking about which other bands we would like to see.

So here's my list:
Metric
Okkervil River
Portugal. The Man
Sigur Rós
The National
Fleet Foxes
The Decemberists

These are the ones I would definitely go see. Okkervil River has been disappointing in their newer albums, but I think I would still go see them in case they play any of their awesome old stuff. I think Modest Mouse has moved beyond playing anything from Lonesome Crowded West, so I doubt I'd see them.

I am definitely going to see Stars again. Hopefully they'll come close though, so I won't have to be traveling or anything. All the bands I've seen this semester I would see again (Broken Social Scene, Of Montreal, Murder By Death).

Also I'm learning to bend notes on the harmonica. It's not an easy process unfortunately, but it's a necessary one if I'm supposed to become at all proficient.

hipsters

I have very strong feelings when it comes to hipsters, but not in the way that is usual. Okay the wikipedia link won't tell you much about them, and I don't know if this link will work because it says the site is currently down for maintenance, so I'll try to explain what a "hipster" is for the curious.

A hipster (in my view), is a person who refutes the mainstream. Everything about it. If something is mainstream, it sucks. Hipsters are very much into aesthetics. According to the might-not-be-working article, that's about all they're into. Also there's a streak of "irony" that permeates the culture. They view wearing vintage clothing and drinking cheap beer *cough PBR cough* as "ironic" and so very much desirable. Past this point hipsters are harder to describe. They usually listen to faddy indie music (MGMT, Justice, Animal Collective, etc), and very few will actually admit to being a hipster, due to the strong negative conotation.

Once you've been around college campuses long enough, you can easily pick out the hipsters. They often dress pretty ...hip, for lack of better descriptor. If someone has his/her right pant leg rolled up, you can almost be sure he/she is a hipster. People with fixed gear roadbikes? Very much likely. Tight pants, scarves, alternative lifestyle, the list goes on and on. They're also pretty rabid about music. They take pleasure in finding "new" bands and think people who listen to "mainstream" music to be beneath them. Of course these are probably the extreme cases, but you do see quite a few of them around campus, so not that extreme.


Okay, so a lot of those descriptions match me. Am I a hipster? Yeah, from those descriptions I guess I am sorta hipster-ish, but I feel there are major distinctions. Hipsterism seems to be a double headed culture. In one part there are those who try to be as different as possible. Just because they think different means good or whatever. But on the other side there are those who think being a hipster is the "cool" thing to do. So they try to emulate it and fail badly. That's probably where a good deal of the stereotypical hipster behavior comes from. These people think they are better than others because they are "hip". They mutate what might have been a relatively benign and enclosed subculture into the semi-mainstream mess we see all over the place. They become the sneering contemptuous mob that shows up at shows and annoys the fuck out of everyone.

And because the subculture has gone semi-mainstream, it sort of perpetuates itself and turns against itself. Obviously a subculture can't be a subculture if it goes mainstream, especially if the subculture emphasizes being non-mainstream. Everyone hates the label of "hipster", even though some of the original aspects are perpetuated and weren't really that bad. So while people may be hipsters, they sure as hell do not want to be called hipsters.

Okay so that's my analysis. Nothing too groundbreaking, but here's where I get really angry. The "hip" thing to do currently seems to be hating on hipsters. Like the second article I linked, a lot of people really think hipsters are completely without saving qualities. They adamantly reject anything that is hipster, and even make groups showing how much they hate hipsters.

So what is wrong with this? I dislike hipsters, or at least the current definition of hipsters, but I am not virulently against all of the principles of hipsterism, nor am I going to hate someone just because they fit some artificial mold, some created definition. By doing that you completely block out the possibility that there might be an individual underneath the veneer. You loathe a group of people not because of who they actually are, but by how they are seen.

This is really almost the same thing as hipsterism, except the new generation is consumed completely by their antagonism towards hipsters. You can never base a subculture exclusively on negativity, and in this case there aren't really any other qualities, such as music or aesthetics, to provide a positive influence. Hating on hipsters is gaining ground because hipsters have gone mainstream, and so they must be rejected. Does this possibly sound exactly like hipsterism? And now the tail end of hipsterism, the "popularity" aspect, is catching on as well. It is faddy to show your contempt for hipsters. So you make groups, you blog, you talk about how much you hate hipsters. Because you don't fucking know any better.

I don't really see hipsterism dying out, or this new fad supplanting it anytime soon, but the whole mess just seems like a vicious cycle of one group running and another group following, all the while contempt is spread throughout the culture.

I guess I'm trying to say dislike a person because of how he is, not because of how he is perceived. If a person is obnoxious, then by all means hate away, but maybe not everyone who owns a road bike or wears a keffiyeh is a total douche.

And above all else listen to music because it is good music. Don't listen to it because all the cool kids are doing it, or because you are trying to be unique. Base what you listen to on your taste, and take into account what others think. Don't just be completely devoid of taste. That makes you uninteresting.

Oh yeah and don't listen to all that mainstream music you hear on the radios. The hipsters were right about that shit, man.

wow

I'm listening to some Sigur Rós. It's pretty depressing. I shouldn't be listening to All Alright in the middle of the night.

Anyways I have pictures and videos from BSS and Of Montreal. One day I'll actually post things about them, maybe.

I still can't bend notes on the harmonica. Also I want a banjo.

oh fucking shit

Of Montreal!

I'm so sore that I have no intention of putting up pics/videos until tomorrow anyways.
And whatever pictures do get put up are probably all blurry. It was dark and I was trying not to jump all over the fucking place.

Actually I'm tempted to look at some of the pictures.

Hell I'll put up one picture on here, just for visuals.
And that's when he's clothed. I have a few where he's not so clothed.
And oodles of video. I don't know how much of each song I got, because there was a tall kid and my arms were sore from holding the camera up. Fuck tall kids who get in the way.

ugh

Some dumb fuck asswipe decided to erase my picture, which took 2 hours and was very pretty.
It was up for less than 8 hours.
So I decided to write a little note:

What USED to be on this board before someone thought it would be fun to erase it:

While a whiteboard on my door does invite others to contribute, simply erasing my drawing was both petty and uncalled for. Do you also like to torture small animals? You might want to get yourself checked. I bet you’re also the person who thinks drawing penises on this board is highly amusing. Yeah, definitely go get yourself checked. College might be a bit much for you. Take a break or something. OH WAIT. Maybe you DID want to contribute, but I purposely removed the marker so that the picture could at least be up for ONE DAY. Too bad you couldn’t draw penises all over the board, huh? I’m SO sorry for spoiling your fun. My friend said this was an offense that calls for murder, but I don’t know where you sleep and frankly don’t think you’re worth it (also I wouldn’t actually think about murdering anyone, if any UF officials think that statement was serious). You probably wet your bed anyways. You know what? I’ve got the perfect job for you. You would fit in well with the Spanish Inquisition. They definitely seem like your sort of people. Too bad you’re a few hundred years too late. Too bad people have become more intelligent and open to art. Too bad YOU HAVEN’T.

Anyways I’m going to go enjoy this concert later tonight. You’ll probably be crying yourself to sleep. Have a good life.

I printed that out and stuck it beside the whiteboard, which reads "who the FUCK erased my picture? it took me 2 hours. thanks ASSHOLE"

Anyways concert tonight.

Of Montreal

In preparation, I spent two hours with dry erase markers to recreate the album cover.
Of Montreal is TODAY.

well

I guess this is the long overdue blog post I've been procrastinating. Now there's just so much stuff idk what to start with. So I'll start where I left off.

The Murder By Death concert. Holy fuck that was a good concert. It was also on my birthday, so that just made it more enjoyable. It's been a long time so the details are a bit hazy, but there were 2 bands that opened for them. One was a rock group with the singer on a piano, that was pretty cool. The other was William Elliot Whitmore I believe, who was also drunk, and kept saying "Fucking A". Anyways Murder By Death was fucking awesome. They've got this amazing cellist who has the coolest cello I've ever seen.
Her cello is just a narrow piece of wood. I guess it's an electric cello, so it doesn't need a resonating chamber. They played a lot of good songs, including Brother and most of the ones I like on Who Will Survive, but they DIDN'T play Killbot 2000. While I was disappointed by that, it was still a very good show. I got myself a Murder By Death shirt and poster, which has a flying turtle on it. It's pretty fucking awesome. (Fucking A!)

What have I been listening to recently? I've listened to quite a bit of Stars, as usual, but I can't really say I've branched out much. Hopefully I'm not getting old. I've also listened to a good deal of The Submarines. I really like the emotional quality of their music: wistful yet upbeat.

On November 20 I traveled back to Tallahassee for the Broken Social Scene concert at The Moon. I'll leave that for another post because I have a lot of picture and video that I want to add in, so I'll have to figure that out first. I found out that Land Of Talk is a very good band, and I've also listened to a lot of that. I'll also talk about them in the next post.


Most recently I've been fiddling with music software. I've previously tried using Songbird for a variety of tasks, such as searching for music or trying to listen to my library, but it was in a beta phase and didn't work for me. They recently released 1.0, and I must say it's worked much better. One of my previous gripes was that all my metadata tags were messed up because Windows Media Player decided to try to fix everything once. Then Songbird decided to freeze while reading the metadata, so my library didn't get organized at all.

I still use Foobar for organization and tagging, because it's just much better at it, but Songbird has nice playlists and it also boasts nice web integration. It has the core of Firefox, so it can browse the web pretty well. Also, it's completely open source, so there should be a lively community building up for it. I've already gotten some extensions for Last.fm support and safer web browsing. It's still in its early stages so we'll see how much I decide to use Songbird in the future. First of all they should implement some of the perks of Foobar, such as the ability to organize the library, and more comprehensive metadata support.

Just very recently I've been listening to a lot of Okkervil River. They're my second most played artist, but I don't listen to them regularly like I do Stars. I listen to them in very large bursts, usually when I've got something bothering me. I love folk music because of the darker content, the wistful feel, and I really do love the banjo. I've already given my views on the banjo, but hell it's such a beautiful instrument.
I'm pretty sure Okkervil River was the first "folky" music that I fell in love with, so I guess they sort of define good Indie Folk for me. Also a lot of their music is written in A major, so I can play along on my harmonica, which complements the music very well. I just need to get better and learn more techniques.

Oh yes and Of Montreal concert on friday. I'm so excited.

Yeah. Broken Social Scene report with pictures and video to come later.