mmm

Revisiting the Canadians. I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. When I first became interested in music, I started with Stars, and found awesome stuff like BSS and Metric. Then I sorta lost focus from Canada, and started exploring stuff in the US as well.

Dear lord Canada produces good music. The US has got to be full of stupids to think that Canada is backwards. Oh wait the US *IS* full of stupids. I think I'll end up in Canada eventually because the music is awesome and I loved Canada from what I saw of it.

Anyways I've listened to a few new bands recently. Of course, I ended up listening to a bunch of Stars again, go figure. I've now got >5000 plays recorded. New Stuff: Apostle of Hustle and Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Both are pretty closely connected with Broken Social Scene, since Andrew Whiteman and Emily Haines are at least part time members. The Emily Haines is mostly solo stuff which is much more toned down from Metric and involves a lot of piano, which is nice. I'm still in my initial listen to AoH, so I'll keep you guys updated. All I know is that it's pretty damn good.

dear lord

I love Amy Millan.
In my opinion she has the greatest female voice I have ever heard.
Also if you go to a show live you can tell that they basically don't process her voice at all; she just has such purity in her voice that my heart twinges every time I hear it.

Anyways listen to this. She comes in at the end.

finally...

Someone added a queue to Songbird.
one of the big features that was missing before.
Now all I want is better file and id3 tag management.
Also speed it up a bit, less memory and cpu usage, and we're golden.
Listening to Stars again.
And I set them as my desktop background.
:)

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

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.

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.

iTunes

Well it seems like I've stopped using iTunes completely. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out because I've used iTunes for just about the whole time I've listened to music, even though I don't have an iPod or anything. It had a nice layout and playlists were nice, and I'll probably miss being able to listen to other people's music (not that it was usually very good), but reduced sound quality really isn't that great. And it's not just some indistinguishable difference either (Like what kinds of cables or small differences in bitrate), because I've used iTunes, then switched to the Last.fm player and thought that it sounded better, BEFORE I heard about the reduced sound quality of iTunes.

Anyways, I figured out how to organize libraries using Foobar, so now I'll just use that for all of my tasks. Window Media Player is simply terrible, because it doesn't read ID3v2.3 tags correctly, so that obviously doesn't work for me. Also, it doesn't organize very well, though it DOES have the ability to transfer music to my mp3 player, which is as shame since the tags don't work despite WMP claiming they do.

The new Stars EP is exceedingly good (especially since I've been waiting for a new album for a looooong time). I've listened to it for 259 times in the last 2 days or something, and I'm still not sick of it. Maybe I should do another experiment with just 1 album for a week.

hooray

Lots of stuff happening recently. First of all there are some really good concerts coming up. Of Montreal is coming December 5th, and that show should be completely crazy. Their new album Skeletal Lamping is coming out soon, so there will probably be a lot of new things at the concert. And they're crazy anyways, so a good show can be expected. Also Murder By Death is coming sometime near the end of October, I don't really remember when.

I heard it first in Lauren's car and thought it was pretty good. I didn't do anything about it for a few weeks, then suddenly became inspired and got some of the albums. Mainly I listen to Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them (a mouthful, anyone?), since it's pretty much epic. I really like Murder By Death because of the instrumentation. They have good keyboards and include a cellist, which is fucking awesome, since their tracks sound amazing. Just listen to Killbot 2000 and you'll be forced to agree. You can even download it for free there. The whole album is great, so I think it'll definitely be worth going to that concert.

Also I forgot to mention last post that I got my Stars shirt and poster. I didn't have anything to hang the poster with for a few days, until I went to the poster shop near the Union and got some sticky stuff. It's on the wall opposite my pillow so I can look at it as it glows at night I guess. And now I have the new EP. From what I've heard (it's currently on the first play through) it's really chill and quite good. I've always liked the chill Stars material (On Peak Hill, Don't Be Afraid To Sing, Calendar Girl, etc), so now I can listen to this EP when I'm in the mood. I'm quite happy I got the CD, because now I can make high quality rips (about 900 kbps lossless yay!) and listen to it with my good headphones.

Oh and two nights ago I went to a concert with Calvin. There were a bunch of local (meaning Florida, I guess) bands playing. They were all decent, though only the last band, The Dead Songwriters, really stood out. I got a shirt and CD for $10, cause it was pretty fucking cheap and pretty good.

okay

So I haven't posted anything for a while, while I've listened to a goodish bit of music. In terms of new stuff I've basically listened to a lot of Belle & Sebastian, which I got from Wilson, my roommate. I'd listened to them before, but for some reason never did really become that interested, but that happens with bands now and then. Belle & Sebastian is basically twee pop at its best, it's very mellow, quite happy at occasions, and songs like 'for the price of a cup of tea' just make me want to dance.

Belle & Sebastian is probably one of the best bands from Scotland ever, but have about zero visibility in mainstream music even though, as my roommate mentioned, they would be perfect for radio.

I've also been listening to a playlist I put together, composed of generally unhappy music. It's definitely not "emo" though, and I titled it "wistful" just cause that's all I could think of, so I don't really know what it is. I'm pretty good at putting together these sorts of playlists, and I like listening to them, so whatever. It's not like I'm unhappy, I just like it. I can also listen to Calendar Girl just over and over too, which I did yesterday for a bit.

Wilson also gave me a bunch of different things. There seems to be a goodish bit of post rock, some gypsy/Eastern European music, and other things like Belle. I still don't understand how we listen to like mutually exclusive material, but there it is.

Also there is a new Stars EP available! It contains about 20 minutes of material and 6 tracks, one of which is a live version of 'Going, Going, Gone' from Nightsongs. I've been waiting for one ever since In Our Bedroom but didn't expect any new material so early. It's available here, in either digital or physical format. I bought an actual CD, but it's not shipping til the 16th. I also got a $5 shirt and a glow in the dark poster, so that should be exciting. Stars is definitely my favorite band, so I'll gladly buy CDs and merch to support them. I actually haven't heard the new material aside from some 30 sec previews, but it sounds like it should be good. BUY IT.

kay I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I forgot something.

updateish

Listening mostly to older things like The National and BSS, and some instrumental stuff like Sigur Rós. My roommate and I are going to share music, so I put a lot of cool stuff on a hard drive. I think his stuff is also pretty cool, though the stuff we listen to is pretty exclusive.
So I added:
Okkervil River
Animal Collective
Beulah
BSS
Handsome Furs
Metric
PTM
Of Montreal
Neutral Milk Hotel
Stars
The National
Wolf Parade
Sigur Rós

If anyone thinks of anything I should add feel free to add suggestions

shit

It's been more than a month since my last post, since I guess I just totally forgot about this.
anyways I've been listening to a lot, though the number of artists is limited.

My last.fm pretty much illustrates that. I listened to quite a bit of Okkervil River for a week or two (about 700 plays, just on itunes), then waaaay too much (about 1000 plays) Modest Mouse. Not the new stuff, mind. At the expense of sounding pretentious, the old stuff (Lonesome Crowded West, and Building Nothing Out Of Something) is much better.

Recently I've been listening to some more ambient/instrumental stuff, like 65daysofstatic. I was a bit skeptical about instrumental music at first, cause by definition there aren't really words... But after listening to this I've realized it's really good. While it may not be as good when you're just listening to music (debatable), it's still very good in the background when you're working.

Uhhh right now I'm listening to Yeasayer, and I've got a Deerhunter album in the queue (is that how it's fucking spelled?). Yeasayer is described as experimental, and I guess that's the general direction I've sorta been headed. There have definitely been a lot of instruments in my recent musical selections. I also listened to Sigur Rós, Múm, and Oceansize along with the 65dos.

Ehh Lauren's been to a lot of concerts that I'm pretty jealous of. The National, Modest Mouse, 65dos, SSLYBY, and probably other stuff that I can't remember right now. There's nothing playing in Tallahassee that I'm interested in, except Portugal. The Man, but they're coming when I'm going to be out of town.

Also I've decided that Stars is good drunk music. Don't ask me why, because I don't really know myself, but it just sounds like it would be excellent while drunk. Same with Brand New. Stars has some magical quality that's hard to describe. I'd say it invokes a wistful feeling, but that's not the whole picture. Just listen to it yourselves and maybe you can relate. Brand New basically encourages you to get drunk. No need to analyze much deeper.

I'm sure there are more musical adventures I've been on in the past month, but that's about it for now. I'll try to write more often.

ende

Well it appears that I've successfully listened to Stars for a week straight. not only that, I listened to more tracks per day than the average, I'm pretty sure. So to answer our question of "Is it possible to overdose on Stars?", I would give a resounding "NO!".

I enjoyed the music the whole time, never getting tired of it, showing the incredible talent that Stars possesses. Like I've said in a previous post, I don't know why exactly I like them to such an extent, but there's just some special connection. A lot of it probably has to do with the fact that Stars is pretty much fucking amazing, cause they're not really trying to be especially "trendy" or "hip". It just happens. Like Torquil said in an interview with CBC Radio 3, the most punk thing you can do write now is to write a love song. It's not about the looks, media attention, or fame, it's about the music.

And that, perhaps, is why the Stars shine so brightly.

halfway!

So I guess I'm halfway through my little experiment, since it's wednesday. I started sunday/mondayish cause I listened to Stars all sunday too, so this makes it the third/fourth day, about halfway in between.

About now I'd say it's impossible to get tired of Stars. I've played Stars more than 300 times since the weekend, and it's going pretty swimmingly. In the car I've been listening to Heart exclusively, and I must say it's a very good album. Though every album by Stars is good so I can't really say it's better. Also it doesn't have The Calendar Girl, which is basically the best song ever. I would put Set Yourself On Fire first, since that album contains Calendar Girl, Your Ex-Lover, First Five Times, and One More Night. Then I'd probably put In Our Bedroom and Heart at second, since they're both still amazing but in different ways. Nightsongs still has good songs like On Peak Hill but some of them I don't like all that much, as opposed to the other albums.

Anyways 3 and 1/2 more days to go! About now it seems like no problem. I might even double the total plays of Stars.

experiment time!

So I've been listening to a lot of Stars these past few days, and I started wondering if it's possible to overdose on them. I don't think it's really possible cause almost every song is so fucking amazing and I love them so much, but let's find out. So starting today I'll listen to nothing but Stars and see how long I can keep it up. Of course, I'd not like to listen to Stars for the rest of my life (or maybe I would?! I'm so confused!) so I'll set the limit at week. If a week is up and I've listened to Stars and only Stars for the whole time, I'd say it'd be impossible to overdose on them. I won't count if I accidentally listen to something else, cause it's not really such an experiment anyways, but if it's purposeful or it happens a lot I might have to change my mind (eep!).

pronouns

So I've been wondering about which pronoun to use with a band. Or on a similar vein which "be" verb (is, are) to use. I came up with three ways to think of it.

The first way is to use the number of people in the band. This will designate most bands as plural because that's basically the common definition of a band. There are solo artists that record under a band name, but a majority of bands have more than one person. Therefore I don't think that this is a very effective way of... classifying?

The second way is to say "it" and "is" all the time because you are referring to a band. A band is a group of people, and therefore it is singular. i.e. "the band is...". I also don't like this approach because it doesn't account for discrepancies such as in the third case.

The third approach, which I prefer, is to look at the name of the band and go from there. For example, Stars is plural, so you would say "Stars are...". Modest Mouse is singular, so you would use the appropriate form with that.

Really it's not that big of a deal, and there probably isn't one right way to say it, but I usually prefer to use the third method. When it doesn't apply because the band name isn't a noun, I defer to the first method, using the number of people. The second method I use sort of exclusively when I start out by saying "the band" instead of the artist name. You can still say "Stars IS...", but it sounds sort of funny.

hmmm...

So I don't think I've been listening to much that is new recently. I listened to a lot of Stars and Broken Social Scene, especially Swimmers and Almost Crimes, which are excellent songs. The Almost Crimes video is matched perfectly with the song, so go watch it!

basically you can just Youtube the video or the download link (from the Arts&Crafts website) is here.

odd...

Every so often, I stop listening to the new stuff I've found and go back to a few tried and true bands like Stars, Death Cab, and Broken Social Scene. And every time I do this, I wonder why I feel so much more connected to these bands than the bands I've discovered more recently. I don't know why, but it seems like the older stuff has much more significance in my life than new material. Now undoubtedly some of this is explained by the fact that I've been listening to Stars, Death Cab, etc for a lot longer than anything else, and a lot of other bands that I started at about the same time sit unplayed in my library.

So part of it is because these are the best bands that have stood the test of time. However I also think that because these were among the FIRST bands I listened to, they have additional significance. There is something very romantic and mysterious about Stars, and not solely because of their music. So as more and more bands are discovered, there is less "mystery" about them, because you can compare them to stuff you've listened to previously. While this is useful for classifying music and finding similar bands, it decreases the uniqueness of new music. But when you find something that is truly different, however, you can really get into it, because of the novelty. Of course, this novelty makes it harder to appreciate the music at first, but once past that, I think your enthusiasm for the music is higher than if it was more similar to previous artists. A prime example of this process is Animal Collective. It was so far removed from the less experimental indie I've been listening to that it took a few weeks for me to even play a few tracks. Then I suddenly discovered that it was a lot of fun, and now it's something like my 6th most played artist.

So if you want a mathematical formula,
enthusiasm = (talent of the band) + (length of time you've been listening) + (novelty of the band)
where talent is generally constant, perhaps rising with time, time is obviously increasing, and novelty is inversely proportional to the number of bands you've listened to that are similar to the new artist.
and that's only if you're absolutely desperate for a formula, since my variables are vague and only give general trends.

Relapse?

So every so often when my music is on shuffle I'll get something I haven't heard in a while, like Neutral Milk Hotel, which surprises me because I've forgotten how good they were. This happens quite often, because I'm always looking for new music, so old favorites get pushed aside while I listen to the new stuff. It's also occurred with Brand New and Death Cab For Cutie many times. I listen to Stars a lot, so I don't really forget about them, they're that good. Anyways I think I have too much "new" music right now so I'm going to go through and actually get into the ones I like.

Analysis: Stars!

So Stars is definitely my favorite band ever. Like they say, they have a euphoric, dark sound that just appeals to one. I remember in an interview that Torq said that they take a song, make it sound beautiful, and make it as dark as possible. I think that that's an amazing combination, and they're albums are full of good songs, not just one or two good songs with a bunch of filler.
They use lots of instruments well (in a show I saw them constantly changing guitars), not too many prerecorded tracks in the background, and Amy Millan happens to have the sweetest voice I've heard. Go and listen to "The Calendar Girl" right now. You'll know what I mean.

Their stage presence was very good, and the live show was better than their albums, which is ALWAYS a sign of good music, especially if the albums were excellent already. It means that they didn't edit the album heavily, thereby making the music sound better than it actually is.
Anyhoo this is just a general overview of Stars. I'll probably talk more about specific songs or albums later.