[NT!]

All,

I have recently started downloading and listening to music a lot again, which is something I hadn't done in a long time.

Here are a few records I have been listening to. A lot of this is not new but whatever, it's indie and it rocks and I haven't seen much mention of these bands:

The Promise Ring - Nothing Feels Good - I re-acquired this album the other day and I just love the living [censored] out of it. Really great up-tempo indie rock from the same guys who brought you Cap'n'Jazz, Texas is the Reason, etc. Irreverent and fun. I saw these guys in concert about ten years ago and they were awesome, very lively, just like you would expect from hearing this album.

Lakes of Russia - self-titled EP - very slow, pretty instrumentals, like a less busy or atmospheric Sigur Ros (sans vocals), or Tortoise if somebody slipped their drummer some ludes and told them they could only use major keys.

Les Savy Fav - Emor (Rome Written Upside Down) EP - great EP from this art-punk outfit, this one is like 7 or 8 years old now but sounds very fresh. Their singer reminds me a little bit of Isaac Brock but without all the irony and cuteness. (I guess a lot of kind of stereotypical indie rock singers sound a little like Isaac Brock so this is a sort of weak sauce analogy.) Anyway these guys anticipated the lo-fi, drum-sampling indie thing quite a while ago but did it without all the crappy 80's dance rock shtick. I like this EP a lot but their sound takes some getting used to, one of those love it or hate it kind of records.

Slint - Spiderland
Rodan - Rusty
Two early-nineties albums that just kick the absolute crap out of anything out there today, these Louisville-based (I know, WTF) bands really set the standard for sparse, angsty atmospheric indie rock. I am just going all 10th grade on the world right now with these records.

June of 44 - Four Great Points
Another one I re-acquired recently and am loving. Jo44 pack lots of midwestern post-hardcore crunch with long, looping jazzy instrumental passages and atmospherics, weird time changes, trumpets, typewriters, etc.

Karate - Unsolved
I have always felt that this Boston 3-piece is the most criminally under-appreciated indie rock band in the universe. The band sounds like a jazzier version of Fugazi in terms of their tight rhythmic exploration, which serves as a vehicle for singer/guitarist Geoff Farina's punchy, strangely catchy vocals and guitar leads. His background in jazz composition is evident in all their music but even moreso in this record.

Anyway this is all old stuff now that I look at it, but going back and hearing this is way better than listening to most of the stuff that I have sampled from recent times. I just heard the new Kanye album and I think it blows goats, very repetitive flows, expensive-sounding production that is totally uninspiring, even more inane lyrics than usual from the biggest ego in rap, etc. No thanks.