Hell yes! That Guruguru Brain article was the most important musical piece I read last year because it got me into them and a number of their label mates (Ramayana Soul, Prairie WWWW, Khana Bierbood, Minami Deutsch). Kikagaku in particular are awesome and I even got to see them live last year shortly after you guys got me into them!
They're probably my favorite active purveyors of psychedelic rock right now, especially since Tame is playing in a different sandbox.
How I Got Over is underrated, yeah. It's a great version of them going a bit more conventional and interacting with outside sounds, especially some strains of late '00s indie. "The Fire" is, well....aptly named. What a jam.
It's a little short of their absolute best (I'm equally partial to Things Fall Apart/Phrenology and Game Theory/Rising Down), but that's just because they set a crazy standard.
That's a fun EP for sure. Funny that they shifted "Cherry Chapstick" soft, because the EP was mostly seen as proof they could still rock out after Summer Sun.
"Blue Line Swinger" then "Let's Be Still", which basically counts, even if "Take Care" technically closes.
But I Can Hear the Heart is still tops, with our without an epic last song.
Damn, I'm looking forward to that book! And I didn't know he had (or needed) another new album already, but this article got me sorta hyped for that, too.
Very good lineup, as usual. For me there's no single "MUST FUCKING SEE" act on there, but I haven't seen RtJ in a few years so if RtJ4 is good they might take that spot. And All Mirrors was awesome, so I'd definitely like to see Angel's new show. She was there when I went in 2017, but I reckon this will be quite different.
Friday has a great batch of female-fronted acts and Saturday is just a cool AF mix. Sunday leaves me a bit flat, but like I said above somewhere, I'd like to finally see The National if nothing else.
As I recall, Mosquito didn't deserve anyone to care about it! I remember it being pretty rotten.
But you're absolutely right about her more recent stuff.Nobody seemed to give a damn about Lux Prima last year but I thought it was a borderline masterpiece and the second best thing that came out.
I never got any more than very casually into them, and never saw them live. So if I go to Pitchfork again this year (maybe!) I'm kind of excited to finally check their show out.
Their fest is regularly better than their site. Not to say indie rock inherently > those other types of music, but rock is better live music than the majority of pop and hip hop.
And sure, I DO like rock/indie more than poptimist stuff.
I big-time second that point about having taken a break from new material being a good thing. When 3 dropped, I was a bit worn out on them and wished they waited. That it was their weakest one didn't help, but it wouldn't have mattered as much if they'd given us some breathing room.
But now? Now I am hyped for a new RtJ and their old material still rips.
Yeah I love that, considering how derisive talk about the band has been since....First Impressions? Everything tries to ignore or diminish their later work and write them out of relevance, but I think the well-received second Voidz album helped a lot, at least with this commentariat.
And then just the fact that they actually never really stopped making kick ass music and sound great together.
So funny how Primus went from a band that would have been natural for "indie" publications to cover - they were just another weird alt rock band - to a band that people seem to think should be shunned because Claypool spent the 2Ks jamming his ass off (and it rocked!).
Like I said in the latest Dulli thread - can't wait for his new album and King Krule's. Maybe I'll check the Kamaiyah too, but she's an unknown quantity to me as anything other than a name I started noticing last year.
My favorite expression of this was in the aftermath of the Baker's Dozen shows Phish did a few summers ago at MSG (which basically represented them hitting a serious peak for the first time since pre-hiatus). I read an article somewhere that basically said "forget whatever you feel when you see the word 'Phish' and imagine that your favorite band put out the time and effort to play 13 consecutive shows, each with distinct themes that informed the setlists and covers, that never repeated a single song. Wouldn't that be fucking awesome?"
2000s SY wasn't that great, IMO. They were enjoyable, sometimes interesting, but hardly a match for 80's Youth.
If this new PJ album is somewhere, qualitywise, a mix between this and "Dance of the Clairvoyants", it will be in the same range as Sonic Nurse or the overrated Rather Ripped.
Kikagaku Moyo
Not that I think those other bands are better than Tame. None of them has a Lonerism or Currents in their catalogue, no matter how many albums they've put out. And I like all 3 of them, to varying degrees.
After one listen, I enjoyed most of it more than I expected. It's inferior to the last two albums, but I could see it being at least on par with Innerspeaker.
I like the opener. "Instant Destiny" - "Posthumous Forgiveness" left me pretty flat and ready to give up on it, but then by the end of "Breathe Deeper" I think it really gets going.
I don't know why I can't arm to get one to show up. I have one in Gravatar, what do I need to do beyond that? I'm almost certainly one of the most avid, long-running commenters here without one.
Me? I didn't think it was that hard to tell. Maybe that is why people continue to downvote that comment into the -30s? I did say in my first post in this series that I think the movie is really good.
I like the movie a lot and always have. I think it's funny and tells a good story. I was probably not going to watch the new show prior to reading this article and now I almost certainly won't.
All I was trying to say in the comment that is drawing so much downvoting is that I think it's ridiculous, stupid, and kind of offensive to imply that making lists of things you like is some form of toxic, narcissistic masculinity that needs to be woke'd away. It's nerdy and largely a waste of time, sure. But that's about it.
I don't know why the comment is continuing to draw downvotes since it seems like the bulk of the comments on the topic are saying similar things.
Whatever. I just don't think that the other comments here so far suggest that people disagree with my initial point. Most people seem to think the remake as described in the article is unnecessary and wrongheaded. I also think that. I also think there are worse things men could be doing than making lists about the entertainment they like. Thank you for your list, by the way.
Wait, was I downvoted because people think I was serious about it being a chauvinistic piece of shit with the gall to talk about and rank music?
Or because they sensed my sarcasm and disapproved of it for somehow not being woke enough, because the way men talk about music is inherently wrong and smacking of male privilege and unearned confidence?
The movie, which I still think is really good (I haven't seen it in years, but I have seen it enough to know it more or less inside out), was basically when Jack Black came onto my radar. I'm sure I'm not alone on that, but what a whirlwind he was to 16 year old me who'd never noticed him (though I have realized since, I saw him in smaller roles in all kinds of 90s movies like Mars Attacks!).
God, what a letdown, mostly on the headliners. It's like they consciously made an effort to book the most dull, mediocre acts they possibly could to headline each day. And to think, MMJ fans were speculating that the Jacket might headline after Roger Waters said they'd be touring this year. Poor bastards (me included).
As for the smaller font, though - no worse than most American fests this year. Parquet, Thundercat, Cass, Brockhampton, Low Cut Connie, and even Umphrey's and Grace Potter are all fine to great additions.
But fuck me, those headliners....
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