thread to dis hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about

let's keep it in here, folks.

Jlin - if I wanted to hear a quantized sample of a CD skipping, I'd listen to an Oval CD from 1999

Caretaker - this is just a bunch of thrift store record samples

Oh yay I can post here AND in 'vent your bullshit'! Maybe the latter can be non-2017-specific though

yes this is just to keep your attention during the EOY poll, submitted with love

Bjork - I found this slow, gloomy, and unengaging. her mix that she did for Mixmag (?) was great, though.

*warms up FPing finger*

happy to help!

this is a safe space

;-)

Caretaker - this is just a bunch of thrift store record samples

otm, I've never understood the hype.

Angel olsens new one gets seriously dire in the second half. Love her but hate to say it's a bummer record

i'll just get this out of the way: most of the 2017 music is bad

Caretaker's not hyped though. It's got a steady following, but that's something else iirc.

Anyway I can't get enough of it.

no defences of albums itt imo

I've said this elsewhere I'm sure but the Julien Baker love-in is an album late; the new one is flat and mostly a disappointment

Where's the fun in that? xp

OK fine

but no holds barred. except like actual bigotry

KING KRULE is kind of boring.

oh yeah I can't take his voice for a second

Not as boring as The National though

That Big Thief album is boring as well. A charisma vacuum.

:o you're dead to me

I do like the Big Thief album a lot :(

LCD Soundsystem should be banned on the basis of that atrocious album cover alone. The music stinks, is completely irrelevant up to the point of self-charicture, and seeing critics hailing this has-been baffles me.

*caricature

thoroughly agree with every dis so far btw*. sleeve ur emperor palpatine

*not heard the bjork or big thief yet

Guided By Voices - the songs are twice as long and half as good (tbh I dunno how hyped this really was, but let's open the thread up to all contenders regardless of hype level/EOY standings)

I tried listening to the War on Drugs album once and I had to check the album wasn't starting over at some point. Still can't remember any of the songs in there.

@Moka, same here. It's drab.

Lorde is the new Carly Rae Jepsen - "pop" music that non-professionals spit out after a single taste, but which critics will continue to ride for forever.

Xp that is sort of the point with WoD - it's aural valium for the inhibited and the terminally nostalgic.

Me included.

Sounds like WoD do The Caretaker better than The Caretaker does!

I can't really diss it because I don't hate it at all but Yaeji seems overrated as hell to me. There's just not much going on musically and lyrically... every song seems she runs out of ideas and she just resorts to repeating words in the same monotonic voice.

Again, I don't hate it but I don't see what's so special about it either or why she's making it into so many EOY best songs lists.

Ok I'm done taking those out of my chest... I think... those are the ones frustrating me about their roaring approval.

Well, those an Bodak Yellow heh

i rate the yaeji EPs (2 isn't as good imo) but found it pretty easy to get burned out on her stuff. Not much replay value as there's not a whole lot of depth, ya

laurel halo album was a disappointment for me, way too esoteric and weird for weird sake

Xxp Kirby has a concept, though. Granduciel is walking in socks over cold coals.

I still don't really get what everyone liked so much about Black Beatles. I don't hate it, just does nothing much for me.

I think this is the first Laurel Halo album I like mainly on the strength of Moontalk alone but yes... it's way too dependent on its own quirks and weirdness.

moontalk is an amazing song! yeah

moka check out the king felix stuff if you haven't heard it, "spring" by king felix and her halo album "king felix"

I did not know about that project. Listening to spring now and it sounds amazing! Thanks for the recommendation.

:) sweet

the Fever Ray album was really disappointing to me

why? show your work :)

Sleaford Mods - this guy used to sound angry, now he just sounds bored (I do like most of the previous records)

Fever Ray was also so-so for me. I like the knife and the first fever ray album a lot, so I thought for sure this would be one of my favorite albums of the year but alas it ended being one of the most dissapointing ones for me. It’s just so hard to sit through... even harder than ‘shaking the habitual’ and that’s saying something.

I can get past the hamfisted lyrics (either way lyrics has never been her strong point), but the textures and production are sort of uninteresting too, the middle of the album is specially boring or annoying and contains some of her worst songs ever (“this country” really wtf is up with that).

I don’t know... I guess it’s just alright in small doses but I don’t want ‘just alright’ from her.

Ok maybe the production isn’t uninteresting... but it’s too harsh and irritating more often than not. I get that maybe that was her intent with this particular album but I’m not a masochist, sorry.

Yeah, my love for the first Fever Ray album is immense, this one is not bAd exactly, just very disappointing

yeah I agree with all of that Moka

the production mostly feels like lesser retreads of Silent Shout and the Fever Ray s/t, and the songwriting lacks the memorable melodies. the lyrics are a step down too - Silent Shout especially could be quite evocative but they're more hamfisted here and the BDSM subject matter of some of it is completely uninteresting to me

Sleaford Mods - this guy used to sound angry, now he just sounds bored (I do like most of the previous records)

heh this = lack of money > money

King Krule was the overrated hype of the year for me. Could barely get through that mess 3 times.

So I will probably dig his next record :P

Fever ray album is fucking great, just took time to grow on me. I mean it's not that different texturally from
The debut it's just more hyper kinetic arrangement wise. Give it some time, mustn't hurry

Reality TV Argument Bleeds

Regarding old dudes listening to a young woman…. isn’t that good? When I was in high school a lot of guys had no interest in Belly or PJ Harvey or Throwing Muses,
a lot of guys simply didn’t want to listen to a woman.

If you’re telling me there’s an army of old farts eagerly listening to Wednesday, then Hooray! Even if their motives are somehow impure, maybe they’ll learn something.

I'm really tired of this whole 'everything is retro, nothing is original' stance. I like originality, it might be hard to achieve today, but that's why it should be recognized and celebrated. Some bands are more retro than others, and it makes sense to argue about which ones are the least retro. Imo Wednesday is more retro than other Pitchfork-hypes like Water From Your Eyes and No Joy, but probably less retro than MJ Lenderman.

it just seems bizarre to middle-aged people that the youths would be recreating shoegaze or idm while wearing the wrong clothes

Then there's me, happy to see any and all shoegaze bands of current vintage doing their thing no matter the age or the clothes. (Which did explain why I was initially interested in Wednesday and still am, but less so for any trad country Americana whatever going on.)

― Ned Raggett, Monday, September 22, 2025 1:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think it was intentional, but pulling that quote out of context makes it seem way more prickly than was intended. It's not that I care at all what clothes people wear while listening to shoegaze! It's the time-out-of-joint feeling of a (music) style being renewed in the present but warped by the passage of time and recontextualization in the present. Obviously this happens all the time (e.g., I lived through the *third* wave of ska), but it's a notable feature of middle age ime. I often think of a middle-aged woman I worked with in the late 90s who could not get over a pair of navy surplus jeans I wore, which were basically bell-bottoms, and now it's me wondering at the kids in their Docs etc.

Fred: I didn't see anyone making that argument in this revive, but I also did not reread every post. "everything is retro" is definitely nonsense, but it feels straw-manny

zchyrs post upthread is close enough that I don't think I'm strawmanning at all.

probably less retro than MJ Lenderman

I dunno, to me this dude sounds a lot like some of the boozy post-Westerberg stuff that used to get written about in No Depression

Since you used them as an example, I like Water From Your Eyes because for every time I think, "hey, this sounds like the Pixies," I also think, "hey, this sounds like Blue Gene Tyranny!" I feel like that band in particular is doing its own thing in a way that makes their music unlikely to be mistaken for something that existed 20 years ago. I guess that's all I really ask of a new band

Imagine putting Lenderman in the same SENTENCE as Water From Your Eyes! Oh w-

I mean Rachel WFYE moving on from Nate WFYE to Lenderman might well be a boyfriend upgrade. Definitely isn't a fuckin songwriter upgrade (which is why WFYE stiil exists I guess lol)

Is this the ilm gossip column thread now?

That's common public knowledge ffs

is it?

It was in a published interview I read

I tend to not hear about these things until there's a break-up album or an abuse allegation.

"Posters only love you when they're posting..."

Frederik, I never meant to imply "everything is retro, nothing is original." Only that Wednesday in particular don't sound very "retro" to me. There are other young indie bands that I think do sound retro (Momma comes to mind). Why some artists strike me that way while others don't, is something I'm still figuring out. I also want to be clear that I'm not pooh-poohing the idea of originality.

I do think, to an extent, we are living in a kind of post-retro age. Aesthetics from many different times and places have been rubbing up against each other and synthesizing since at least the 90s, and certainly for my entire time as an engaged music listener. Some styles have already been revived, and re-revived, to a point they no longer read as referential to some original influence, while still legible as part of a lineage of influence, and that's how I hear Wednesday: as a descendant of Swirlies/Uncle Tupelo/Breeders/whoever else you want to name drop, not a band whose M.O. is just "hey, remember 90s alt-rock?"

Again, this may be a product of my particular point of view in time: by the time I started getting into music in the early 2000s, 90s alt-rock was *already* this relic from a recently-vanished past, something to be revived. So I've always kinda experienced it through that rosey lens.

relevant perhaps to this discussion I'm seeing a lot of comments on YMO videos from (presumably) new listeners who are surprised it's from 1981 and not the early 2000s. obviously they were ahead of their time but not by *that* much...I think its more that there was a full on 80s revival going on then and I would imagine younger listeners maybe aren't able to make that distinction

I mean, I was born in 86, so to me anything from say 1968 until then was 'old music', but anything before that was really old music - the stuff my parents listened to vs. the stuff my grandparents listened to, though that was obviously from before the era of recorded music as we know it today - might be confusing to the new generation when their grandparents listened to Talking Heads and their parents listened to stuff that knocked off Talking Heads

we listened to Tom Tom Club, our kids listened to Mariah Carey sampling Tom Tom Club, our grandkids listened to Latto sampling Mariah Carey sampling Tom Tom Club

my favorite podcast plays bits of it every week as part of a regular segment, and they always rep for Tom Tom despite clearly having no idea who they are or their connection to Talking Heads

I mean Rachel WFYE moving on from Nate WFYE to Lenderman might well be a boyfriend upgrade. Definitely isn't a fuckin songwriter upgrade (which is why WFYE stiil exists I guess lol)

― imago, Tuesday, September 23, 2025 11:44 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

well I guess I know who will be attending their Carrboro show tomorrow night.

I keep reading WFYE as some new feminist spelling for Wife

I guess this is where the conversation about the new Wednesday album is? I was listening to it this morning and thinking that I hadn't seen a revive. Not as good as the last one, but there are a few good jams on it.

I dunno, I know for a fact that I gravitate toward certain new artists because they tap into an aesthetic that has been in my veins since adolescence and thus will always appeal to me. But I am also a dilettante who listens to a lot of stuff, so I don't feel like I am getting overly excited about anyone in particular or that it's coming at the expense of appreciating other kinds of music.

their own thread was briefly revived: a thread for the North Carolina twangy indie-rock band Wednesday

definitely very ilm-in-2025 that this thread was the more active one though

WFYE was where I used to buy CDs at the Mall, iirc

Finally catching up with the Dijon album, and it's not doing anything for me!!

It's a great sound world but I haven't felt very compelled to go back to it.

It ended up clicking for me in the right setting (ie. not while taking a walk). I still prefer Nourished by Time though.

After trying with his solo album last year and this new Geese album, I have concluded that Cameron Winter is just not for me. I can see what people dig, or I think I can — the emotional and musical range, undeniable creativity and energy — but it doesn't connect for me.

what on earth is this geese crap?

It’s all over the grass

I'm not sold yet on the new album but try 3D Country before completely dismissing Geese. It's a lot more fun and less raggedy

joanne robertson, geese… hard pass sorry

same

why is the geese guy singing like that

Seasonal allergies

not really feeling lucrecia dalt sorry :| generically artsy pj harvey flavor of the month. nb i could flip on this if someone wants to share a convincing deep cut.

XXXXXP ok so i tried "3d country" and i am more disgusted than before. which surprises me, i kinda pretty much always dig your playlist picks, dog latin.
not sure what it is. are they the indie imagine dragons? so many "emotive" retro signifiers which somehow sound obviously empty, which as a concept might be fertile ground for exploration in other hands here sounds a lazy and pointless coattails pastiche. hermeneutically suspect, sure, whatever. different strokes.

Bongos. Too many bongos

(I made it 1 track before I had to turn them off)

I liked Malibu's Palaces of Pity (though I can't remember exactly why), and I've really enjoyed her mixtapes and her blown-out takes on pop hits as bgirl, but this new album may be my personal tipping point for barely there, diaphanous, post-Cocteaus ambient underachieving. Like, is this all it takes?

"3D Country" sounds like Ween.

i still do not understand why anyone listens to Big Theif

I feel like everyone is “ambient” these days cause it’s easy to do (hard to get right). I blame the normalization of New Age music.

I hear so much new music where I’m like “why did you choose to sing like that?”

Do you mean the pick-a-note style of singing? Cause I'm with you on that thought.

it's all about the notes you don't pick

I wish there were more notes they didn't pick

LOL

I absolutely get why Geese might rub people wrong, but I like them.

That said, I cannot understand the appeal of Cameron Winter's solo album in the least. I've given it three tries now and it's like subtracting all of the things that make Geese interesting to me.

since we don't appear to have a Rolling Techno thread for 2025, I'll put this here--

what am I missing with the Carrier love? As a fan of Andy Stott, Basic Channel and Pan Sonic, not to mention an appreciator of Brewer's previous work as Shifted, I'm more or less the key demographic for this, but this record sounds to me like immaculate sound design with no real musical innovation or ideas. I've listened to it twice (loud, good speakers), and I just don't see why this is in any way exceptional?

For comparison, I listened to it back to back with the new Mike Parker record, which is my idea of an exceptional techno record

Thanks for reminding me to listen to this. I agree that I was expecting...more? I love space and dubbiness and every sound is on point (listened to an interview with him recently and was quite inspired by some of his processes), and I love his love for Photek. But I wish the rhythms were a little bit more propulsive, and that there was more in the way of interlocking drums. It sounds like Photek if you muted everything except the kick, pads, and one cymbal or rimclick layer.

that is exactly it, thank you for nailing it, especially about wishing the rhythms were more propulsive. There just isn't much to hang onto