DUSTER

ilx missed on duster

Good band.

the new one (in dreams) is soooooo good! no surprise, they are consistently excellent. i completely missed them in their first round in the 90s. i was lucky to see them play a few months ago here in STL and was glad to see that most of their crowd is super young. i'm not sure if what they're doing now qualifies as a "victory lap", it probably never feels like that irl, but they deserve it more than any band

i'm not sure when it happened, but at some point, pre-listening to real Duster, i mixed them up with Guster. a few years ago people 'would be like have you heard Duster!?' i'd be like oof, yeah i've heard duster (thinking guster), yeah, 90s band, still around, wow. guster is still around, it must be really fun when people mix them up with duster now

i'm not sure if what they're doing now qualifies as a "victory lap", it probably never feels like that irl, but they deserve it more than any band

how so? Isn't their popularity based almost exclusively on a random algorithmic fluke? Couldn't this just as easily have happened to Bedhead or Indian Summer?

are you in bedhead

but yeah, both bedhead and duster received the numero group box set treatment. bedhead was a lot better known than duster, back then, of course. they both rule

RYM seems to have played a part.

jason albertini (ex-drummer) was very prolific under his Helvetia project between 2003-2023. his songwriting and riffs are a cut above. an incredibly overlooked musician, also really wicked guitar tones, musically very unusual, cryptic, psychedelic... so many golden songs.

s: the acrobats, the clever north wind, dromomania, nothing in rambling, headless machine of the heart, a dot running for the dust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syp_rzSR_U

i'm not sure if what they're doing now qualifies as a "victory lap", it probably never feels like that irl, but they deserve it more than any band

how so? Isn't their popularity based almost exclusively on a random algorithmic fluke? Couldn't this just as easily have happened to Bedhead or Indian Summer?

― Paul Ponzi, Monday, September 2, 2024 11:21 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Duster has more of the sonic atmosphere that resonates with / is an influence on younger indie bands coming up these days. Duster started getting rediscovered years ago at this point. There's that space rock / lofi angle the other slowcore bands don't have, but it's also their taste in melodies and their delivery.

Holy shit, how did I miss out on Valium Aggelein? This stuff is incredible.

^^

I still don't totally get Duster's mass appeal but that Valium Aggelein record is definitely pretty special

I don’t think anyone know who duster is!

*s

for me Duster is one of the most interesting algorithm success stories. I get the appeal - they are very pleasing to listen to. But when you see that 'Inside Out' has 17 million views on youtube. like... what's going on there?

It is nuts, but very cool. for the London shows last year (about 2500-3000 tickets sold over 2 nights?) seemed to be 90% made of extremely excited older teens, a huge number of them queueing up outside the venue before doors making a long line down the road and around the corner. definitely felt like a parent stood at the back waiting to take their kid home. nice thing was once the show started; from my pov they were probably more into it, more respectful and less chatty than most indie-rock adjacent shows attended by audiences of the age you would expect.

I think one of the problems I have with algorithm success stories is that, as far as fandom goes, there seems to be very little trickle down. What is keeping all these rabid teenage fans from falling just as hard for Slint? Or better yet, for one of the oodles of still-active bands that don't sound worlds apart from Duster?

I'm guessing a large part of it is that Duster is actively touring and the kids are more excited about a band they can experience live.