shhhhh secret thread to talk about music without getting into a high-pitched ilm shriekfest on whatever thread is going on atm

73. the creator has a master plan - bardo pond - i fucking love this, havent heard or thought about them in like idk 15 years? i take back my reluctance for 15 minutes, i am totally in, see you all in a while. trying to place it, its like what all those dudes from kranky and constellation could have done if they werent too busy flattening pennies on train tracks and being a half-assed Crass.

all of ILM is pretty funny for revealing a bit of conservatism about music that isn't Ciara

People can watch every single episode of 2 Broke Girls or whatever but their monocles pop out if a song is 15 minutes long.

haha OTM

fwiw the "hilarious" comment wasn't meant to be a knock on Bardo Pond, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to that song

tbh much of my reaction to 15 minute song was based in "technically i am running a business and am at work" but eh fuck work

all of ILM is pretty funny for revealing a bit of conservatism about music that isn't Ciara

― SHAUN (DJP), Tuesday, January 21, 2014 6:02 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Both lol and ;_; about the truth of this statement.

yeah the distant vocals dropping in halfway through this track with swoopy space noises rolling around in the background is working really really well for me. i like this a lot. also, as the dude who listens to NWW on the board, im the last guy that should be whining abt long songs obv

i only like long songs when they are around an hour long and mostly the sound of a ship creaking THATS HOW THEY USED TO MAKE "REAL" MUSIC KIDS

you are making me want to play "Time To Melt"

72. XO - beyonce - haha this is str8 up 80s soundtrack in the intro i keep expecting ally sheedy to suddenly smile through all that mop of hair or something, chorus has the dreaded modern indie background shouters thing but not in a fuck u all lumineers way, i like this more than the other stuff, wish it was a little more driven or something. sounds like a pink song sometimes, but not one of the good pink songs, the boring ones about all being friends and drinking champagne and getting through the tough times and stuff. theres still something here i like somewhat though. idk, none of this beyonce is measuring up to the beyonce i want.

"XO" is pretty great

every time I think Ryan Tedder should be murdered, he pulls out a song like this

100% agree with how the EOY makes ilm seem like a different place. NA otm about BP album too. I wouldn't have loved the Master Plan cover as much but I loooooooove the original and hearing it translated to one of my favorite styles (heavy lumbering dirge with hint of lightness) was a great musical moment for me.

Is it just me or does a scary amount of the stuff nominated and placing sound like 80s soundtracks and mall music?

well, 80s soundtracks were awesome and I heard Santigold and MGMT at a TGIFridays last week so I think what you've generally described is known to most as "music"

I hadn't heard any of the new Beyonce until this weekend when driving around I heard the second half of "XO" twice on the radio, both times coming in at the weird surfboard part. It doesn't seem like a very good song but Jay Z made me laugh and I liked when she got all growly and aggressive near the end.

like the first time I heard Haim, I immediately thought of the music they played in mall stores like Express and Claire's Boutique when I was in junior high in the 80s

the song you're talking about is actually "Drunk On Love", NA

Oh yeah duh.

71. raging lung - the knife - ok first things first if i glanced at this album cover i would expect it to be a halo benders k records thing, which i assume its not but hey. this is an ok knife track, not my favorite, not my least. is it bizarre to say i want it to be consistently weirder? i mean its obv weird, but mostly in the chorus/postchorus, verse is a little comfort zone. i mean to the extent that there is a verse. i am being a harsher critic here because i know this stuff so theres more comparison points. lots of early mid peter gabriel twinkling weirdness and wobbling bassline fun. its good. it would prob grow on me.

that said, this does overstay its welcome a bit i think.

I don't really care that much about the singles poll bc it emphasizes music that I'm not as invested in (pop/dance). I did vote in it but didn't think about it that hard.

Have you not heard that whole album, dude? IT'S REALLY GOOD (esp "A Tooth For An Eye" and "Wrap Your Arms Around Me")

70. when a fire starts to burn - disclosure - ive heard so much stuff in this same wheelhouse that i like so so much better that idk i dont get. wish the fire starts to burn dude would STFU, fine theres a goddamn fire and i am bringing my attitude home already leave me the fuck alone. this is now officially the longest song on the countdown. ok he shuts up in the middle, things are looking up, wait no fuck hes back again. this sucks.

haha can't wait to see what you make of "White Noise"

69. song for zula - phosphorescent - i fucking love early phosphorescent, like listen to it all the time love, and i hate to be this guy, but he seems hell bent on prettying up everything interesting and charming about him and his writing and it SUCKS. its like dude has just become a junior partner in the bonnie prince billy/palace/oldham/swor & gatto law firm and he is just so eager to please. i take this personally and i am mad at u phosphorescent dude.

cram your goddamn string section you dick. quit smoothing out your vocal cracks and reverbing everything out you dick. fuck u.

oh whoops skipped whatever lulu james is one sec.

Oh I accidentally skipped that one too

it's okay?

69. closer - lulu james - part of me likes this, but her voice is losing me, holy shit she should stay out of her upper vocal range omg that was bad. now shes spending more time in there. ick. can she not sing? she can not sing. not up there at least. pro tip, if you honk in your upper register, stay the fuck out of your upper register. wait, more of her range is sucking now. what is going on. aaaaggghhhh nooooo. damnit, this seemed promising for a short like 20 seconds but yeah nope can not get past her voice. oh and also its really really boring.

haha dan listen again, i think u will want to drop the same vocal hammer here

haha thank you for saving me an update post

she sounds like she is a quarter-step off the pitch almost the entire song

i know it is so bizarre

it actually does get worse right? or does it just build to a fever pitch of "oh you poor thing, stop"

for me it was "this is an interesting affectation, it's bringing tension into an otherwise unremarkable song... okay ENOUGH OF THAT"

idk her voice sounds fine to me

i'm a terrible singer though

it's not really her voice, it's that she is consistently slightly off the note, which starts out interesting and then starts making me grind my teeth

67. merry go round - kacey musgraves - haha ok first of all from the intro i keep expecting a muppet to jump in and take a verse. the verses are oddly clever actually, esp for what i can only assume is a mainstream country deal. Her voice is sorta by the numbers album radio, but theres something actually kind of compelling. song writer is really pretty fantastic, manages to toe the line of clever and not too clever, like the round and round and round turn quite a bit. huh. i wish she was just a tad less innocuous, but theres nothing to fault here really. i am impressed, and fairly surprised. i dont think there is anything special here w/o the writer though, so unless she is the writer i am somewhat concerned, wouldn't mind a more compelling vocalist taking a stab at this really.

IIRC she is the writer

basically I feel like she's the artist everyone keeps trying to convince me Taylor Swift is

That's good, maybe she should just be that more

She's quite an accomplished writer for other people too. Interesting to hear her version of Mama's Broken Heart back to back with Miranda Lambert's super-campy one.

66. Fall Back - Factory Floor - basically i just want this to turn into the telex song that it really wants to be, idk man i think i just like this sort of stuff with some weird german dude yammering over the top of it or robot voices and not with a bored sounding lady getting all breathily unenthused all over it. its...fine i guess?

i am honestly really glad to hear that abt musgraves, shes really one hell of a writer

judging from this one song i heard that one time on the internet lol @ me

that's the CW about her so you're playing into an already-established narrative

she and Brandy Clark are kind of the go-to "authentic young country voices" of 2013 afaict

65. she will - savages - time travelling music, appreciate the unburied guitars, and just when i was abt to slog it off as retro masturbatory factory worship, in comes the drum break and moves it to something more than that. theres a lot of badassery going on here actually, motherfuckers know how to build, thats for sure. i dig it, old better pj harvey before she got all pleasant sounding filtered through JD/NO transition stages. im sure this will get pinged with the retro tag but honestly, i dont think thats fair, and also saddled with asshole female band novelty media blitz, but thats a huge misstep, its a really good band, who gives two fucks abt the fact that they happen to all be women (which implies the tokenism that undercuts women as musicians, which is a personal fucking sticking point being stuck in the lunkheaded industry i am in). stands 100% on its own merits, like thousands of other women populated groups that get dragged down by assholes making their gender the prime narrative, while leaving the unsaid bias against women in rock intact.

Not really about Savages, but the 'who gives a fuck if they're women' thing is a double-edged sword. Being in an all-female 6-piece we've had to talk about whether we put it into our blurbs or not, and we've so far decided that we should. Not for men, but for other women, because when you're growing up as a girl into male-dominated shit it's good to find that there are women out there doing what you want to do.

I mean, obviously there are plenty of women out there who won't give a shit either.