Rocknerd

Imaad Wasif: So Long Mr. Fear (2022).

17 February, 202317 February, 2023 Indie, Record, Rock 0

Eventually indie folk rockers make it clear which Beatle they modeled their approach on.

FreeDB is gone — but the CD data lives on.

11 February, 2023 Audio 5

Guess it’s been a while since I touched the dusty old boxes of CDs — I only just found out that CD database FreeDB shut down some time in early 2020.

Flower Face: The Shark in Your Water (2022).

10 February, 202323 July, 2023 Indie, Opinion, Record 0

Something to listen to while tending your greenhouse full of carnivorous and/or poisonous plants.

B.E.F.: Music For Stowaways (1981).

7 February, 20237 February, 2023 Pop, Record 0

A fun listen if you know who Marsh and Ware are, and it gives you a good idea of how they were thinking.

Capsule: Metro Pulse (2022).

3 February, 20233 February, 2023 Audio, Dance, Record 1

Yasutaka Nakata‘s much-anticipated synthwave masterpiece.

Farewell: Panic! at the Disco, 2004-2023

27 January, 202323 July, 2023 Opinion, Pop 0

Nineteen years isn’t a bad run, for a baby band that blew up and then fell apart several times along the way.

Sometimes I just want to listen to R.E.M.

25 January, 202323 July, 2023 Opinion, Pop, Rock 0

I like to put an R.E.M. mix on while I’m baking. But only the ones that include Man on the Moon.

Video: Fall Out Boy: Love from the Other Side (2022).

20 January, 202320 January, 2023 Pop, Record 0

Fall Out Boy have once again regenerated. I’m not going to say they’re back, because they didn’t leave.

Missed Connections: Happy Mondays.

18 January, 202323 July, 2023 Dance, Indie, Opinion 0

I had an epic musical missed connection when I confused the Happy Flowers with the Happy Mondays, and didn’t realize what had happened until thirty-odd years later.

Almost nobody cares what’s in the Top 10 any more.

14 January, 202314 January, 2023 Industry, Pop 3

You’ve never heard of current pop stars because they aren’t actually popular in mainstream culture.

Shelf-reading at Bandcamp: Industrial — Leæther Strip, Metal Heart, Master Boot Record, Pertubator (2022, 2023).

13 January, 202323 July, 2023 Dance, Industrial, Opinion, Record 0

Yeeeeeahhhh that’s the 2nd floor of Slimelight GOOD STUFF, y’all.

Collected thoughts: The War on Drugs

11 January, 202323 July, 2023 Opinion, Rock 0

I’m sulky mainly because of the band name, which causes me to think muffled cross thoughts about failed social policy. But the name harmonizes well with the band’s overall vibe, which is “skate park during the golden hour.”

Late Night Listening: Status/Non-Status: Surely Travel (2022).

6 January, 202323 July, 2023 Opinion, Record, Rock 0

The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

Mixtape: Songs for 2022

3 January, 20233 January, 2023 Country, Indie, Pop, Record, Rock 0

Some of these are old. Some of them are new(ish). They are all songs I listened to, with varying levels of obsessiveness, at various times during 2022.

RM: Indigo (2022).

29 December, 202230 December, 2022 Pop, Record 0

Indigo is RM’s first full solo record, released as BTS starts a brief compulsory-military-service induced break.

Riffusion: we’ve replaced these musicians with an AI model.

16 December, 20227 February, 2023 Esoterica 0

Can’t wait for Spotify to offer streams of generated nonsense music. And see if the record companies can spot the source tracks it was trained on.

Ride, The Forum, Melbourne, November 30

6 December, 20226 December, 2022 Indie, Live, Rock 0

In times past your author would have expressed a positive indifference to most of the bands of these broad British genres of the early 90s, and that opinion largely still holds.

Pop Will Eat Itself, Sept 10 Corner Hotel

5 December, 20225 December, 2022 Indie, Industrial, Live 1

It made perfect sense of course, that a thirtieth-anniversary tour would perform.

Father John Misty: Chloe and the Next 20th Century (2022).

14 November, 202214 November, 2022 Country, Indie, Record 0

Some of you may remember his aggressively caustic approach to, well, everything, but I think maybe the man has … mellowed? Perhaps?

Deep thoughts about Snow Patrol.

31 October, 2022 Rock 0

I am forced to begin with the fact that I began my descent into a Snow Patrol-shaped spiral by confusing them with the Arctic Monkeys.

An opera singer shattering a glass, redux.

19 August, 2022 Audio 0

Your mission: document the resonant frequencies, and come up with an enormously popular banger of a tune that hits all of them.

Maybeshewill: No Feeling is Final (2021).

29 July, 202229 July, 2022 Prog, Record 1

Always great, they have even gained in skill, orchestration, and passion with their latest album.

Valedictions, Vangelis

5 June, 20226 June, 2022 Musician, Prog 0

It seems to be all a little bit disturbing to write shortly after the death of Klaus Schulze, that one must also put finger to keyboard to comment on the loss of Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, better known as “Vangelis” on May 17th.

An image carefully constructed to make musicians cry.

19 May, 202219 May, 2022 Classical, Musician 1

Musicians who have a casual attitude to the continued use of their eyes may want to look over this advertising image and see if they can spot a single thing right about it.