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Showing posts with label mew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mew. Show all posts

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Lists and subtitutions.



photographs via Esther K.

My most played albums in 2009, according to Last.fm*:
1. Au Revoir Simone: Still Night, Still Light
2. Metric: Fantasies
3. Slow Club: Yeah So
4. The Thermals: Now We Can See
                              5. Emmy the Great: First Love

6. Sin Fang Bous: Clangour
7. Passion Pit: Manners
8. Fanfarlo: Reservoir
9. Nurses: Apple's Acre
10. Dead Man's Bones: Dead Man's Bones

12. Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains
13. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Vs. Children
14. The Woodlands: The Woodlands
15. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion


This top of course doesn't necessarily - actually cross that, it definitely DOES NOT  coincide with my favourite albums of 2009. First Love, for example (Emmy the Great's debut album) was a bit of a disappointment for me. Sure some of her old songs - previously unreleased but available online of course - were as good as I remembered, but the new ones left me decidedly unimpressed. The fact that the Thermals' Now We Can See is in this top is due almost exclusively to the song of the same name, which I must have played ad infinitum ever since I first heard it. The rest of the album however, apart from one or two songs, is unexceptional. And, while I enjoyed Yeah So, Fantasies, and Clangour, Fanfarlo's Reservoir should have been higher on the list than all of those if the aforementioned list were to reflect my preferences. So basically what I'm saying is that this list is just a lazy substitute. It's a lazy substitute for the Best Albums of 2009 list that we're not going to make. And we're not going to make it because, just like last year, we want to focus on individual songs rather than albums that may or may not have more than one or two good songs on them.

One album I was surprised to see on that list was the Woodlands' self-titled debut. Not because I didn't think it was great but because I hadn't realized I'd listened to it so many times. I'm glad that it did get to be there however, because that means the video we received in our inbox yesterday came just in time:



The Woodlands - Can We Stay

Related posts:

*Last.fm shows all the albums I've listened to the most during the last 12 months. I've included here only the ones released in 2009.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The "I'm so full of prejudices and sweeping generalizations" post.

 Pukkelpop 2009
 
Sweeping generalizations I firmly believe in:
 1. People that holiday in the same city/resort/hotel/village or island year after year after year after year are not real people. They are  simplistic robots that the Government has created in order to make us feel better about being so boring. Let me explain. In a rare moment of clarity back in 2005 the Bush administration decided to introduce these robots amongst the humans. The reason was that suicide numbers in the U.S had reached an all-time high. More and more people, polls revealed, committed suicide because they considered their lives to be extremely boring. Not only were their jobs miserable but they didn't even have fun on their holidays! Thus, the Robots that Holiday Every Year in the Same Place (RHEYSP) were invented. Suddenly people thought: "it's not that bad! At least I'm not as boring as them!". So things went back to normal. There is proof of this. People that spend every holiday on, say, Ibiza lack some sort of fundamental brain function that scientists call "curiosity". Now this "curiosity" is a quintessentially human trait so of course this proves once and for all that these freaks are non-human. But seriously now, I don't understand it. You can take the pathetic sum of money you worked all year to make or that your parents worked all year to make and you can either a) do something boring, unoriginal, stupid,  repetitive and unchallenging or b) do something different, eye-opening, horizon-widening and intellectually challenging. It's like if someone told you - "look, if you buy this magical banana (which will cost you the same as or less than an ordinary banana) you will become instantly happier, more knowledgeable, you will be richer as a human being, you will have more experiences, you will stimulate your imagination and brain, you will learn a ton of new things without even trying and you will have many wonderful memories." And you're like "no thanks, I'll have the ordinary banana instead, you know, the one I always get. I just know it better and trust it more. I like how it always has the same sticker that says Chiquita." What???! It makes no sense! Seriously, have you stopped to consider the fact that you are committing brainicide? Same place every year, same people, same sand, same water, same club, same cigarettes, same TV channels, same language, same boredom, same music, same radio station, same sun, same friends, same same. Going to the same island for the 4th year in a row is about as interesting and entertaining as watching grass grow. No no no no no, wait, you know what? That's a shitty comparison, I apologize to all grass-watchers. At least with grass there's the unwavering certainty that at least if you watch long enough something will be different. No, going to the same island for the 4th year in a row is more like container-ship watching. Or Feng-Shui. Or discus throwing. Or repeatedly drawing little triangles onto a piece of paper until you've covered the whole surface only so you can then wipe your ass with it. Over and over. For the rest of your life. Yeah, that's more like it.

2. All festival-goers suck. Especially festival-goers that think they're being funny and for some reason also think the rest of the world thinks they're being funny so they repeat the same joke ad nauseam just in case you didn't get it the first time (you didn't). Especially festival-goers that piss on any single object having the misfortune to be vertically positioned - including your tent, the place you buy food from and your leg. Especially festival-goers that burn your tent with cigarettes and squirt what one can only hope is water in your face from plastic guns. Especially festival-goers that don't attend said festival for the bands but just so they can have what underdeveloped Vogons and mentally challenged apes would deem "fun". To be fair, all these people mentioned only comprise about...oh, 90% of all festival-goers, but just to be safe I propose the whole lot of them be castrated (and tube-tied respectively!). YES! In fact, I already have a plan. We'll have a dozen hundred surgeons ready on the spot. We can tell festival-goers to gather at the Marquee for a "Surprise Act", à la Pukkelpop 2009, right? They'll probably have wasted their last two (2) remaining neurons on trying to figure out whether they'll be seeing Katy Perry or The Rasmus next so they won't even understand what's going on - my God! The genius of it! One minute they're staring obtusely at the sign that says "If you have already had a vasectomy, please walk away now" and the next WHAM. No more babies for you, Scottie. Preventing the Stupid-gene from polluting future generations just like that - imagine! It'll be cruel, sadistic, horrifically bloody, epically sick, environmentally-safe and so much fun!
3. Anyone that watches MTV nowadays is a complete and utter moron. Now I need to explain myself properly here because this is highly debatable. I'm not saying people are morons, just because they choose to watch tasteless crap. I am saying they will eventually become morons if they continue to watch the shows for a prolonged period of time. You can only do it for too long before you start hearing screaming voices in your head. If you insist on doing it, be prepared. Expect nausea, dizziness, paralyzing headaches, an overpowering urge to throw plates at the wall, kick your dog and possibly kill small innocent children with big red sledgehammers. Your brain cells will also start dying a slow and agonizing death and you will find you are only able to communicate in tweets, text messages (sorry, I mean, txt mssgs) and loud unexpected bursts of "NEEEEXT!". If you don't believe me and want to experience the effects of this global disease for yourself, just watch one of the millions of reality shows on offer these days at what used to once be a music channel: e.g. Date My Mom, Made, A Shot at Love With Tilla Tequila, That's Amore, From a G. to a Gentleman (or was it From a Gangsta to a G?), The Money and the Power, Next, Room Raiders, Sweet Sixteen, etc.
 
4. Any person who uses the word "morality" in a sentence is a twat.
 
5. Despite what Cosmo might tell you, sweaty men are not "sexy" - they are disgusting humanoids oozing filth, chloride and water from their pores and should surely put effort into avoiding human contact rather than happily trying to rub against you in buses or at gigs.
  
At this point I must stop my complaining and stereotyping unfortunately because the new Mew (newmewnewmewnewmew. Haha. Must be all the MTV-watching. Sorry.)  album has gone and put me in a good mood. Ugh. Hate it when that happens.

Here, you have some, too:
 

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Rocket for sale - call now!

1. Adem - Launch Yourself
2. Singapore Sling - Martian Arts
3. Say Hi to Your Mom - Let's Talk About Spaceships
4. Futurecop! - Starworshipper*
5. Heavenly - Space Manatee
6. Murder Mystery - Love Astronaut
7. Au Revoir Simone - Stars
8. Mikrofisch - Alien Monsters
9. The Magnetic Fields - You and Me and the Moon
10. Mew - Special
12. Modest Mouse - 3rd Planet
*
illustration by el blog ausente

*song removed by request of the band's record label; they did however write us a kind e-mail asking us to have it available for listen only, not download - instead of the usual way of record labels (just taking down our post entirely) and we really appreciate that.