Orkie

Thought this would suck, it's actually pretty great.

New album is a grower.

Clapton better than Page?

hahahhahah. Maybe at doing heroin.......

i have a hard time with 99% of indie rock for that exact reason.

When you start getting into your upper 20's, you realize a lot of indie rock is just hollow posturing, and the straightforward rock becomes absolutely refreshing. Bands like AC/DC become like some triumphant razor that slices through the bloated indie pretentiousness.

4.7 on Pitchfork today...

 

while i'd prolly give it a 6.5, the review is pretty spot on for the most part

PF sucks, but they are right about Cardinology. It's a stinky pile of wombat dung.

Great news. Thx for posting.

>At War With Mystics gets a bad rap because it is not as good as those two,

 

that's not why i give it a bad rap. i hear songs like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "Free Radicals" and just want to give up on the whole enterprise.

 

-justin

It's a terrible cliche, but those songs are much better live. I find AWWTM to be poor by Lips standards and a significant blow to their great run.

I mean, The Beatles--good singers. Paul McCartney-- genius....but Pink Floyd? Sorry, you had me til then. Also, Thom Yorke has an extremely good voice and decent range. Probably a better range than Tweedy, and better singer. But I feel like Tweedy has consistently captured different moods. If you look at two quiet Wilco songs- Sky Blue Sky, and Someday Some Morning, there is a still a huge different in tone and color. Thom Yorke doesn't do that. Tweedy's a good singer, on the mumbly side, but he is extremely good at using what he's got.

Well Pink Floyd is second only behind the Beattles in terms of albums sold by a rock band, so they fit the bill. They also had three vocalists which gave better balance to the music.

Seriously!?! I mean I can understand the criticism lyrically (and I can even understand some backlash for their success), but how can anyone say The Bends and Kid A are even in the same ballpark musically, let alone "one tone"?

They aren't. The "one tone" has been Amnesiac to IR. They are awful records.

As for Radiohead being overrated, any of the greatest bands ever you could make a case for them being overrated (The Beatles, The Band, Dylan etc etc.), it's natural for the music community and press to put bands that are obviously a cut above on top of a pedestal.

Hopefully you aren't implying that Radiohead are even on that level.

U2 is still the biggest band in the world and has been for quite some time.

Radiohead was actually a good band at one time. Then they faded badly after Kid A, stuck on the same ideas and gloom. One of the problems with Radiohead is the same problem that currently plagues Wilco and Son Volt - mumbly lead singers with little vocal balance unlike the true great acts like the Beatles and Pink Floyd. You can only take those mumbly, depressed vocals for so long before you get sick of it.

Nowadays, Radiohead is largely propped up by "Listonistas", a cadre of aging white males who own blogs and forums and who "pimp" year end lists( see the recent In Rainbows Rate Your Music debacle where several Radiohead fans were caught voting a few hundred times each.

There is a blatant need for justification for certain people to have "a big act" to attach themselves to. The difference is that this time gloomy white males with blogs can be heard, rather than in the 70's and 80's where they just pumped their fists in concerts and *maybe* had a job writing for the local paper.

In Rainbows is an example of the internet delivering hype over substance, as a "tip of the spear" for propaganda.

Really, *really* bad band.

So you're a fat guy, huh?

Actually I'm pretty good looking and fit. You would hide your girlfriend if you had one.

yeah, i'm with paul b

 

i don't dislike the jayhawks and occasionally enjoy them as background music

 

listenable ... just boring & completely non-essential ...

 

almost muzak-ish

 

but ya know, nice harmonies and arrangements ... pleasant enough stuff

Strange opinon considering Hollywood Town Hall is widely considered the finest alt.country record.

this begs the question. have you ever listened to Uncle Tupelo? i mean really, teh fuck?

I own their discography. Not quite Blue Earth/Hollywood Town Hall/Tomorrow The Green Grass territory but pretty good, if a bit amateur sounding.

As much as I like the Jayhawks I have always found Blue Earth irritating. I sure doesn't beat out No Depression in my book and is NOT essential.

 

LouieB

Everyone is allowed to be a moron at least once. "Two Angels", "Five Cups of Coffee" and "Martin's Song" are better than anything Tupelo ever recorded.

It's rather unfortunate that you gather your knowledge from the internet. You can come up with countless links to prove your point. Townes = country, folk, and blues. The categorization of "alt.country" doesn't fit here. Nice try, but your way off. Throw a 'D' on the beginning of the name too please.

Don't overheat your Honda, Cortez. You might miss that Urban Outfitters sale tomorrow.

I have Sky Blue Sky tagged alt country just to piss people off. Johnny Cash too.

SBS would be tagged under "Dad Rock".

Just like Uncle Tupelo's No Depression, right?

They just named a magazine about the subject and the whole damn movement after that raucous motha of a record.

So Uncle Tupelo is "most alt.country"?

By the way, "Blue Earth" was released before "No Depression", contains no punk elements and is the better record.

The dude is part right:

Yup.

Yes.

Before there was punk there could be no alt country.

That's laughable. Most alt.coutnry has no punk element whatsoever.

one could certainly argue that artists such as Gram Parsons and/or Sweetheart of the Rodeo-era Byrds or even Dylan (with Nashville Skyline) started alternative country, but i think you have to make a timeline somewhere. for example, in those days, mainstream country was still country and so these artists were merely dabbling in the country genre. later, when country became vocoder-ized, cross-overed and for the most part, shit, you can consider bands that were doing classic country to be "alt country," because, by now, what they were doing was alternative to what was popular. late 80s-early 90s, the birth of Uncle Tupelo and the birth of the term itself. taking that into consideration, alt. country applied as it was at the time and even currently then encompasses traditional country (which today is no longer mainstream) and psychedlic country or cow punk or whatever, just as indie music encompasses multiple genres. i mean, really you are dealing with semantics here. one example would be the indie labels these bands were a part of. you could put out a release that sounded exactly like top 10 radio, but if it was on Merge or Sub Pop, would it then be considered "indie rock"?

The Jayhawks were doing this before Tupelo, and Townes before the Jayhawks. Alt.country is basically "intelligent" country for the most part.

I'll buy that. But I refuse to say he's "alt.country."

You'd be wrong of course.

http://folkmusic.about.com/od/artistsaz/p/Townes_profile.htm

Alternative Country, Singer/Songwriter

Anyone who thinks alt.country is soley defined as a mixutre of punk/country is barking up the wrong tree. That's just one aspect.

Nope. Those are just plain ol' country.

Nope. Townes is widely considered the grandfather of alt.country because of his purposely non-commercial sound and unorthodox vocals.

http://www.mahalo.com/Townes_Van_Zandt

Along with Gram Parsons, Van Zandt is often cited as an early pioneer of the Alt. Country sub-genre. Unlike Parsons, however, he saw little to nothing in the way of mainstream recognition during his lifetime, and many of his records were out of print by the time of his death at age 52. Artists beside Nelson who have covered his songs include Steve Earle, Cowboy Junkies, Nanci Griffith, Ryan Adams and Emmylou Harris.

Wikipedia got it right in my opinion:

 

Alternative country is a term used to describe a number of country music subgenres that tend to differ from mainstream or pop country music. The term is sometimes known as Alt. country and has included country music bands that have incorporated influences ranging from american roots music, bluegrass, rock & roll, rockabilly, americana, honky-tonk and punk rock.

The wiki article is completely wrong. No Depression the first alt.country record? lol. No mention of the Jayhawks, who released Bunkhouse and Blue Earth well before then? Alt.country is only a mixture of punk and country? lol. Ryan Adams ushered in alt.country?

Alt.country is something that started around the turn of the 90s I would say, the rest is country rock. Sorry old man.... all of us remember these albums from our youth, but they weren't called alt.country they were something else, along with Commander Cody and NRPS, etc.

 

LouieB

This is incorrect.