cloudsofhiss

Roughly in order:

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Sleigh Bells - Treats

Kurt Vile - Square Shells

No Age - Everything in Between

The New Pornographers - Together

Warpaint - The Fool

Corin Tucker Band - 1,000 Years

A little bit of a disappointing year for me, a lot of the bands I usually really enjoy put out albums I found a little forgettable. (National, BSS, She & Him, Spoon, Thermals, Tift Merritt, Arcade Fire)

Pleasant and sappy without making me cringe, I like it.

Arcade Fire - Funeral

Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs

Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat

The National - Boxer

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Sigur Ros - ()

Sleater-Kinney - The Woods

Snow Patrol - Eyes Open

Sonic Youth - Murray Street

The Strokes - Is This It

Tom Waits - Orphans

The White Stripes - Elephant

Wilco - YHF

Wrens - The Meadowlands

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell

It's a video, only about 10:00 long; and very engaging.

http://idolator.com/5243982/see-there-is-a-way-to-make-people-care-about-rock-criticism-again

 

Dig it.

Entertaining. He talks about the insularity of blog/indie world, but I'm not sure where he's coming from. Rolling Stone (can you get more traditional than this?) gave the new U2 and new Bruce Springsteen ablums 5's. The new Dirty Projectors album gets a 3. RS isn't exactly challenging their readers to seek out new stuff are they?

I've given it a couple listens so far. Two Weeks and While You Wait For Others are both great, but I'm finding that when You Wait comes on I can't really remember anything about the songs that played since Two Weeks.

totally missed that link the 1st time around. it seems like a capable machine, but theres a big part of me that says to run far away from buying a Dell @ Wal Mart. for example, fairly comparable Lenovo for 500$

 

i totally agree. the 1st build is a bit scary, but hell, i can build a system in an hour or so anymore.

 

also, unless the needs are urgent, or you are building a system, i would either go for an XP machine, or wait till 7 comes out. 7 will be the next XP

ArsTechnica has some good guides, for choosing the set of components for a build:

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2009/04/ars-technica-system-guide-april-2009-edition.ars

It gives you a good list of pieces you can to start from.

But that

This is spot on and why I usually stay away from actually reading their reviews. I think a writer inserting him or herself into a music review is fine, hell Lester Bangs did it all the time, but there is a point where I eventually I am more interested in reading about the actual album than what Ryan Schreiber had for breakfast and why he doesn't like Jim O'Rourke. While I am not entirely sure I can judge Pitchfork's motivations in terms of only going for things regarding their hipness and coolness, but I will say they're certainly more going to be way more receptive to an album that sounds like Kid A than they would to an album that sounds like Sky Blue Sky.

I know for me, a lot of how I listen to music is in relating it to events/times in my own life. I can't tell the difference between a song in 5/4 or 4/4 time while listening, and a review that analyzes the technical aspects of an album probably won't help me. I don't care what he had for breakfast, but there is some sort of middle ground in there somewhere.

Growing up in the grunge era saved me from some of the most embarrassing first albums, but my first was probably a Cranberries cassette. Before I was old enough to start listening to my own music, I think my favorite was Randy Travis, probably an influence from my parents.

The small, insular group of people that buys physical copies of records at local stores instead of downloading low-quality mp3s?

Yes?

my local indie store owner said the same thing to me.

Of the six "Best New Music" albums on the pitchfork frontpage, none are in the iTunes or Amazon MP3 top 25 selling albums. Their commercial influence is limited to a small and pretty insular group of people.

I am calm, however, you said it depends on what they value. The thing is, Pitchfork only values what they think is "cool" at the time, and they turn on the artists that have been around (Radiohead excluded). If this is an example of "value," then that alone invalidates Pitchfork.

I don't feel like they've turned on Wilco. It seems like they still have Wilco related news stories quite frequently. I would guess that many of their writers are still Wilco fans. There is a lot of pandering to what's "cool", but I still get the impression when reading the site that most of them still have a genuine love of music. Cokemachineglow.com for example is a music site I used to read, but over the last year or so it seems like they devolved into rating anything anyone else likes poorly, and only liking what's too obscure and cool for anyone else to like.

What gives Pitchfork (or Rolling Stone or any rock critic for that matter) the authority to determine what records are good and what aren't? That's the $64,000 question.

Pretty good article just written on criticism here: Hypercritical It's more about software/consumer electronics design, which is much less subjective than music, but it still covers the difference between those who criticize and those who create pretty well.

Pitchfork is just a website... Their album ratings are pretty consistent in terms of what they rate well or rate poorly. YHF overlapped pretty well with what they typically like, SBS did not. If the new album contains the sort of things they value, it will score well, if it doesn't it won't. If their tastes don't overlap with yours, calm down and read some other music site.

For me, Sister is the high point of their older stuff, and Murray Street the high point of their newer stuff.

My first SY album was Washing Machine when it came out in 96ish and liked it. I tried Daydream Nation next as it was usually recommended as being their best, and it didn't really work for me at all. It's one of my favorites now, but it might not be the best starting point.

Five Cornered Drone

I Heard You Looking

Flying Lesson

The Summer

Pablo and Andrea

and because five isn't enough:

The Story of Yo La Tango