Thursday, March 10, 2011

'Best' new music

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do if I’m going to post all my stuff that’s been running lately at Blurt. First off, I got the new issue in the mail yesterday, and it looks really nice, despite the fact that it continues the worship for P.J. Harvey’s awful Let England Shake. (She’s on the cover.)

I’ve got a few things in the magazine, reviews of Eleventh Dream Day and Six Organs of Admittance, interviews with Cave Singers and Explosions in the Sky. I’ll probably link some of this up soon, but for now, here are reviews of two “best new music” albums that I didn’t like nearly as much as some people.

Cut Copy’s Zonoscope…where I noted that “You get the sense that a lot of polish has been applied to surfaces that just aren't very substantial.” More




Toro Y Moi’s Underneath the Pine…which I liked a bit more, but still found kind of light in the tail, observing, “Underneath the Pine wreathes delicate little melodies and fleeting thoughts in a haze of 1970s funk-psych-soul pheromones, so that even the most calorie-free sentiments achieve the heft of sensuality. To say that Underneath the Pine is heavier on style than substance is to miss the point. Its glossy, glassy style is so extreme as to become the substance.”

More

“Still Sound”


I have this very amorphous theory about how a generation whose main social interaction occurs through FaceBook and Twitter may not be equipped to handle actual human emotions, and so, seeks out diluted, plasticized versions of them in music and other arts…but it’s probably all bullshit.

3 comments:

Ian said...

Well, if it's not, all that means is that you're going to see some sort of super-intense backlash in the near-ish future, I'd bet.

....why do I have this sudden urge to listen to Xiu Xiu?

Unknown said...

Hey, I like that theory. But that probably just means I'm over 30.

jenniferpkelly said...

Well, I guess my alternative was that I've lost my ear...much better to blame those damned kids, don't you think?

Queue Swans