ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

so many "likes" and "unlikes"

OK word. I'm 28 and pretty much disconnected from the college crowd. I work with teenagers and DJ for and party with 21+ crowds on the reg, so I know what those sets like but college taste is p much a mystery to me at this point. Seems like they like middlebrow rappers and MGMT knockoffs a lot afaict.

― aybaybayfan (The Reverend), Friday, January 30, 2015 3:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i meant "non-indie hipsters" as we were calling them tend to have gone to college whereas "hipsters" as i have known them includes more "loser" alt-lifestyle dbags. art school the exception obvs. but yeah the avg college student in 2015 listens to like stuff you named + black keys and mumf

whos an example of a 'middlebrow rapper'?

― ciderpress, Friday, January 30, 2015 1:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

J. Cole

i like the idea that u can classify culture + subcultures and that people fit into them. i'm obsessed with the commonality of human experience lately, thinking about how everyone over estimates the uniqueness of their experience. it's kind of calming to know that we're to a large degree just acting out cultural archetypes and even the perception that we have 'free will' in something as simple as our tastes in music is misguided (that was one of my big epiphanies reading like nabisco & tim f posts as a teen). and like the role of media in all this. like thinking about how stuff i read when i was 12 or 13 years old that i can't even remember reading is now embedded in me, and in other people who read the same stuff at the same impressionable age, too. imo it's only a shitty thing to do if you keep yourself outside of it like some omniscient seeing-thru-your-bullshit snob. i'm as much a "type" as any of the people i'm sorting, its kind of cool & freeing to admit it

like obvs don't lose sight of the magic & uniqueness of everyday human experience. but also don't mistake one for the other?

otm

I don't got no type

Bad Brains is the only band that I like

Great band out of that scene that is awesome but no one outside of Minneapolis or Albini & Cory Rusk love is Arcwelder
― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I saw Arcwelder many times. Some great shows in the hot, stinky basement of the Speedboat Gallery in St. Paul, and $3 shows at the Uptown Bar in Mpls. Babes In Toyland, The Bastards, Run Westy Run, Rifle Sport, Walt Mink, all the Amphetamine Reptile bands like Cows, Hammerhead, Janitor Joe, Melvins (we booked them to play outside our student union and they were game!) and visiting Aussies Lubricated Goat and Cosmic Psychos. When I moved to Chicago, Touch & Go bands filled that slot. The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Six Finger Satellite, Silkworm (just got this reissue - https://skwm.bandcamp.com/album/libertine). My bread and butter for live shows in the early 90s. We just called them rock bands.

ha xp

I know people are mainly thinking of much different bands, mainly from the 00s, when they set up these indie straw dogs. If only I could stuff a bunch of folks in this forum in a time machine and see some of the shows I did like Dog Faced Hermans, early Fugazi shows, Jesus Lizard and others above, and witness firsthand how demented, funny, sometimes frightening, and fresh and original these bands were.

i don't get the connection between babymetal and farrah at all

they seem like the requisite troll-placements of their respective years. not that i don't unironically enjoy both.

Fastnbulbous OTM. The live music experience is not appreciated or discussed much on this forum it is true.

http://www.indyweek.com/binary/06e2/indy-logo-sq-fb.png
GAH. THE HORROR.

http://www.empireonline.com/images/features/100greatestcharacters/photos/6.jpg
This man ruined my life.

@ everything, it's understandable though, as it's hard to translate in writing. What little video footage there is doesn't really do the experiences justice. I'd love decent footage of moments like my friend Glenn literally banging his head against Donita Sparks' (L7) guitar, He Who Shall Not Be Named (Dwarves) whacking a heckler with his guitar, penis flopping about.

seeing bands live is rockist

Great lost upthread, flopson

*post

Yeah flopson doing god's work

When I think of 'indie' I think if the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, which is the first music I remember being described as such. Think it's pretty mad how now it seems to mean something so different in places like ILM.

cuz they came up earlier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzf7h3AR8Iw&t=1m43s

― lag∞n, Friday, January 30, 2015 12:12 PM (5 hours ago)

indie rock, iirc

this whole discussion should probably be on some indie thread but w/e, some history

my (US) pantheon for this type of stuff (n.b. I am 48) from 92-95 was Pavement, Sebadoh, & Unrest. Almost nobody outside of Ohio had heard about GBV until late 93 or 94, I saw them play a free show downtown in the summer of 93 and there were < 20 people. Sebadoh's "Gimme Indie Rock" had come out in 1991, and in my mind is still the most high profile use of the term.

It's funny now in retrospect to think about the 88-91 era, what I think of as the grunge years as opposed to the post-Nirvana alt-rock that the word came to describe. Mudhoney, Dinosaur, Pussy Galore, SY. The only traces of 90's indie were the first few releases by Drag City (Pavement's Demolition Plot 7", first two Royal Trux singles), the very early Sebadoh records, and Unrest's 2 albums for Caroline which were very different than their work w/Bridget Cross. Go back even earlier and you get college rock or whatever, another antecedent.

and then somehow from the late 90's where Sebadoh and GBV and Pavement were all the rage, we get this kinda thing that ppl touched on earlier

a major faction of non hipster indies in 2015 is like ppl who got into indie circa cute woodsy bearded lumbersexual picnic in a meadow animal-themed band names circa mid 00's but couldn't get down with the ensuing trends. (flopson)

I started to turn on indie rock when postrock became a thing, but I began to antagonize indie rock and indie rock fans when Death Cab and Rilo Kiley and Sufjan and Oberst became the inescapable leaders. (Johnny Fever)

so it seems to me like even the musical signifiers have mutated and changed, and that the word is just some free floating cultural signifier. I dunno.

I'm deliberately leaving out the whole pigfucker/AmRep/Dog Faced Hermans/The Ex/Fugazi/whatever thing because I don't think it was ever really "indie" in fact probably kinda hostile to the term. I mean, I love all of that stuff, but I see it as it's own thing, much more punk rock related as in sweaty basement shows or whatever.

Confused by what flopson was saying in that quote.

I liked the freak folk thing in 2005. I was a big fan of Animal Collective and the one Devendra album I had. it was interesting and refreshing until that style started getting co opted and flattened out by things like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver before eventually becoming a default style that gets played on car adverts.

yah I think FE coined it? xp

― brain floss mix (sleeve), Friday, January 30, 2015 3:16 PM (3 hours ago)

Actually I read somewhere that Christgau came up w the term 'pigfuck'

that was hobbies

not sure i recognize the indie rock landscape described itt. ime, most major cities have a healthy, showgoing indie rock subculture dedicated to high-energy freakouts in small spaces. its local taste & character probably draws on and crosses over with garage rock, punk, hc, metal, noise and artmusic, but remains distinct and tacitly punk-oppositional. bands from these scenes rarely become super popular, but many thrive for quite a while in the niche. until a couple years ago, when i moved to siberia, i was still hooked in with, listening to and going out to see a lot of what i'd call indie rock: oh sees, ty segall, pissed jeans, deerhoof, oneida, wooden shjips, metz, tyvek, etc. that's still the essence of indie rock to me: loud yet accessible noise delivered in a small room delivered to an audience of nerds.

^ well, wasn't sure i recognized it prior to sleeve's last (excellent) post. lol, i'm sure i've run a similar breakdown at least five time on this site.

that's still the essence of indie rock to me: loud yet accessible noise delivered in a small room delivered to an audience of nerds.

a CIA black site

flopson otm re: types

it's always fun figuring out your taste against the backdrop of an archetype, seeing where you cleave to it and where you don't. and seeing where you're perfectly happy to be that archetype vs watching out for the danger of getting calcified in it (the latter especially with people getting older)

types

subcultures

genres

memories

vibes

albums

songs

friends

ipods

retweets

carles

Yeah flopson doing god's work
--Tim F

flopson otm re: types

it's always fun figuring out your taste against the backdrop of an archetype, seeing where you cleave to it and where you don't. and seeing where you're perfectly happy to be that archetype vs watching out for the danger of getting calcified in it (the latter especially with people getting older)
--lex pretend

aw :) love u guys

sometimes i do actually realise that i am becoming quite boring and that's when I am thankful for the people who say the things i want to say but less tiresomely than the way I would put it

I did notice that 9 out of the 25 albums I voted for were made by middle-aged women and briefly wondered whether that was me getting old and calcified but then I realised no one else, old or young, is much repping for those middle-aged women so it's more down to patriarchy

Of course you've repped for a few middle-aged men as well (Cohen, Waits)

(also Quik duh)

I like to think of myself as being untied to any scene or genre. But that all gets thrown into sharp relief come EOY when I realise I've listened to naff all metal, barely any hip hop and even less r'n'b and pop this year, despite really enjoying these genres when the time comes to hearing them. I started subscribing to Wire two years ago, so among other things it's shaped my listening landscape a lot more than top 40 radio.

Being untied to scenes and genres is exactly what would cause you to lose touch with them

dog latin maybe it's time you started following those scenes then. Every year you say you are disconnected but never try to alter that!