oilandbatteries

2012-11-20

A List of Rec’d 2012 Albums I Quickly Made For Someone Who Doesn’t Like Rap or Dance Much

LOUDISH ROCK
Japandroids — Celebration Rock*
Ty Segall — Slaughterhouse
Ty Segall — Twins
Tame Impala — Lonerism
Cloud Nothings — Attack on Memory
Django Django – S/T
Jack White — Blunderbuss
Screaming Females — Ugly
Bob Mould — Silver Age

FOLKY/ROOTSY
Mark Eitzel — Don’t Be a Stranger
The Mynabirds — Generals
Fiona Apple — the Idler Wheel*
Sharon Van Etten — Tramp
The Magnetic Fields — Love at the Bottom of the Sea
First Aid Kit — The Lion’s Roar

ELECTRONIC
Todd Terje — Love is The Drug (Roxy Music Remix)* [Single]
Matthew Dear — Beams [Album]
Korallreven — An Album By Korallreven [Airy, Balearic electronica]
Chromatics — Kill For Love [Single]
Tanlines — Mixed Emotions [Album]

OTHER
Mati Zundel — Amazonico Gravitante* [electronic cumbia-folk from Argentina, amazing]
Frank Ocean — Channel Orange* [R&B/Pop artist of the year probably]
Bat For Lashes — Haunted Man [dark, electronic pop]
Kendrick Lamar — good kid, mAAd city [rap album of the year]
Dirty Projectors — Swing Lo Magellan [art rock]

2012-06-06

Fears About the Future of Music in Affluent S.F.

From a new piece I wrote for All Shook Down:

These bougies-in-training will want events to practice their conspicuous consumption, whether on food, booze, music, or all at the same time. And they’ll get it at events like Noisette. This kind of high-minded consumerism — fun as it is — will become the norm, even more than it already has. So while it was once a respite for low-income creatives and real deviants, who would pay $5 or $10 to go a show or a party (at the Eagle Tavern, or Annie’s Social Club, or Kimo’s, remember those?), swill cheap whiskey, and watch something freaky and loud until early in the morning, San Francisco will slowly become one big pork-belly party, an amusement park for well-off residents to discover some new consumer good to become picky over, or for bridge-and-tunnel types to visit on the weekend, go to an overpriced club, and meet a hookup. Big concerts will draw kids from the ‘burbs paying $50 or more a head. They’ll never believe they could be rich enough to actually live here.

The freaks and creatives won’t go too far — they’ll go to Oakland, where there’s much more space, at much lower cost. The kinds of reckless energy that powered San Francisco music from the ’60s through the ’90s will trickle away, as much of it has already. And the city will be worse for it.

2012-06-05

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips’s new album is ravishing and I’ve listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.

— Dave Eggers, in a 2000 interview with the Harvard Advocate.

Start as close to the end as possible.

— Vonnegut