In the five years between Joan Baez’s debut and her third studio album (entitled 5, on account of the 2.5 live albums also released) something strange happened in the landscape of popular music: it became marketable.
Three years ago, I was sorting through my records and said to myself, “why do I have so much Joan Baez? I haven’t even listened to these.” Realizing that there were many other records I also hadn’t played. I started this very blog, anticipating that it’d take me about a year to get through my 400 piece collection. I was wrong, and it’s taken me three years to get to the very discography that inspired the project in the first place.
In the beginning of the 21st century, I was in a post hardcore band with some high school friends. The three of us had some pretty different tastes–I had a strong bias toward melodic emo like Further Seems Forever and the Juliana Theory, Travis’ tastes were for almost purely punk bands like Flogging Molly and Against Me, and Seth had a soft spot for nu-metal a mile wide. But there was one album that none of us could get enough of: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 by Coheed and Cambria. This disc joined Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance and Thursday’s War All the Time to form the triumvirate of albums we all played on repeat.
About nine years ago, a Pedro the Lion fanatic named Calvin added me on MySpace because I looked a little like Aaron Weiss from mewithoutYou (this is true). We became friends through many an AIM chat (nine years ago, remember?) where we discovered that we were both songwriters with a penchant for emo-tinged acoustic music. I was striking out on a solo project after the dissolution of my high school post-hardcore band, he had just started playing Bazan-esque tunes under the name The Foxery. Over time, the Foxery added members and influences until this year when they got signed to Spartan Records and released the emo record of the year, which is no small task in the year that brought the emo revival no one knew we needed.
A few weeks back I was trying to sell my Sigur Ros box set and someone in a vinyl forum on Facebook inquired about it. The price was too high, but he said, “since you like post rock so much, you should check out EF.”
So I hopped on Spotify and gave it a listen.
Even if he lived to be a hundred, the world never would have been ready for Jimi Hendrix’s death. He certainly wasn’t, as this unfinished album contained some of his most poignant statements.
At this point in time, the biggest question I ask about anything the Antlers could release is “will it get me to stop listen to Undersea?” And four tracks though it was, that extended play was one of the most beautiful records released in 2012, and it remains a fixture on my turntable. So when the mood strikes for the Antlers, will anything replace its sublime wonder, or should I just play the disc I have?
“Yeah AQUALUNG,” quoth Ron Burgundy during his epic flute solo, a nod to the group’s place in rock history as “that metal band with the flute dude.” Which is a little reductive, especially considering that the flute is prominently featured exactly ZERO times in the title track. Also because Jethro Tull isn’t exactly metal.
To be completely honest, this record is the reason I’ve been procrastinating on this project. After all, I feel like I JUST did Godspell. And that’s pretty much the same thing, right?
The Jesus and Mary Chain were not the first band to turn their guitars into an onslaught of feedback and sing surprisingly sweet pop songs without affect (see also: The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Sonic Youth).
But something about JMC’s debut pricked a hole in the swelling bubble of likeminded artists that became the shoegaze scene. Continue reading