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Toss a few albums in the air...


historicrocker

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My keyboard quit working for a while for who knows what reason, but I had a few thoughts during the process of mousing around my music library. I downloaded some of the new albums of this year, including Cassadaga by Bright Eyes and I thought I'd just say a few things.

Anyhow, this morning's been solely for enjoying Rilo Kiley's new album and I have to say despite all your (I mean generally) sell-out comments that are two a penny, this is to me the usual Rilo Kiley with a bright new twist. Less steeped in melancholy like the last few albums (though that was never such a bad thing), the new album allows the horns and vocals to fly through the clouds and have kept me bouncing on my bed all afternoon until I realised that the wood might break. Special mention must go to "Smoke Detector" which I think is fantastic since it less objectifies Jenny Lewis as this perfect image. She's just somebody looking for a good time and sometimes the blacklights and the smoky back areas in night clubs get to her. And it's fun, just really fun. I just like that the album is no longer fixated upon being somewhere and looking outside. It's being everywhere and looking all around. That's what it feels like, and it feels good. And Jenny's new country-esque vocals I think are trully lovely.

Bright Eyes, I love as well. I first listened to them in the form of Fevers and Mirrors which I made the surprising discovery would capture the attentions of the rest of my school entirely. I preferred I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning though. And I think that with Lua and Handle Me With Care on Jenny Lewis' solo album really inspired the new Cassadaga album. Spent many a time walking home listening to Four Winds and just remarking on how completely different all that sound is. And it's wonderful. Lime Tree is this beautiful and soothing piece, and none of the songs seem to keep you in one place, just let you float past and not get too involved in all the meaning. It's better like that.

I could go on but I thought I'd just toss all this up and out of my thoughts so that I can fall asleep more content.

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This is a convoluted part which tends to mean (depending on how I'm feeling when I explain) that I didn't quite like Fevers and Mirrors half as much as everybody else I gave it to did. It was suprising though, because everybody makes the mistake of thinking that the music that they listen to is so intimately kept aside that a wide scale of popularity would be quite unexpected. That's what I meant, although it was put pretty basically and I can't say I was going out of my way to make much sense. I do like to think that everybody can enjoy a musician's work on some level, just like when I was watching my old flatmate watch an entire two hours of the Arcade Fire on television after me spending three years in the past enjoying them when they were not so well known. It was kind of satisfying, if patronising. The music industry seems to anticipate the exhaustive trends of pop music in order to make a big sell on an indie record and get massive credentials. I have no idea why I had to bring any of that up. Your comment must have made me first quite indignant and then argumentative. I don't know why they follow one another but they do.

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Whilst I was cleaning the hob in the kitchen I wondered how it would seem less like I was agreeing with you and more like I was sticking to my original comment. I was meaning in my initial post how the music industry is quite opportunistic and when the general pop music sound gets too grating and something new breaks through (consider how little albums like Up The Bracket and Funeral originally sold under the Rough Trade label), then their reputations received massive and resounding response several years later. The music industry is not solely record companies, but the industries that help to promote record companies as well, including big time magazines and television shows. All I was trying to say is how over time something manages to come along (like a film like Napoleon Dynamite in terms of film) that is not so ordinary and gets everybody buzzing around it. And it may have been that before then there was not a little dedication but very sincere at that in following these not so popular items of culture. I used the Funeral example because it seemed like everybody would understand quite what I meant.

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Whilst I was cleaning the hob in the kitchen I wondered how it would seem less like I was agreeing with you and more like I was sticking to my original comment. I was meaning in my initial post how the music industry is quite opportunistic and when the general pop music sound gets too grating and something new breaks through (consider how little albums like Up The Bracket and Funeral originally sold under the Rough Trade label), then their reputations received massive and resounding response several years later. The music industry is not solely record companies, but the industries that help to promote record companies as well, including big time magazines and television shows. All I was trying to say is how over time something manages to come along (like a film like Napoleon Dynamite in terms of film) that is not so ordinary and gets everybody buzzing around it. And it may have been that before then there was not a little dedication but very sincere at that in following these not so popular items of culture. I used the Funeral example because it seemed like everybody would understand quite what I meant.

But, Funeral and Up The Bracket sold loads of records! Of course the music industry is opportunistic, most if not all industries are. I can't think of any TV Shows (in the UK, since we're talking about Rough Trade and not their US labels) which would have had their reputations boosted pre-Neon Bible. Sure, magazines hyped the band up, etc, but that's what magazines do with ordinary, sub ordinary, and extraordinary bands, films, events, anything. All you seem to be saying is that there are some things which get released, which you like, and so do some aspects of the music/film industry. A bit of a non-point, really. In fact, without said industries, I'd be surprised if you would have heard of The Arcade Fire or Napoleon Dynamite.

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