Rock Music - let's be honest

[mms]

I've been exploring and massively enjoying Fugazi's later albums recently. If more current rock was like this I'd be genuinely interested. Given how many supposedly 'punk' or Gang of Four influenced groups there are around who are just piss poor, I'm surprised Fugazi weren't bigger. But sadly they're on 'indefinite hiatus' these days, so that leaves no rock bands for me to like. Actually, I might explore other current acts on the Dischord label.

if you are going to check discord stuff - check Nation of Ulysses, fantastic, good music with better concepts. the band makeup who followed them were arguably better too,quite naturally by taking in elements of foreign pop etc into their punk music.
Fugazi and that all grew thru and out of hardcore, its not like they were coopting anything really they were genuinley fairly revolutionary at least in the eyes of the hardcore youth.

Nation of Ulysses and their 'ideals' even more so. Like dressing well, being polite and having good grammar.

 

[Leo]

liars are one of the few bands that i love unconditionally, still buy their new things on sight. loved the last record. same goes for oneida. on a noisy tip, the pissed jeans cd "shallow" is a mess, and a wonderful one at that.

but my fav contemporay bangin' art-damaged (everyone describes their sound as "angular") band are the AFrames from seattle, and their loopier, slightly less rockin' offshoot the intelligence. first two AFrames albums are on a small label and hard to find but worth getting. their third album is on subpop, good but prefer the first two.

 

[matt b]

if you are going to check discord stuff - check Nation of Ulysses

fantastic band. awesome live too.
also go and find lungfish

recent(ish) dischord stuff that's good: medications and Q not U



re: OM- 'at giza' on conference of the birds is the best 'stoner rock' songs of the 21st century and therefore probably one of the few worth listening to. transcendental.

'pleasant'? mmmmmm

 

[petergunn]

Vaz is the only rock band i regularly check for that i think is doing something new and interesting with the form... like Lightning Bolt, with SONGS...

 

[gek-opel]

re: OM- 'at giza' on conference of the birds is the best 'stoner rock' songs of the 21st century and therefore probably one of the few worth listening to. transcendental.

'pleasant'? mmmmmm

I guess its just a matter of perspective, but I don't understand the massive praise this is getting. Its a nicely recorded piece, its extremely pleasant to listen to, but it doesn't do anything new, besides take stoner rock to a place very close to early pink floyd. I listened to it once and thought "That was nice- perfectly nice, in fact. However, I have no need to ever experience that again, it will yield nothing further."

 

[matt b]

well, i loved sleep, and OM sound just like sleep, but more grown up. true its nothing new in the great scheme of things, but it is a bit different in terms of genre.

'conference of the birds' re-pays repeated listening at high volume.
being battered not required

 

[Dunninger]

Vaz is the only rock band i regularly check for that i think is doing something new and interesting with the form... like Lightning Bolt, with SONGS...

Yay! These 2 guys played in Hammerhead (classic early 90s Amphetamine Reptile noiserock), good stuff. Another great noiserock band with an ex-Hammerhead member is Todd. The sheer physicality of seeing a band like this play live is something I haven't found in any other music yet.
Interestingly this guy (Craig Clouse) also plays in Shit and Shine (really messy garbled noise fun), who played Sonar festival last year which is kind of odd, but from what I hear people loved it. But it shows that the interesting stuff in rock only happens at the fringes.

 

[gumdrops]

i dont exactly consider myself an authority on rock but i thought TVOTR were quite progressive with their first EP and first album. to my ears, they seemed to regress a bit by taking the standard, or more standard (compared to before) trad-band format for the most recent album but all the critics seem to love it. its pretty boring to me though. much preferred when they sounded more electronic.

 

[gek-opel]

Yeah, the only tracks on the latest TVOTR album which were any good were "I was a Lover" and the haunting Beach Boys chorale sounding one. Very disappointing, I thought given the potential of the debut (ie- it didn't sound great, but unlike much indie rock it was a mess of ideas, most of them not quite working yet, but which were full of future possibilities and new intersections not yet exploited).

 

[gek-opel]

I believe its from 1999 but I've really been enjoying Corrupted's "Llenandose de Gusanos", the titanic Spanish language art-doom metal masterpiece "Sangre/Humanos"... a 50 minute piece that moves from chilling minimal piano shapes to massively over the top slow as sludge downtuned guitar and bass chords and trudging breeze-block heavy drums, then builds in synths and choirs along with guttural Spanish beast vocalising, before returning to the piano at the end.

 

[gumdrops]

Yeah, the only tracks on the latest TVOTR album which were any good were "I was a Lover" and the haunting Beach Boys chorale sounding one. Very disappointing, I thought given the potential of the debut (ie- it didn't sound great, but unlike much indie rock it was a mess of ideas, most of them not quite working yet, but which were full of future possibilities and new intersections not yet exploited).

i think theyre done with the sound of the first one though, i think the 'proper' rock sound they have now is whats going to be their sound from here, sadly. shame cos they sounded much fresher before. as a live band on record i find them quite leaden/heavy handed/over laboured, but then maybe thats the idea.

i loved the last two liars records, esp their 2nd one - which incidentally was also produced by dave sitek from TVOTR (not been into many of his recent productions though - celebration, the beck remix or the TVOTR album, they sound pretty boring, and the beck remix sounded like something from mo wax in 96).

arent mars volta considered forward thinking in modern rock?

 

[gek-opel]

Yeah, I mean even the guitars sound less interesting than on the debut, where they frequently felt into spaces occupied by shoegazers and the like (exception: "I Was a Lover" which actually takes the aesthetic further into almost noise rock guitars, along with the jumble of drum machines and samples-- functioning as a kind of apotheosis of everything attempted on their first EP and album...). Another problem is the live drumming, which removes the intriguing lo-fi drum machine feel of before, which if developed presented lots of interesting potential crosscurrents with other genres. But yes, leaden is a pretty accurate description of the kind of dull-rock on "Return to Cookie Mountain"... which also, weirdly felt more "white" than the stuff on "Desperate Youth..." which had fantastic tracks like "The wrong way" with all those looped up saxophones giving a sort of afro-post punk blues ambience which felt like another possible direction to travel in.

 

[minikomi]

argh yes!

couldnt agree more about drummers

i tend to be drawn to bands who use a very steady, hypnotic and skilled bass/guitar skeleton and vocals and guitars to build up and break down...

similar, i guess, to whats pricking my ears up to minimal techno these days

off minor, nine days wonder, my disco... were some who were doing it for me a few years back when i was still listening . . dont know about what their output is like now or who else to check but if you can dig a bit back into these guys you might find something you like

 

[Tactics]

rock isn't dead

f*** that - most music I listen to is by 'rock' bands

ppl jus like complaining...aaaaaaaall the time

if no-one's complaining around you, stop what your doing...and run

some interesting points though in terms of rhythm section being more important that ppl think (the drummer in Bloc Party helps that group keep moving) but I did think this was a standard notion...I remember the lead of Urusei Yatsura (R.I.P) saying something good about this some time ago

anyway didn't woebot (I can't remember his name) get it right when he wrote in that free mag that Prog was the way forward (or a 'Prog' mindset) across all genres?

 

[gek-opel]

Perhaps he means everything should be more like Gentle sodding Giant (no offence to Woebot)....? No thanks.

Um re: Bloc Party, the thing which made their first album (in some parts) actually not as bad as one might imagine was the drummer who was pretty perverse, deliberately drumming at twice the tempo or whatever... tho from what I've heard that kind of behaviour has been somewhat excised from their sophomore slumping follow-up (I'm having another moan here, aren't I...)

 

[Tactics]

(I'm having another moan here, aren't I...)

yes

 

[nomadologist]

i'm not complaining, i just happen not to like most new rock

 

[mistersloane]

I believe its from 1999 but I've really been enjoying Corrupted's "Llenandose de Gusanos", the titanic Spanish language art-doom metal masterpiece "Sangre/Humanos"... a 50 minute piece that moves from chilling minimal piano shapes to massively over the top slow as sludge downtuned guitar and bass chords and trudging breeze-block heavy drums, then builds in synths and choirs along with guttural Spanish beast vocalising, before returning to the piano at the end.

I'd really like to hear that. Tryin to find a sample of it now but their website isn;t COMPLYING TO MY NEEDS.

What I like about OM - and Rays of the Sun/To The Shrinebuilder on particular - is that it's deliberately dumb. I wish more bands would learn how to be dumb, and that I don't require anything more from them other than their utter dedication to being dumb, dumb, dumb. I don't want more time changes, I don't want clever clever, I want a riff from God that goes on forever without ever turning into a song or being ruined by a singer over emphasising a point. It's fuckin hard to do.

 

[shudder]

@ Leo: tell me about Oneida. I saw them a few years back open for (local heroes) the Constantines in the t dot, and they didn't do much for me (of course, I wasn't into psych-y pounding rhythms at the time).

Also, where do I start with Liars? Which album is best?

 

[petergunn]

Yay! These 2 guys played in Hammerhead (classic early 90s Amphetamine Reptile noiserock), good stuff.

in general, i feel that genre ("am rep noise rock") is the last time rock did anything really really interesting...

that's just me, tho...