Jimmy E's Music List Mania

For an introduction, see the "Best of 2008" entry. Battles - Mirrored I find it difficult to describe exactly what it is about rock bands that aren't straightforward, especially without using the word "quirky". Quirk-rock, how's that for a genre name? Anyway, what are some words and phrases I can use for Battles? Experimental. Keyboards. Maths? Odd sounds. Off-kilter. A drummer who is a machine in a man's body and yet wears a collared shirt to play gigs (Mike Portnoy and Danny Carey wear vests, but then the old jazz drummers wore full suits back in the day.) If it's a successful experiment does that mean it's not an experiment anymore? This is not beautiful music to shed a tear to late at night, but it is jolly good fun to listen to, especially with others. Between the Buried and Me - Colors I've quoted it before and I'll quote it again, but BTBAM are the "thinking person's hardcore band". Hardcore because it has...

Nostalgia's big right now. Has been for a while. But I'm quite a nostalgic person anyway. With mixed results - replaying old Zelda games (Ocarina onwards) rarely fails to bring me pleasure, and I even enjoyed Wind Waker and Majora's Mask more the second time through, but then as good as Breath of the Wild was, it didn't ultimately feel like a Zelda game to me and I wouldn't rate it in my top few. And I have a bit of a weird thing about Christmas, daydreaming about it from Spring onwards, being really sad when it's over, never quite enjoying it as much as I wanted to, or did when I was a materialist little child in the snow. I keep a few traditions - munching my way through all the Christmas sandwiches, the Radio Times double issue, celebrity University Challenge, a ritual listen of AFI's the Art of Drowning (even when it doesn't snow) and Tool's Lateralus (a Christmas present from my sister), rewatches of The Nightmare Before Christmas (no explanatio...

Normally when I write these things I take a good few hours, get through a good amount of beer or wine, and have a jolly good ramble. This year I’m going to keep it short(er) and make even less of an effort to come up with common themes and write in anything other than lists. Disappointments I’m not going to prattle on about what I found disappointing, except to say while on the new A Perfect Circle record, Eat the Elephant, Maynard James Keenan’s vocal performance is incredible throughout, there isn’t much else to what appears to be their young adult contemporary piano album. A big exception to this is the track By And Down The River, a rerecording of older track By And Down. This song actually has some guitar in it, and it is fascinating to listen to the two versions side by side to hear how Maynard does the vocals differently. While I like the new Deafheaven (Ordinary Corrupt Human Love) a lot, especially the song Glint, they don’t really have the same impact...

In 2017, the girlf and I have reconciled with the strong likelihood that I love music more than her. Having debated the point for almost three years, I think we’ve finally come to accept it. Then again, “first the worst”... goodness knows what my third love would be, with a hairy chest. Nevertheless, 2017 is the year I stopped buying CDs. My favourites, and smaller artists I feel an urge to support, I still did, but not in general nor particularly to check out new stuff. So vinyls and Spotify it has been, the first world double edged sword of the latter being saving money vs the “too many boxsets” style stress of listening to twice as much new music (over 170 new albums streamed vs the last few years’ c. 80-90 purchased CDs) and not being able to give it little of it more than a cursory spin or two. I have still managed to arbitrarily whittle it down to a top few (several), and in trying to come up with unifying themes I would say two things. One is that there has perhaps been a sens...