"The extent to which [The Smiths] were funny actually diminished their impact: it made Morrissey loveable, but it made the music easy to live with, deprived of its edge. Compare The Smiths with Throwing Muses. Both Morrissey and Kristin Hersh work with and within the flux of adolescence — the vacillation between agoraphobia and claustrophobia, possibility and constraint, the feeling that one's body, and the cultural meanings attributed to it, are a cage.

"Morrissey crystallizes that flux, turns it into couplets, quips, aphorisms, insights, a wisdom we can draw comfort from. Hersh reproduces that fraught flux, her voice is flux. The Smiths are a synopsis of pain, a resolution — awkwardness and alienation ennobled, given poise. Hersh is the presence of pain, of falling apart; her voice, the intolerable stress it inflicts on the words, is the sound of inconsolable wrestling with the insoluble. The difference is between commentary and embodying, identification and voyeurism. It’s the reason why The Smiths are more powerful as a pop institution, and why Throwing Muses are more powerful as art."

—From "The Smiths: A Eulogy" by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, September 1987. Debatable, I know, but interesting nonetheless. :)

Very debatable now with the gift of hindsight. But certainly interesting. Definitely interesting that Throwing Muses were named in the same breath as The Smiths. I feel like they (talking Muses here) never quite received the amount of love they deserved. Sure, cult following and everything, plus some exposure through good reviews here and there. But compare that to the massive following and adoration the Smiths have acquired over the years and it is night and day. That said, I do like me some Smiths every now and then, despite Morrisey being a reactionary douchebag.

OK, NOW we're cooking with gas! Five-star, A+, 10/10, you name it. :cool:

At work listening to Wolf Eyes

Fabulous Diamonds - Plain Songs
Aussie duo Fabulous Diamonds had an impeccable string of albums from 2008-2012 and then promptly disappeared off the map for the next seven years. This year they return on UK indie ALTER with a new LP and a bigger vision of their dub-glossed damage. Back when they were slinging discs on Siltbreeze and Nervous Jerk, the band was itching at the same wound that like-minded howlers Blues Control and Peaking Lights found themselves infected with. There was a faded, pre-dawn quality to the music, tumbling down a wormhole of disorientation and delirium and then bounced through the spring reverb within an inch of its life. They’re still not wholly dislodged from that mindset, but Plain Songs feels like someone bottled their sound and terraformed it into a seething organism — bigger, smarter, and more alive than ever.

There’s still the evil slink of tape hiss, but it doesn’t feel like a vehicle of necessity this time. There’s no Tascam noose pulled tight on their sound, rather singer Nisa Venerosa feels like she’s piping her humid vocals through six feet of imported wet topsoil, recording them with an expensive array of contact mics and condensers threaded throughout the room for total coverage. The underbelly of their sound is still haunted by noise, but, again it’s come to some of the logical conclusions of what they were setting up prior. There’s a dingy, collapsed-society, ‘end-stage capitalism devouring the tail’ kind of feeling on this one.

The corrosion here is more of a viral creep than a means to an end. They’ve embodied the spirit of a lounge act poisoned by years of exposure to heavy metals and carcinogens — giving their disease flight through sound, spreading it through the narrow alleyways of an unrepentant reality. They are the cure and the carrier. They’ve finally gone through the lens and into a Lynchian sound that’s as full as they deserve to be and it’s so good to have this pair back, finding the bile that flows through the night wanderers’s souls and giving it a home on two-inch tape. - Raven Sings the Blues
https://fabulousdiamonds.bandcamp.com/album/plain-songs

Good album. She's my favorite....I was lucky to see her perform in Tokyo with the pianist from Urbangarde(I forgot his name, but he is really talented) EDIT: Kei Ohkubo! I had to look it up.

Some mofuckin' RUINHORSE



https://youtu.be/5uiGzXFkRug

Getting back into Sonic Youth bootlegs - starting with 1993-03-05.

I know I know this is the wrong forum, but this new Justin Biber video is astonishing.


Anyway, I was listening to Golden Earring just now. They exist since 1961(!), and since 1970(!!!) in the same line-up, the same four guys. Some oddities:
- the bassist was once asked to join the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he declined
- both Radar Love (1973) and Twilight Zone (1982) were made sort of as a farewell song, each time they were on the verge of breaking up but both became such smash hits that they decided to stick together


I've never listened to them really, at least no full albums. This is my favourite song, and especially it's video: When The Lady Smiles (1984). This video was banned in the USA by MTV which sort of ruined their US tour, and is probably NSFW especially if you work in a church :) Very impressive video when I saw it first, as a 12 year old...

My new favourite however is this Byrds cover they did in 1969, a stunning 19 minute long version of Eight Miles High. Savage Clone will most probably like it too
This Winterland 1975 full concert is pretty cool too, check out the guitar solo of Vanilla Queen for instance

Nice! And yeah they have a hugely long career and a ton of records with a surprisingly good amount of deep cuts. I really like the one on Moontan called "Are You Receiving Me."
Thanks for the hot tips. I'll check them out.

The Feelies - CBGB's, December 14, 1977. Bitchen take on Eno's "Third Uncle" and the fastest cover of The Stooges' "Real Cool Time" I've ever heard.

There will be a new remix of R.E.M's Monster album, released tomorrow(?). Over here you can compare 30 second clips of the original version with the remix. Overall, I think I would still prefer the original, but I really liked that album anyway. There's a couple of songs I really don't like in the remixed version, especially the added guitars in e.g. Crush With Eyeliner, and the missing organ in Let Me In.
I think the only song I like in both versions and that are not mixed in the same way is "You".




I'll put on some Colorado now, let's hope it's a good one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqXqPhqb9hM

https://clairemsinger.bandcamp.com/album/solas-3
if you have 25:57 minutes to spare and a pair of headphones, spend it on the last track on this album
(thanks for reminding Soup)



And I'm liking the new Neil Young album, apart from maybe one track. It's very moving, but that's probably because of this documentary I watched yesterday evening about older couples with long lasting relationships of which the woman had Alzheimer in various stages.

I reminded you of Claire M. Singer? Because of the Organ Reframed BitTorrent repost? :confused:

indeed
one more reason to forget

damn damn damn....

It's good eh?