The Last Dinner Party’s ‘Prelude To Exctasy’ scratches an itch in my brain. ‘Nothing Matters’ is a song I will happily scream in my car every morning until I pass away. Like play it at my funeral. Same with Omar Apollo’s ‘God Said No’ and Leon Bridges new work.
As always it sounds better on LP than a streaming service. There’s something about having to work that little bit harder to get your music that just makes a truely lovable album even better <3
Like Emma, I think this year it's been Lola Young - and I had Mannequin Pussy on high rotate for a while (especially after I picked it up on vinyl).
I discovered TesseracT back in 2021 and their album Sonder was like a bolt out of the blue; I still listen to it in full at least once a fortnight. Sleep Token are another one; I heard their album Take Me Back To Eden last year and fell in love instantly.
I do find, though, that the albums I listen to in full and love from start to finish are generally older; its things like Radiohead's In Rainbows or Soundgarden's Superunknown or Deftones' Around The Fur. So maybe you're mostly right that its harder to do nowadays. Maybe ask me in 5 years and we'll see if I'm still listening to TesseracT and Sleep Token and Lola Young.
Or maybe it will take longer for those albums to come back around? I find you can listen to those albums from 20 years ago with fresh ears, and hear new things in them (especially on vinyl) and the 90s is huge now anyway. But that's a very long time back and perhaps it's hard to imagine we'll have nostalgia for the 2020-2025 era but it will definitely happen. (#bratsummer2045 haha)
I would say it is still very possible, but maybe occurs less due to the ease of streaming now – but maybe that’s because streaming is *almost* all I know. You have to want to listen to full albums, and have the time and patience for it I guess.
I grew up with parents that had a very health music collection and I was always allowed/encouraged to pick and choose CDs to play. Then as I got older I loved spending the little pocket money I had on purchasing CDs. I think Avril Lavigne was the first album I bought with my own money when I was about 8 and I thrashed it. Having had physical music to play taught me to appreciate the album as a whole, how the artist intended it. Once streaming was around when I was at high school my listening habits stayed pretty similar which probably helped. (Listening to full albums rather than random playlists).
Things I’ve really fallen in love with…
This year Lola Young’s new album, and The Last Dinner Party have been amazing. Also makes me feel like an angsty teenager which is fun for a 30yo.
Last year I thrashed Daughter’s Stereo Mind Games and Overmono - Good Lies (weird combo back to back). Spotify wrapped told me I was in the top 0.5% of listeners of Overmono which felt like an achievement!
But I have to admit, I’m still chasing the high of about 6 years ago when I discovered No Mono and Tom Snowdon’s haunting voice. Even now when I play their Islands Part 1 album it just makes me what to lie on the floor and absorb the sound. So in love!
YES! I was about to reply and say Lola Young! Its so visceral - I made a joke that I hope whoever she wrote that about is in some kind of protective custody haha! But its also so engrossing and interesting from start to finish.
Kneecap’s Fine Art is my current obsession. I’m really appreciating the amount of artests I’ve been seeing recently making their albums into a narrative
Ive had multiple falling in love with music moments this year. The most stand out album so far is Everything Must Go! By DRS. My mental health desperately, desperately needed this album when I found it.
Sitting At The Table by Voodoo Black, and Poor On purpose by Skittles were highlights too.
I think buying vinyl is a good way to get back to albums, listening to bFM and having a good crew of music mad friends who still recommend and share music outside of the algorithms helps too. I’ve got Romance by Fontaines DC on fairly high rotate in the last few weeks (which my husband won from bFM). Like many others here The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy has also become a new fave (although that came from a Discover Weekly rec on old Spotify)
"Late" to the War on Drugs party with "Pain" off A Deeper Understanding. That record and then the next one,"I Don't Live Here Anymore" just... do the thing to me.
Then seeing them live (Drugs) last year in Wellington was all the things.
I still to this day do not subscribe to any music streaming service, and do not make playlists. I advise anyone reading this to give up this practise and to simply listen to albums as intended, your taste will improve and you will become a less fickle listener. I fall in love with with every good album I hear, and I don't really hear many good albums coming out at all these days (Brat? Seriously guys? There's no listenable music on there! It's exclusively coked up rants about how it's so special to be rich and how drugs are good, performed for an audience primarily consisting largely of children on top of this).
In saying this, Jack White's new album is fantastic, and you can pick up any Antonio Carlos Jobim record and watch the days melt away. Chiquimamani Condori's album "DJ E" is a culmination of years of intense soundcraft and you won't hear anything else like it by another's hand. Ulcerate's "Cutting the Throat of God" is amazing. You can still put on "Thunder Lightening Strike!" by the Go! Team and it still sounds fresher and most vital than just about any indie band working today. While not an album, I am obsessed with Sammy Davis Jrs 1985 Berlin performance currently. The new Doris album was great, Black Moth Super Rainbow are gearing to put out the landmark record of their career, Amyl and the Sniffers are better than ever. Why would I ever put such disparate music against each other in a playlist? Seems like a horrible listen. None of this music is obscure in any sense, but it seems unlikely much of it would be sent your way on Spotify.
Just pirate heaps of music and get back into the game of it guys, who cares about this transient playlist music that you're being told to like - it is all terrible and will ruin your brain, and when you tell people that you like it they only sort of believe you because they themselves also live in this bubble of feeling obligated to listen and they don't really like it very much either. I can tell when someone has been on Spotify for years from the music they play, it's infesting the minds of musicians and making them suck bad; you can make money from there, but never, ever, ever pay for it. Brat was bad, Cowboy Carter was bad, face it guys Billie sucks too, and Lorde is at best OK. It's not a tolerable landscape for popular music right now at all from my perspective and so I advise people to divest their attention from these spaces entirely until the bigwigs come up with something legitimately interesting that has a cultural benefit.
I’ve been doing this more and more and waiting to listen to things in full on vinyl (when I can afford it). Doing this with the Jack White album - gutted he’s not coming here eh? Would be a great gig.
The Last Dinner Party’s ‘Prelude To Exctasy’ scratches an itch in my brain. ‘Nothing Matters’ is a song I will happily scream in my car every morning until I pass away. Like play it at my funeral. Same with Omar Apollo’s ‘God Said No’ and Leon Bridges new work.
As always it sounds better on LP than a streaming service. There’s something about having to work that little bit harder to get your music that just makes a truely lovable album even better <3
(Like the new Drug Church album out today!)
That’s a good one for a car scream session! I’ve got a few of those too … very cathartic eh?
Like Emma, I think this year it's been Lola Young - and I had Mannequin Pussy on high rotate for a while (especially after I picked it up on vinyl).
I discovered TesseracT back in 2021 and their album Sonder was like a bolt out of the blue; I still listen to it in full at least once a fortnight. Sleep Token are another one; I heard their album Take Me Back To Eden last year and fell in love instantly.
I do find, though, that the albums I listen to in full and love from start to finish are generally older; its things like Radiohead's In Rainbows or Soundgarden's Superunknown or Deftones' Around The Fur. So maybe you're mostly right that its harder to do nowadays. Maybe ask me in 5 years and we'll see if I'm still listening to TesseracT and Sleep Token and Lola Young.
Or maybe it will take longer for those albums to come back around? I find you can listen to those albums from 20 years ago with fresh ears, and hear new things in them (especially on vinyl) and the 90s is huge now anyway. But that's a very long time back and perhaps it's hard to imagine we'll have nostalgia for the 2020-2025 era but it will definitely happen. (#bratsummer2045 haha)
I would say it is still very possible, but maybe occurs less due to the ease of streaming now – but maybe that’s because streaming is *almost* all I know. You have to want to listen to full albums, and have the time and patience for it I guess.
I grew up with parents that had a very health music collection and I was always allowed/encouraged to pick and choose CDs to play. Then as I got older I loved spending the little pocket money I had on purchasing CDs. I think Avril Lavigne was the first album I bought with my own money when I was about 8 and I thrashed it. Having had physical music to play taught me to appreciate the album as a whole, how the artist intended it. Once streaming was around when I was at high school my listening habits stayed pretty similar which probably helped. (Listening to full albums rather than random playlists).
Things I’ve really fallen in love with…
This year Lola Young’s new album, and The Last Dinner Party have been amazing. Also makes me feel like an angsty teenager which is fun for a 30yo.
Last year I thrashed Daughter’s Stereo Mind Games and Overmono - Good Lies (weird combo back to back). Spotify wrapped told me I was in the top 0.5% of listeners of Overmono which felt like an achievement!
But I have to admit, I’m still chasing the high of about 6 years ago when I discovered No Mono and Tom Snowdon’s haunting voice. Even now when I play their Islands Part 1 album it just makes me what to lie on the floor and absorb the sound. So in love!
Some great recs in there Emma! Listening to Lola Young now and loving it...
YES! I was about to reply and say Lola Young! Its so visceral - I made a joke that I hope whoever she wrote that about is in some kind of protective custody haha! But its also so engrossing and interesting from start to finish.
Kneecap’s Fine Art is my current obsession. I’m really appreciating the amount of artests I’ve been seeing recently making their albums into a narrative
Did you see they announced a Powerstation show? I’m tempted!
Ive had multiple falling in love with music moments this year. The most stand out album so far is Everything Must Go! By DRS. My mental health desperately, desperately needed this album when I found it.
Sitting At The Table by Voodoo Black, and Poor On purpose by Skittles were highlights too.
Very keen to make my way through all of these - thanks Leilu!
I think buying vinyl is a good way to get back to albums, listening to bFM and having a good crew of music mad friends who still recommend and share music outside of the algorithms helps too. I’ve got Romance by Fontaines DC on fairly high rotate in the last few weeks (which my husband won from bFM). Like many others here The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy has also become a new fave (although that came from a Discover Weekly rec on old Spotify)
"Late" to the War on Drugs party with "Pain" off A Deeper Understanding. That record and then the next one,"I Don't Live Here Anymore" just... do the thing to me.
Then seeing them live (Drugs) last year in Wellington was all the things.
Head over heels. Arse over Tit.
Ahh that’s bliss eh - hoping for that feeling at peggy’s show next year…
I still to this day do not subscribe to any music streaming service, and do not make playlists. I advise anyone reading this to give up this practise and to simply listen to albums as intended, your taste will improve and you will become a less fickle listener. I fall in love with with every good album I hear, and I don't really hear many good albums coming out at all these days (Brat? Seriously guys? There's no listenable music on there! It's exclusively coked up rants about how it's so special to be rich and how drugs are good, performed for an audience primarily consisting largely of children on top of this).
In saying this, Jack White's new album is fantastic, and you can pick up any Antonio Carlos Jobim record and watch the days melt away. Chiquimamani Condori's album "DJ E" is a culmination of years of intense soundcraft and you won't hear anything else like it by another's hand. Ulcerate's "Cutting the Throat of God" is amazing. You can still put on "Thunder Lightening Strike!" by the Go! Team and it still sounds fresher and most vital than just about any indie band working today. While not an album, I am obsessed with Sammy Davis Jrs 1985 Berlin performance currently. The new Doris album was great, Black Moth Super Rainbow are gearing to put out the landmark record of their career, Amyl and the Sniffers are better than ever. Why would I ever put such disparate music against each other in a playlist? Seems like a horrible listen. None of this music is obscure in any sense, but it seems unlikely much of it would be sent your way on Spotify.
Just pirate heaps of music and get back into the game of it guys, who cares about this transient playlist music that you're being told to like - it is all terrible and will ruin your brain, and when you tell people that you like it they only sort of believe you because they themselves also live in this bubble of feeling obligated to listen and they don't really like it very much either. I can tell when someone has been on Spotify for years from the music they play, it's infesting the minds of musicians and making them suck bad; you can make money from there, but never, ever, ever pay for it. Brat was bad, Cowboy Carter was bad, face it guys Billie sucks too, and Lorde is at best OK. It's not a tolerable landscape for popular music right now at all from my perspective and so I advise people to divest their attention from these spaces entirely until the bigwigs come up with something legitimately interesting that has a cultural benefit.
I’ve been doing this more and more and waiting to listen to things in full on vinyl (when I can afford it). Doing this with the Jack White album - gutted he’s not coming here eh? Would be a great gig.
T Bone Burnett, "The Other Side". Simple, strange, beautiful, beguiling.
Albums I found via Spotify that I'll still play through - the last 3 Zheani albums. Most recently, Akrilla's epistolares.
Googled Zheani and found: "Australian artist, musician and occultist."
Clicked play immediately :)
https://georgedhenderson.substack.com/p/trapping-fairies-in-metal?r=9ni9m