In 1967, the Velvet Underground built the house.
In 1979, Joy Division furnished the house.
Girl Band – The Talkies
Tag: album
John Grant and the Absurdity of Metamorphosis
John Grant has always been a musician good with contradictions. On “Love is Magic”, he pushes this theme to its extremes and seems to come to terms with his own holism. This is his most explicit album, in that it combines so many of the opposing features of his much and works them into a, sometimes disjointed, but nevertheless fully convincing whole for the first time in his career. This is the most evident on Metamorphosis, the albums’ opener, and one of the best tracks of the year. The song lays this dichotomy bare, beginning with a crunchy 8-Bit stomp and listing disparate things on Grant’s mind in his trademark caustic, childlike manner. The first third of the song culminates in the following stretch of lyrics, which gives you a fair sense of Grant’s new depths of ridiculousness.
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The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, S/T (2009)
I am not a difficult man to please, on the whole. But once, when I and my friends were looking around for houses to inhabit, we found that none were quite right. There’d be a promise of cheap rent, or a nice location, or a good space to cost ratio, but something would just be off. We eventually settled on the least “off” house of the bunch, but I remember that period as being one of pure indecision, as none of the houses we looked at, despite initially appearing to be okay, fit the bill.
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Battles, “Mirrored” (2007)
Opening with a pulsing snare and what sounds like the bottom of a tin can being tapped mercilessly with a drumstick, introducing a whistle, and then notes that could either be coming from a guitar or a keyboard, the aptly titled “Race: In” sets “Mirrored”, Battles’ first full-length, off like a line of flame slowly making its way to a truck full of TNT. It’s all there; the propulsive riffs, the heavy use of repetition, the interplay of instruments like gears rotating inside a child’s kaleidoscope.
The Appreciation Index 