Here's a take: things that sounded like shit 40 years ago can still be novel because the mid-to-late 1980s were the last monoculturally uncool era, but things that sounded like shit 20 years ago still sound like shit because culture is stuck in a tightening recursive loop. In sartorial terms, I'm not saying I wouldn't wear Crocs, I just never thought I'd see the day they'd become de rigeur.
Do not judge an album by its eight-minute second track, as I foolishly did with Wednesday's Rat Saw God.
If you're a band, and you're recording an album, and you have an eight-minute track with an extended coda where your lead singer sounds like they're getting sucked into a black hole made of tar, their shrieks and screams getting more and more muffled in the mix as the song reaches its conclusion, my advice is to make that song your closer. This has been Thoughts on Album Sequencing.
I now know approximately 1,500% more stuff about the Smashing Pumpkins than I did at any previous point in my life, stuff like “holy shit, Tommy Lee drummed on their 2014 album Monuments to an Elegy” (shout out to Sarah).
The best recommendation engines have always been and continue to be your cool friends and your own curiosity. Link-hopping can lead to some weird and beautiful places.
No not that Molly Lewis, the otherMolly Lewis, the Paganini of whistling.
Is “Susanne” the best Weezer song? Maybe!
Dude I spent hours trying to find the specific mix of “Smooth Operator” that I got off LimeWire in college, and I don't think it's on Spotify. It might be the 12” single mix.
Kiwi Jr. are the leaders in the clubhouse because I still believe in the 12-string electric guitar.
Jeremy Gaudet, if you see this, drop the Letterboxd, brother!