Testy McTestface.

Deerhoof

Deal with it. Fetus fetishists are part of the problem, no matter how cutesy nice they play.

Liz Bruenig is an anti-choice whackadoo, FWIW.

Still!

Fark still sends me birthday notifications, which these days is the only time I remember that place exists, alas.

Cageside Seats is good.

Grizzly Bear is so close to being an elite band it hurts, and their problem is simple to identify but more difficult to solve: The lyrics suck.

So on a lark some friends and I saw her on the Warrior tour, and…she was terrific, really.

Holy shit, now I feel bad for trashing him.

The general consensus was "well this is kinda weird, a little long, but I guess they couldn't do awards-bait again," with some outliers. Pitchfork loved it, Steve Hyden acted like it killed his dog.

It's not hard to make the argument that, as good as the first four albums were, Arcade Fire peaked with Album 1, Song 1.

I told a more Arcade Fire-agnostic friend of mine after Reflektor that I wanted their next album to be some Win/Regine acoustic folk freakery, like their own Sung Tongs. I still want that.

Given Mel Gibson being who he is, I always read the last-scene twist as "these savages'll get what they've got coming."

That review is way more harsh than the one for Everything Now despite having a higher grade. EN's bad review boils down to "this band can do better and doesn't know where it stands these days," while Painting With is "stick a fork in 'em."

Hmm. Maybe I should give it another spin after all these years; it was for me as Reflektor was for Steve Hyden, something that I went from just not caring for to actively being offended the more I listened.

Yeah, Arcade Fire are swinging for some kind of fences on this; Wilco added one of the best guitarists in the world for Sky Blue Sky and did jack shit with him.

Exactly. They've certainly always cared about being essential, but cool? How can you misread them that bad?

It's only been one more year this time:

Tonight > You Could Have It So Much better