this month's music

It's been quite a while since I heard good new music. The last album I liked enough to buy was She Wants Revenge, but that was a while back.

At a wedding recently, I met an old friend. This was the same friend who first introduced me to Live, back in Secondary School. At that time I was still listening to boy bands, so Live was pretty heavy stuff. But I loved it. And so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some new recommendations. It turns out, interestingly enough, that both of us had passed out of the hip hop/rap stage, gone through a spate of jazz and are now exploring indie bands.

But that's where the similarity ends. The problem with Indie bands is that there are just so many of them. And if someone else has heard of the band you are listening too, then it is obviously not indie and cool enough. The proliferation of music on the internet doesnt' make it any better, because the whole plethora of unknown, obscure music is now there for the picking. So it should probably come as no surprise that we both listed a whole bunch of bands, and couldn't find anything in common. Anyway, I said I would check them out, but the conjugal spirits somehow seem to have erased his recommendations from memory overnight.

Anyway, since then I've done quite a bit of listening, and here are the ones I've taken a fancy to:


















Lately my taste in music has been very much slanted to subtle complexity. The kind of music I can play in the background and do my own work and it won't wrap my thoughts up in its lyrics. And yet, when I have a mind to, I can just sit and dissect each instrument on every track, and immerse myself in the acoustic environment.

Suede was such a band. So is Coldplay's X&Y. But indie bands are just more raw and much different. Some recommended tracks in particular are She Wants Revenge's Us, Secret Machines' Alone, Jealous and Stoned, Sonic Youth's Jams Run Free and The Neutral.

My girlfriend doesn't like indie. I think I am going to drive her crazy.

Ok, so Sonic Youth isn't really Indie. In fact, they've been around a heck of a long time. But I never really checked them out now. My lasting impression of them was of a discordant grunge group, but they are surprisingly mellow and melodious. Just my kind of music. It all started from syntaxfree, and yes now I realise I got the wrong album oops. So apparently Sonic Nurse is better ... gosh is that possible?