Friday Music Day

FMD: Listening Habits

32 Comments

Up through much of college, I had no real ambition to expand my musical listening habits. I liked what I liked and that was fine. Then a few years ago, I was devouring new music at the rate of about an album a week. But eventually I burnt out on the high turnover and I couldn't really tell you what 3/4th of the albums were like. In the last year or two, however I've started listening to a small number of albums repeatedly (e.g. Metamodern Sounds and lately Something More Than Free), over and over, taking in as much as I can and trying to hear every different part of the song, each instrument and vocal track.

32 thoughts on “FMD: Listening Habits”

  1. 1. Aaron Dilloway “Buddhist Cremation: Swayambhu Temple 2.14.05” Sounds of Nepal Volumes 1-3
        a. Eastern Screech-Owl “'Screech' Calls and Bill-Clap” (Cornell Essential Set)
    2. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy “Lessons from Stony” Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
        b. Green Heron “'Kuk, Kuk, Kuk' Calls” (Cornell Master Set)
    3. Björk “Gratitude”* The Music from 'Drawing Restraint 9'
        c. Boreal Chickadee “'Seep' Calls” (Cornell Master Set)
    4. Colleen Green “I Want to Grow Up” I Want to Grow Up
    5. I-Lp-O In Dub* “Father Sun Rudealis” Communist Dub

    6. Meat Puppets “Beauty” Mirage
    7. Sarah Neufeld “Sprinter Fire” Hero Brother
    8. Plastikman “Plastique” Musik
    9. Nine Inch Nails “Help Me I Am in Hell” Broken
    T. Eels “Guest List” Beautiful Freak
    B. Grimes “California”* Art Angels

    *Notes:
    3. Vocals by Will Oldham. This was the first thing I heard from him.
    5. Ilpo Väisänen, from Pan Sonic. Sounds less like dub and more like Pan Sonic.
    B. About time someone remade Tool's "Ænema" and "Hooker With a Penis" as one dance-pop song.

  2. 1. “Uprising” – Muse – The Resistance
    2. “Phantom Limb” – The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
    3. “Just The Way You Look Tonight” – Frank Sinatra
    4. “Hurt Feelings” – Flight Of The Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky
    5. “Percussion Gun” – White Rabbits – It’s Frightening
    6. “The Sign” – Ace Of Bass – The Sign
    7. “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case” – Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
    8. “House Of The Rising Sun” – The Animals – The Animals
    9. “Lean On Me” – Bill Withers – Still Bill
    10. “Help I’m Alive” – Metric – Fantasies
    B: “Banks Of The Guadalupe” – Jimmie Dale Gilmore – One Endless Night

              1. Yup.
                I basically like the album in its entirety, but Sleeping Lessons, Phantom Limb and Caring is Creepy are my favorites.

  3. 1. The Future -- Leonard Cohen -- The Essential Leonard Cohen
    2. Up The Neck -- The Pretenders -- Pretenders
    3. Stranger Than Fiction -- Bad Religion -- Stranger Than Fiction
    4. It's Easy -- Guided By Voices -- Suitcase 1: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft
    5. Don't Stop Now -- Guided By Voices -- Under The Bushes Under The Stars
    6. The Phone Call -- The Pretenders -- Pretenders
    7. We Are the Boys -- Pulp -- Velvet Goldmine Soundtrack
    8. Christmas Girl -- Boston Spaceships -- Let It Beard
    9. You In My Prayer -- Boston Spaceships -- Let It Beard
    10. Turnaround -- Nirvana -- Incesticide

    B1. Won't Get Fooled Again -- The Who -- Who's Next
    B2. Chords Of Fame -- Teenage Fanclub -- Thirteen

    Mitski at the 7th Street Entry was decent last. Zach, AMR, and Pepper were there too (forgot group pic). She only played for about 40 minutes. A couple of songs off her latest album were very nicely done. At age 52, I may have been the oldest person there but a nice mix of ages and sexes which is a switch from the middle aged white dude shows I typically end up at.

    1. My only complaint would be the set length. Though the first Zola Jesus show I saw was shorter (touring off the Stridulum EP, she said the band only had those 6+1 songs prepared).
      I was glad I wasn't the one that had taken a 12-hour-late train from a different state to see her. (I know, Zack had other activities this weekend, too.)

      I would have liked to have recorded it. I think the sparcer arrangement on some songs like "First Love Late Spring" made the emotional impact more immediate, and I'd like to hear that a few more times at my own pace.
      But I asked permission to record and she said no (on Twitter)*. That comment before her one encore song "Don't record this one either" must have been for me.

      *Dang my courtesy. Sometimes, I'd so much rather just ask forgiveness rather than seek permission. Sometimes I do, but I felt I could get a direct response from her (and did). Back to Zola Jesus... I asked her before that show (via email) and got a response from the label or something and then noticed ZJ sharing a bootleg video recording (or similar).

      1. The set length was about what I expected, so it was okay! Mind you I drove down to see The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower in 200...3? and they played for like 15 minutes. The other bands on the bill were cool (Das Oath, Your Enemies Friends, The Locust, maybe one more?) but I was there to see The Plot.

        1. Maybe I'm just old.
          I once drove to Milwaukee to see Ha Ha Tonka actually headline a bill (up until that point, I'd seen them open like 6 times). They played 75 minutes!

      2. She said, "Don't record this one" before her earlier song that she announced as a new one, so I assumed "Don't record this one either" was in reference to that previous statement.

    3. This comment isn't particularly related to this specific concert, but I have to say that it's great to go to a show with a group of guys. A Mitski show probably isn't somewhere were I'd be likely to get hassled anyways, but it's so nice just to know it's not going to be a thing thanks to the company I'm in.

      Free, I don't know if you noticed, but almost immediately after you and I headed in different directions, a guy approached me as I was walking toward Hennepin. It wasn't a big deal or anything, but being out in public alone (especially late at night) is just a completely different circumstance than being in the company of one or more guys.

  4. I've been mis-hearing Mitski's lyrics to "Townie". I thought verse two started:
    "Smell _???_, sweatgrass, and smoke in my hair."
    Thinking sweatgrass was a play on sweetgrass as in Native American incense. But I didn't really think hard about it.
    I realized today that the compound word was finding meaning that probably wasn't there. Just
    "Smell _???_, sweat, grass, and smoke in my hair." To verify, I checked the lyrics on her bandcamp:
    "Smell that, It's wet grass and smoke in my hair." OK, but I liked the faux-hippie cultural-appropriating connotations I had in my head before I fixed it.

  5. 01. Primordial - "Failures Burden", To the Nameless Dead
    02. Hypocrisy - "United We Fall", End of Disclosure
    03. Weedeater - "Cain Enabler", Gloiathan
    04. Opeth - "By the Pain I See in Others", Deliverance
    05. Nile - "To Dream of Ur", Black Seeds of Vengeance
    06. Ensiferum - "Tears", Iron
    07. Heimdall - "Black Tower", Hard as Iron
    08. King Diamond - "Mother's Getting Weaker", Them
    09. Evenoire - "The Lady of the Game", Herons
    10. Jag Panzer - "Spectres of the Past", Thane to the Throne

  6. 1. Women Without Whiskey – Drive-By Truckers
    2. (I Just) Died In Your Arms – Cutting Crew
    3. Run To The Hills – Iron Maiden
    4. 9669 – The Joy Formidable
    5. The End’s Not Near – Band of Horses

    6. I Don’t Wanna Grow Up – Bebe Rexha
    7. Loose Ends – Imogen Heap
    8. The Space Between Lightning and Thunder – Ramona Falls
    9. I’ll Be Seeing You – Billie Holiday
    10. Stop The World – Waylon Jennings

    B1. Deck The Halls – Nat King Cole*
    B2. Heartbreaker – Led Zeppelin

    *Dang! Thought I’d deselected all my Christmas music from general randomness … musta missed this one.

  7. Just one new album a week would be low for my habits these days. I try to take in at least three or four new albums a week, if not many more, and if I don't like them through three songs, I bail.

    1. I go in fits and bursts. The longer I've gone without adding, the more I grab the next time I update my iPod.
      This week, I added Julien Baker Sprained Ankle (on Zack's recc)... no thoughts yet.
      Last week, I added Grimes Art Angels... I've been slowly sharing my thoughts.
      Three weeks before that, I added the first two HEALTH albums.
      Three weeks before that, I added I-Lp-O, two Pan Sonic albums, two Ryoji Ikeda albums, the new Lana Del Rey, and the new Low.
      Four weeks before that, I added a slew of Will Oldham stuff.
      So I'm at about 1.5 albums/week. More when adding "catalog" and less for trying completely new things.

      1. Ah, I remember the days then I had disposable income for large quantities of music consumption. When I first got into metal during my freshman year, I doesn't quite a lot, probably buying two to three albums per week. That summer was worse. I think I spent something like $1200.

        These days I just don't have the money to justify too much of that, so is buying maybe one a month. The proliferation of digital music has made it a lot easier and cheaper, so now I'm in the around two to three per month. I've found some pretty good gems in amazons five dollar music bin.

        2. I think Amazon is trying to get rid of some of their CDs. They are cheaper than the digital versions and come with automatic mp3 downloads. In other words, the CDs are negatively priced.

            1. Two of my kids were in their school musical this past week. At the end of the show when they come out and take a bow, they were playing a song off of Twisted Sister's Twisted Christmas. Now I have the kids totally into that album.

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