i hate the sound of guitars

2007 is the year that I started listening to music mostly on computers. My office-mate persuaded me to experiment with iTunes, and I started using its rating system to help me assemble the inevitable year’s best list. Then I discovered last.fm and let it track my listening patterns.
The upshot of all this is that The […]

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Here are some things that Dean Edward Wells, a.k.a. The Capstan Shafts, doesn’t have:

Fancy recording equipment
A rock-solid sense of timing
Rabid perfectionism about the recording process
Long songs

Here are some things that Dean Edward Wells does have:

A prodigious bounty of catchy melodies and riffs
A bevvy of quirky lyrics set to the former
A pretty good singing voice
A modicum […]

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last.fm recently played me Zsammy’s “Your Chest Is Not Moving,” and I liked it a lot. It’s about as creepy as the title suggests, but much prettier. It’s a little shoegazer-y and a little bit Britpop in a loved-The Bends way without being overly derivative; some of Zsammy’s other songs have a slowcore vibe. It […]

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