i hate the sound of guitars

How I learned to stop worrying and love Auto-Tune

Not to imply that Auto-Tune is “the bomb.” Overuse of Auto-Tune is a scourge we have to learn to live with somehow. Maybe if we all pretend we’re all Peter Sellers it will help.
All of this music was new to me in 2009. Most, but not all, [...]

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Back in April, I wrote this about Big Dipper:
But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in [...]

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Breaking all kindsa rules: I haven’t even listened to this record all the way through once, and it’s already one of my favorites of the year. It’s got me bouncing around in my seat so much, I just have to tell someone about it right now!!! Manhattan Love Suicides (from Leeds; the name is [...]

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I had just enough leftover affection for Kay Hanley’s 90’s act Letters to Cleo to check out the previews for her new record, even though the only thing I remember about her solo debut Cherry Marmalade is that I felt like I didn’t need to hear anything on it twice. I’m really glad I gave [...]

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Great Plains is the band that ruined my life. You might know their signature “Letter to a Fanzine” as the “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?” song. But I know it as the Song of the Big Lie:

You like everything that comes out on SST
You like everything that comes out [...]

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You’ve got just about a month left to place an order from Asaurus Records, the micro-indie label that releases beautiful hand-packaged CDRs from the likes of Pants Yell!, Colin Cleary, The Mathletes, and many more. There’s a very generous selection of free tracks to download, too. Among the “I Hate the Sound of Guitars”-endorsed discs [...]

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I’m going to link MySpace pages in this post. I feel like it’s a little irresponsible to do that without mentioning a more-or-less safe way to follow the links. Here’s what I recommend for visiting MySpace:

Set up a browser (or browser profile) to delete all cookies on exitI like to configure Opera up for [...]

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The first time I saw The Magnetic Fields was such a profoundly moving experience that even after several years, I have trouble distilling a coherent description of what was so magical about it. It was very warm and human, almost disquietingly intimate — perhaps a bit like eavesdropping on the quiet evening gathering of a [...]

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There’s basically nothing I don’t love about Smokers Die Younger’s X Wants the Meat.
I love the cheap-sounding keyboards (Casio? I can live in hope). I love the also cheap-sounding and frequently fuzzed-out guitar and bass (Slates amps and Skinny Rat guitars? Sounds like they could be), the determinedly plonky single-note guitar lines they play, and [...]

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I really should have found the time to write about this album two days ago, but oh well, life is full of missed opportunities. I also missed my opportunities to hear Ash Wednesday in the year of its release, else it would’ve been shortlisted for the best-of set.
I try to avoid Neutral Milk Hotel as [...]

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