i hate the sound of guitars

Unbalanced listening week; Thanksgiving.

1. Boyracer
   Why has Boyracer not been one of my favorite bands until now, when they’ve just broken up (dammit)? Apparently because the first thing I bought was the 1996 In Full Colour, which doesn’t seem to be the best place to start.
2. Robyn Hitchcock
   Trying to give some of the newer records (Spooked, Luxor) a fair shake, but mostly still not feeling them.
3. Blind Idiot God
   Andy Hawkins’ band’s catalogue splits into two very distinct groups: there are spacious experiments that use some of the production and arrangement techniques of dub, and there’s abrasive jazz-metal (or is that metal-jazz?). The least interesting of these tracks (”Alice in My Fantasies,” say) sound more or less like instrumental heavy metal; many of them start with riffs you can’t imagine Ozzy singing over but veer into harmonic territory I can’t imagine Iommi exploring; and the best are like nothing else I’ve ever heard — sheets of distorted guitars, and a striking approach to tempo (perhaps best exemplified by the cyclic accelerandos and ritards of the aptly named “Rollercoaster.” One of the many bands I was introduced to by the ear-opening instrumental SST comp No Age.
4. Crash My Model Car
   The samples sounded pretty interesting so I downloaded a bunch, but in bulk the over-histrionic singing grates on me.
5. Rabbit in Red
   My “wow-now-I-love-Boyracer” sent me climbing the band’s family tree…
5. Arrows
5. Baak Gwai
8. Vulgaires Machins
8. Joel Plaskett Emergency
   “True Patriot Heart” is a really good song.
10. Joel Plaskett

12 artists, 253 tracks.