Muzak I'm listening to

People always (ok, almost never) ask me what music I'm listening to. I never know what to say! I usually sputter and mutter incomprehensibly and finally just tell them, "Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen." I do air quotes around "The Boss" too, since I don't want to invite confusion to someone's real boss! Whoever asked then just kind of shrugs and walks away. But now that I've had time to "think on it," here are a few bands that have caught my fancy recently. Feel free to disagree or make fun of me. And it seems like everyone else but me is a fan of Owl City. And I thought I liked one-trick ponies who have a dated sound! (see: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart)

Neon Indian

These guys are great! They sound hazy and lazy and crazy. They sing mostly about drugs and their music sounds like it. I guess they get labeled as "Glo-Fi" or "Chillwave" or any number of blogger-inspired tags. I think they should just get labeled "fun" and be done with it. Nice.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart


Ok, ok, so if you're like me, at first, you're like, who are these Belle and Sebastian / Camera Obscura wannabees? Take your dumb 8mm footage of your dumb hipster friends and get out of my face! But unlike the aforementioned bands, or Morrissey/The Field Mice/Heavenly/other twee, emo bands before them, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart actually sound like they're kind of having fun. I guess for cardigan-wearing hipsters, that's as good as it gets. But I like it. And they have a song called "This Love is Fucking Right!" so there. They like to have fun. It's just more of a reserved, hipster, cross-legged-hipster-cigarette-vintage tee fun.

Annie

Woweewowwow, I love Annie. She's an indie/Norwegian/DJ Sasha Fierce. This song is old, I think I got it sometime around 2004 but she has a new album coming out soon and from listening to it, it's more bubblegum pop. Which is a good thing! This video is kind of dumb, but you can never have too many Annies prancing around.

The Dirty Projectors

This video sure has a lot of Middle Earth quality to it, but I assure you, this band will make you wish that Frodo could come back from living with Bilbo and the Elves so he could hear this! Ok, so I've just alienated 3 of the 5 people who read this blog, but my love of LOTR and this band is simply too much to suppress. I've heard this band and especially the main singer (who doesn't sing on this) is just too grating, the kind of band you like just to name-drop, but their last album, Bitte Orca, was all around good. They play next week about 1/4 miles from the law school. Sadly, at the futon store that doubles as a daytime box office, I was informed yesterday that it was sold out. It went from the best to the worst day of my life. Seriously!

Atlas Sound

Ok, so this guy's name is Bradford Cox, he's also in the band Deerhunter. I think he's friends with everyone in the indie music scene, so a lot of them are like, let me be on your record, dude! The dude abides, and this song "Walkabout" features Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear aka 1/3 of Animal Collective aka guy who sounds like Brian Wilson). Very bouncy, moreso than a lot of Atlas Sound's other stuff. I like bouncy.

It's late and I should sleep. But I hope this post leads you to some new tunes.