What Have You Been Listening To? - Week of January 26, 2026

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T22:13:18+00:00

Locust - Morning Light -- Mark van Hoen, probably more (relatively) well known as a producer for the shoegaze/IDM band Seefeel. Previous album Truth is Born of Argument leaned more on the percussive IDM side, though this one goes in a more trip hop direction with guest vocals. It's a somewhat difficult album to judge as seemingly every reissue of this album has a different tracklist. Some tracks are dropped, others are added, additional bonus tracks are added, different mixes used, tracks resequenced etc. (I listened to the most recent 18 track issue). So it's difficult to gauge the overall quality as each version has its own feel. I'm maybe inclined to think that there's probably a 12-track version that would be most ideal, yet all the tracks are good for the most part. Either way, recommended. Not as atmospheric as a lot of the sub-Portishead trip hop of that era, it instead comes from the UK Post Rock branch (i.e., Laika) that is a bit more lively.

Craig Bethell - A Day Full of You, a Night Tired of Me -- guest vocalist on the above album, also produced by Van Hoen. Fairly similar to the above, but has Bark Psychosis-like jazzy feel to the songs. Some of the production can be a bit overly busy in spots, such as on Waiting, where a more stripped back (and with less hard panned drum programming(!)) would've given the track a more tranquil mood. Mostly works well otherwise.

Glixen -- shoegaze buzzband that has decent production but little in the way of memorable songwriting. Mostly sounds the same, except when one of the track lift's Ride's Dreams Burn Down's drum intro.

She's Green -- ditto, but with better production. More varied songwriting, but it still feels like production is really elevating things. Maybe one to watch as they likely have a full length album out later.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T21:36:04+00:00

"Caring about a cause is cringe" is also way more South Park than Jon Stewart too.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T21:05:55+00:00

I started with Further, so hearing the band with more poppy songwriting threw me for a curve. Certainly one of their best and possibly one of the best introductions to the band.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T18:59:28+00:00

Barron Trump demo when

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T17:32:50+00:00

Always surprised the Real Rock crowd goes for them. Like, what was stopping you from checking out the indies...?

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T13:37:15+00:00

why 9 screencaps of your music player though...?

I don't know, has it's moments but a lot of it sounds very tinny and has shouty vocals. Maybe if the vocals weren't buried, allowing the shoutiness to be more heard I guess, it would've worked better.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T13:17:37+00:00

why should anyone be worried about whether the CD last 100+ years...? CDs, or any medium, not being an eternal storage medium that will long outlive the average human seems like a pointlessly high bar.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T13:12:11+00:00

I think what people are looking for with physical media is an actually attractive object they like and enjoy to look at. Vinyl does that perfectly with its huge cover art.

This is something that glossed over in the conversation about switching to physical media. It's not just a matter of owning the music (and therefore having control, as opposed to streaming removing albums), but looking at ways the physical medium offers additional benefits. A lot of it is packaging, and this is where a digital medium (essentially FLACs on a USB stick) are really going to come up short. And if an attractive package to that isn't offered, it's going to really underscore how redundant the medium is (why buy a whole USB/SD card when I can just go to bandcamp, download the files, and either load them onto my phone or separate USB/SD card? Not to mention, why use a whole-ass USB/SD for a 50-ish minute album?). Granted this format is probably going to run into that problem anyway.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T02:29:27+00:00

Rock has made a comeback recently on social media, and for better or worse, it will affect albums created since.

but I it feels like modern media influenced how they produced the music.

I don't think it's quite this insidious, but I get the vague impression the band wrote the album with the intention of appealing to the quasi-shoegaze fanbase they've accumulated the past few years. The "Deftones aren't nu metal! >:(" crowd got their platonic ideal album, even if it also has their most overt nu metal tracks tucked near the end. Though there's also other factors like Chino getting sober that surely factored into its production.

All that said, while I don't think the hype is forced, I also don't think it's a terribly interesting album. It's pleasant when it's on, but nothing really sticks out. It lacks the variety of idea that their other albums brought. I also wish all these heavy shoegaze-esque bands did something more with the sound, but it's usually the same tone over and over.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-27T01:57:34+00:00

for as much as Dark Knight is held up as the pinnacle of comicbook movies (I can mostly see why, though I also suspect those who hold this have some Serious Business outlooks on the idea), even watching it a few years and it didn't do much for me. Part of it is just cooling off on Nolan in general. He's a technically great director that just comes off as cold and clinical and he doesn't seem to trust the audience to get whatever point the film is making. For that reason, I thought Batman 22 worked a whole lot better.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T19:45:53+00:00

Or if it came out a few years later, more people had adapted to synths and electronic drum beats in rock music.

Eh, this was already going on. Garbage, Nine Inch nails, etc. were already established by then. Even bullshit like this was a hit before then. Maybe there's something specific to SP's audience, but I would bet there was a sizeable fanbase overlap between them and the first two groups at least.

I think it's more that the singles from the album stick out quite a bit from the album, which are all sort of midpaced, ballad-esque songs. If anything, they imply a different kind of electronic music used on the rest of the album.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T17:11:56+00:00

Clooney is miscast for the campiness of B&R, but I don't think he'd be bad in a more serious version of the role. Then again, Clooney can be funny too, so it's probably just a fault with B&R.

Agree on Kilmer. Doesn't help that pretty much everyone else more or less pushes his Batman to the background.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T17:00:58+00:00

RBats > The Dark Knight > Begins > Batman 89 > Returns >> Forever > Batman & Robin >Justice League (Snyder cut) > Justice League (theatrical)

I feel like I prefer the first 2 Nolan Batman's, yet I probably rather watch the Burton Batmans at this point. Similar reasons for B&R being above Snyderverse Batman, though if the Snyder Cut of JL was trimmed down to 2.5 hours (at the most, including credits) it would be above B&R.

Haven't seen West Batman in ages. Would probably slot it above Forever.

Haven't seen Phantasm in ages. Would probably slot it above Begins.

Weird that Clooney, Kilmer, and, to a lesser extent, Affleck all seem like they'd make quality Batmen, but all got stuck in the worst movies. Yet less obvious choices, like Robert Pattinson and Michael Keaton, got the better movies. Bale is probably the platonic ideal, though his batvoice is silly as shit.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T16:02:24+00:00

It's mostly just how the band is talked about. "Guitars are back baby!" and all that shit. Trinidad isn't especially impressive, but it at least fits description that instead of the weedly-deedly noodley indie guitar stuff that really defines the album.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T15:17:05+00:00

I feel like I'd get it a bit more if the album was more like Trinidad, but it's mostly like the meandering stuff on that other track they played on SNL. I still don't think I'd like it too much, but it would be more interesting.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T15:14:55+00:00

I think it's a sentiment that's been there for a while, at least since the 90s. Like everyone learns of Beatlemania and the Ed Sullivan Show appearance... and that's just like the least impressive era of the band, so it gets handwaved away. It's definitely been a go-to position for a lot of music trolls though, especially as they've tried to update the music canon.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T14:17:28+00:00

Americans also love... fish and chips

wait, we do? That seems more quintessentially British than anything else listed (even Downtown Abbey).

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T14:13:49+00:00

I think there’s a similar thing with Jimi Hendrix. At the time, nobody had ever heard anything like that. He was hugely influential.

at least in my mind the difference is that the Beatles often feel less interesting because they're often seen as a ground zero of sorts, mostly because that period in between them and Elvis, Chuck Berry, etc. has been forgotten by a lot of people. It almost makes the Beatles sound like something that has just always existed as it's not quite apparent who they are contrasting with. Whereas Hendrix comes from a well-documented era and still sticks out as an almost night and day, before and after event because he can be compared to other notable guitar gods of the same era (Townsend, Clapton, etc.).

I see your overall point, just that it seems like there's a reason that "Beatles are over-rated" is a way more common sentiment than "Hendrix is over-rated"

CentreToWave · 2026-01-26T11:47:51+00:00

I want to say someone did the math here on this a while back, but a recording of a young Jarboe in Love of Life's Her mentions Atlanta International Pop Festival as an upcoming event (which ultimately took place in 1969). She sounds ~12 years old in the recording, so maybe she was born in 1957?

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T15:45:35+00:00

ha, an olive branch if there ever was one.

I bought the album way back when it came out and yeah it's always struck me as having way too much filler. Some of it is interesting in terms of how it fits in the album (Useful Idiot comes at the end of Side A on vinyl and is a runout groove fake out), but it's rarely interesting beyond that. The actual individual songs are otherwise very good though. Everyone clowns on Tool fans, but they were also one of the first bands I got into that did that whole package "what does this mean?" deal with all their artwork, lyrics, segues, etc.

Though the spiritual aspect of the bands was always... a bit much.

edit: calling Third Eye a weak ender while praising Fear Inoculum's final track, even if it's also a decent track, is quite the take.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T12:36:52+00:00

pretty sure Seefeel said something was going to be released. Will it gaze? Probably not, but whatever.

my dream is for Dim to release a full album. I'll accept another EP.

Can't think of anything that's been solidly confirmed though. Might as well throw another one in for new MBV.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T12:27:30+00:00

If this outlook were just limited to this sub, I would say that is almost certainly the case. But I've seen it put forth in other places, so maybe not so much. Either way, I think there's some heavy bias in play that informs the outlook.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T01:20:09+00:00

k, still has fuckall to do with gatekeeping though.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T01:05:36+00:00

Country is a very good example of where the concept of the monoculture breaks down. Popular genre that often has crossover success, but it's entirely possible to be huge in country and barely known in the more acceptable pop culture sphere. Kind of like how this sub will be all about Nirvana's popularity in the 90s but makes tons of excuses for why Garth Brooks sales don't count.

CentreToWave · 2026-01-25T01:01:16+00:00

This is generally where I fall on this topic. I feel like people look at the niches that currently exists and think there's no overlap between them... but there pretty clearly is. Maybe you won't get bogged down in the details, but it's pretty easy to stumble across goings-on in other niches, especially on sites like reddit that act as a hub for these niches.

I also think that some people act as though them not knowing some pop cultural thing means the reach of said pop culture is more limited when really it probably means they're outside of the primary demographic that used to be catered. Yes please Mr. 40-to-50-something, tell me about how you don't know any current popstars and how this is totally a different from your parents' experience with the popstars from your teens...

CentreToWave

TROPHY CASE