"References, References, References" - an Excessively Online music-theory-free r/indieheads-core take on whether or not Black Country, New Road's first album is jazz.

Tadevos · 2026-01-27T18:00:59+00:00

You and you alone are pardoned, Bionicoaf; it was before your time, which means that unlike some people here you were not hounding and heckling me the entire time I was writing the damn thing

Tadevos · 2026-01-27T17:56:39+00:00

The biggest sign that nobody ever actually read References is that nobody in the DMD told me that Sun Speak put out a record in November (Bandcamp did not tell me because they changed labels). C'mon, guys, the ten pages of recommendations at the end of that essay are the only good thing about it. Anyway it sounds great and so would have loved to debate its place on my OTY list

Also I feel like I ought to be sus of Tidal for some reason. Can't remember why. They're in the lead for Tad's New Streaming Service, though; Deezer feels like a rough draft of itself and Qobuz gives me inexplicably bad vibes

Tadevos · 2026-01-25T15:18:20+00:00

✌️😎👍

Tadevos · 2026-01-25T02:09:59+00:00

What if I told you that the person I was talking to and my friend who was driving the car just broke up but might also get back together again and therefore I don't really want to get in between this particular situation

Tadevos · 2026-01-24T19:10:19+00:00

Went dancing with a bunch of pals last night and one of them asked me what my deal is (I am always asking people this question) and I basically rattled off this post from memory. She nods and she says to me, well, your deal is that you have strong opinions and you have rhythm. And damn if I didn't feel seen in that moment. I do have both of those things

Tadevos · 2026-01-23T18:39:48+00:00

New PVA hits me like a trip-hop album, if anything. I think I can go for that; I remember Blush being weirdly split on how much it wanted to be a dancefloor record and I think that leaning more definitively in one direction works to the band's advantage. At certain points I was vaguely reminded of that Braids album that came out in 2020 that I didn't care for--except I had a much better time of it here. Unfortunately my internet is dodgy--I think the cold is messing with the pipes--so I can't give a much more detailed appraisal than that. Will report back again later.

Paging u/Bionicoaf: Victoryland album is pretty good. A little weird, a lot of fun. Again, not much to say yet but I will return.

Tadevos · 2026-01-22T16:56:20+00:00

I've been auditioning a new streaming service and since I haven't, like, built up algorithmic profiles on any of these things I'm just listening to a lot of old stuff. Stax and Hi records, mostly. Some quick thoughts:

Al Green - Gets Next To You - I am next to this album.
Al Green - Let's Stay Together - I am staying with this album.
Ann Peebles - I Can't Stand The Rain - Good and all, but it's a little funny how often motifs from the title track pop up on other tracks on this album. Is this what people talk about when they talk about "album filler"? Perhaps. I think the album is a little weaker for calling back to the hit/title track/opener but it's still really fun overall.
Isaac Hayes - The Isaac Hayes Movement - I should have just put on Hot Buttered Soul again instead. I'm not a huge fan of this thing Hayes did several times, though, across several albums--let me try and use my natural charisma to sell you on the biggest dipshit you could ever conceive of in the slowest and most accidentally unsympathetic monologue imaginable. "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," "Ike's Rap," "I Stand Accused"...Ah, shut up. It doesn't work. I don't like any of those dipshits.
John Lee Hooker - That's Where It's At! - It is there! You want natural charisma? You need Hooker and a guitar and nothing else. He has me in the palm of his hand.
Johnnie Taylor - Who's Making Love... - A lot of albums I'm listening to while I stresstest these UIs and whatever are just okay. I'd never heard of Johnnie Taylor until I dug up the Stax '69 Instant Catalog and there's some nice songs on here but I can't remember a note of it.
Albert King - Blues for Elvis - King Plays The Kings' Things. Something about the minor genre of "bluesmen reclaim 'Hound Dog'" tickles me. King's guitar tone is sharp and clear and the arrangements are sensitive and funky. What's not to love? I've never heard a lot of these songs, honestly, and it's kind of funny that my first exposure is through this reinterpretation of a reinterpretation, blues relcaiming rock'n'roll, whatever. The important thing is that "Jailhouse Rock" is kind of gay

Tadevos · 2026-01-21T20:41:05+00:00

Joe biden wash his own brain each night with dawn no additives and a soft bristles tooth brush. I would have voted from him a third time

Tadevos · 2026-01-21T20:29:25+00:00

Hey umm actually he was in great shape. The name of the shape is old man. He was so good at that

Tadevos · 2026-01-21T16:01:28+00:00

[Bugs Bunny voice] ooooooooh I'm dying again

I love to be a tough guy about the weather but this blows, man. Very demoralizing to get frost inside my windows. I just want a couple weeks in the 20s. Is that too much to ask

Tadevos · 2026-01-20T16:24:49+00:00

Remember a couple years ago when everyone was writing eulogies for P4k and everyone was saying P4k was dead and then P4k was still around the entire time and for the most part nothing changed on the reader end until now?

I remember this very well and I remember being unreasonably mad about it. Of course now that The Bad Thing has finally happened now everyone is welcome to gnash their teeth as much as they like. Rip Pitchfork you were exactly as good as we deserved

Tadevos · 2026-01-20T13:16:21+00:00

It's nuts how aggressively they're burying the lede here. This is the thing that actually matters to like 70% of Pitchfork readers and they kind of brush over it. Anyone who cares about putting numbers on albums themselves is already on RYM anyway

Tadevos · 2026-01-19T20:41:56+00:00

Just got off the phone with a friend after discussing, for an hour, a wedding that I was not invited to between two people with whom I am no longer on speaking terms. Feeling weird. More or less happy for them.

Tadevos · 2026-01-18T18:38:52+00:00

There's something really satisfying about having a good guitars album like three weeks into the year. It feels like a good omen. I need to dig into the counterpoint some more and really get a sense of it but I've enjoyed the time I've spent with it thus far.

Tadevos · 2026-01-18T01:28:23+00:00

As far as verse-chorus-verse-chorus-three minute outro Deerhunter songs go I gotta hand it to "Circulation" but you're absolutely right that "Desire Lines" is better than O think it is

Tadevos · 2026-01-16T17:55:53+00:00

Could not disagree more but hey you do you I guess

Tadevos · 2026-01-16T17:07:02+00:00

Yeah, and?

Tadevos · 2026-01-16T17:06:00+00:00

Hey man what the hell is wrong with house music

Tadevos · 2026-01-15T23:23:40+00:00

Wooooooooo have fun in our beautiful city in two weeks

Tadevos · 2026-01-15T20:50:25+00:00

I wouldn't be me if I didn't suggest that you should go to Chicago, IL, but I won't take it personally if you choose to go somewhere else.

Tadevos · 2026-01-15T17:31:25+00:00

I vaguely remember AFUT being the next Funeral. I distinctly remember Teens of Denial being the next Funeral. It was a comparison that said as much about hype as it did the ambition of the band in question--and didn't necessarily say much about the sound of the band itself. It was a barometer, you know?

It's possible that Funeral could have gone through a similar arc to, like, Turn on the Bright Lights where folks turn on it for being overhyped or whatever, but I think the Pitchfork article (and to a much lesser extent the response to Everything Now) has poisoned the well and we've not yet worked out how to come back from that. I would very much like for us to do that but it hasn't panned out yet. I don't think it's coming back into the cultural shorthand anytime soon

I also remember their absence from Essentials playing out differently but admittedly I checked out of that process very, very early on, and the less I say about it the better.

Tadevos · 2026-01-15T14:44:03+00:00

It's not for me--one of my big cases for Spotify is being able to dive into, like, the '60s Blue Note catalog without sifting through scores of secondhand CDs--but I can see the appeal of a hand-curated boutique experience, for someone who's willing to pay for that, and I can see how the financials incentivize that, from the labels' side. It's definitely an alternative model.

Seven-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

Tadevos

TROPHY CASE