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I can't stand music discourse—particularly of the "rock is dead" or "rock is back" variety—because I find that nobody has decent taste, and often they're not even aware of the best bands making music now. I feel like most adults have a period of their life when they discover a lot of music and then they give up searching. I'm relentless when it comes to discovering new favorite bands. I don't think there has ever been a time with as much incredible and timeless guitar-driven music as right now. Nothing, Teenage Wrist, Soft Kill, Ruby Haunt, Ski Lodge, cursetheknife, Jorge Elbrecht, Narrow Head, Sports Coach, Gold Star, Choir Boy, Better Person, Private World, Peel Dream Magazine, Salem, Heavenward, Broken Head, Sweet Trip, Valleyheart, Sculpture Club, Winter, Deafheaven, No Joy, Sheer Mag, Day Wave, Roseville, Kitten, Glare, Amusement Parks On Fire, Soft Blue Shimmer, Black Marble, Provoker, Anonymous Club, Holiday Sidewinder, House of Harm, Superbloom, Softcult, Tigers Jaw, Second Skin, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, NewDad, Failure, Beachy Head, The Chain Gang of 1974, Cindy, Seer Believer, Fearing, and VR Sex are the names of some current bands you should probably be listening to that come to mind. And Drab Majesty's The Demonstration, a melodramatic tragedy pageant in honor of the Heaven's Gate suicides, remains the best album of the last decade. If you want something more electro, go for Real Lies, these two Islington dudes who make the most tasteful club pop since the Pet Shop Boys. Their recent single "Late Arcades" was written as an ode to their old schoolmate, Richard Spencer, who vanished years ago. That shit makes me cry. (Especially in the car.)
Mar 3, 2022
Related Recs
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A few hours of scrolling on here today has done more for my taste in music than years and years of Sp*tify algorithms. Highly recommend turning to the PI.FYI community for something fresh.
That in mind here's a couple of bands I really like that I have had to introduce to like 90% of people, I've tried to make sure all of these artists have under 100k monthly listeners on Spoofy:
- Blue Deputy: indie dream rock who will absolutely become my favourite band the moment they release their first EP (they keep promising it's in the works!!!!) favourite tracks: Cypress, New Jersey, Lucky Star (that one's not on streaming yet!)
- Lesbian Bed Death: Gothic Hard Rock/Metal that packs a hell of a punch, they're so much fun. Favourite tracks: Maria, Your Love Makes Everything Worse, She Loves Lilith
- Sean Solomon: He has that one song on tiktok where he plays along to VCR recording of the music video (that I believe he drew and animated himself)/backing track. That one song is Car Crash and it's just quite lovely, really
- The Man the Myth the Meatslab: more acoustic midwest emo I found on TikTok lmao. effortlessly, i feel everything is eerily similar to Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl but imo not in a way that feels like a ripoff, it actually elevates the song for me. It's like a spin on a similar theme from a different perspective
- Chloe Slater: working class, indie, feminist indie rock anthems for disenfranchised people who just wanna dance. favourite songs: Fig Tree, Sucker, Thomas Street
- Life to Experience: this is kind of a memey one bc their album The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads appears on a tonne of people's cringe/bad album covers lists, but guys. Please. I promise you it is genuinely one of the best Prog Rock albums of all time it rules so hard. Please try it. this is not an original take but it IS a correct take.
- Wax Fang: this band had one song appear in an episode of American Dad of all places, and whoever put it there should have immediately been given a raise and creative control of the entire show. The song they used is called Majestic, and the album it's from, La La Land, is an incredible rock album.
Feb 14, 2025
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in no particular order
-a place for owls - a denver based indie/emo band with gorgeous writing and lush instrumentation
-LL by The Hellp - the most important electronic/pop album of the 2020s, this album more than justifies their self-mythologizing of the past decade
-Mk.Gee - he's finally getting his flowers thank god but there is nothing else that sounds like two star out there
-Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee - Waxahatchee with MJ Lenderman executive production what more do you need
-Aaron West & the Roaring Twenties - conceptual side project of the lead singer of emo cornerstone The Wonder Years, he plays/writes the character of Aaron West across three beautiful alt country albums
-Venturing - Jane Remover's side project, great rock/contemporary shoegaze, album out valentine's day
Jan 24, 2025
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There's a real death rattle going on for indie rock or whatever we're calling the kids who play guitars. So self-serious, so self-respecting, so self-important. Dour and dreary. Image conscious and with so much inhibition.
Where is our Tom Waits or Lucinda Williams or Silver Jews or Smog or...? I mean, fuck. Even the National would kill a bottle or two of sauvignon blanc on stage.
We deserve a better class of bands. We deserve the Replacements getting shitfaced and lamenting (stammering?) mid-song about losing a girl's number again or trashing David Bowie's dressing room. Or, y'know...Being blackout on SNL
Jan 25, 2024
Top Recs from @patrik-sandberg
Whenever I mention Night Flight Plus, no one knows what I’m talking about. It’s a streaming service named after (and featuring) the USA Network late-night cult series from the 1980s. It also includes a ton of films of the cult, horror, obscure music documentary, and exploitation variety. If you’re looking for Paul Morrissey, Troma Films, Vinegar Syndrome, or outdated TV specials about Minor Threat and Kate Bush, its curation is like a return to Kim’s Video… or my favorite VHS store from San Francisco, Le Video. The other night I watched an English-language Italian fashion giallo from 1988 called Too Beautiful To Die. It’s a totally outrageous masterpiece. It’s my favorite subscription. Feast your eyes.
Feb 21, 2025
I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin and Sonoma (specifically a town called Petaluma) and now that enough decades have past, I have a new appreciation for the beauty of the region—particularly as depicted by Hollywood's great genre filmmakers of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Of course, this includes great San Francisco movies like Vertigo (Hitchcock), Bullitt (Yates) and The Game (Fincher), but there are so many others that venture out to Monterey, Bodega Bay, and all the way up to Humboldt County. Some of my friends keep a running tally of "NorCal Noir" movies. Some favorites:
Salem's Lot (Miniseries, 1979), The Fog (1980), Play Misty For Me (1971), The Birds (1963), The Final Terror (1983), Firefox (1982), Dead and Buried (1981), Murder She Wrote (TV episodes, various), Cujo (1983), Point Blank (1967).
There are probably many others but between the midcentury architecture, west coast hippie/yuppie dialectic, atmospheric coastal fog, and rolling hills, it's a distinct vibe that always feels incredibly indulgent and tasteful even when it's lent in service of schlock.
Nov 24, 2024
My friend Aaron put me onto Badvril, the best band presently crawling out of San Francisco—the cesspool from whence we all came. And they sound like it, in all the most perfect, sludgy, narcotic, dreamy, total-eclipsing sort of ways. If you like shoegaze, Catherine Wheel, early Pumpkins, '90s alt revival, or melodic punk that pre-dates the Hot Topic era, you will die and go to heaven listening to their I AM GOD EP. that came out in February.
The desirous thing about becoming a fan before there is too much noise is that it's easy to catch up on their back catalogue. And then Becket becomes your Instagram friend and sends you the new unreleased album and it's the best music you've ever heard in your life. One wrong move and they could be too huge to handle. I wish them all the money in the world.
Dec 9, 2024