Favourite current band
Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:41 pm
Going by the instant popularity of the British invasion thread, it looks like we're all into old man music here. So as a little offshoot, who's your favourite current band? By that I mean bands that are still releasing albums and touring frequently, not bands of ageing hippies who re-unite with a guest musician to replace whichever member of the original line-up has died once every 10 years.
For me it has to be Radiohead. They're a band who constantly push boundaries, both in music and business politics. For the uninformed, their new album In Rainbows was released last week. Since they don't have a record label they released it through their website, and the customer could choose how much they paid for it (yes, including nothing). It's a big one-finger salute to the music industry, and they're estimated to have already earnt about £4,000,000 from it already, which is $8,000,000 from the other side of the pond. The reason for this is that by releasing it the way they have they are getting almost all the money from a purchase - normally when you buy a CD, after the retailer, record label and management take their cuts the artist gets about 50p.
And what an album. For a long time they've been trying to find the perfect balance of rock, folk and electronica and they've finally done it. There's balls-out-of-the-bath rock, pounding electro, tender ballads and epic torch songs. If it's not album of the year there's something wrong with the world.
So there's my lengthly rant. I also like these bands.
Arcade Fire - Most folk bands are content with sitting around a campfire, learning to play the banjo, growing beards and singing about donkeys. Not Arcade Fire. They've expanded their number to 11, making them one of the loudest bands to have ever existed. On top of a wall of guitars, drums, keyboards, violins, horns, accordions, hurdy-gurdies and God knows what else they sing songs of growing up in poverty, the loss of family members, post-9/11 paranoia and religious hypocrisy, all played with 110% passion (think Born To Run-era Springsteen but a lot louder) Widely considered to be the best band around at the moment.
iLiKETRAiNS - Chiming guitars that build to walls of noise via the sound of Beelzebub himself vomiting fire and brimstone, mixed with haunting vocals about history, murder and trains. Mesmerising stuff, and they're a really great bunch of guys when you meet them in person.
Fields mix pastoral folk, pop sensibility and widescreen rock so massive it makes the likes of U2 and The Killers sound like a pub band.
Wooden Shjips (yes, I did spell that properly) are a bunch of psychedelic renegades who sound like The Doors jamming with The Velvet Underground. Hypnotic grooves, noisy guitars and keyboards and heavily-treated vocals. Now, why can't Amazon hurry up and deliver their album to me?
Oh, and no-one's allowed to say RHCP because if we're honest they haven't done anything good since Californication and are [&@%!]' awful live.
For me it has to be Radiohead. They're a band who constantly push boundaries, both in music and business politics. For the uninformed, their new album In Rainbows was released last week. Since they don't have a record label they released it through their website, and the customer could choose how much they paid for it (yes, including nothing). It's a big one-finger salute to the music industry, and they're estimated to have already earnt about £4,000,000 from it already, which is $8,000,000 from the other side of the pond. The reason for this is that by releasing it the way they have they are getting almost all the money from a purchase - normally when you buy a CD, after the retailer, record label and management take their cuts the artist gets about 50p.
And what an album. For a long time they've been trying to find the perfect balance of rock, folk and electronica and they've finally done it. There's balls-out-of-the-bath rock, pounding electro, tender ballads and epic torch songs. If it's not album of the year there's something wrong with the world.
So there's my lengthly rant. I also like these bands.
Arcade Fire - Most folk bands are content with sitting around a campfire, learning to play the banjo, growing beards and singing about donkeys. Not Arcade Fire. They've expanded their number to 11, making them one of the loudest bands to have ever existed. On top of a wall of guitars, drums, keyboards, violins, horns, accordions, hurdy-gurdies and God knows what else they sing songs of growing up in poverty, the loss of family members, post-9/11 paranoia and religious hypocrisy, all played with 110% passion (think Born To Run-era Springsteen but a lot louder) Widely considered to be the best band around at the moment.
iLiKETRAiNS - Chiming guitars that build to walls of noise via the sound of Beelzebub himself vomiting fire and brimstone, mixed with haunting vocals about history, murder and trains. Mesmerising stuff, and they're a really great bunch of guys when you meet them in person.
Fields mix pastoral folk, pop sensibility and widescreen rock so massive it makes the likes of U2 and The Killers sound like a pub band.
Wooden Shjips (yes, I did spell that properly) are a bunch of psychedelic renegades who sound like The Doors jamming with The Velvet Underground. Hypnotic grooves, noisy guitars and keyboards and heavily-treated vocals. Now, why can't Amazon hurry up and deliver their album to me?
Oh, and no-one's allowed to say RHCP because if we're honest they haven't done anything good since Californication and are [&@%!]' awful live.
