Sometimes I wish The F-Z had a comments section. I miss the anger and the threats I used to get back at the old place. When someone says they’re going to kick your ass because you don’t like Julia Holter, that’s when you know you’ve made a difference. Anyway, this month is, aside from the Grimes debacle, mostly posi-vibes as far as the eye can see. Maybe this month’s inbox will be filled with love threats instead of death threats.
I went to see Ed Schraeder’s Music Beat this month. Of course this is Athens, where shows never start on time, and so even though it was a weeknight ES’sMB didn’t go on until 12:30am and neither I nor the person I was with have a life right now that allows us to stay up til 2 in the morning on a weeknight w/o facing Serious Consequences. But even though we had to split, we still got our money’s worth b/c one of the opening bands was this thing called The Gurgle Twins that sounded like a cross between those ‘Phish Shreds’ videos you see on YouTube, and Capt. Beefheart, which is to say that they sounded very excellent indeed. It was freaky and fun and totally unexpected and it made my week. It might be the best new thing I’ll hear all month and should serve as a reminder to all of us that the world is full of strangeness like a rich painting and sometimes the only way to find it is to leave your house. Because while the grid delivers a lot to us these days, it rarely delivers surprises.
That said, so much astonishingly great music came out last month that we should all be grateful to still be alive to hear it. If only we would listen.
All albums scored on the binary scale because zeros and ones are how your mom tells you she loves you. And just so we’re clear, these are albums that came out in November.
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