50 disappointing opinions on debatably important music from the year 2013
again, this is just between you and me ok
in spite of all the death threats you all have so kindly opted to leave in drafts for now i’ve come crawling back to share more bad opinions on songs that have possibly reached ‘beloved’ status over a decade later, in this case from the year 2013. unlike with music released in 1993 i don’t necessarily have a resting bitch opinion on these (so long as they don’t feature lyrics like ‘hey!’ juxtaposed with stomps and/or claps), and i’ve mostly even outgrown the mindset that i’m too cool to listen to a lot of what was popular and directly marketed to me at the time, as it’s become quite clear a decade later that i am not.
that said, i don’t feel like any artists like car seat headrest or the wonder years won me over during this exercise but rather have established themselves as projects that i’ll forever feel indifferent to, either because i didn’t put in the work to fully appreciate them when i was most susceptible to or because at this point it’s become pretty clear to me what their deal is and it just doesn’t appeal to me as much as music made by their peers does. i guess i was hoping to have my opinion changed on more of these artists, having figured out what kind of music i actually like since the last time i tried listening to them, but ultimately i feel like most of my pre-existing opinions on them have just been fortified by digging into the not-necessarily-singles beyond the familiar songs on these albums’ tracklists.
one of these days i won’t have to be escorted out of the club for bringing down the mood when a track from yeezus or random access memories comes on, but for now, i feel a surprising amount of solidarity with the guy who accidentally set his jacket on fire at a party while explaining that the master is one of PTA’s lesser works (hence the afore-written-about leather jacket that took its place for a very odd chapter of my life).
oh, and side note re: my 1993 list: did i not call that one of these obscure-to-my-generation indie bands would resurface much to the delight of every single music journalist among my generation i follow on twitter?
oh, and side note re: that last paragraph: i still don’t love the master. here’s a terrible cellphone picture of the jacket i destroyed while first introducing that opinion to a disinterested public:
oh damn ok, ok
chief keef, ‘blew my high’ there’s absolutely no reason why this boy’s instrumentals should go this hard but this beat—as with a surprising number of beats keef’s rapped on over the years—has been haunting me since i first heard it.
julia holter, ‘horns surrounding me’ used to get julia holter mixed up with julien baker and julie byrne a few years back and while that certainly isn’t the case anymore holter is the only jul- who i’m not entirely certain what their whole deal is?
subrosa, ‘ghosts of a dead empire’ have somehow never come across this band name before and i once again blame the public school system for failing me. hell yeah, hail satan, all that cool stuff.
new to it, into it
bölzer, ‘entranced by the wolfshook’ prime example of the direct correlation between how metal something is and how much i had to google the germanified pagan hunting term in its song title.
altar of plagues, ‘reflection pulse remains’ records (last fm) show i listened to this in 2016 tho i have no recollection (possibly because the band name sounds more autogenerated than anything posted by this band isn’t real). we’ll see if it sticks this time.
black kray, ‘fuck money stay pretty’ oh look it’s lil ugly mane’s whole thing. seems to be drafting on the vibe-heavy blown-out-beats thing viper was doing that was getting white boys in a tizzy at the time. i guess i’m sorta white boys.
gettin there
the dillinger escape plan, ‘one of us is the killer’ sounds like cult finish shoegaze/space-rock outfit kairon; irse! mixed with what i remember coheed and cambria sounding like based on the last time i heard ‘welcome home’ circa 2006.
car seat headrest, ‘knife in the coffee’ big fan of finding out that an artist i think is kinda mid has early recordings that sound like trash. more artists should know when and also how much to continue sounding like trash.
vampire weekend, ‘hannah hunt’ possibly the first VW song i’ve ever heard that isn’t one of the like 8 i’m supposed to know and it feels pretty harmless, i am not harmed by it. still could never listen to this band knowing how many times ezra has walked past me eating terrible little sandwiches out of a filthy piece of tupperware on larchmont blvd.
dreamcrusher, ‘cathedrals of moths’ only reason i haven’t spent time with a dreamcrusher record yet is because they’re mixed so much louder than everything else (except for that one RHCP album) and i’m genuinely terrified of the prospect of having one of those songs jumpscaring me on a playlist.
nails, ‘in exodus’ often consider becoming a nails guy until i see someone wearing one of their shirts in the wild. it’s always a guy who doesn’t look like he listens to anything remotely tethered to powerviolence just like…..browsing produce with his also-norm gf at target. if he has facial hair it feels like an experiment that isn’t going over very well.
the wonder years, ‘the devil in my bloodstream’ between this and the screendoor song i feel like i’m so close to breaking through and really enjoying TWY but i also can’t help feeling like it’s that thing where if you didn’t grow up watching the original star wars trilogy it’s kind of hopeless. tl;dr the wonder years are kind of like the max rebo band.
chelsea wolfe, ‘feral love’ chez loup is an all-star when it comes to showing up on an album i really like and even being in album-length collaborative projects i enjoy, i guess it’s probably time to start listening to her like a normal person.
it’s a terrible, terrible shame how much i’m into this
mark kozalek & jimmy lavelle, ‘gustavo’ really hoped my interest in the koz would drop off post-red house chili painters but even the obviously-dumb stuff speaks to me more than i care to admit.
guess i saw that coming
lil b, ‘stealing from strippers’ deceptively catchy, violently misogynistic, and hard to pin down how self-aware his sense of humor is—in retrospect lil b was kinda directly in step with just about every mainstream rapper of the era.
cult of luna, ‘in awe of’ you could put a gun to my head and ask me if this or any other cult of luna song came out in 2001 or 2021 and i’d say what a weird question, how did you get in my home, etc.
still don’t get it
autechre, ‘jatevee c’ well unless you mean the memes people make about them. i get those now.
queens of the stone age, ‘i appear missing’ entire teenhood spent being ensured by amazon that i would love QOTSA based on my CD shopping history only to find every time i listen to them—to this day—that it literally just sounds to me like license-free ‘rock ’n roll’ music, unspiced chili, etc.
tricot, ‘pool’ only thing more inscrutable to me than japanese (language) is math rock (genre; personality).
nick cave & the bad seeds, ‘jubilee street’ please understand that this is not my final thought on the caveography—as a fan of the like five other songs of his i’ve heard and wings of desire i promise i will be pursuing his music at some point even if this song (and the man’s increasingly dogshit politics) may deter me for another year.
melt-banana, ‘candy gun’ love math rock but i feel like it exists on a spectrum and there is at least one end of that spectrum that i am terrified of examining any further.
jason isbell, ‘elephant’ to me this just sounds like the type of guitar guy you meet in college who wrote a song called ‘better man’ about how ‘daddy liked lookin at the bottom of a bottle’ or whatever. he’d get his buddy to play cajon for him.
lord snow, ‘solitude’ i’m good with just knowing about nine of swords and super unison.
the ocean, ‘mesopelagic: into the uncanny’ feels weirdly descendent from mid-’00s cop rock a la three days grace to be classified as atmospheric sludge metal? i don’t hate everything about this but the lips from which these lyrics are gruffly recited sound far from angelic.
sigur ros, ‘isjaki’ remember when we had several scenes of musicians making like…..beautiful post-rock? what was that all about.
thought i’d be more into this
gorguts, ‘le toit du monde’ feel like i’ve only heard like two metal albums that dropped pre-sunbather, i’m realizing i have no clue what these subgenres sounded like between the ’90s and then.
my bloody valentine, ‘only tomorrow’ i am comically uninitiated with this band and i’m pretty sure this is the first time i’ve ever engaged with anything from this album. zzz!
lil ugly mane, ‘steelspittin’ love the little ugly guy, barely recognized this as being him.
adrianne lenker, ‘hours were the birds’ i dunno, kinda just sounds like big thief stripped of their superpowers. even though adrianne is like….the source of much of that superiority.
the drones, ‘i see seaweed’ always been optimistic about exploring the drones discography as it seems to be everything i love about tropical fuck storm and springtime but i did not like the way he says ‘panties’ in this song.
freddie gibbs & madlib, ‘deeper’ wait which of these sounds is coming from freddie’s mouth.
mach-hommy, ‘breastmilk’ this guy was developed in a lab to be custom tailored to my interests but for some reason his music has never once hit for me. which is honestly probably for the best since i can’t afford it.
unfamiliar with what this is and i don’t think i’ll retain it
ichiko aoba, ‘いきのこり●ぼくら’ i guess by default this is my new favorite japanese prog-folk single.
feed me jack, ‘definitely you’ mathy grizzly bear? had to google to find out what this was and learned it’s just the guy from still woozy? then i had to reopen the tab to find out what stay woozy actually is?
steven wilson, ‘drive home’ feel like i’ve googled this guy dozens of times over the years and he’s never what i expect him to be, which is just a one-guy ’70s prog band (pretty sure he has songs that sound like muse too?). i also tweeted something fairly innocuous about his band porcupine tree one time and it got a private retweet and that clearly still haunts me. what if pink floyd had been called ‘steven wilson.’
capo feat. ballout & chief keef, ‘forgiatos’ white guy with bad facial hair weed dealer type beat.
marietta, ‘cinco de mayo shit show’ man miss me with the twinkly ish.
retch, ‘special jim’ feel like this is what action bronson would sound like if he wasn’t always doing that thing where he’s always like….kind of trying to shout.
in solitude, ‘death knows where’ had this song pop up 5+ times on shuffle and each time i assumed it was the QOTSA track i had on this playlist. even writing the band name ‘in solitude’ right now i swear i’ve never seen it before.
‘yeah ok’
jon hopkins, ‘open eye signal’ establishing this subhed for the influx of (to me) same-y instrumental electronic production monikers that seemed to define the middle part of this decade to some extent…..like names i see on pidgfork lists and just go ‘yeah ok’ and move on.
tim hecker, ‘live room’ i like sounds and all, just prefer to have some other stuff going on over top of them. he should go by ‘tim heckler’ and roast other ambient musicians over his epic soundscapes.
oneohtrix point never, ‘chrome country’ i thought iggy pop was in this band.
DJ rashad (feat. DJ spinn & taso), ‘feelin’ obv more hip-hop than the others in this section but i’m gonna go ahead and slide this one in here. guess my feet don’t work.
miss me with it
kanye west, ‘new slaves’ look man i swear this isn’t a post-kanye era ‘i never liked his music anyway’ take, i genuinely think the my beautiful silly little fantasy through pablo honey or whatever run is the dumbest fucking music i have ever heard and i feel like an insane person knowing this is such an unpopular opinion. you freaks will put up with some of the most nails-on-chalkboard lyrics known to man for some instrumentals that feel like a mid at best take on what the underground was doing around the same time each of these records dropped.
daft punk feat. julian casablancas, ‘instant crush’ ‘get lucky’ whips, panda bear song is kinda cool, wish the rest of the songs didn’t sound so much like daft punk.
drain gang archive, ‘hold me down like gravity’ just recently found out yung lean and bladee are two differnt guys and also that bladee is not pronounced ‘blah-day’—yet neither of those realizations evidently came to me while actually listening to the music. this is so silly man…..i could name one thousand crazy ass white boys doing this exact kind of thing way cooler.
carpenter brut, ‘roller mobster’ really doesn’t sound like the carpenters or art brut. it’s like daft punk made by fans of muse and poor modern interpretations of ’80s b-movies.
kacey musgraves, ‘merry go round’ going off the isbell blurb there’s something about this type of wordplay specific to pop-country that drives me crazy. the banjo and plastic piano sounds certainly don’t help it.
lorde, ‘pure heroine’ most ‘2013’ pop song i encountered during this undertaking which, unfortunately, dredged up memories of all the pop songs by like…..second rate imagine dragons i’d suppressed from this era. this whole project may have been a huge mistake!