"Resist the urge to quantify"

Quella vecchia rubrica che una volta si chiamava "Polaroids From The Web" [*]


► «There is a new-old Quarterbacks song, thank God», titolava ieri Fader, ed è stata proprio la mia stessa reazione. Non me l'aspettavo e la sorpresa è stata pari solo al caldo senso di gratitudine. La band di Dean Engle è stata uno dei più brucianti amori a prima vista degli ultimi anni per chi vi scrive, ma è da lungo tempo assente dalle scene, ed era già chiaro che fosse ormai un discorso concluso (Dean, a giudicare dai suoi ascolti su Soundcloud, ha anche cambiato decisamente gusti musicali). La Team Love Records ha ora ristampato Quarterboy su cassetta, e come bonus track all'album del 2014 ha aggiunta questa nuova Park, composta sempre in quel periodo ma mai registrata fino ad oggi. Stesso approccio lo-fi, stessi versi laceranti, stesso magia "twee-punk", come si diceva all'epoca. Quarterbacks, qui ti si vuole ancora molto bene, e io spero che un giorno o l'altro ci rivedremo.




► «What do I remember of that show? I know how bad we must have sounded. There’s no way it could have been good, and yet? The crowd was singing along to songs like they were real songs, like we were a real band. People were screaming and jumping around, the sun was setting over the ocean beyond the crowd, and it was great in ways I could never understand or replicate. It’s very possible the audience was too stoned or drunk to notice how terrible we were, but to this day—nine years later—people all over the world who were there that year come up to me and say how much they loved that concert. I’ll meet someone in random places on tour, and they’ll tell me they were there at Primavera when we played. And I want to say “oh, I’m sorry”—but I don’t, because our band that barely knew how to play, accidentally played one of the greatest shows we ever played to thousands of people» - Kip Berman dei Pains Of Being Pure At Heart racconta in maniera magnifica per Spotify Stories (ma quindi ora Spotify ha anche un magazine? Chiudiamo tutto?) il suo primo Primavera da musicista: "What I Learned When My Band Played its First Festival".

► «New Zealand Indie: Beyond Flying Nun and the “Dunedin Sound”», dove Bandcamp Daily cita anche svariate band e label passate su queste frequenze.

► «People are listening to more artists than ever before, with playlists boasting a range of musicians, but when people become fans of playlists are they no longer becoming fans of the music itself?» - su Red Bull Music un articolo per cercare di rispondere alla domanda "Is music streaming making listeners smarter or complacent?".

► «Whether it’s a rap song or a reality show, there is this notion of widely enjoyed media as “junk food” — something to feel bad about consuming. But the very idea of a guilty pleasure has always felt gendered to me, at least to some degree»: "The Problem With 'Not Caring' About Pop Culture".

► Periodicamente torna fuori qualche articolo con "quella ricerca di Oxford che dice che andare ai concerti allunga la vita". Ok, che scoperta. Forse è meglio questo pezzo del Guardian sugli over 50 ancora in azione dietro ai mixer: «Thirty years on from the second summer of love, a cohort of fiftysomething DJs are refusing to hang up their headphones».

► «The breakup of The Thermals feels like the end of an era for indie rock. They were a reliable constant in an ever-changing world. They never produced a dud or the dreaded mid-life crisis record. They didn’t hit a sophomore slump or make an overproduced, major label disaster. They never went more than three years without releasing a new record»: Dan Ozzi su Noisey elogia a dovere i Thermals, che questa settimana hanno annunciato lo scioglimento.




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