april marches

lookuplookup:

dykings:

lookuplookup:

bluebeadsandbones:

dykings:

Someone said “The Silver Jews are back” on twitter and I lost my mind a little. CONTEXT: They’re re-releasing some early songs, specifically tracks off of Dime Map of the Reef and the Arizona Record. This is a bit of a bummer for me personally as I already have/listen to those records on the…

The world needs these early recordings! How can your resist such lyrical genius as “Welcome to the house of the bats, my baby / Welcome to the house of the bats!” Silver Jews forever and ever, amen—their performance in Toronto remains of two concerts I have ever s-o-b-b-e-d at.

Edited to add: I’m really into the above write-up describing the early recordings as the work of “muppet baby versions of the David Berman, Stephen Malkmus and Bobby Nastanovich that we know today”

MUPPET BABY VERSIONS. BEST!!!

It’s not a rare early track and it doesn’t even have any words, but sometimes the only thing that keeps me from totally hating this stupid world is “Night Society.” I’m pretty much only mentioning this because I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about The Silver Jews (aside from, of course, my undying love for SM & also any band name-dropped in “His Indie World” by Mary Lou Lord).

how have I never heard this “His Indie World” song before?!

I LOVE “HIS INDIE WORLD.” Like, okay, I have a lot of feelings about the way people fetishize other people’s taste, particularly when it comes to music, mainly because I am SO SICK OF DUDES WHO WANT TO TALK ABOUT MUSIC WITH ME. Don’t get me wrong, I love music maybe more than anything else in the world and I love talking about music but like every dude who has ever tried to get with me has had some weird fixation over my interest in ~indie rock~ and BLARG, like, I really don’t care that you are into the fact that I know a bunch of bullshit about, like, KRS Mail Order Freaks singles or whatever & I kind of hate when dudes are like, “I’ve never met a girl who listens to FILL IN THE BLANK before” (like, a couple of weeks ago some guy was like, “I’ve never met a girl who listens to Sebadoh before!” and my response was like, “Dude, operating on the most awful gender essentialist assumptions of what ladies like, Sebadoh is practically genetically engineered to be a band for chicks — like, “On Fire”? “Rebound”? Also, Lou Barlow is a Grade-A dreamboat. There is nothing surprising about anyone with a heart and access to a good college radio station liking this!”) or “Wow, you know even more about THIS BAND/LABEL/WHATEVER than I do” (like, okay, great! I also probably know more about Sweet Valley High and Stuart Hall and pizza than you do, too.)

ANYWAY, one of the things that I like about “His Indie World” is that instead of an indie girl being, like, an object of lust, Mary Lou Lord is talking about how she doesn’t feel comfortable in a world driven by indie cachet and just wants to be left alone to listen to folk music (“just give my Joni, my Nick, Neil, and Bob/you can keep your Tsunami, your Slant 6 and Smog”). Sometimes I feel that way, too, Mary!!! (Except for the part where I hate Bob Dylan.)

Full disclosure: As much as I love Mary Lou Lord giving the (very gentle and tastefully phrased) finger to indie rock dudes, I am also into Tullycraft’s judgmental screed “Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About” even though it goes against basically everything I believe re: not judging people based on their taste.

K., you put BOTH of those songs on the first mix cd you sent me a million years ago in high school.