Here’s some new music I quite like, which is more than a little surprising. I’ve become extremely cynical about music over the past 1.5 decades or so, but it seems as though there may (at last) be some new stuff worth listening to. My biggest complaint about most recent music is that it’s so completely derivative of previous bands’ work that it’s really just a poor reproduction. Right now the trend is towards mining the bands of my adolescence and teen years, which I find particularly galling.
The xx deserve credit for creating a sound which seems genuinely inspired by their predecessors, rather than being just a simplistic rip-off. The following two songs show strong New Order/Joy Division and Jesus and Mary Chain influences, but don’t feel like talentless, hack-job reproductions. Very much the opposite.
“Islands” (studio version)
“VCR”
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