Pretensions

Today I had a horrifying thought. Am I pretentious when it comes to music?

Admittedly, when it comes to classical music I'm more a fan of the darker stuff - deaf or nearly so Beethoven, Mozart at the end of his life when he was all dark, Jenkins for reasons I can't really understand - and when it comes to popular music, I'm the same. Metallica, Apocalyptica, Rammstein, Within Temptation, Iron Maiden, Kamelot, even the odd bit of Murderdolls.

Recently however, I've found that I'm liking more and more non metal. I quite like three of Adele's latest songs, I can listen to Christina Perri's Jar of Hearts on an endless loop, and there's one Florence + The Machine song which I love, I just don't know what it's called. Either way, this made me wonder. Am I truly a metalhead, or am I just fooling myself?

Am I just pandering to my pretensions that I'm more hardcore than that? Ought I give up and stop visiting Utopia (which is probably my favourite store after Dymocks Stationery - the cheapest place to get Calligraphy supplies)?

To test this theory, I went into JBHifi and purchased a CD. Lungs by Florence was $10. If I didn't like it, I could always just give it to my sister.

I stuck it in my computer and listened with trepidation.

As it turns out, I didn't like it. Cosmic Love was alright, but not really to my taste. All of the tracks sounded the same, with the same airy voice and electronic instrumentation. I'm not a pretentious ass. I genuinely dislike the majority of popular music. I don't know whether I should be pleased or disappointed. Who cares?

Either way, I'm off to cleanse my mind of all that ranga music by listening to some music which never fails to perk me up: Amour by Rammstein, Parliament of Fools by Skyclad, Sacra by Apocalyptica and what is probably my favourite piece of classical music: The Allegretto (mvt. 2) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

Because as it turns out, I really am hardcore like that.

Incoherent Indies

I was watching Rage on ABC on Saturday morning, and I was reminded of one of my pet hates: incoherent apathetic indie bands with stupid names.

They mumble, they ‘sing’ in irritating breathy voices that demonstrate quite obviously that they have absolutely no diaphragm support whatsoever, and they have stupid band names.

What kind of an idiotic name is ‘Fire! Santa Rosa. Fire!’? seriously.

And what about ‘Fauns’.

It’s only a matter of time before they just start taking names out of science textbooks: I will in no way be surprised when there’s a band called ‘the Electrolytic Cells’ or perhaps ‘Xloem vessels’. And let’s not rule out ‘the Tickertapes’; ‘the Hubble Telescopes’; ‘the Stephen Hawkings’… I could go on.

And it’s as if they can’t even get enthusiastic about their own music. They just stand there, playing their instruments in an expressionless manner. They seem to think they’re too cool for their music, but they’ll deign to play it anyway, and we just have to deal with their boredom.

On a slightly unrelated note, scuttlebutt is that Metallica is coming to Australia in August. Tiff (the one who introduced me to the joys of Metallica) and I are really cut that it’s in the middle of trials.

Damn and blast.