urgencytobleed: (ki i wanna fuck it up)
Alright, I can't delay this any longer as it's already way overdue. Well, sort of - on the 27th of December, I promised it within the week but on the 15th, I gave myself a month so I at least have to get this posted before I break both deadlines. Anyway, it's been nearly done for at least two weeks now but I've been a. lazy in writing thoughts on each album (which, if you know me, I can't go without including) and b. obsessed with slightly re-arranging the list so that if I didn't force myself to stop I'd never be able to. I'm pretty happy with it right now, for the most part, especially the top ten; the rest of the list is more fluid, as is to be expected, but I just couldn't bring myself to make the lower ten "honorable mentions" and call it good - they deserve better than that so I had to include them.

So, since otherwise this is going to be extremely tl;dr, I am going to split it up into two entries to make it only slightly tl;dr. I was going to do four but considering I'm already later than I wanted to be, that seems pretty unnecessary. So, two it is. Back ten today, top ten tomorrow. Remember, it's all my opinion, my tastes, etc., etc. so if you want to tell me how bad it sucks just do it in a constructive way, okay? I don't like arguing.

And for the record, most surprising thing about this list? 14 of the bands have prominent male singers in them. This is shocking because about two or three years ago, I basically used to shun most male vocalists and only listened to female vocals. This is a big step for me. Sure, about 8 of those also have prominent female singers, but still. I am proud of myself for this, people! There were only three bands out of ten on my list last year (four if you count Rilo Kiley - which I don't; poor Blake only got one song, after all) and those all had female vocals as well. Anyway, yes, this is exciting to me. Now, onto the important stuff!...

P.S. Click on the album covers for Amazon links if you are interested. I actually own physical copies of 15/20 of these which is pretty good for a downloading fiend like me. So support these artists if you like them, okay? Also, remember to change download links from hxxp to http for them to work. And the key tracks are listed roughly in order of how much I like them, so if you don't want to download them all, just try the first song from each.

Without further ado, #20-11... )

urgencytobleed: (where do i belong)


Johnny Foreigner

So here's the deal. I've tried to get into this band about ten times now. And every time, I absolutely hated them; I seriously thought they were nothing more than terrible noise. But I kept hearing good things so I kept trying anyway. So I downloaded their recently released album - Waited Up 'Til It Was Light - and I liked it a lot better than any of their previous recordings I'd heard (probably because the actual sound quality is a lot better) but still wasn't really into it. Then, I had deleted it from my computer but not my mp3 player, so I ended up hearing one of the songs on shuffle. It was a lot quieter and calmer and nicer than I remembered any of them being and I thought it had to be another band before I actually looked to see that it was them. I quickly became obsessed. This song was "DJs Get Doubts", which as I mentioned, is about the only slow-ish song they have, but apparently it works well as a starting point because from there, I've kind of fallen in love with most of the rest of the album as well. The rest of these songs are a lot more aggressive and frenetic than the above-mentioned but I like them a lot, especially "Lea Room" which is just insanely catchy. I'm sure to some people, they still will sound like terrible noise because they can be pretty harsh on the ears at times, but I'm glad that I finally can say that I like them now. I guess if I had to make comparisons it'd be like a much more aggressive Be Your Own Pet (who unfortunately just broke up, by the way), or for some reason I keep thinking Los Campesinos! (who are putting out another album in October, by the way) if they did punk rock, or maybe the closest would be Help She Can't Swim, another punk rock-ish girl/boy band from the UK, or possibly like a sloppier, louder Blood Red Shoes. I don't know. I'm terrible at making comparisons, I've said a million times. Just listen and decide for yourself.

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Shannon

January 2020

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