Music Stuff and All That

The new, final, Megadeth album has dropped today. I will listen in the gym and provide my verdict shortly.

Update: it's terrific. One of the best albums they've ever made. If he'd done this 30 years ago at least 3 or 4 of these songs would have become MTV staples.

Listened to a few songs. Very much an album for the fans that sounds like a mash up of past glories (see also Death Magnetic, what I heard of it, anyway). This is not a bad thing. Especially for a last album.

I think the line up with Marty and Nick was the one to beat and I hear a lot of that on this one.

While I don’t think I’ll buy it (see again: Death Magnetic) as i don’t listen to a lot of that music anymore, it’s a fitting swan song and pretty great for a band still going after 40+ years.

In other “bands who’ve been around far longer than expected but really it’s just the fact that I’m getting old(er)” reactions:
I finally got around to listening to QotSA’s ‘Alive in the Catacombs’ and bloody hell, incredible. Really moody (obviously) and perfect reworkings of existing songs.

A couple of years ago I learned about something called the Triple J Hottest 100. Triple J is a radio station in Australia, every year they hold a fan vote to determine the 100 favourite songs of the last year with a heavy emphasis towards Australian bands and artists, and it's apparently quite a big thing in Aus. I'm generally supportive of the idea of it because encouraging and giving profile to your own country's music over just playing Taylor Swift on hard rotation is a thing to be applauded, but I listen to a few of the bigger songs and artists and fuck me there's a reason why Australia's musical taste is a punchline.

The winning song was by a British artist called Olivia Dean and it sounds very much like what would happen if you described soul music to ChatGPT and then asked it to make you a song. She had 5 songs in the 100. The only other artist with 5 entries was an Australian indie band called Spacey Jane, they have clearly spent many years listening to a never ending rotation of British 90s landfill indie bands like Guillemots and Hard-Fi and The Enemy and The Pigeon Detectives and all those other generic and immediately forgettable outfits, and thought "that kind of cutting edge songwriting is exactly what Australia wants", and apparently it is.

Tame Impala got 4 entries and I don't mind him at all, so they get a pass for that. There's an electronic producer and DJ called Ninjarachi who got three entries who I'll give a try, but as the highest electronic entries were by Fred Again and Disco Lines, both of whom make electronic music for people who stand still and video DJs on their phones, my hopes aren't high.

Come on Aus, do better. You've managed to produce the odd good band in the past, you can do better than most of this guff.

Any Kylie?

Might actually be better if there was.

There’d better be some You Am I on there. They have some great songs in their catalogue.

Nvm, I thought it was longer than a year.

It's here. Enjoy. Or don't.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_100,_2025

Sleaford Mods are playing Wellington in April. I don't really know their music and it's a pain to do an overnighter, but it might be kind of a crossover thing for me.

I’ve met them. They really can’t. I truly think that the nation, as a whole, just doesn’t like music. As in.. maybe 5% of people actually really like something (whether it’s metal or folk or maybe they do actually like bland dance pap) but everyone else will just exist with slop being slopped around them and give no thought to what it is.

There is just no evidence of any kind of passion.

The other day I was at a garden centre thing and was struck by the fact that the guys in the admin shed were listening to something that wasn’t the same pap I hear everywhere.

People in the UK listen to pap too.. sure.. but material numbers of people listen to particular types of pap. They have made a choice. Here they all just listen the the same stuff.

If AI music makes it big.. it’ll make it biggest in Australia. These people are primed for that shit.

Aussie psyche and punk can be exceptional

As you are painfully aware I will not leave a bad word about Aussie Pub Rock uncontested. Today's suggested listening: Shutting Down Our Town by the aforementioned *Jimmy Barnes. * Like all the great songs of the genre it improves exponentially with drunkenness and if you are not drunk it reminds of how great being drunk is. Sadly I think even Australian culture is shifting from drunkenness so we are coming to the end of a golden age. I'm very sad to hear that theme tune to smoko now is garden centre pap.

Conversely, Smoko by The Chats is an absolute banger.

Terrible news for Chicago - Dee Snider has had to step down from Twister Sister due to health issues, so the reunion tour this year looks to be in jeopardy.