Friday, June 4, 2010

Musical Peaks

Having waxed 80s-musical yesterday, maybe I should be slightly more objective today — but only slightly.

To determine a time when the music you like peaked, it’s tempting to pick when the songs you loved the most came out even if they remained obscure…or when the most stuff you loved was actually in the Top 40…or when (a) what you loved (b) was in the Top 40 and (c) actually warranted critical praise years later — and by the complex third standard, I might have to pick the mid-90s (instead of, say, the 80s), when moments like this (from 1995) were actually quite common — without the need for hunting down indie online stations or something.

By contrast, the 1991 song “Counting Backwards” from her old band Throwing Muses is even better but is the sort of thing one only heard if lucky enough to be at a college with an alternative rock station at that time — WBRU in Providence having been the first professional such station in the nation (feel the pride).

You can understand why a guy who liked 80s New Wave and then in the 90s the sort of thing linked above would also enjoy, say, Metric in the 00s.  At first, I thought the stuff from their recent album Fantasies was a bit less immediately-catchy than, say, “Dead Disco,” but now stuff like that older song or “Monster Hospital” sounds a bit primitive to me compared to, say, the genuinely complex and pretty “Sick Muse” from  Fantasies.

At this rate of maturation, expect me to listen mainly to classical around the time I turn ninety.

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