What MUSIC are you listening to?

This morning again in the car, asking for Les loups but settled for Culottes de v'lours on random play.

Alex picked up the fiddle for tri-fiddliness on their latest, pretty good. I think my favourite ballad is Canot d'écorce, I love Ian's voice especially and Pascal's plaintive notes on the fiddle. Couldn't find it on Youtube so they might not have ever played it live.

I could see why you'd prefer instrumentals, but a lot of the songs are hilarious nonetheless (Quand chus parti du Canada); and why they explain what's happening in english before playing the song when they're in anglo-country (they've toured often in Scotland, Australia, US, Canada). Some are versions of songs my grandpa would sing (he also played the fiddle but never professionally - certainly influenced Pascal, in fact he still owns our grandpa's instrument but last I heard it wasn't in good shape, something about spilling a drink in it).

you in or around MTL? We should go to their next show.

I'll mix you my favourite drink afterwards, i call it the Lazy CauseBee

I'm in Gatineau but often visiting family in the MTL area.

They're playing the Chambly beerfest in early September (Labour Day weekend), I might be going there.

I just went to check their FB page, we see Yann, Pascal and this other guy on their updated picture (June 30), it's NOT Alex. Yet he's still in the band. He's probably just toning down his activities with them. Maybe he's got another day job.

is it that tall anglophone guy? He's pretty damn good too.

Chambly is only 40 mins from my place, I'll totally hit that up

I've been listening to The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. Great band, fantastic music, although I'm not crazy about the amount of spoken word is in their newer material.

In a punk mood tonight:

kittenforever.bandcamp.com/track/black-ice

And then there is this, with a chorus that you won't soon forget:

A while back I started hearing about this Swedish metal band called Ghost...well, Ghost BC in the US. They are one of those bands that is huge everywhere in the world that is not America.

The band is billed only as Nameless Ghouls, and they wear black cultist robes and those shovel-face Venetian masks. The singer goes by Papa Emeritus, and according to their lore he's died after every record so they're up to Papa Emeritus III. He wears black papal vestments, complete with a mitre. And skull makeup.

You might be thinking that this is some kind of black metal outfit, but they most definitely aren't. Here are my mental points of comparison from listening to them for a couple of days: Blue Oyster Cult, Beach Boys, King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, "Age of Aquarius", Shocking Blue, ABBA, NWOBHM, Deep Purple, Rainbow.

The singer sounds exactly like a cross between King Diamond and Brian Wilson. They seem more influenced by 1960s "soft" psychedelia and Swedish pop than Venom or Bathory. Their melodies are hooky and accessible, and it's almost like un-heavy metal in a way.

Really not sure what to think of these guys. On one hand, it's all brilliant. It's like really accessible, super-Satanic (but tongue in cheek) metal from an alternate reality where heavy metal existed in 1968. On the other, it seems almost too cute for its own good. But I'm sure the metal community probably despises these guys because they're funny and popular.

I had a post with some videos about Ghost a few years ago, but I can't find it now. Looks like we're missing a lot of posts in this thread. There's a jump from 2011 to April 2015...

I found them 'ok' at best, and even then it was two or three songs. I couldn't get into a whole album. Damn, I wish I remembered what else I said. Haven't heard them in awhile. I think they've had 2-3 different singers or something.

I believe they put out a new album this weekend. The same weekend as ...The Sword.

Rock with a honky-tonk influence:

Retro '90s sound from a modern band in Spain:

This song is like unto the apotheosis of Tears For Fears and Crowded House:

Not sure if there's a thread for concerts, but this last Saturday I got to see The Get Up Kids, which has always been a big favorite of mine. They played pretty much all old stuff, ignoring everything form their last two albums. Great show, nice and small venue, polite crowd, bands set up and started playing soon after the last one ended, can't go wrong with that.

After spending years hardly buying any new music at all, over the past week I've bought all the following songs and albums:

Bloom - Beach House
"Comeback Kid" - Sleigh Bells
"Little Fang" - Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks
"Far From Any Road" - The Handsome Family
"Fight Song", "Albert" - Eddie Japan
Four by Six - Eddie Japan
Have You Ever Done Something Evil? - Hallelujah the Hills
"Two Weeks" - FKA Twigs
Picture Perfect EP - Strawberry Whiplash
"Red Eyes" - The War on Drugs
"I Wanna Get Better" - Bleachers
What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World - The Decemberists
Wolf's Law - The Joy Formidable

I attribute this to two things. One, I'm doing running now, so I finally have a place to really listen to music now. Two, I set up a Plex server so that we can listen to this stuff on phones, tablets, computers, etc, and even stream to bluetooth speakers. I'm actually excited about new music for the first time in a long time.

I think that my music tastes aren't in sync with many others here, but I just made a new mix CD. It's called Les Pommes Sont Rouges et Je Suis Désolé and you can listen to it here:

www.daveexmachina.com/wordpress/?p=9682