Peter Escott: They have music in Tasmania!? This is great.

Sounds Like Sunset: Putting this here for when I need to look back at what 2014 releases I actually listened to. This is pretty decent.

Mere Women: Getting a fair bit of play on Double J. That's good.

Pitchfork: They published a bunch of lists lately. Only really looked at the singles one though. Agree with Oblivion topping the list, not sure about the rest. There are 5 songs involving Kanye in the top 100, and I think it's kind of boring to put too many songs by one artist in a list.

Linked Hey QT to my friend while we were sitting a corridor waiting for class and she decided to play it out of her phone. Thank god we were not on a train, because that would have caused a riot. It's like an inferior rehash of Barbie Girl. I guess it's so bad that it's rebellious. Still don't like it.

The Apartments: Mr Somewhere gets added to my "Ambivalent Songs About Brisbane/Queensland" playlist thanks to mention in Pig City (the book).

The Church: Starfish is really growing on me. Four stars, at least. I also like Anna Miranda.

Double J: J Files are back. Sort of listened to the Jeff Buckley one without paying much attention. I'm not really a fan, to be honest. I can handle only so much sad man music.

Kimbra: Listened to the new album a few times, felt nothing. I got tired of 90s Music. Pitchfork gave it a mildly negative review, but I know that writer actually likes Kimbra. So it really is an underwhelming album.

Taylor Swift: Initial bubblings about cultural appropriation, but then the sort of people who like to talk about that moved on to raving over Nicki Minaj. Song is acceptable, but I cringe at the lyrics. Not sure how it got to no. 1 in Australia, but I guess that's not really hard.

Nicki Minaj: The song itself starts out strong, but derails towards the end. The video does the exact opposite. Loved NGE crossovers on Tumblr. Perhaps a bit too explicit to really become popular mainstream.

Hottest 100 Vote: 
The Drones - Why Write A Letter That You’ll Never Send
Lorde - Ribs
Vampire Weekend - Step
The National - Sea Of Love
Kirin J Callinan - Embracism
Courtney Barnett - Avant Gardener
Rainbow Chan - Haircut
Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?
Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Janelle Monae - Q.U.E.E.N. {Ft. Erykah Badu}

In descending order of how much I like them. I think the only ones to make it will be Step, Reflektor, and Do I Wanna Know? No sure what will be No. 1. My friend and I guess it'll be Royals, Get Lucky, or Riptide.

Ooh, Warmest 100 is predicting Riptide as No. 1. I'm not surprised. It reminds me of Big Jet Plane, being an aggressively... ah, I should save that for the 26th.

Other Triple J Things: People are arguing about jjj and homogenizing again. Nothing new to me. Yeah, I don't like the station much, despite being squarely in its target demographic, and sometimes I find even Nova easier (less annoying) to listen to, but after talking with a friend, I think the problem lies with the audience. They do play some decent stuff, but the majority likes dumb crap, which is how it goes with every kind of art. Oh well. Just listen to 4ZZZ or FBi or something.

Hey, they're talking about the Dessner-Greenwood classical collaboration now, that's something good!

Things I Just Discovered:
Kimbra - The Build-Up | Is that a prepared piano? It's a shame I never noticed this song earlier; I always zone out towards the end of albums.
The Triffids - Wide Open Road | It's up there with Cattle & Cane, I think!
Midnight Oil - Power And The Passion | For some reason I was expecting something MOR, but this is pretty fun.

Arcade Fire: The more I listen, the less I like. So I think I'm gonna leave it here. They're doing a sideshow here next year, but it's on a weeknight, at the damned Convention Centre, and I have no friends, so blah. It'll probably be full of the kind of people I don't like.

St Vincent: New song is surprisingly fun. I didn't care much for the previous album and I was set on not caring about this, but now I'm going to be cautiously interested. Has it stopped being shocking for female singers to talk about masturbating?

Jenny Hval: Innocence Is Kinky came out ages ago, but I'm revisiting it because one of the songs came up in shuffle and I distinctly heard the lyrics, "Do you remember, in Brisbane in December? It was raining..."

RCO: Saw them at the Opera House at the beginning of the month. Mariss Jansons had to pull out halfway through, which made for some awkwardness at the end when the audience threw streamers at the orchestra. Especially since they'd advertised it as his last concert with them. But I still enjoyed it, I guess.

Television: Went to the concert ages ago, but I somehow neglected to mention it here! They were impressively tight, and one of the few bands where I wasn't even slightly annoyed when they jammed and drew out songs. Ed Kuepper of The Saints was the support act. I really like Sleepyhead, and now it's on my high rotation playlist.

ARIA Awards: I wasn't really paying attention. Tame Impala won a bunch of things and I'm pretty OK with that. I'm not even sure Nick Cave should count as Australian anymore. The Flume guy seemed annoying. Resolution has to be the meh-est song to get Song Of The Year ever, I'm glad Matt Corby just said, "I don't have much to say" and walked off the stage.

Youtube: Keeps recommending me terrible Youtube singers because I keep clicking on things that people post on my Glee Club's Facebook group. They can sing well and all, but oh the overproduction! Oversinging! The worst thing is amateurs imitate and add stupid affectations to their singing when they haven't even got the basic "singing in tune" thing right.

Tumblr: I'm gradually unfollowing all of the music writers, because I just don't care anymore. They're all clambering over each other to say stuff like, "I liked Taylor Swift back when everyone else hated her!" and it's just stupid and annoying.

Lana Del Rey: Tropico is... something. I still listen to Driving In Cars With Boys a lot. Looking forward to her new material.

The Whitlams: Yeah, people say they're terrible. But I just rediscovered You Gotta Love This City, and I'd never noticed the disparaging lyrics before: "You've gotta love this city for it's body, not it's brain. My city's a whore..." Absolutely perfect. I'd kill to hear Tim Rogers sing it.

Darren Hanlon: Manilla NSW is one of my favourite discoveries of this year. I've been looking for Sydney/NSW kind of songs because The Go-Betweens' perfection was making me want to move back to QLD. Alas, this guy is from Gympie!

My votes are over here. How long will I last before I switch over to the Classic 100?

100. Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
We're off to a good start, though I guess all of the good stuff will be in the bottom half of the countdown, as always.

99. Lana Del Rey - Video Games
I didn't actually expect this to make it. I figured that to everyone else, this would be just another terrible buzz single. Overall, her catalogue is awful, but this one song is good. (So much Twitter butthurt.)

98. Jebediah - Leaving Home
Not familiar with this, though the I know the band is Australian. Meh.

97. MIA - Paper Planes
This should probably be higher, but okay.

96. The Cat Empire - Hello
Hmm. Definitely not better than Paper Planes. This looks like it's going to be a "Best of Triple J-Core" countdown.

95. Ben Lee - Cigarettes Will Kill You
There's a Ben I particularly dislike, it's either this guy or Ben Kweller. Definitely not Ben Folds, but all three are probably similar. Oh, this is the "Catch My Disease" one? Alright, this is my least favourite Ben.

94. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks
Catchy but insubstantial fluff. Sorry to my friends who love this band.

93. Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
I was going to vote for either this or Smashing Pumpkins' "Today". If "Today" doesn't make it, I'll probably wish that I gave a vote to this song.

92. Of Monsters & Men - Little Talks
Are you fucking serious? Meanwhile, Philip Glass is on the Classic 100, so over there I go for now.

91. Jebediah - Harpoon

90. Silverchair - Straight Lines
Glass is finished, so I'm back. This song has a tiny bit of nostalgia value for me, but I don't really like it. It's a bit Coldplayish? I can see why people love it though.

89. TV On The Radio - Wolf Like Me
This band has been on my to-listen list for years, but I never got around to it. This seems like the kind of thing I'd be into.

88. Something For Kate - Monsters
Okay, nothing special, meh, etc.

87. The Kooks - Naive
Boring.

86. The Killers - When You Were Young
I like this in an indifferent, 6/10 sort of way.

85. Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
Shit, I'm too young for this. This has nice production.

84. Kanye West - Gold Digger
This is really fun, but I think most of it is because of that sample.

83. Pulp - Common People
Ah, another song I wanted to vote for. This song is about middle-class people wanting to go ooh-ah at poor people, right? It's great.

82. Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag
I guess this counts as a pop classic now. I think it's annoying, but it could be worse.

81. Angus & Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane
Oh my God, the nostalgia. People were so angry about this song! And my high school music teacher suggested them to me when I said most Australian music was boring...

80. Rage Against The Machine - Bulls On Parade
Missed most of this because I went to do the laundry.

79. Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
My father likes this band.

78. Silverchair - Freak
I don't see anything really memorable about this song.

77. The Presents - My People
What's the difference between a good song and a song you heard a lot when you were young? It's really hard to tell. Apparently this song is about asylum seekers, and that's pretty cool.

76. MGMT - Electric Feel
I think there's a Foster The People song that sounds exactly like this!

75. The Killers - Somebody Told Me
Eh, I liked the other Killers song more. I didn't have any interest in music until 2009, and I've found that it's really hard to like anything I heard a lot before then.

74. The Wombats - Let's Dance To Joy Division
The disco noises and children's chorus make me cringe. Also, I feel like a horrible person because I seem to hate everything that my friends like.

73. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home
Hey, it's the original version of "Little Talks". There's something likable about it despite being one of those stupid "hey ho" songs.

72. Wolfmother - Joker & The Thief
All these old songs make me feel like I'm listening to that station that says, "the best mix of the 80s, 90s, and now!"

71. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Whoops, zoned out.

70. Regurgitator - ! (The Song Formerly Known As)
69. Eminem - Lose Yourself
Nope, I'm not old enough for this.

68. Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
All of the celebration about their breakup made me really embarrassed for Australia.

67. Alt-J - Breezeblocks
Liked this song the first few times I heard it, but it got tiring. And 67 is waaaay to high.

66. You Am I - Berlin Chair
I couldn't decide which You Am I song I wanted to vote for. I'm glad this is here, even though I probably wouldn't consider it one of the best 100 songs of the last 20 years. But hey, this list was always going to be Australia-centric, and not really the best.

Right, I'm going to Hurstville. See you tomorrow.

Trends: Seems that the likes of Grimes has ushered in an age of female vocalist indie electronic pop. Like CHVRCHES, AlunaGeorge, and Phebe Starr, who was really boring when she was on Unearthed. They just wrapped that mess up with some trendy production.

Foxygen: Listened to the new album while going through BNMs and was shocked by how bad it was. Thank God for this review. Especially that 2nd paragraph!

The Drones: I wasn't going to freak over new music this year, but I heard The Drones on the radio and thought, "Wow, this is a really weird." It's a good album. I particularly like the last two tracks.

Spotify: Oh God, they changed it so you can see who people are following/who's following you. On the plus side, I can now unfollow that girl who listens exclusively to Glee covers.

Paul Kelly/Neil Finn: Watching the livestream was probably better than actually being there. It was alright, though I'm not really into Crowded House (gasp). I dunno, they were like one of those name-drop bands in high school, like Beatles or Pink Floyd. Felt a bit emotional during How To Make Gravy.

Hey, you know what I'd like to hear in new Australian music? Specific references to local stuff (like catching the 470 to Circular Quay) and accents that aren't pointlessly weird and definitely not Australian (Lisa Mitchell, Josh Thomas).

Dirty Projectors
I bought the tickets ages before and I had no idea why, since I didn't even like them much. I didn't even know that they had a whole bunch of albums before Bitte Orca.

The first support act was awful. They started promisingly enough, with a guy playing a bass clarinet, before a girl walked on and started singing some terribly generic piano pop. Fortunately the second was a nice indie-classical group that played Nico Muhly and St. Vincent, though by that point a lot of people had gone outside to buy drinks.

I'd read some criticism where people were saying that the male singer was off-key and "Using women as back-up singers is sexist!" but it really didn't come off that way to me. Longstreth is a better singer than most other wimpy indie frontmen I've seen, and there were plenty of female-lead songs. The bassist was not a woman for once!

I walked away thinking, "Hey, that was great!" while people around me were like "That was weird, where was the melody?" like a lot of other concerts I go to, and I know that a lot of them are just going to these things to pretend to be smart.

Also, I saw a guy wearing Crocs.

David Byrne & St. Vincent

I appreciated the songs from St. Vincent's 2nd album, which I thought was better than her new one. 

I didn't expect any Talking Heads because musicians are often like, "This is the new me, stop making me play old hits". And that's fine, but everyone leapt out of their seats at "Burning Down The House" and they finished with "Road To Nowhere". Unsurprising, since the audience looked pretty middle-aged.

Um, I'm not sure where I was going with that. It's been more than a month, so I don't remember much. However, I will always remember that old guy sitting and reading his phone while everyone was jumping and dancing to "Burning Down The House". But I won't complain anymore about other concertgoers...

By the time I got around to actually posting this, I forgot what all the links were.

Haim: Whenever I hear their song on the radio, I wonder, "When did I change to the oldies station?" Not the best response to a song. They're probably this year's Friends. Ugh, buzzbands.

I'm  tired  of  "alt"  pop.

Well, not really. More tired of music writers. I spent all of 2012 following new releases and I didn't enjoy it much, especially at the end when everybody started declaring Call Me Maybe to be the year's highlight. It seems like they're trying too had to prove that they don't only like "serious" music and that they don't agree with the consensus. There's even this article about both of those things!

Whatever to those people. This year, I'll stick with Australian stuff that never makes it overseas and classical.

EDIT: I'm updating this as the situation changes. It's going to turn into a fun way to discover new music.

I know it's really stupid, but it's annoying to see posts on Facebook from distant acquaintances talking about something I like. Part of it is because I'm bitter about having no friends who like what I like. Another thing is that it's usually some vapid post like "[critically acclaimed album/artist] is awesome!" or some random lyrics, and then it gets a whole lot of likes and circlejerk comments. Karma whoring.

Well, screw that. I'm going to find alternatives that my news feed doesn't mention.

This week in music: this and one prominent response. Now there's a response to that response!

I could be all, "I'm under twenty and I pay for music," but that would be as bad as "I'm a girl and I play computer games." I have nothing to contribute to this debate. Let me find something else to talk about.

Oddly enough, the majority of my acquaintances aren't torrenting music: they don't know how to do that. From what I've heard, most of their music comes from a few of their more technologically competent brothers. That, or they're using a Youtube-to-MP3 converter, which results in terrible low-res files. If I were a musician, I'd really prefer for you to be downloading V0 mp3s ripped from the CD, just so you wouldn't assume it was bad because of the shitty file quality. If you're going to pirate, do it properly, geez.


Spotify? Probably better than pirating, even if you're giving money to "evil corporations". The point is, you're showing that there's demand for an artist, making it more likely for them record and release new stuff. You're not doing that by getting stuff from "alternative sources".

In the absence of someone to argue with (I miss you!), I'm going to post my thoughts here.

100. Mr Little Jeans - The Suburbs
This is interesting, though the sound doesn't really suit the lyrics.

99. The Beards - You Should Consider Having Sex With A Bearded Man
First time I've heard this. This is a novelty song, so I can't say much about it. I think it's rather weak.

98. Jay-Z & Kanye West - Niggas In Paris
Surprised that this isn't higher. That shit cray.

97. Foo Fighters - Arlandria
Hello, generic rock song. I have a feeling that I'll be saying that a lot today.

96. The Strokes - Machu Picchu
This Is It was great. This isn't terrible, but it's not that impressive either. Typical British stuff.

95. Grouplove - Naked Kids
Mercury Rev? Pixies? Is this one of those opportunistic indie bands that copies a bunch of sounds?

If Hype Machine is still going with their Zeitgeist thing, then it's not too late for me to waffle about my ten most-played artists of 2011.