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.

Augie March: Glad that they reformed, mostly because there might actually be a chance of seeing them live now. New song also sounds promising.

Meanwhile, I've been listening Future Seal on repeat. I don't usually go for songs longer than 6 minutes, but the lyrics of this one keep me coming back. Paul Dempsey picked it as one of his favourite Australian tracks, and I think it would've been bigger if it wasn't so long.

The Middle East: Hey, remember how I loved Land Of The Bloody Unknown? My new favourite from their album is Months. The instrumental section is gorgeous.

The Parameters: Pig City was posted by someone I follow on Tumblr. It might be the most obscure thing that someone I know has actually heard of. (I know it's legendary, but my Brisbane friends and their non-knowing were the whole reason I started this blog.)

Ed Kuepper: Finally got around to picking up a copy of ...Sings His Greatest Hits For You. Liking it so far.

Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence is decent. Nothing on it is as terrible as some of the low points on Born To Die, but there isn't anything as good as Video Games either. I think my favourite off it is The Other Woman.

Grimes: Go is so-so. It's pretty, but it doesn't really... go anywhere. Sonic equivalent of those ~soft ghetto~ tumblogs, maybe.

Australian hip-hop: Discovered last week that my friends are not aware of its existence. Ah, racial segregation.

Future Islands: Thanks to Robert Forster for recommending Seasons on Double J a while back. Great vocals.

Last.fm: Upon hearing an incredibly irritating track on the radio, I Googled it (Mystery Jets - Greatest Hits) to see if anybody else hated it and its egregious name-dropping. Apparently not, but I discovered this Last.fm account, whose usefulness makes up for having to listen to that song.

Triple J: Oz music month or something happening. I'm ready to tut tut at the J Award. Here's a somewhat worrying article that pretty much confirms my theory that they promote Australian crap that just sounds like better overseas bands. Edit: Yay, they're playing a Royal Headache song.

Spotify: A guy in my feed seems to be listening to some kind of "A-Z of Pitchfork". In alphabetical order, even. Sometime last week he started listening to Arcade Fire, then Bon Iver, Cults, Death Cab, and Grimes. After that, it seems that he gave up and listened to Marina and the Diamonds. More entertaining than my Facebook feed!

Philip Glass: I listened to Music In 5ths. I don't think I will ever need or want to listen to it again.

Ben Salter: His album won Album of the Year at the QLD Music Awards. I finally got around to listening the whole thing, and yes, it deserves it. (I feel like I don't say that often.)

Homebrand 1: Hey, remember them? They released a new song. No oohs + no Mumford = a step in the right direction. But the glock reminded me of another song by a guy who went to our odd network of schools. He's doing pretty well now, with this song winning a QLD Music Award.

ABC Classic 100: 5 out of eight predictions correct, 7/10 if you count the "other things by those composers". Cool. Suite Bergamasque (ie. Clair de Lune) juuuust missed it at no. 11, Massenet and Delibes at 14 and 15 respectively.

Spotify: Spotify is horrible and seems to pick the worst things you've listened to to put in your top artists/tracks. The Pitchfork disciples therefore have theirs hidden, but I can still see using Swarm.fm. You can't win. Amusingly, the flamboyant Nicki Minaj fan is now listening to Bon Iver. That's what uni does to you, I guess.

CDs: Counted my CDs and marked them as owned on RYM. There's a few I haven't marked, but I don't know what they are! I also felt a bit sad looking at Pixies and Talking Heads albums, because I doubt that I'll want to touch them again for a while.

Festivals: My white, upper-middle class, Triple J listener friends always complain of drunk bogans at festivals. Looking at photos though, they could easily be mistaken for drunken bogans. I bet the people they complain about are just other middle-class kids.

Identity: I have learnt from conversations in my chemistry lab that people actually do use the term "Triple J" to describe their music taste. A lot of information conveyed in one word and one letter. I am not ignorant enough to say "everything", so I guess I'll go with "elitist", like one guy in this article.

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".

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.