Feeling Lonely

Another hot tip from Lindsey at Merge: Ladybug Transistor live session mp3s, courtesy of Daytrotter. And Spoon’s new album is coming out soon too!

For a long time I didn’t pay hardly any attention to labels, until I started to see the same logos over and over and find that some of them were more consistently great than others. My favorite labels, then, are standard indie nerd kid ones: Barsuk, Kill Rock Stars, Matador, Merge, Emperor Norton (defunct), Kindercore (defunct), Touch and Go, Secretly Canadian, Sub Pop, Magic Marker, ANTI-/Epitaph and K; in the owned-by-majors field, Nonesuch, Astralwerks, Rykodisc and Capitol frequently release good things (including Capitol mostly due to Decemberists). These befit me, being an indie music nerd. Lately, though, I’ve been impressed with a lot of stuff coming out from Jagjaguwar, Domino, Kranky, Ninjatune, Mint, Asthmatic Kitty, Cuneiform, Stones Throw, One Little Indian, and Yep Roc. I’m sure I’m late to the game on most or all of these, but hey, I’m tryin’, man.

Also I love Lil’ Chief’s logo, and the Brunettes, who I saw open for Rilo Kiley in Seattle in `05 at the Showbox. And I love Smithsonian Folkways. Also I wish Orange Twin would put out more albums. There are quite a few labels that have dizzying rosters: Volcano, home to 311, Weird Al, and Tool(??); Vagrant, the label of Paul Westerberg, The Futureheads, and a few dozen mediocre emo acts; and V2, who puts out music from Josh Ritter (from Moscow, Idaho!), Bloc Party, and Mooney Suzuki (who have a new album out soon)… but also Moby, Sugarcult, and Slipknot imitators Dope. These are but three examples, all of whose names begin with a V. In fact some of the above-mentioned names have such a volume that their releases are widely variable in terms of quality. So it goes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.