music reviews from the last few months

I updated the link list.

Also, a while back I asked everyone to give me music recommendations. I've since found a lot of the stuff y'all told me about, along with a ton of other stuff.

Things I liked that were brand new to me;;;

Akron Family/Angels of Light= Akron Family is great, great folksy-ish, minor key dark, yet uplifting- plus, the vocals are really good.and the Angles of light are a swans related project that I hadn't heard of, and are also great if a bit dark and mopey.
Decemberists= Omigod "mariner's revenge song" and "we both go down together" became new anthems for me. perfect, perfect. "Picaresque" is the best of the 3 albums I sampled.
Woven Hand is also great, brooding, scary folk. they're pretty complex for folk music, though. I heard they are xian but the lyrics are so damn scary that I don't care. And that's saying a lot.
hawk and a hacksaw; these guys are sweet and creepy eastern-european-style instrumentation, but with a very intense ambient sound. I really like them.
deerhoof; well, I can't listen to blonde redhead and can every single time I want a twee-fix, can I? No I guess not. And these guys are pretty good in their own right-one of the songs says "Spirit me away" again and again and I have to listen to it because otherwise it just gets stuck in my head forever- bastard!
Brian Wilson; I listened to the "SMILE" album. It is very strange. Even stranger is that I've heard OF it about a million times, but never heard it.
Cromagnon; This is some weird chorus of primitive psychedelic stuff, but kind of more like pop music. Very odd, and totally listenable. Every time I play it for anyone they say "Who is this? It sounds familiar." But I think it's just the sound-that lush kind of acid-laced bubblegum noise.
Elvis Costello (he'd been hiding in my blind spot and dragged out of it thanks to sean, who is his biggest fan)
Jolie Holland; This kind of wants to be on my twee-filter, but she just sounds so-cracked and broken by shitty life, that I have to love it.
M.I.A.; Sunshowers. Nuff said.
Matmos; These guys are like the hidden heroes of my itunes shuffle. They make every segue perfect. They are very crunchy noise indeed, and their sampling is always well-timed.
Melechesh; Really clean Iraqi death metal. They take it to a new level.
Old Crow Medicine show; I like the old-timey noises, and the songs about being boozed up. It's not the best ever but it's pretty good.
Polyphonic Spree; Holy shit.
Rufus Wainwright;How come nobody ever told me this guy could write great stories?
South Austin Jug band; I like jugbands, especially ones with good washboard players (see also: Kitchen Syncopators)
Go! Team; It's a bunch of crackhead cheerleaders, and yet somehow, against all odds, I like it.
the Ukelele Orchestra; I don't need to explain everything to you people.
Blind Blake; Wow. It's the blues, and I'm not bored yet.
Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits; To me, this is ambient. I think that says something about me, but I'm not sure what.
the Wicked Tinkers- because I heart bagpipes.
.

Rediscoveries that were extremely pleasant, or better than I remembered;;;

Iggy and the stooges; Yardbirds; Xavier Cugat; Shirley Temple; Eartha Kitt; Woody Guthrie; OLD They Might Be Giants; Sapcemen 3; The police; rolling stones; Raymond Scott; Rammstein; PIL; psychedelic Furs; peter gabriel; my bloody valentine's "loveless"; mojo nixon; loretta lynn; lydia lunch; plasmatics; laurie anderson; LARD; jane's addiction's "nothing's shocking"; godspeed; heart; dinosaur jr.; jesus lizard; circle jerks; can; camper van's "tusk" cover album; blonde redhead; minutemen; alice donut; les baxter; and cabaret voltaire.

Total, fucking, bad disappointments;;;

Autechre; really bad, scratchy, unlistenably abrasive would-be aphex twin shit. Not worth the ten minutes I spent with it.
Grandaddy; It sounds good in theory, but then it sounds like overproduced and badly-written crap.
Acid mothers temple's "troubadors" album; which is a long piece of meandering shit with no point;
alison krauss; TWEE!!! SQUEE!!!! I love fiddling, and this makes me hate that I love fiddling.
apocalyptica;enough already. I have all the amber asylum albums and they ROCK. They play better, sound better, and they toured with neurosis. Why would I buy a cheap imitation like this when I could have the real thing???
devotchkas;Ditto, except that one song that's a cover of a gypsy-type song I've heard before in my uncle's collection of violin music, with a few sound effects added, and renamed so it sounds like they wrote it themselves. Bullshit alarms going off in every direction, for me. No thanks.
bathory; Oh man. Just give up. You will never beat slayer. ever.
beirut; either it's building too slowly to please me, or it sounds like a twelve-year old wrote it on a casio keyboard. Nope.
carnival in coal; This is just garbage in every way. I won't listen to it again to explain any more than that, because I can never get that 30 seconds of my life back.
children of bodom; shite. see above.
chyna white; I expect more out of wordsmiths and mcs. cliche.
belle and fucking pile of shitstain;
atmosphere; Man. Like I said. I expect more. Also, the music behind stuff can't sound like garbage or it loses something, since it is called MUSIC.
esquivel;I liked this at first, then it grew on me like black mold. It is just too boring to be good even as a weirdity in my weirdity collection ( which includes a helluva lot of theremin)
old man gloom; Dude. Seriously. Get a 4track or a working microphone.
priestess; Screamy bitch metal shit. Not very good. Not good at all.
sadies; Overproduced for what it's trying to be-trying to be folk music, but put together like a goddamn orchestral production. Which just makes the bad music more obvious, you know.
shonen knife; Now I should really have known better, I got suckered a long time ago, see, and bought their "concrete animals" album. But! I am not a creepy dude with a squeaky-asian-girl-fetish, so I actually listen to the music and don't just sit there with my eyes closed and pretend they are moaning while I fuck them, so it's totally annoying and GRATES. Learn english (at least engrish) or just sing in japanese, because it's not cute to sound like a five year old without teeth.
sigur ros; oh, I know it's "artsy"-to people who like mainstream pop, I'm sure it's very..."enlightening".
switchblade symphony;I thought it'd be great, because of the song titles being about dragons, witches, and demons. Boy was I wrong.
venetian snares-more annoying over-the-top sampling and drum machines and crap like that. just drivel.
.

Not so great; but I can see why some might like it;;;

isobel campbell;twee!!!
acid mothers temple; boring!!!
black heart procession;too goth!!!
bogus blimp;-a disappointment, as I was expecting better (...joby)
black uhuru; well, I hate reggae, but I tried.
boredoms;says it all.
brian eno;erm. No thanks, crybaby.
cibo matto; twee, twee,twee dudes.
casiotone for the painfully alone;too smug.
comus;ugh.
slint;not what I thought they'd be- not very good unless you are really really into obscure boringness.
daughter darling;twee, with daddy issues.
discordance axis;not as good as I expected.
frank zappa;There is no room in rock and roll for a lute-like free-jazz guitar solo about a bad pun you told once about a jewish girl's ass.
godflesh;I used to like them, but now they're boring. and too inorganic.
gogol bordello; I like the one song! You know that one!
jethro tull;twee-ly not what I remembered
jellomelvins; Honestly, there was no way in hell this could ever be as good as I wanted it to be.
lungfish;I think Daniel Higgs is a god. That said, I can't listen to this girly crap.
lila downs; O shit twee, like spanish style.
mike patton;I want everyone to get out of his ass right this instant, because it's big but not big enough for what everyone wants to shove up there. I'm just, really, not a fan. Oh, I like fatomas ok. and all. I just hate HATE his voice. And his lyrics. And his style and stuff. I like some things he's done mainly because of the other people involved in them, but then again, if this is the case,m I might as well just listen to THEIR stuff, not the collaboration he did with them.
now it's overhead; It's like that indy stuff that I sometimes have an urge for, but not all the time or I'd get sick of it super fast...