I really really like wilco, but Radiohead are a universe above them. I understand it one of the first times you had your dad listen to them, I tried to show my dad radiohead at around your age and it did not go very well, even though im from the UK they were never amazingly popular over here, they were big when Oasis and Blur were around. But Its such a special band to me, and no slashing of wrists had ever occured.
I'm with the son regarding lyrics. For me they can't make a song, but they can ruin it if they're bad. But overall the voice is just another instrument to me. I kind of approach most music the same as I would classical or jazz: is it interesting, is it hummable/memorable, do I like the sounds I'm hearing, etc. Most lyrical content is just subpar poetry anyway, the words themselves mainly interesting for how they complement the music.
I have a tip for your production, If you apply a noise gate to just your mics then you can eliminate the backgound buzz. Just make sure to apply it to only your mic recording before you combine it with the music recording, if you are not recording them to seperate channels then never mind you can't fix it.
Nice reaction. I have only one answer to your dads question at 9:51 : Kiev. Great but very little known band. I feel like their album 'Falling Bough Wisdom Teeth' is the only thing i've heard that I consider to be on par with Radiohead. Check it out! Subscribed btw.
I like y’all. And I wish the camera would have drifted more. I liked that part. Drifted into a severe close up of something. Kaleidoscopic and disorienting.
I'm thinking ( weird fishes) is about a friend who's high on PCP or something with a buddy of his who's sober and they are on top of a tall building... and the friend that's high lol (theoretically and literally because of the building in this scenario) sees a rainbow 🌈 road and he wants to cross on it... (Reality check! There is no "rainbow road"...) So his sober friend is trying his very best to not get his friend to jump off and kill himself... But by the end of it he still jumps off... (Doesn't die... and his sober friend looks down in horror but only sees a watery landscape of unknown...) and i guess joins in to look for him.... [Fill in the rest...] That's what i envision for "Weird Fishes" (my favorite track personally) :D
If you like this sort of music you should check out the album "Black Sheep Boy" by Okkervil River ... a lot of people point to it as kindred spirit to Neutral Milk Hotel and they have a lot of similarly intense visually poetic lyrics.
Others have mentioned Anne Frank already but she's definitely a major theme throughout the record. Jeff Mangum, to me, had some sort of parasocial relationship with her where he imagined going back in time and rescuing her and having some relationship with her and saving her from the horrors of war, but in thinking about that it seems to me like there are so many really personal associations about adolescence and childhood trauma that he just puts right out there for us to see. It's very dense and I think anyone claiming to understand every reference is delusional, but the reason it speaks to me and probably so many others is that, as quirky as the Anne Frank focus is, it's kind of beautiful and endearing and sympathetic in ways that many of us wouldn't like to admit, especially not in such a public venue as writing an entire album full of this stuff and putting it out there for all the world to see. It feels personal in a way very little music truly does.
“No Shit! yeah..,” truer words never were spoken at the opening to any music review of this album. Hahaha. The whole album plays light one track. Also, this is an album experience, not a radio album.
I love it. Great review in general. Much appreciated the 15th step reference :-) … and the use of depressing to describe the experience of listening had me laughing. I’m around dad’s age but grew up in a musically expressive home. This album is genius.
Super video! Your father is great and he is completely on point! For me "In Rainbows" (one of my favorite albums in life) is about a very problematic moment in Thom's marriage life. Most of songs have clues about that (betrayals, love affairs, ends, farewells,,,), like he was very uncomfortable in his "married skin" as your father so cleverly pointed out many times. Congrats!
I still remember listening to the first few bars of King of Carrot Flowers after purchasing the album online (never hearing anyhting from the band before) and just getting the feeling that this was something different, something special. And the rest of the albumlived up to that feeling.
