Urban Outfitters Rant and Recent Music

I realized this morning that I would make a terrible "professional music critic." For that matter, I would make a terrible hipster; I don't like listening to an indie playlist or radio station just for the sake of the trend. The label "indie" does not automatically equal appealing. In fact, many of the big name indie bands sound pretty drab and boring to me, so actually having to listen to new releases and critiquing them for a publication would be difficult for me. I'd either say, "This one was pretty good," or "Nope."

It's easy for me to immediately relate the indie genre to Urban Outfitters. The store's name, in turn, has become my new favorite adjective. I feel like it's the easiest way to describe the subculture that wears $90 thrift store crap that I could find in my grandma's garage, and follows every self-proclaimed indie band that the store releases a vinyl LP for.

I don't hate Urban Outfitters. Every Christmas I generally order about $200 worth of stuff for my family, (and I can't deny a nice pair of clearance t-strap shoes or a fantastic deal on a vintage-style purse,) but I really dislike the fads that have been bred by its sales and endorsements. I don't like having to see those trends screaming at me when I go to a show in my tragically un-hip southwestern town, because most people have no idea what they're doing. They don't know how to adopt the look and make it work for them, (but maybe in general, few do.) Perhaps in a bigger city, I would be more accepting, but it would most likely be because I would have exposure to individuals who modify the style and add creativity to it--maybe a piece or two from UO, but also a vintage necklace, a thrift store sweatshirt, a handmade skirt.

I digress. It's hard to put a finger on my musical tastes. Rhapsody classifies me as a fan of Electropop, Indie Pop, Alt Dance, Post-Punk, and Brit Rock. Sometimes I'd like to expand my horizons, if only to not sound so dense and uncultured around people that have one or two bands in common, but if I don't like the first 10 seconds of any song on the album, I'm not going to go out of my way to become intimate with the band. Anyway, I suppose everyone can be a critic these days thanks to the internets!

The whole purpose of this post was to list the music I've been digging on recently because it's fun for me to come back to it months later and say, "Hey, I remember that song!" So in no particular order, here are a few songs off of albums that I dig in their entirety:

Grimes - Circumambient (album: Visions)
The Antlers - Parantheses (album: Burst Apart)
Flo & the Machine - Spectrum (album: Ceremonials)
Austra - The Noise (album: Feel it Break)
School of Seven Bells - The Night (album: Ghostory)
The Rapture - In the Grace of your Love (album: same title)
Youth Lagoon - Posters (album: The Year of Hibernation)
M83 - Midnight City (album: Hurry Up We're Dreaming)

Other songs:

Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks
Of Monsters and Men - Six Weeks
Phantogram - Turning into Stone
Zola Jesus - Animal
Zola Jesus - Vessel
Digitalism - Reeperbahn
Glasser - Apply
Hooray for Earth - True Loves
Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know, (the new "Pumped up Kicks"? Nooo!)
Gotye - State of the Art
Bell X1 - Nightwatchmen

The Undiscovered Bedrooms of Manhattan

I stumbled upon a fantastic blog entry today that appealed to my dreamy, whimsical side. Here's a snippet:

"A friend of mine once told me about the "typical dream of a New Yorker," as he described it, wherein a homeowner pushes aside some coats and sweaters in the upstairs closet... only to reveal a door, and, behind that, another room, and, beyond that, perhaps even a whole new wing secretly attached to the back of the house..."

I found the entry very inspiring. Read the rest here.