im with you - they are interesting live, but the records bore me. panda bear's solo album is the best thing any of those dudes have done, imo.
Huge fan of AC's last three albums. Never got into anything prior to that. I wouldn't even call them all that "avant-garde" anymore. Definitely not like a Captain Beefheart. So, I'm not sure how it follows that liking CB means you'd expect to like AC...well, maybe their early stuff.
I've never been able to get AnCo's music either. I think Pitchfork has built them up to such a high degree, alot of people automatically assume you have to like them in order to have a refined taste in music.
I’m lukewarm to both of them. A song I’ve been listening to lately is Albatross by The Besnard Lakes. They have a new album coming out next month and there are some very good early reports on it. They’ll be playing SXSW and appearing on Jimmy Fallon next month too. http://www.scjag.com/mp3/jag/albatross.mp3
Funny thing about Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear. I saw both of them live in 2009, and before seeing their shows I thought each of their latest albums were decent, but nothing mind blowing. After seeing Animal Collective, I was incredibly letdown. I thought their live show sucked, literally one of the worst I've ever seen. I haven't listen to them since. Grizzly Bear live on the other hand absolutely blew me away. My jaw was dropping throughout the entire performance. Since then I can't get enough of their music.
In fairness to Animal Collective, I have only listened to their albums once per album so I am hoping their music grows on me. DC - I mention Captain Beefheart (along with Pere Ubu and Sun Ra) because those are some artists that when most people hear them for the first time, they want to turn the music off and go to something a little more aesthetically pleasing to the ear, if you know what I am saying. However, if you have patience, you will be able to hear things in the music that you didn't catch the first time around. Animal Collective may very well be like that for me but it hasn't gotten there yet. I am not discouraged because the same thing happened with Sonic Youth. I had Daydream Nation and Dirty and just could not get into either album. A year or two went by and I got another opportunity to hear Daydream Nation and was floored. Since then, I have gotten more SY albums and I like them. They have definitely grown on me.
I just snipped one of my folders. It's mostly new albums(last year or two). Most of these bands can be found on myspace or last.fm.....you'd be surprised how many of these artists give their albums away for free. Spoiler
Hehe, thanks. It is interesting how I got into Scott Walker. I had liked Leonard Cohen for awhile and then I got into PJ Harvey. As I was trying to learn more about her, I found that Nick Cave was an influence/similar artist for her and that there were a lot of similiarities between Cave's sound and voice with Cohen's (Cave has the better singing voice while LC has the better lyrics but they both have a very dark and brooding sound). So after getting a couple of Nick Cave CDs, I was led to Scott Walker. I just had gotten into the experimental/avant garde stuff like Beefheart, Sun Ra, and The Residents (to name a few) and found it interesting that "Tilt" was the first album in ELEVEN years that Walker had released. I took a chance and bought it and just expected it to be weird. It was like listening to a combination of some proto industrial music like Throbbing Gristle mixed with the Phantom of the Opera, lol. The Drift is even more disturbing, IMO. Too bad that he only does a new album every eleven years now and this is with him being close to 70, lol.
