I often hear the saying, “opinions are like a**holes; everyone has one, and they all stink.” Here’s the reality of what I just typed out: that saying is an opinion, and it stinks. Yeah, I may be crude with my opinions on a saying that compares opinions to buttholes, but that’s there’s real beauty in an opinion: opinions are what separates us from each other. Opinions are how we formulate our music tastes, our favorite types people, the decisions we make, the world we live in. Therefore, I won’t bore anyone who chooses to read this post with superficial qualities I posses or how much I love to hang out with friends, and that in no way means that I’m a hermit. I’m really trying to say that I feel like too often I fall prey to telling people basic things about myself, which usually include what year I’m in at school, and that I enjoy music.
Actually, I’d like to speak on music just a little bit. I recently picked up the latest album by Swans, an experimental rock band that is decades old, and I realized that I was either listening to something truly great, or that I was listening to total rubbish. Upon further listen, I realized that Swans new album is fantastic. What time I gave up trying to figure out this new album, To Be Kind, was well spent time. Sure, I could listen to the new 5 Seconds of Summer album, and I would have an enjoyable experience, but I would much rather listen to Here Comes the Indian by Animal Collective, Beaches and Canyons by Black Dice, The Seer by Swans, or any other album that’s pegged as noise music. The reason behind my music tastes in this direction lately is because I get more out of albums that I have to think about in order to understand. I really find music most pleasurable when a significant amount of creativity and boundary pushing is done in order to create something unique in its own light. I don’t say this to sound snotty, because I actually really enjoy 5 Seconds of Summer’s debut lp for what it is; however, my opinion is that I get more out of “To Be Kind” than an act that I can easily trace back to another previous artist, which to me, says that no boundaries are pushed. Yeah, I know that Swans can be traced back to bands from the no wave genre, which was the movement that Swans was born from; however, Swans’s sound remains so fresh and so clean, clean after 30 years of off and on time making music, and Swans’s new album is two hours of music that I find totally unique.
Was my ramble good? Here’s the deal: the ramble wasn’t good or bad because I just gave an opinion of my music tastes rather than simply stating that I enjoy music, which I know is an opinion in if itself, but now whoever is reading this post knows more about me in a way that’s semi deep. If whoever is reading this happens to not care or space out because I wrote too many words, then that’s cool. I’m not even mad. Some Music