They're all crap.

http://www.thetreat.co.uk/audio/MYC.wma.ra

Campesinos they are good live, but quoting Johnny Borrel to win any argument is a slippery slope partiuclarly as the quotes doesn't mean anything, does he mean dylan did the leg work for razorlights success? Cooking chips is bad? he's more sucessful than Dylan?
and to use football analogies i think Johnny Borrel is closer to Beckham than Dylan (the Cryuff of pop)in that he had flashy celebrity life, rarely does anything nteresting and is famous for his girlfriends.

...you find the music mentioned on this site rather too Olde Worlde for your tastes, does this not rather more suggest that you are in the wrong place, than that this site discusses the wrong things?

Just a thought. Personally I'm listening to a lot of Holy Fuck and Fleet Foxes at the moment. I hope they're contemporary enough to pass muster. Or do they need to be really obscure, too? Mind you, aren't Crystal Castles a bit old hat, themselves, by now?

(And if you get that reference, you win the moon on a stick).

...the occurrence of anything new and interesting is sparse to say the least..., which is a very good reason for continuing to enjoy ... Lennon, George Harrison, John Martyn, Roger Waters, Elvis Costello, and Split Enz/Crowded House, Glenn Campbell, Robert Cray, Peter Green, XTC ... and so on.

Come up with some examples of the quality of the aforementioned, and you'd have a case for coverage.

Having said that, I'm not sure whether I get some weird provincial variant of Word delivered by my subscription, but the mag I read each month is crammed with new and exciting stuff. Too bloody much of it sometimes for my wallet to survive.

(...continues rant about ongoing impecunity brought about by Word articles and reviews).

they might be new but they're not interesting. Heard it all before...

Just music you've never heard before.
If it's the first time you've heard it it doesn't matter if the person who made it is 40 years dead or has barely left school.

If that's the stuff that you're getting off on then, yes, I suggest you toddle off back to NME.

I really don't understand the idea that something is better just because it's newer. There are plenty of great new bands to discover but there are ten times more great old bands to discover.

NME only covers new music made by new bands. That's just as arbitrary and narrow minded as only covering bands who come from London or only reviewing music played on guitars or only interviewing rockstars with blond hair and blue eyes.

Balderdash (or whatever teenagers say these days).
The last week or so on the site has seen discussions on new acts such as Ralfe Band and Pete Molinari while the cd can always be guaranteed to have more than a few breaking bands on it.
And as far as Johnny Borrell is concerned.... well really!

How Indie used to be a byword for good innovative music and now refers to the worst derivitive crap about.

There has been favourable reference to Burial, Elbow, Glasvegas, Little Jackie, among others plus not so very old bands from 90s that are still going. Naturally old stuff gets a lot of coverage here as there's a lot more of it and it's a stupid waste to disregard it all and there's no prejudice against it here as you tend to get with NME - rather out of date in it's old fashioned (ironically)punk won the war mentality. Trouble is so much that is hyped as bold leap forward is actually not so bold leap back to post-punk style, ever since Strokes emerged. I'd love to hear something new that's astounding. But nothing wrong with enjoying all kinds of past pleasures and why have lesser copies when can have the original?

2 Bands that lived with me in the last year or so were

The National and Death Cab for Cutie.

Love the intensity of The National's Boxer and their live show was something to behold but I'm sure that they've been covered in The Word.

Death Cab for Cutie came to me watching a Jennifer Garner film Catch and Release with Mrs S one evening last year. One for the girls I suppose but with a surprisingly good soundtrack. They had the last track Soul Meets Body from the album Plans a brilliant Shins like track. They had a terrific new album out Narrow Stairs which was reviewed by Andrew Collins this year so my favourite secret band was fired to the masses.(Without much take-up I might add). So it too was covered in the reviews.

Lastly 1 year after it was covered in the magazine I got around to The Field (Swedish Electronica) last month, probably covered in Mixmag but I missed it. Also terrific stuff.

Now if someone mentions The Felice Brothers or bloody Fleet Foxes I'm going to have to lie down for a nap.

Nicodemus....... over to you.

...Los Campesinos formed in my own university and a few friends of mine have seen them live several times.

Two new bands I do like are US acts MGMT and Yeasayer, both of which look beyond the now-very-cliched punk/post-punk reference points that few British indie groups ever deviate from. I'm looking forward to the new release by Secret Machines too.

I'm currently liking The Long Winters a lot - especially Commander Thinks Aloud, Teaspoon and Pushover. Like a together Grandaddy. And they're on eMusic.

windier than Hawkwind

The magazine and the blog covers both old and new music. I’m the one who did the Little Jackie post you approve of but I also post stuff about old things. And, as others have pointed out, all music is “new” if you’ve never heard it before. And I’m sure most of us have learned of stuff we didn’t know about through this blog.
Anyway, here’s something brand new and utterly fab. Emmy The Great.

... the past is "Old & Inferior!"

First two little more than variants on Dare era Human League (which in itself is certainly no bad thing), and the third one starts promisingly, but as has already been said - the vocals kill it stone dead.

Stick to the NME - you'll be happier there.

I'm off to listen to The Edgar Winter Group...

I'm of a certain age, one at which giving houseroom to indentikit skinny indie kids I can't tell apart churning out stuff saying nothing to me about my life represents a waste of time I could better waste on something else. For the record, all three songs sound like that early 80s dry-as-dust stuff Peel used to play a lot of. And Johnny Borrell never recovered from Razorlight being declared a big fave of that famous pop-hater Michael Parkinson. How indie was that?

And as for you busker _du... ta! After what I saw written above I listened. They are alright. Not a bad tune among them. Emmy The Great? Yes she is.

Edgar Winter? That looked like a groovy programme...

See. Not bad for a trad dad.

..just closed ears. I'm happy to say I've pretty well shut up shop. I'm 50 for christ sake, I'm not SUPPOSED to go chuntering after new music like a little lad. If there WAS anything interesting or radically different out there I'd probably say "Well done..carry on" and go back to Dylan. There are simple not enough hours in the day of a rapidly decreasing life.
(..and the wazzock from Razorlight even daring to compare himself to Dylan is laughable beyond tears)

I turned green and crinkl... sorry 50 in August.
I care not for the Be-a-t-les, Les Garcon du la Plage, Arthur GobIron and his Cleft or Moni Jipjo. I still find I enjoy the witty banter general Joss homme and occasions where I can shoe in a reference to the "genre that dare not speak it's name".

Aye, I get peeved but it's well worth sticking in.

... am I in the wrong room?

but I would heartily recommend Beirut - I was completely hooked after two listens to Elephant Gun on a CD a mate sent me. Both albums are available on eMusic.

Also not that new, but I love the Cold War Kids too. Their new album is great (and got a glowing review in last month's mag) and the first one is definitely worth a listen (it's on eMusic). They are a cracking live act, too.

I would also like to second Springer's calls for the National and Death Cab for Cutie.

Surely the responses to Heppo's 50 years of albums demonstrates many have very wide chronological interest and knowledge (and many more, probably, not the time to complete, sorry, the exercise!) rather than a vainglorious need to be forever at the forefronty of whatevers going. Bearing in mind that most of whatevers going will be soon whatevers gone, the need to emulate the, to my mind, sacrilege alert, somewhat tedious latter day Peel efforts to be so up to date as to be desperate is unlikely to appeal, at least to me. Thanks for the introductions, Busker, but please don't lecture us, we can make up our own minds. I thought the tracks showcased were largely derivative also, the point made by many, in itself not necessarily a bad thing, but requiring more originality and wit to carry off successfully. But then, I never liked Husker Du either.
Spoiler: early Peel was great, up till about 1980 and I liked much of his other broadcasting and writing later on, gaining much more pleasure from his Dr Jekyll of "Home Comforts" than his norwiegan death metal Mr Hyde on Radio 1.
Spoiler 2: Original Derivatives, as well as being a great band name, as in, say, Van Polaroid and the.., probably sums up the difference between success and failure, rather than the opposites attracted it sound. (Discuss.)

By trying to mix up the musical gene pool a bit, I appear to have stirred up the reactionary forces of conservatism.

My original post called for more of a 'balance of old and new' and my way of trying to achieve this was to take what turns out to have been a somewhat provocative approach of celebrating some of the new. Paul Vincent's reply basically advocates what I was trying to say. For example, why front covers within the last few months featuring separately George Harrison and John Lennon and not, say, Santogold, Metronomy or Glasvegas? Of course, because they haven't 'earned it' yet!

Anyway, here are a couple more which will set some of you raging about the young folks:

Animal Collective

Wild Beasts

Los Campesinos! at the Irish Centre tomorrow night and the physical release of the album at the end of the month. As a young scamp of 26 I suppose that it's still OK for me to have an interest in new music? That said, my interest in the New Musical Express is less than non-existant and has been since I left university many moons ago.

I do feel however that the mere existence of said pamphlet and their spam-fisted attempts at journalism makes it easy to dismiss anything involving guitars, the under-thirties or indeed men.

What's more, I can feel the rising damp of 'Nostalgia man' creeping up on me as I look forward (or backward) more and more to revival shows by Pixies, Sonic Youth etc. I was berated last summer by one of my students for spending a summer's evening in the company of the Smashing Pumpkins when the Klaxons were playing in the other tent. 'They're so now' or rather, they were then.

as I feel comfy sat on the fence. I am 41 and have too many cd's (according to Mrs LB) or not enough (according to me). My all time favourite bands are The Smiths, The Undertones, New Order and Sigur Ros (there are others but this is to prove a point). They all mean something dear to me. However, of those four, I only really listen to Sigur Ros currently. The rest I have but will rarely play - although when one arrives by way of a shuffle, its normally a good thing.

I like new music - but thats new to me not just brand spanking shiny new. I'm about to catch up on Rodrigo y Gabriela after hearing a track on the tv last week. Not sure if they're old or new given that they seem to have been around for 2 or 3 years. I am debating on getting some Pink Floyd having seen David Gilmour on Later playing a Rick Wright song which I really liked.

But I still like hearing songs for the first time and so I will try new stuff (its why I still subscribe to eMusic - its a cost effective way of trying stuff) as well as older stuff thats recommended, mostly by a review in Word or you lot on the blog.

I like music so I don't actively avoid any of it - especially as I am getting older and a little wiser - those preconceptions I have are often wrong (that doesn't include you though Axl Rose).

with a free all-you-can-eat-buffet is you stuff yourself silly until you cannot move away from the table. Do that every day and you soon get pretty sick of food.

You do not need to be downloading music illegally - there are enough free CDs, online and on digital radio stations, streaming audio sites plus YouTube and MySpace to enable you to stuff your lugholes to bursting point. Something has to give and it is usually the attention span first followed later by a desire for...

silence.

And I hate everything.

many of us on here are of the age where the previous generation didn't want pop but we did, and we grew up with it while it was still developing, and have heard what was once shockingly new and extreme, and it's hard to believe anything new can go further - not that you necessarily want it to since who wants to hear tuneless dischord, which is the dead end where the avant garde tends to finish up, and that's been done.

So, yes, if you are of a certain age you will be less likely to rush to embrace the new for the sake of finding something original, whereas younger listeners will not be so burdened with the awareness of the past - not that it's really a burden - and naturally often look to performers of their own age - that's natural. Inevitably since outlandish experiments have already been carried out to make tracks as long as possible, as short as possible, as loud as possible, fast, slow, and with as many unusual instruments as possible, we may feel that there is no where else to go but to repeat, as happens so much now. Knowing that makes you less hung up on the new. Tis not necessarily conservative nostalgia - it's cos pop is more of a museum now whether you like it or not. But I personally still want not to give up on now and will look for new, as do most others hereabouts. You can choose what copied retro (as most is) style appeals but there's still scope for fresh combinations of influences.

The original post spoke of delusion. Hence the less than friendly reaction by some.

I will mention 'TV On The Radio' and 'Friendly Fires' as new I have heard lately (on Later..) that I enjoyed.

... was intended as a humourous allusion to the Dawkins book.

Let's not go there.

.....there´s loads of it over on NPR All Songs Considered podcast, admittedly most of it´s American, but I am currently shaking my thang to Okervill River cos´of Bob Boelin at NPR.

So I can't click on any of the videos so I'll reserve judgment on them until I'm at home.

But, on a general point, I'm 51. I entered my years of teenage awareness of music at the height of the power of the Who, the Stones and Led Zep. And I caught up on the Beatles who were still big even though they'd split up when I was 11. I still listen to a lot of that sort of stuff but I'm not adverse to new bands as well although it is fairly rare to find one where I actually want to buy their prroduct.

But I don't expect young people to identify with my old music tastes from the early seventies more than they do the music of their contemporaries. That would be like me getting off to Ted Heath, Vera Lynn and Bing Crosby as a teenager. But young people have their own magazines to cater for the new. Leave us old fogeys here to discuss the greatness of the past and, thanks to the quality of writing and cover CDs, occasionally be introduced to something new.

I know footballing analogies don't really work, but one may provide an interesting comparison. It's a little bit like picking your All Time Favourite XI. You'd probably consider different players from different eras. So for me, I'd be looking at choosing between these guys:

The King

God

The Kid

one i can heartily recommend
Tom McKean and the Emperors
'if you like this you'll like that" reference points are cohen waits cave but er with a twist

they have demo'd and recorded at guitarist bobby's home and former residence of ted hughes and syvia plath (as commemorated in Birthday Letters poem 18 rugby st)

here's alink to them playing on said roof

Are you referring to old music by the old artists you refer to or new music by these artists? The artists have endured mainly because they are very good - many of them are still making valid music. Do we throw them on the scrapheap because they are old or because they are not making new music of any worth? And if they are banished to retirement who do we replace them with? you are surely not suggesting that the bands your are recommending are worthy successors to the ones you are tired of listening to?
It is also rather insulting to suggest that we don't show any interest in new stuff and are thus stuck in our ways - have just come back from a business trip to USA - bought about 8 cd's - only 1 by an artist already appearing in my collection and one a cd replacement with bonus tracks of something i had on vinyl.

By the way taking your football analogy of replacing the old with sub-standard new may i suggest Jermaine Pennant and say John Barnes. Best transfer BCFC were ever involved with was getting £6.5 million for that useless muppet.

My point was really to achieve a balance between new artists and old artists. Making room for the new as well as the old. e.g. Giving the Metronomy album a try instead of choosing to but the Power Corruption & Lies remaster. I'm not saying that 'old = bad', or that 'new = good'. I was just calling for a little more of a mix of coverage. I've explained this in previous posts, only for comments that I'm being patronising or that the balance is already fine, thank you very much.

You're right re: Pennant. I imagine he's also trouble in the changing room. I think the Blues saw Liverpool coming.

BTW, if those naysayers (and you only have to read some of the posts above) need any further reasons to reject anything new, then they can probably find it in the recent statement of intent by Frank Carter of Gallows: "We want to ruin music for everyone". Bless.

And they say young bands don't have a sense of humour ...

No worries and (really) apology required, Sven.

My selection of 'new' is very narrow - I was hoping that more would share their own suggestions. Some have done above, and I have happily checked them out!

No worries and (really) no apology required, Sven.

My selection of 'new' is very narrow - I was hoping that more would share their own suggestions. Some have done above, and I have happily checked them out!

Sorry I've just picked up this thread - really good stuff.

Given the sheer volume of music that's ever been produced, it really isn't fair to expect anyone to delve into the archives for years before producing anything new (I know I certainly didn't), so it's perfectly fair that they just start their own bands and start listening to their new music.

An important part of growing up with music as a teenager and in your early 20s is being part of an active social scene: hanging out with people, going to see them & their friends' bands playing live, etc etc. So older music is inevitably going to be partly overlooked.

And new music will often appear worse because we hear all of it whether we want to or not. Older music is filtered so that we don't listen to the rubbish that was around when we were teens. There's probably always been only around 1% (?) of current music worth listening to at any one time.

Having said all that, I don't mind when music was produced, so long as it's worth listening to, and that's less obvious with newer stuff until it's had time to ferment. So more recent acts I like are maybe not cutting edge, but neither am I fossilised in 1980s indie: Burial and Sigur Ros have been mentioned already, but Juana Molina and Boris are worth a listen too.