musical suggestions

[winterbadger]

I'm always interested in broadening my musical horizons, and I'm conscious that I tend to miss a lot most of what's happening in popular and alternative music because I steadfastly refuse to put up with the 'let's advertise at you for 40 minutes out of every hour' behavior of commerical radio.

LJ, however, is filled with young hipsters who can educate old fogies like me. :-) Someone in one of the Scottish communities mentioned the Glasgow group Belle & Sebastian, so I picked up one of their CDs (The Life Pursuit), and I'm enjoying it a great deal (despite firstfoot.com assuring me they're awful). It reminds me a lot of the some of the early (pre-punk) British Invasion groups I grew up listening to.

Any of my readers have suggestions of other, similar artists (not necessarily British) that I might want to try?

Comments

[geekchick]

Satellite radio is a godsend, I haven't listened to terrestrial radio other than NPR in more than a year; XM I believe has some ClearChannel stations, but they're plenty easy to avoid if you don't want to listen to top-40 pop stuff.

If you like Belle & Sebastian, maybe look for stuff by Isobel Campbell (formerly of B&S). I have her CD with Mark Lanegan (ex-Screaming Trees) here if you want to try out an MP3 to see if you like it before picking it up.

The Beautiful South

I still harbor a fondness for a large number of shoegaze bands like Lush, Ride and Slowdive. Tangentially, I'll listen to pretty much anything on 4AD at least once.

If you can stream music, I highly recommend Pandora. Plug in an artist that you like, and they'll play similar stuff for you. You can rate what they offer and they'll adjust the songs accordingly.

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I've heard good things about satellite radio. Well, let me revise that. I've heard good things about satellite radio from several people; I trust your judgment and gr_c17's more than that of my work mate who got it because it means he can listen to Howard Stern almost 24 hours a day...

I will definitely try out Pandora. Thanks for all the suggestions!