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Forget the 5D and the 7D. This is the new hot shit in the market: Canon’s Rebel T2i (aka 550D).

For $800, you will be able to get a great camera to shoot your masterpiece. You have no excuse anymore to not shoot a short movie, or a music video to help out your local rock bands.

The T2i supports all the frame rates that the 7D does, at similar bitrates. It has full manual control, and an audio jack. No new video-focused abilities are present in the cam compared to the 7D, however, it’s a camera that’s half the price. The still picture side of it is not as powerful as the 7D, but when it comes to video, it’s up to par with it (sample). It’s also a smaller/lighter camera than than the 7D, using SDHC instead of CF.

Add in the mix a large-aperture prime, a wide-angle, and a zoom lens, and you’ll be in business. My [photographer] husband would suggest instead three prime lenses: one wide, one normal, one long (a good combo is 24-35-50mm). You should be able to buy the camera and three lenses of your choice for $1500 overall, which is a great price if you think that a high-end Canon AVCHD camcorder, or the 7D body alone, costs as much. Honestly, I think the Scarlet is in a bit more market trouble right now — even if it’s a much better camera. “Good enough” is what sells more actually. I see plain camcorders to also be in real trouble now. Except wedding photographers and travelers, the camcorder market will down-size significantly in the next few years.

Canon also announced their new digicam line today, which actually let me down. Their SX200 IS replacement digicam, the SX210 IS, is now 14 MP — at the same sensor size. The SX200 IS has low light problems, so stuffing more pixels in it will make things even worse. They added “zooming while recording” and a “stereo mic” as new abilities for the movie mode. Personally, I find these useless as a filmmaker. Actors only have one mouth, and zooming while recording is as cheesy as 70’s B-movies were. I would have preferred to see a 10 MP sensor instead, and the ability to also record at 24 fps in addition to 30 fps. That would have been more useful to the kinds of video I shoot (i.e. not random family videos).

So as far as P&S HD video digicams go, the SD780 IS remains the best bang for the buck for $180. Except of manual focus, it still has all the video features that the SX-series have.

Official music video for “Solomon”, by the San Francisco rock band As A People. You can download the song for free at the band’s site, or the HD video at Vimeo.

I had immense fun shooting this video, the band was really cool, and the song rocks. I consider it the most complex, and best video work of mine so far. I learned a few new things about the process, and I believe that the next step for me as a videographer is rigorous story-boarding, and having a grander plan. It’s the only way to avoid weak spots of continuity, like the ones found on the first 30 seconds of the video.

I shot the video with a Canon 5D Mark II, at 30 fps, and then slowed it down at 24 fps. I can’t wait for Canon to at last release the 24p firmware, it’s a long time waiting. It was my first major video with the 5D. Overall shooting time was 3 hours.

On location tools: a tripod, and a shoulder rest. A single Canon 50mm f1.4 lens was used. Software tools used were Sony Vegas Pro, Cineform, Magic Bullet (tools that didn?t always want to co-operate very well, so editing took quite some time: crashing, and bugs).

Many thanks to my beloved husband, Jean-Baptiste, for his support and feedback. I wouldn’t be able to do jack without him.

I heard a lot of people wondering: “Why doesn’t the radio play less known artists? There are some amazing songs out there that are lesser known and need to be heard. Commercial/ClearChannel radio sucks.”

However, it’s not the radio that sucks. It’s the listeners.

Consider the following: The music director at San Francisco’s Live 105 (owned by CBS) is Aaron Axelsen (who I’m a fan of). Aaron decides what’s get played by the DJs during the day, but he also has a show of his own on the station: Soundcheck, every Sunday night. In it, he plays the kind of music we are longing to listen to during daytime: From Manchester Orchestra, to The Temper Trap, to Surfer Blood, to many local Bay Area bands that caught his ear (scroll down for his latest playlist).

However, the rest of the daytime programming is terrible: the same 20-30 hit songs are playing on a rotation. How many times it happened to me already: driving for sushi lunch, Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing on our car’s radio. Coming out of lunch, and Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing AGAIN. The rotation is so fucking short that it’s not even funny.

Now, it’s easy to put the blame on Aaron or his corporate overlords, but it’s not really their fault. They are just doing what makes sense for their business. And what makes sense is to keep the listeners from switching channels.

You see, the vast majority of the radio listeners don’t listen to music. They hear music instead. There’s a difference. They put the kids on the SUV, and drive them to school, and turn on the radio in the meantime. Or, they’re stuck in traffic, pissed off, and need to listen to “easy” music to pass the time. Or, they’re sitting on their sofa, reading a magazine, and have the radio ON as a background.

Very few people actually drive somewhere in order to turn on the radio and listen to music. Or sit on their sofa, closing their eyes, and listen to just music. Normal people instead, are so busy with their lives, their problems, the quick pace of this civilization, that simply don’t have the time to discover new music. Listening to unknown kind of melodies, or new kinds of sub-genres altogether, takes them out of their comfort zone. Listening to something like Dan Deacon instead of Lady Gaga, for example, while the kids shout at each other at the back of the car, makes it difficult to level your head. Not only you have your problems, but you have this new ‘annoying’ music playing instead of the music (or kind of music) you already know so well.

Basically, commercial radio works as a kind of a depressant for the masses. At first, it feels like music is exactly the opposite: an excitement that is, but in reality, in the large scheme of things, as far as FM radio is concerned, it’s nothing but one of the ways that helps you kept in check. No, this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just how things work. Listeners want it that way too.

And that’s the reason why you’ll never be able to hear Fever Ray, Antlers, or Local Natives on commercial radio, during daytime, at least in the US. Unless indie bands hit it big on their own, their music will play only late at night, or at specialized radio stations like college radios, KEXP, and Indie 103.1.

So stop hating the radio stations for doing their job. Either hate the system, or the listeners, or don’t hate anyone, and listen to your favorite music in your own accord. But don’t expect the population to follow too. They won’t. They have mortgages to think about rather than HEALTH’s awesome off-beat noise.

I shot the following interview with the Bay Area band Geographer last Sunday, for The OWL Mag. One of the tracks heard on the video below is unreleased as of yet. I shot it using the Canon HV20, since I had to save the battery of my Canon 5D MkII for the As A People music video that I shot an hour later after this interview. It was a busy Sunday. But I loved it.

Well, we lived to see that too: a major product by Apple that misses the mark. The iPad.

Where do I start with this?

Flash? No. How the hell is this supposed to take over netbook market? Without Flash it is a no-go. I can eat the bullshit that the iPhone can’t do Flash for this or the other reason, but not having it on the iPad is a major mistake. Even if Apple adds it eventually, the damage is done for this product’s prospects in the minds of consumers.

Keyboard? Not only this keyboard requires both your hands, but it requires your lap too. How’s that any better than a freaking netbook? Instead of implementing a RESIZABLE split-keyboard, and have the full screen keyboard only as an option for when you sit on a couch, they go with the full screen keyboard by default. This is a MAJOR mistake. The large bezel and screen makes it IMPOSSIBLE for people with small hands to type when in vertical mode either — our fingers are not long enough to reach the middle of the screen. This is where the *resizable* split-keyboard would be a LIFE SAVER. [Update 1: Gizmodo on the terrible input method. Fully agreed with them.]

No multi-tasking? What the hell? Again, how’s that any more useful than a netbook? Just because it looks nicer and has a nicer interface doesn’t mean that it’s essentially more useful than a netbook. Again, Apple puts form over function as a priority, but I have the feeling that this time that strategy won’t be so kind to them. People wanted something better than the iPhone, not just an enlarged version of it. Daily Finance wrote it best (thanks goes to Dominique for the link).

And then, just like Andreas wrote, no camera for video chat? Sure, I get it. AT&T wouldn’t want to overload their towers, and I respect that. But Apple could easily have implemented an iChat or VoIP SIP version (or having Skype do it) that would only use WiFi. You can lock down that shit in application level. But, nooooo….

The last part is that with AT&T’s 250 MBs per month for $15. I’m sorry, but 250 MBs are not enough for a netbook-killer device. For $15 bucks per month, that should have been at least 1 GB of data. The last time I checked, just Engadget’s front page is 1.3 MBs usually. Even by doing light web browsing, the 250 MB per month will be eaten up within a week by a modern internet-er. Easily.

Finally, Gizmodo also has a nice list of 9 things that suck on the iPad. Thanks for the link @AsAPeople. [Update 2: Not to mention the lack of a microSDHC (or SDHC) slot. Sure, the iPhone has the excuse of being a small device and not having extra space for a slot, but the iPad doesn't have the luxury to lie to us about it. Selling the cheap version of the iPad with just 16 GB of storage, with no expansion option, is a slap in the face of the modern consumer.]

Jeez. What a freaking over-hyped piece of shit of a product this is. Sure, I still expect the iPad to make its R&D money back, but this is not the next “iPhone”, not by a long shot. This is not the next big thing. Not with this implementation anyway. It’s half-baked at the points where it counts. My main concern though is that this product is not half-baked because Apple didn’t have the time to work on these points, but because these were their design decisions. And this shows a possible problem at Apple right now. It’s very possible that they’re suffering from the Microsoft/IBM syndrome: that one of the dinosaur.

Update 3: Thanks to Guy for the video link!

The following video, shot with the Canon 5D MarkII, contains snippets from a video I shot at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco last Friday, for As A People, a local post-punk and politically charged band. Parts of the live recording will be used for the music video I’m putting together for the band. The second part of the shoot, under a day light, will take place soon. The track we shoot the music video for is “Solomon” (free download here).

As you probably know, it’s important to shoot “flat” with your video camera, in order to help color grading in post, especially if you’re after the “film look”. Since I got the Canon 5D MarkII, I made sure I shoot as flat as possible: with the “Neutral” color setting, modified to have the contrast/saturation/sharpness settings on minimum, and its tint on +1.

So far, I’ve only shot two videos with the 5D, and I was not happy with the visual result. Yes, its picture quality is amazing for the price, but as the occasional filmmaker & colorist that I am, I need the kind of look directly out of the camera that I could get with a film camera, or the RED One. And the 5D, with tricked out color settings, it would still not give me what I wanted: the videos came out over-saturated, and over-contrasty for my taste. Sure, the videos were magnitudes less contrasty/saturated than when using the “auto” color modes, but they were still not what I wanted.

I tweeted about it yesterday, and some people suggested I try the Canon Picture Style Editor, which lets you edit these parameters even more. So I downloaded this famous package, which includes a Panalog-like curve (which I didn’t like), Marvel’s EX1-like Cine curve, one called “superflat”, and a pseudo-Velvia one.

Well, I’m still not happy with the results. None of these downloadable styles are what I wanted exactly, and to make the matter worse, the curve utility inside the Picture Style Editor sucks goats: you can’t move the two edges of the curve. Photoshop’s curve dialog can do it, but Canon’s utility can’t. Because of that, it’s impossible to get more detail in the dark places directly out of the camera. You see, whatever you can do IN-camera, is MUCH more desirable than doing it in post processing. IN-camera processing is higher quality, so what you get out of it is purer, and doesn’t bring out as much the h.264 artifacts when lowering contrast in post. But without a curve dialog that let’s me do more, I can’t tell the camera to shoot that way. To be fair, this feature didn’t need to exist in the past, because photographers don’t care about it, but filmmakers do. Now that dSLRs can shoot video, hopefully a better curve dialog will be implemented in the future by Canon.

So, I had to do with what I had. I edited Neil Stubbings’ “superflat” style, and created a new one called “ExtraFlat”. My version uses the “Neutral” look as a base instead, and it’s a tiny bit less contrasty, but a lot less saturated, and it doesn’t have the “red face” attribute of the video look. Of course, we should not forget that Canon uses extra processing when sizes down the sensor image to 1080p, but that’s a kind of processing we can’t control.

You can download the ExtraFlat style for your Canon vDSLR camera here. Instructions on how to upload it to your camera after unzipping it, here. Make sure the “EOS Utility” is installed on your computer. Check the ExtraFlat style compared to the rest.

Now, please don’t start commenting again about how you prefer the “standard” contrasty/saturated look. I don’t care if it looks better as a FINAL still picture. Don’t think of this frame grab as the end result. Video footage of any artistic work HAS to go through color grading, and for that, you need a FLAT look to work on.

Look at how the pros do it. Check this 2k frame grab, directly out of the RED One camera (ungraded). Notice how it’s extremely low-saturation, low-contrast, and the people’s skin is almost PINK-GREY and not red as the consumer camcorders do it (check this HV20 frame for reference). With a Canon consumer camcorder, even if you use Cinemode+custom color settings, it’ll still look red-ish, compared to what the RED ONE does. Panasonic consumer HD cams are way worse, since not only they don’t go as far in color settings, but their footage is processed to be very red by default.

With the ExtraFlat style I get almost what I want out of the 5D, but more dynamic range could be acquired in-camera if the curve dialog in the Picture Style Editor was better implemented. The camera CAN do it, we just don’t have a way to TELL it to do it right now.

Update: Shot a small video of me testing the flesh tones of the ExtraFlat today. It was flat and non-red alright! And it graded so nicely. Going through the various grading templates, it offered a very pleasant look, across the board.

Tonight I reached 7500 tracks in my iTunes library. A far cry from my husband’s 15,600 tracks (he’s got more CDs and Creative Commons tracks than I do), but that’s still 20.5 days of non-stop listening. For years we were only buying CDs, but 2009 was the year where we went mostly digital after iTunes went DRM-free. For us, that was the key to move to digital. I started collecting free promo mp3s sporadically back in 2006, but it was in 2009 when their numbers exploded in my iTunes library. In fact, I’ve noticed that especially after 2007, there’s a stream of freeware promo mp3s out there that gets bigger and bigger every year. Some indie artists give 1/3 of their album for free these days (e.g. Cold Cave)! Anyways, here’s the breakdown:

7500 tracks, 44.5 GB on disk, 20.5 days

2000 were bought from iTunes in 2009-2010 (we spent a fortune!)
300 were bought from Amazon in 2010
3700 are freeware, legal promotional mp3s or Creative Commons
1500 tracks were ripped from some of our bought CDs

2430 tracks were released in 2009
4000 were released in 2008-2009

5150 are tagged as “Alternative”
1180 are tagged as “Rock”

Only about 20%-30% of the tracks are from artists signed to major labels.

4150 tracks are starred so far:
660 tracks have 5 stars
1300 tracks have 4 stars
1635 tracks have 3 stars

Most played tracks:
1. “The Keys” by Dolorata
2. “Gold for Bread” by Blitzen Trapper
3. “The Tornado Lessons” by Cloud Cult
4. “Heads will Roll” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. “Sci-Fi Kid” by Blitzen Trapper

Most tracks by the same artist:
1. Madonna (190)
2. Depeche Mode (113)
3. Blitzen Trapper (68)
4. Portugal. The Man (62)
5. Coldplay (53)

Oldest track added in iTunes library:
“New Years” by Asobi Seksu: 10/17/2006 11:08 PM
Newest track added:
“Vapor Trail” by The West Exit: 1/15/2010 12:43 AM

Shortest track:
“Foreword” by Linkin Park: 14 seconds
Longest track:
“Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” by Iron Maiden: 13:35 minutes

Lowest Bitrate:
“Induction” by Broken Spindles: 32 kbps
Highest Bitrate:
Various at 320 kbps (mp3)

UPDATE:
I was reading an article at OSNews and tried to answer the “is there profit in a world of file sharing” question (in my case legal promo mp3s, since I don’t pirate media). So I went back to my “Purchased” section of iTunes, and checked it out. I found that from the ~2000 iTunes tracks I bought:

1. 900 tracks were bought (just in 2009) because I discovered these bands via their promo mp3s in the last TWO years of collecting legal promo mp3s.

2. 350 tracks were bought after discovering the bands due to word of mouth (e.g. from friends on Twitter or IM).

3. 750 tracks were bought from bands I got to know by traditional media, e.g. TV/radio, over my LIFETIME. However, about 300 of these tracks are purchases made FOR my husband, and are not the kind of music I’d normally buy (while the numbers above are all for music bought for my own music taste). So this leaves the “traditional PR” artists with just 400 bought tracks.

So within a single year of starting buying digital music, I bought 900 tracks from bands I discovered just in the last 2 years. And only 400 tracks were bought for bands that I’ve known for many years via traditional means. I’d say that promotional, viral, mp3s work best for heavy internet users, way more than radio/TV promotion.

This is a frame snapshot out of an already twice re-encoded 720p video, shot with the Canon SX200 IS. A friend of mine shot this recently, all “auto”. When light is adequate, the result is fabulous with these small Canon cams. Click for a larger PNG version.

Love it or hate it, it’s in fashion. As Stu Maschwitz many times explained on his blog, the “teal” color is used a lot in the last 10 years in Hollywood. Either as teal, or towards blue or green, but definitely not “natural” red though. I used the same convention for the music video I shot a few months ago.

Yesterday someone asked me how it was done, so I decided to put this blog post together. Click the following image to view the arranged Vegas plugins used.

This is my mountainous village where I originate from, Skiadas. I lived there from the ages of 2 to 4, and 9 to 12. It’s what I consider home. My father’s house can be seen in the picture too. I can’t believe how easily I was able to run through the climbs to reach other houses when I was a kid. If I would try the same thing today I’d probably die of a heart attack mid-way. My 82 year old grand father doesn’t have a problem with the landscape though, he still pushes through like a teenager. Anyways, I miss my home, I’m just mumbling.

Click picture for a larger view. Picture by Kostas Dimeris

From Wikipedia: Skiadas took that name because the ancient Greek God of the dead, Hades, would sometimes come out of his underworld to seek for some daily light (which its supposed entrance is only a few miles away from Skiadas at the nearby Serziana village — that my mother is from). But because he was sensitive to sun light, he preferred to stay near Skiadas where sun doesn’t shine before 11 AM and there’s lots of shadow (because of a high mountain in front of the village). ‘Skiadas’ means “the shadow of Hades” (in Greek: ???? ??? ???).

Skiadas is part of the Souli region, a collection of mountainous and hard-to-reach villages that never succumbed to Turks during the 400 years of Turkish occupation (well, not until a Greek traitor showed the Turks a secret passage). Interestingly, my grand-mother on my father’s side had the same surname as that traitor — a shame that we try to not think too much about in my family.

FCC Disclaimer: The following are my very own personal & truthful opinions.

Enthusiasts usually want the latest and greatest. They often go and buy expensive camcorders, dSLRs, or even 35mm adapters for them, only to never use them again after the novelty wears thin (and I’ve been guilty of it too). Or, more often than not, they use them, but they never fully use the equipment on its best of its ability. I know people who bought an HV20, and yet they always shoot in “auto” mode. They don’t take advantage of all the other features and settings the camera has to offer.

As some of you know, I’m a fan of the Canon SX200 IS, a $300 digicam that shoots 720/30p, and has more video manual controls than any other P&S digicam (read my review about SX200 IS’ video mode here). Around the same time the SX200 IS was announced, Canon also announced the SD780 IS. The SD780 IS has almost the same manual controls the SX200 IS has: exposure compensation & locking, contrast/saturation/sharpness control, manual white balance, macro/infinite focus modes, and focus lock. The only thing that’s missing compared to the SX200 IS is that it doesn’t have a manual focus mode, and that its lens is smaller, therefore letting less light hitting the sensor (so it’s noisier). But it’s $200, compared to the SX200 IS’ $300, so it’s acceptable.

My point is that these cams shoot good-enough video for the kinds of videos most people shoot. There is no reason to buy a camcorder, or even a dSLR if you’re not really serious about video. While a few more options would be nice (e.g. additional 24p frame rate, shutter speed support), even without these features, these digicams can offer amazing quality for the price. All it requires is to know how to shoot properly.

I wish people stop buying these terrible digi-recorders instead. They buy a Flip HD or the Kodak Z-series, while these Canon cams are actually much better for the same price: they have optical zoom, they’re smaller, they shoot still pictures too, they have optical stabilization, better lenses, higher bitrate codec, some exposure control, and other settings. Apparently, they also have a better microphone than any digirecorder, or Panasonic/Kodak P&S digicam too. In fact, the Sony and Panasonic digicams announced today at CES still don’t offer all the Canon video features, and Sony seems to be playing with our nerves for using just 6 mbps bitrate for their 720/30p video capture! Consider Canon’s 24 mbps.

I found this useful add-on for the SD780 IS that allows you to attach an ND filter and sunhood. For $50 you can get all three. The ND filter would help bring down the shutter speed, that’s normally too high on these cams, and the sunhood would help to not get CCD light artifacts.

So, while I already own an SX200 IS, I’m thinking of buying an SD780 IS to shoot a music video for a local band. Sure, I own an HV20 and a 5D MkII too. But I want to use the SD780 IS as part of “a project”. A project that details how to shoot properly, and what you can do with these small cams, in order to get an acceptable result out of them. I just want to prove to many people that you don’t need the best tool to create something that’s viewable. It’s not the camera that matters, it’s how you use it. From the moment you have the minimum acceptable tool in your hands, then all it takes is talent, not hardware. This proof of concept idea will end up costing me over $200 (I will probably buy some extra batteries too), but if I can convince one consumer, and one rock band to go that route instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in equipment they don’t really need, it might actually worth it.

What has both surprised me and saddened me deeply is that after relentlessly searching for “artistic” or “atmospheric”, let’s say, videos on Youtube and Vimeo that were shot with either the SX200 IS or the SD780 IS, I found almost nothing! Except my own SX200 IS videos on Vimeo and this video, I found nothing else similar around. Every person who bought these cams (and they’re a lot of them) seem to be busy shooting their cats instead — handheld. They could do so much more! Same goes for most of the people who actually bought camcorders that don’t use in their fullest.

Such a waste.

I spent two very nice hours with JBQ tonight deconstructing music. JB has studied theory of music, so he delivered on my hopes to make me understand why I don’t like the hipster bands, namely Animal Collective (AnCo), Dirty Projectors (DP), and Grizzly Bear (GB). So we compared them with my favorite experimental band, the Cloud Cult, and a few other bands. Here’s what we found out:

1. We found that Cloud Cult, one of the few experimental bands that I like, actually pass themselves as experimental, but the constructions of their songs is very classic: there is always a rhythm, albeit usually hidden from the listener, but still there to not throw him/her off. And there’s melody and harmony at all times. One of the great features of Cloud Cult songs is how they start with 1-2 instruments, the song then transforms to a classical piece, and then somehow transforms back to rock. In contrast to most experimental bands out there that change their songs mid-way, Cloud Cult never change their tempo, even if they change music styles within the same song. Also, the songs’ transformation is slow enough that the listener can follow the genre changes without feeling that he has had the carpet pulled out of his feet. So basically Cloud Cult is more of a smart classic band rather than full-on non-accessible experimental.

2. I always thought that what drove me crazy with AnCo’s music is that it has no melody. Apparently, it’s not the melody, but the rhythm/beat. AnCo’s electronic music is very jazzy usually, where the instruments don’t play in sync with the vocals or other instruments. This jazzy feel confuses me musically because I don’t know to which instrument I should be holding on to in order to find enjoyment. A massive proof for that is that I LIKE the few AnCo songs that are faithful on a rock-style (as opposed to jazz-style) rhythm! Namely: Grass, My Girls, Summertime Clothes. I can’t stand jazz, so it’s no surprise that I don’t like most of AnCo’s songs. I need a “beat” to music. An instrument or vocal that tells me WHERE to latch my brain and follow it. Jazz is the exact opposite of that, and I guess, I’m just not used to it. Then again, most people don’t like jazz (at least in the environment I grew up). Some of their songs, also lack harmony (e.g. “Guys Eyes”).

3. Further proof for all that is the fact that I don’t like Nine Inch Nails either (I like maybe 2-3 songs overall from them too). While NiN are not as jazzy as AnCo, the vocals are usually off the beat, enough for me to dislike their songs. Red Hot Chili Peppers are also off in their drum and bassline, but they somehow complement each other every time in a way that does not throw me off. So NiN are out, Red Hot Chili Peppers are in, even if they’re not exactly classic in terms of music construction.

4. For Dirty Projectors, we agreed that they have no harmony. There is a melody, and there is rhythm. But there is no harmony in the vocals, so their songs sound like a bunch of kids who don’t know how to sing. The music itself feels bare and undeveloped too. The band tries to break conventions in order to “break new ground”, but all it does really is breaking well-researched parts of music theory. This is no different than the market being full of finger-friendly capacitive screen smartphones, and these guys decide to create a new phone that uses a stylus! It’s not pretty. It’s doing it differently for doing it differently, and that’s just not good enough for me to like something. As JBQ put it, that’s just a band to piss off your 40 year old parents when you’re 16 and angry at them. They offer nothing more useful than that to my ears. Without harmony in the vocals, some of their songs feel like when my neighbors are fighting for attention.

5. Grizzly Bear have harmony, rhythm, and some melody. But they’re boring as hell. It feels like they didn’t even try to write music. It’s like a bunch of lazy kids sitting on the balcony and getting sun, and someone walks to them and orders them to “write music, or there’s no dinner for you tonight”, and then they looked at each other and say “you write something”, and then they all reply “no, I don’t feel like writing anything, you do it”, “no, you do it, take one for the team”. Finally, someone replies, “oh, whatever, I’ll do it”.

Tonight we established that we don’t want to hear DP & GB ever again in our lives. They’re annoying as hell. We established that we, like most humans, require both rhythm, harmony, and melody, plus a joyous, and/or catchy beat. If all these requirements are met, we usually like the song. If not, they fall apart for us.