no age, japandroids, earl sweatshirt

Welcome to December, a month which means many things to many people, usually related to Christmas or holidays or some shit.. And to media nerds, it's when they start compiling their "best of the year" nonsense.

I've been trying my best to find recommendations through Google searches while searching for No Age, Japandroids, and Earl Sweatshirt, all in the same search, and so far all I've found is stuff that I've personally written, which is a bummer. So I figured I might as well just make it official, at least as far as Google knows, that I'm probably the only person in the world right now who considers these 3 artists as the most exciting things happening in current music. In fact, I can't recall it being so easy to narrow it down to 3 artists in any other year. So as long as this is the main source for fans of these 3 artists specifically, we might as well post about it.

EARL SWEATSHIRT

The "where's Earl?" mystique is kicking my ass. Nobody knows where he is. He doesn't appear at Odd Future shows either.

(EDIT: There's a very good chance the picture posted above is not Earl Sweatshirt.)

NO AGE

Despite indie-rock "niceness," they reportedly still get into fights on tour.. Not with each other, but with bouncers. Also I've decided that ripping off a Nirvana t-shirt design is fucking badass.

JAPANDROIDS

They just released 3 killer 7-inches in a row, and have 2 more coming next year. I also love the big giant fan that accompanies them at their shows, which is both lulz and amazing.

Before dropping this, here's a quick No Age/Japandroids comparison...

While really stupid people will immediately call Japandroids a No Age ripoff since both groups have 2 members (and really for no other reason), these bands really do not come from the same school. 2-person bands need to fill up their sound somehow. For example, No Age likes to turn up the noise.. a LOT. They're REALLY fucking noisy, while Japandroids fill their sound with large, distorted, and processed-sounding guitar effects. This is a lot more similar to Local H except with 2 vocalists. Also No Age often turns down the vox way low, while Japandroids keep their words at an adequate volume, so as to encourage singalongs, often repeating the same lyrics over and over again for several minutes straight.

So yeah... they're simply in the same genre, but not ripping off each other.. This makes about as much sense as suggesting that Slayer ripped off Metallica.. aka no sense at all!