What is your fave indie/alternative monthly music mag?

donfers

My take:


uncut: used to love it, once found a copy of it in a small town in the middle of korea, cost me about 20 dollars but there you go, recently for me it has gone downhill. I don't like all the cd's with music inspired by this or that

mojo: tend to have a focus more on older stuff whereas my interest is more on new music, still I'll get it occassionally and the cd's are constantly interesting

word: best cd of the lot which is based on new music released that mont i.e. what I want, what uncut used to do, also some very interesting articles, most expensive of the three and not the nbest review section

Q: a bity too populist/commercialised, liked it when i was younger, my tastes have outgrown it now

Rolling Stone: American bias, too unfocused in its musical coverage, who is interested in both Lady gaga and the Flaming Lips?

NME: too laddish/raw/uncouth......too obsessed with the latest cool brit band, ha lost it's credability

Hot Press: decent well-written, nice to have a mag focused on Irish music, cheap too but rarely do you get a free cd and it just doesn't have that professional polish

mehmeh12

NME?

Dudess

I like Uncut and The Word... rarely buy them though.

keithkk16

AU http://iheartau.com/

SilverScreen

I mostly read Clash magazine. It's always full of new exciting indie and electronica bands, and every month you can get free download compilation from their website.

I pick up Hot Press every now and again but it does tend to cover too many Irish artists and they could include more album reviews. Still a good magazine though.

Spiritoftheseventies

Voted for NME. Even though its pretty awfu now in its day it still had some terrific issues back in the eighties. Decision to go glossy will prove its ultimate downfall i feel.

nxbyveromdwjpg

Hotpress is the biggest load of ****e ever, I loved it when The Slate constantly pointed their writers out for contradicting themselves over and over again a years ago.

Now THAT was a quality read.

magma69

nm wrote: »

Hotpress is the biggest load of ****e ever, I loved it when The Slate constantly pointed their writers out for contradicting themselves over and over again a years ago.

Now THAT was a quality read.

In fairness all magazines contradict themselves. The NME came out with an article a few months back saying The Strokes' Is This It wasn't such an outstanding album it was made out to be. Thing is, the NME were leading the line in terms of hyping it up when it was released.

My favourite is Rolling Stone giving Nirvana's Nevermind 3 out of 5 stars and then, a few years down the line making it the 17th greatest album of all time. :rolleyes:

Nearly all magazines are populist bollocks anyway. I don't bother with them anymore. They always have an agenda and are forever hyping up mediocrity and ignoring truly great innovative artists. People buy into their bullshit way too much. It's like they have to be told what is good and what isn't.

We have the internet now. Music magazines are no longer necessary for finding out about new acts etc.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

magma69 wrote: »

In fairness all magazines contradict themselves. The NME came out with an article a few months back saying The Strokes' Is This It wasn't such an outstanding album it was made out to be. Thing is, the NME were leading the line in terms of hyping it up when it was released.

My favourite is Rolling Stone giving Nirvana's Nevermind 3 out of 5 stars and then, a few years down the line making it the 17th greatest album of all time. :rolleyes:

Nearly all magazines are populist bollocks anyway. I don't bother with them anymore. They always have an agenda and are forever hyping up mediocrity and ignoring truly great innovative artists. People buy into their bullshit way too much. It's like they have to be told what is good and what isn't.

We have the internet now. Music magazines are no longer necessary for finding out about new acts etc.

Q magazine gave (Whats the Story) Morning Glory 2 out of 5 upon inital release. When it went on to be one of the biggest selling albums of all time it printed an apology. In a way I kind of understand where it was coming from, its not a patch on the debut, but probably deserved more than 2 out of 5. At least they had the balls to do it I suppose.

As for magazines, I don't think I could vote for any of them. Stopped buying magazines for years but recently bought a few Q's and Hotpresses. The former just because its review section pretty much covers everything, and it does have some good articles. A good few of the articles our usually about artists I couldn't give a **** about but they always make it interesting, or at the least..funny. Hotpress is good at times, just to catch up on whats going on nationally. But it can be full of awful **** as well, about head shops etc.

lordgoat

wire

Spiritoftheseventies

magma69 wrote: »

In fairness all magazines contradict themselves. The NME came out with an article a few months back saying The Strokes' Is This It wasn't such an outstanding album it was made out to be. Thing is, the NME were leading the line in terms of hyping it up when it was released.

My favourite is Rolling Stone giving Nirvana's Nevermind 3 out of 5 stars and then, a few years down the line making it the 17th greatest album of all time. :rolleyes:

Nearly all magazines are populist bollocks anyway. I don't bother with them anymore. They always have an agenda and are forever hyping up mediocrity and ignoring truly great innovative artists. People buy into their bullshit way too much. It's like they have to be told what is good and what isn't.

We have the internet now. Music magazines are no longer necessary for finding out about new acts etc.

Im pretty sure they had it in their top ten of all time. As well as giving it their album of the year when it was released. You sure you got the right mag?

magma69

onestepahead wrote: »

Im pretty sure they had it in their top ten of all time. As well as giving it their album of the year when it was released. You sure you got the right mag?

I stand corrected. It was a blog and not necessarily the official opinion of the magazine. Here is the link:

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=140&p=7385&more=1&c=1

pinksoir

I voted for Uncut. But to be honest all music magazines are mostly a waste of money. The only reason I buy them are if I'm getting a train. I then keep them and read them on the jacks. I've come across a few decent artists, mostly older and more abstract, stuff like Gong etc. I'd never buy it for something to read though, religiously as it were.

Uncut is grim though, cos it covers the same few artists over and over; Dylan, Beatles, Neil Young, The Smiths, that type of stuff. It also has a severe bias towards Americana, and I have no interest is Americana at all.

Mojo is much the same. Don't like the layout though.

Word I've never read.

Q is depressing.

Rolling Stone has too much of a left wing political leaning. Has no balance. Too much too much.

NME is for 18 year olds who shop in Topman and have those stupid angular haircuts. It's a musical tabloid.

Hotpress is unbelievably depressing. Such a rag. Just makes me cringe. The thought that this piece of turd is still going when magazines like State and Foggy Notions are no longer in print beggars belief. Lowest common denominator turd.

To be honest, music magazines are only good for something to read in the crapper. I like looking for the terrible reviews. That's about it. That's why I loved The Slate, and to a lesser degree Mongrel. They told it like it was, the majority of stuff is turd. They were completely biased. They liked what they liked and tore apart the rest. Most people only like a certain percentage of music anyway, and dislike/disregard the rest. Reading a magazine where a page is full of 4 star reviews is misleading. No way are all those albums equally good. No way am I gonna like them all equally. What criteria are they even judged by? Getting a magazine for reviews is a complete waste of time. Dancing about architecture and all that. Last.fm tbh.

MickShamrock

Rock Sound.

zimovain

Uncut for me.

AnonoBoy

magma69 wrote: »

I stand corrected. It was a blog and not necessarily the official opinion of the magazine. Here is the link:

http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=140&p=7385&more=1&c=1

This is going slightly off-topic here but that article is nonsense. They did a whole series of articles where they just go, "You know the way everyone thinks this is a great album? Guess what? It's not. It's crap and this song is crap and so's this song."? No wonder musicians hate rock journalists, that's just lazy pointless writing.

I'm all for going against the grain but that guy seems to be doing it just to do it and makes no real relevant points at all.

As for magazines - I never pick up Hot Press anymore as the writers irritate me. I read State online but even that's a bit touch and go. I'll flick through Q and Mojo if I was in a barber's but that's about it.

Creamy Goodness

my favourite magazine is the internet.

i don't buy paper magazines anymore i find they are just a waste of money for stuff i can get online for free.

deisedude

The American magazines don't do it for me and are too expensive.

Used read NME when i was 13 which is probably their target audience. Very poserish. Someone should tell them the Libertines were average too and not the second coming of the lord as they proclaimed them to be.

Despite all the bashing here, i quite like hotpress. Nice blend of current affairs, music and pop culture in general although one or 2 writers are annoying.

As for everyone complaining about these magazines being hypocritical. You do realise they have more than 1 writer, right? Not all of them are going to agree that a particular band/album is good

KnifeWRENCH

I usually read Q; it's not specifically an indie/alt mag and I like that it covers pretty much all genres. I get NME occasionally but it is way too poserish and hypes up certain bands way too much.

Not a big fan of Uncut/Mojo/HotPress - find them a bit wordy and pretentious, but would get them if there was something interesting in them.

Captain Darling

Uncut for me. Put only buy it when i'm going on the train (and thats a fair bit ).

They seem to be fascinated with Americana though. I like their retrospectives on bands such as the Stones, the Who etc.

I hadnt bought Q in years but got it there lately, a good read in all fairness, it wasnt what i was expecting it to be. i thought i had changed into some sort of lifestyle/fashion/music mag).

I used to buy Melody Maker, NME and Hotpress religiously when they came out, maybe i've changed, or maybe they've changed but NME seems like a pure hype machine for sh1tty arsed indie wannabes and Hotpress is still spouting on about the Church. As mentioned earlier, the review section in Hotpress is very disappointing also. They could do with beefing it up a bit.

The Pontiac

I read Q Magazine's list of greatest frontmen today (in a newspaper), as voted for by their readers. Liam Gallagher was number 1 and Bono was number 2. It was voted by the readers. Sweet jesus like! Here's the list..



1) Liam Gallagher
2) Bono
3) Freddie Mercury
4) Damon Albarn
5) Chris Martin
6) Matt Bellamy
7) Jim Morrison
8) Bob Marley
9) Paul McCartney
10) John Lennon
11) Robbie Williams
12) Debbie Harry
13) Mick Jagger
14) Morrissey
15) John Lydon
16) James Brown
17) Bruce Springsteen
18) Robert Plant
19) Tom Meighan
20) Joe Strummer

Chris Martin and Matt Bellamy number 5 and 6 respectively. Now that's just hilarious. No Iggy Pop or Ian Curtis. LOL. Okay, it was voted on by the readers, but wouldn't you think they'd be a little embarrassed to even print it, and even do a whole front cover with it. What a silly mag..

FredBaby!

I voted NME, mainly because it's the only music magazine I can get my hands on. It can annoy me mainly for reasons already expressed (too laddish, etc.) but I find it better now under the new editor. I just got a subscribtion to Under the Radar. It's American, pretty good. Covers mostly the Brooklyn and Canadian scenes but has some interesting articles.

Aridstarling

Under the Radar is quite deadly alright.

rcaz

I started getting The Wire last month, and I like it so far. Full of stuff I've never heard of before. Some of the contributors seem to fancy themselves, but you're never going to get a music magazine without a degree of pretense, right?

Howard the Duck

I read uncut and mojo mostly for the reviews which i find pretty good. Bang was a good read when it was about. The word isn't bad but the last time i read it they didn't rate their reviews which put me off a bit.

arsenallegend

Uncut is a very good read but for me it was far better a few years back when it was as thick as a book but not its very skimpy but still a great read.

Q is the kind of magazine which gives a bands worst albums five stars or album of the years. its got very pop over the years instead of rock and indie like it was years before

Mojo is a great magazine

fluke

Don't buy magazines so much these days but Classic Rock is the one I'd pick up! Well written reviews and the features plus the comic strip always makes me laugh!

BurnsCarpenter

There are a few decent music magazines in the US - I've had subscriptions for The Big Takeover and Magnet magazine in the past few years.

I used to read Uncut regularly in the late 90s and Melody Maker religiously in the early to mid 90s.

mehmeh12

OK so the general census is that print media is outdated and that the Internet is the place to find good reviews. So without getting off topic too much what sites are the best to find decent music reviews?

And obviously dont say boards :pac: duh

jill_valentine

I'm a child of the internet age and all, but I still like music magazines, I like having something physical to read. If music magazines had half the writing standard of blogs and didn't cost nearly a tenner a pop, I'd buy them more.

Hot Press is terrible ****e now, as previously posted. But then again, I don't know if it was ever actually good. It only occasionally covers relevant bands, and even then grudgingly. The writers all hail from the same tight knit little band of nostaligic self-congratulatory knobs who only seem to write to remind us of how important they are, and on the rare occasions when they actually deign to write about any music the standard of their writing is shocking. Everything from the research end of things to editorial bias, it is one of the very worst rags on the market, and I honestly don't know how it's lasted this long.

Out of the others, I like Uncut and Q well enough, but they're a wee bit too expensive for what they are, or to buy regularly. If they've covered a few bands I really like, I'll pick up that issue, but I could do with a bit less Neil Young/ Dylan/ The Who.

Spiritoftheseventies

Used to love the NME in the eighties. But its glossy new look is an absolute turn off tbh. Marketing people have an awful lot to answer for IMO.

Dazd_N_Confusd

I guess if Pitchfork had a magazine I'd read that.

JerryHandbag

Used to buy Q regularly up until about 5 years ago when they started putting the likes of Robbie Williams and Beyonce on the cover.