People who know music are cool; this isn’t my own personal opinion ( I personally believe it takes many factors to instill and emanate coolness, or hipness), but to the average person, the mystique that is generated by a person’s obvious in-depth knowledge of obscure music, or maybe just music you’ve never tripped across because you have a real job and a life, is just undeniably cool. Although my coolness is questionable, I am obsessed with music and all its societal undulations so I’m fairly well versed in its cultural variances; which is to say: I gots whatchya needs to sound like a music elitist who mines music catalogs in order to sound superior. And here are my recommendations of the artists and albums you should own in order compile your collection and perpetrate this clever coolness deception.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

The Original Incarnation of The Brian Jonestown Massacre

This ensemble band is the seedy underbelly of The Dandy Warhols, which is clearly represented in the music documentary Dig albeit with obvious bias since it is mainly narrated from the perspective of Courtney, the lead singer of The Dandy Warhols. Irregardless of that, however, is the painfully unmitigated talent possessed by The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s creative nucleus and front man, Anton. Seemingly born of another era and the product of an unfortunate childhood which has left him incapable of functioning as a normal human, Anton is the mastermind of the band’s beautifully ethereal, driving 1990s garage-rock interpretation of Sixties rock ‘n’ roll. There is a partial manifestation of the band which still tours, and Joel (one of the band’s many members) can be spotted at Amoeba Records in San Francisco, where he works, but it will never be the influential band that it never was without its destructively creative front man. They have many albums, but in the name of economy I recommend buying their compilation titled Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective (readily available on iTunes); this will give you all the fuel you need to one-up that hipster who thinks you don’t know shit about music. Oh, and don’t buy anything by The Dandy Warhols (unless you buy Dig), because it will be a fluffy waste of your time and severely deplete your newly won reserves of hipness (unless you like that crap, in which case: by all means).

Brendan Benson

Brendan Benson Autonomously

 

When you pair this man with Jack White and a few associated others, you get the explosively popular genius that is The Raconteurs. You wanna know a not so secret, secret? Well then, get in real tight so you hear me as I lower the volume of my voice and whisper this sweet little nothing in your ears: he’s an autonomous entity with his own fledgling solo career. That’s right , instantly increase your hipness by buying my favorite of his solo productions: Metarie:EP. His music relies heavily on his guitar, but much more jauntily than his Raconteurs counterpart prefers, and he does tend to wallow on romance (which means this album has cross-gender appeal). Once you take a listen and juxtapose it against The Raconteurs’ albums you’ll be able to identify the specific individual influences of Monsieur White and Monsieur Benson, which you may haughtily point out to your brethren and sound infinitely cooler. But don’t take my word for it, his albums are also readily available at the house of iTunes so give it a whirl, my friends.