Pick Your Poison: Monday 8-25-14

This isn’t a site that covers TV, but I did want to take a moment to talk a little bit about the Emmys since they took place earlier tonight. Really I’m pop culture obsessed, so I had a very vested interest in the outcome of tonight’s awards. On the whole, I wound up torn. As someone who has watched and seen every single episode of shows like Modern Family and Breaking Bad, their wins in major categories left me feeling like the right decisions were made. Yet they were also big winners last year and in the year or two before that. As I listened to category after category go to people and shows who had won before, it became tremendously easy to predict, and quite frankly that’s also a bit disappointing. Why not give some other shows and some other actors a chance to shine? How many more times are we going to see Matthew McConaughey nominated for an Emmy? Statistically speaking, that’s probably close to 10% at most. The man’s a bonified movie star, and his incredible work in True Detective was sort of a one-and-done sort of thing. Then there were all of the Netflix shows, most notably House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, which earned a whole lot of nominations, but walked away with almost no trophies. Are voters not watching these shows, but only nominating them because of buzz? Of course I had bigger issues with the overall lack of nominations for shows like Hannibal and Orphan Black, which felt like a huge oversight. Of course those are also more niche shows that don’t really attract a lot of viewers. If you’re giving awards for quality though, audience size shouldn’t matter in the end. At least that’s my opinion. Anyways, that’s my rant on this year’s Emmys. Thanks for bearing with me. Now then, let’s have a look at today’s edition of Pick Your Poison. There’s quality tracks in this set from AM Aesthetic (covering Portishead), Deafheaven, Empty Moon, Haley Pharo, Lauryn Hill, Misun and Robbie Fulks. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, stream songs from Baliff, Elsie, New Navy, Real Estate (covering The Nerves), Reporters and Yelle.