massive bullshit generalizations funneled into one specific reference so it'll ring "true".
plus dudes BEEN straight lumberjackin it since nirvana broke!
― j., Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:38 (twelve years ago) link
no. i think it's extremely interesting to consider the commercial explosion of gentle, pastoral, nationalistic, nostalgic and overwhelmingly white indie pop in its larger national/political context. it's all but impossible to ignore the connections between 80s rural/small-town pop nationalism and reagan's "morning in america", so it doesn't absurd to draw similar connections wr2 the indie culture of the 00s.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:40 (twelve years ago) link
fwiw the year High Fidelity came out i was downloading Kid A on Napster and discussing it on AIM with Ryan Schreiber
(losing my edge joke)
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:40 (twelve years ago) link
RichBeck Richard Beck Now an assistant editor for @nplusonemag. That essay/story/thing that's been on your hard drive forever? Let me know about it!16 Dec Favorite Retweet Reply
― buzza, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:41 (twelve years ago) link
grunge lumberjack shit = ragged, smelly, "i don't give a fuck"
subsequent indie lumberjackin = neat, retro-50s, expensive
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:41 (twelve years ago) link
is that so
― 51 fewer calories (Lamp), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:44 (twelve years ago) link
I really don't think that indie lumberjackin was 'a thing' in the same sense that grunge was 'a thing'
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:45 (twelve years ago) link
closing paragraphs are total bullshit tho
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:46 (twelve years ago) link
like, sufjan stevens only exists as a datapoint cause dude can write some catchy melodies
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:46 (twelve years ago) link
smaller scale, yeah. filson gloves hitting a much smaller market segment than thrift store flannel.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:48 (twelve years ago) link
if sufjan stevens couldn't write catchy melodies would this 'indie lumberjack' generation be 'less of a thing'. was there a social demand for a indie lumberjack superstar and he stepped up to fill the role? no, I think that is absurd.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:49 (twelve years ago) link
I need to see numbers that prove that the indie lumberjack generation exists and it's not just like, idk, 3 bands that got big cause they wrote catchy melodies. I mean 'commercial explosion'? cmon.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:51 (twelve years ago) link
i don't think the fad of dudes living in brooklyn suddenly growing unruly beards should be confused with what happens in the rest of the world that is not brooklyn.
― j., Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:56 (twelve years ago) link
might there be something significant about the rapid cultural ascendancy of nostalgic, folksy, implicitly christian and comfortably middle-class white music that echoes the simplicities of childhood and mid-century american optimism in the wake of 9/11? doesn't seem so absurd to me.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:58 (twelve years ago) link
indie beards are probably the LAST thing i'd peg as an exclusively brooklyn phenomenon
― @51TimesNo (some dude), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:59 (twelve years ago) link
'rapid cultural ascendancy'?? again, it's one dude, and he wrote a catchy indie pop album, it appealed to a lot of college kids at liberal arts schools or whatever. that's not a social movement that you can make any real statement about.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:02 (twelve years ago) link
if you guys want to seriously argue that the folksy, goodtimes campfire aesthetics/culture of fleet foxes, anco, grizzly bear, sufjan, and bon iver are not a thing of significance over the past decade or so, then have ats. it's not just brooklyn. it may just be liberal, educated, roughly middle-class city kids of a particular stripe, but that's hardly a "marginalized" group.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:02 (twelve years ago) link
again, it's one dude, and he wrote a catchy indie pop album, it appealed to a lot of college kids at liberal arts schools or whatever. that's not a social movement that you can make any real statement about.
i think that contempo-indie is a thing that one can make real and useful statements about. sufjan isn't a perfect synecdoche for that, but it's not like he has no relevance to the discussion.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:05 (twelve years ago) link
look, almost everyone I know is a middle-class college-educated city kids of a particularly stripe, and some of them probably listen to some of those artists sometimes.
it's not a. a particularly large listening demographic b. a 'movement' c. a trend w/ enough coherence that you can really make a statement about it. when you gotta use anco in your definition of 'pastoral nationalism' you know you're stretching things.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:09 (twelve years ago) link
particular stripe*
anco are only one of the links in the chain. pastoral yes, nationalist no. but they're not a perfect synecdoche, either. there is no perfect single-point representation.
and when we're specifically talking about a. pitchfork and b. indie music, then hell yeah, the demographic in question and the trends within it are worth making statements about. some of these bands have had #1 records in the last few years. they're as worth talking about as any music out there.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:15 (twelve years ago) link
sure they're worth talking about but when you're making big social statements you need big pieces of evidence and I don't think the small-scale success of a few bands is that evidence. maybe people liked 'my girls' cause it's a super catchy song not because of the american national political/context.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:20 (twelve years ago) link
sure, maybe...
the idea that post 2000 indie is in some sense marginal - outside the mainstream, not "worth" engaging in serious terms - strikes me as a weird kind of defensive denial. the neon bible debuted at #2, the suburbs at #1. national public radio (think about those words) has dedicated itself to the promulgation of this music to an audience that will someday assume leadership positions in american culture, business and government. this is the youthful soundtrack of white american privilege, and pretending that it's somehow not central to the narrative of the nation strikes me as bizarre.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:26 (twelve years ago) link
hey self, why the scarequotes on "worth"?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:27 (twelve years ago) link
In Sufjan Stevens, indie adopted precious, pastoral nationalism at the Bush Administration’s exact midpoint. In M.I.A., indie rock celebrated a musician whose greatest accomplishment has been to turn the world’s various catastrophes into remixed pop songs. This is a kind of music, in other words, that’s very good at avoiding uncomfortable conversations. Pitchfork has imitated, inspired, and encouraged indie rock in this respect. It has incorporated a perfect awareness of cultural capital into its basic architecture. A Pitchfork review may ignore history, aesthetics, or the basic technical aspects of tonal music, but it will almost never fail to include a detailed taxonomy of the current hype cycle and media environment.
this is key, as much as i want to defend MIA's catastrophe pop. it does a neat job of tying a good point about the basic structure of indie aesthetics (built in from its 80s-era roots) to the way indie tastemaking works online today, in a post-marginal commercial environment. carles uses HRO to make the same point over and over and over again.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:34 (37 minutes ago) Permalink
idk as a writer for pitchfork i cant say that the bulk of my writing deals w/ a 'detailed taxonomy of the current hype cycle and media environment' any more than is necessary to provide context of an existing discussion, and that's rarely the point of what i write
this piece, amongst other problems, has the same issue most pieces critical of the site has, in that it treats many different writers of many different styles approaches & eras as a monolith
― I Love Pedantry (D-40), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:31 (twelve years ago) link
I literally can't fathom the obscene lack of self-awareness it would take for someone to turn in a piece of print writing with the word "ILX" in it.
― all shitley (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, September 6, 2011
― buzza, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:32 (twelve years ago) link
the other thing is that his generalizations about who the audiences for indie are and how they've changed, while intuitively tempting, don't have any actual evidence to support them, which is really irresponsible writing
― I Love Pedantry (D-40), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:34 (twelve years ago) link
when you're making big social statements you need big pieces of evidence and I don't think the small-scale success of a few bands is that evidence.
i can't imagine what kind of evidence one might find that the popularity of an artist or genre is in some way related to national events. when it comes to speculation of this sort, proof isn't really what i'm looking for.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:35 (twelve years ago) link
his generalizations about who the audiences for indie are and how they've changed, while intuitively tempting, don't have any actual evidence to support them, which is really irresponsible writing
yeah, that i agree with 100%. frankly, i think the audience hasn't changed much. the difference is that the tastes and attitudes that define that audience have changed. but i don't have any strong support for that point, either.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:36 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think fleet foxes are central to the narrative of the nation. the youthful soundtrack of white american privilege is mostly kanye west and jay-z.
again this kinda analysis has no room for separating success that comes from tapping into ~the zeitgeist~ or whatever and success just for writing music that happens to appeal to a lot of people. arcade fire's music is pretty easy to appreciate, hey they won a grammy, really old people vote for teh grammys. so I guess they are big, and if there were lots of other hugely successful bands that sounded like them that might mean something. but with this limited datapoint no, there's just not enough evidence that this 'means something important'.
xp
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:37 (twelve years ago) link
I mean if you really wanted to make a solid argument you'd have to look at the numbers w/r/t 'white american privilege'. back in the day there was a facebook page that allowed you to see what the top bands were by undergrad college. the beatles were the top band for most ivy league schools. does that mean something about the future of white maerican privilege? I mean I guess it means *something* but it's not a movement, it's just a lot of people who like the beatles.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:41 (twelve years ago) link
also OTM. piece is waist-deep in unsupportable generalizations, especially as they pretend to specifically indict pitchfork. nevertheless, i agree with what i see as the author's buried point: trendspotting and the handicapping of cultural capital have become a much more visible component of the pop-critical conversation in the internet era (though again, i'd point more to carles and PRR more than pitchfork itself for evidence of this).
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:41 (twelve years ago) link
he wrote. “We reach more people right now than Spin or Vibe ever did, even if you use the bs print mag idea that ‘every copy is read by 2.5 people’ . . . hell, I should stop caring, get back to work, and let people keep underestimating us.” Then he posted two more times. Then he wrote, “Alright, I will get out of this thread.” Then he posted eighteen more times.
this was the best part of the article imo
― sarahell, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:42 (twelve years ago) link
back in the day there was a facebook page that allowed you to see what the top bands were by undergrad college. the beatles were the top band for most ivy league schools. does that mean something about the future of white maerican privilege? I mean I guess it means *something* but it's not a movement, it's just a lot of people who like the beatles.
i think it does mean something about the future/present/past of white american privilege. for one thing, it reflects the whiteness of white american privilege. for another, it reflects the durability of that culture's totems. i'd say that "pitchfork indie" is a clear extension of this.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:44 (twelve years ago) link
no. what do privileged white americans listen to that everybody else listens to, white or not, privileged or not? kanye and jay-Z, fine.
but what do privileged white americans listen to that other groups are substantially less likely to listen to? pitchfork indie. of course i don't have the statistics to back this up right at hand. just a hunch...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:47 (twelve years ago) link
that's my problem, this needs statistics
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:48 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think fleet foxes are central to the narrative of the nation.
is any music at all central to the narrative of the nation?
the youthful soundtrack of white american privilege is mostly kanye west and jay-z.
i don't think so.
― sarahell, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:48 (twelve years ago) link
haha otm
― 51 fewer calories (Lamp), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:49 (twelve years ago) link
the thought of nice, earnest, young mr. beck reading hundred-plus post ilx thread derails kinda warms my heart.
― sarahell, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:51 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think so today.
― iatee, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:54 (twelve years ago) link
And I'm sure this is something we've discussed a bunch of times:
This has something to do with the site’s diligently cultivated readership: no genre’s fans are more vulnerable to music criticism than the educated, culturally anxious young people who pay close attention to indie rock.
like, i don't think this is indie-specific, i think this is educated, culturally anxious young people - specific.
― sarahell, Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:56 (twelve years ago) link
i don't think it does. it's speculation, criticism, a shot across the bow. i read this sort of thing more for ideas than for ironclad proofs. if i felt that the author's assumptions were factually inaccurate in relation to statistical evidence that i might actually obtain, i might do some research myself. that's why god gave us google, after all.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:58 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, reflective of the myopic, self-damning tone you find in many attacks targeted against pitchfork and indie culture.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 06:04 (twelve years ago) link
feel bad for going all bonkers on this thread. can't help it sometimes. i get a feeling.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 06:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/215868785/Twitter.jpg
i think he's cuet tbh
― sarahell, Saturday, 21 January 2012 06:14 (twelve years ago) link
does help explain the passionate inconsistencies
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 06:26 (twelve years ago) link
this is all probably obvious but...
trendspotting and the handicapping of cultural capital have become a much more visible component of the pop-critical conversation in the internet era
i wonder if we couldn't look at sites like Pitchfork as evolving along with the rapid explosion of information about and availability of music (briefly mentioned in the article) and therefore these kinds of sites are a kind of "control technology" in the formal sense of that term. curating, handicapping, and value judgements become kind of urgently necessary when you are faced with the potential to listen to almost anything. without those kinds of bottlenecks (which are themselves proliferating) i think it'd almost be a chaos of choices. what's unique about pitchfork then would be what counts as information to them, what distinctions they find worth drawing, and the like, and not so much any relation to the music that pitchfork might stake out but in fact a relation to other forms of media and models of music consumption. criticism is always really talking to other criticism.
― ryan, Saturday, 21 January 2012 06:43 (twelve years ago) link
you know, the first half of this article's not bad as a primer for people who were aware of pitchfork but didn't really know what it was all about. would email to my mom!
6.8
― Lana Ballantine (latebloomer), Saturday, 21 January 2012 07:40 (twelve years ago) link
Pretty good article, although the first and last few paragraphs were a bit of a mess. I agree with a lot of contenderizer's points.
It does a good job of painting a picture of the transition through to the internet/file sharing era (c. 1998-2004), this was more interesting to me than anything he had to say about Pitchfork itself.
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Saturday, 21 January 2012 10:16 (twelve years ago) link
^^ That is exactly how I feel. The lead-in and end are shabby at best, but it's a very interesting article nonetheless. And I too agree with Contenderizers thoughts on it.
Missing Whiney here btw
― Another Wein bites the dust (Le Bateau Ivre), Saturday, 21 January 2012 12:21 (twelve years ago) link