Radiohead In Not-A-Bunch-Of-Black-Guys Shocker!

also it still seems to me that when i finally parse his sentences, dig through the references and neologisms, their actual meaning is more often than not pretty banal and unrewarding.

I think it's even simpler: he's saying Thom Yorke has no "soul". I don't think I've ever read anyone say it like that. Hopefully he's able to dodge criticisms of racism.

what do people think about the last line, that httt will not have an impact on rock in general. i tend to agree there. actually you could expand httt to radiohead themselves and i would agree as well...

i mean, that's what the grammar is saying, and that's what the piece as a whole is saying: he's countering the argt that they are merely unfunky white-brit blah blah by saying EVEN GRANTED ALL THIS there is something going on here

"But no matter who's right, if anyone is, the future of Hail to the Thief is unlikely to have much bearing on the future of rock or anything else."

suggest that there is NOTHING going on there?

Indeed, this is the idealized voice of a pretentious college boy.

he could be calling h.t.t.t. a world-historical masterpiece but the piece still irks in spots.

(p.s. i've always felt left out of the let's-assume-nirvana's-near-infallibility crowd.)

I think what convinces me he is saying this is that if he is not, why even bring it up? At least lead rock vocalists aspiring to some kind of soul ambitions is a time-honored tradition (if not something I'm really looking for as a criterion) -- but, does anyone care that Thom Yorke doesn't have the "sound of Africa" in his voice? If Christgau is going to compare all of the music he reviews to African music, how am I supposed to ever know what he's talking about (given my admittedly ignorant experience with African music)?

What's with that "Radiohead are no Nirvana range-wise" line? WTF, has he ever listened to either band?

I think he's saying exactly the opposite of what someone would normally mean with that sentence (ie, Radiohead has a wider musical range than Nirvana).

(I may be exaggerating for rhetorical effect here.)

I'm probably not reading enough into it, but my general impression of the piece was: jeez, they might be the best Band That Matters we've got, but it sure would be nice if they were actually better. Being in the "I like Radiohead but..." camp, I'm sympathetic. I think the only generation gap that shows up here is nothing to do with taste and mostly to do with how much you thing it matters to have a Band That Matters. I think Christgau cares more about that than I do, and I even kind of understand why. But it doesn't invalidate his perspective, and I think he's fun to read. Of course he's a pretentious college boy, and he's writing for an audience of "pretentious college boys" (a demographic group that, of course, includes lots of men and women of all ages), and so when he puts down something as being too "pretentious college boy," he's assuming his audience will get the joke. I think he's one of the funniest writers out there, and that's why I like him. I like his jokes.

My culpa.

I read "Africa" here as a stand-in for rhythm, both in terms of influence and contemporary product (in that the chief marginal distinction of the continent's music, writ large, is its rhythmic qualities, i bushwa). The piece ends up quite clearly on a (re)statement of Xgau's aesthetic position - he favors foregrounding rhythm over harmony, on principle. In practice, Radiohead does not (though Xgau liked Kid A because it veered into something approximating a groove).

doesn't this:

"But no matter who's right, if anyone is, the future of Hail to the Thief is unlikely to have much bearing on the future of rock or anything else."

suggest that there is NOTHING going on there?

he's referring to what the album represents (privileging non-rhythmic elements in "rock" music), not the album itself. he considers the album pleasant, though not necessarily his style, as i understand it.

a.k.a. "the narcissism of small differences: part MCMXIII"

Then what do you make of his Distinctions Not Cost-Effective trope?

I should read the whole piece, but the deep irony of ending that paragraph with "this is the idealized voice of a pretentious college boy" is staggering me.

said before, but this pretty much approximates his stated perception of his audience. and considering his self-description as a "peculiar combination of pretentious and unpretentious" (paraphrase, perhaps), it's at least somewhat self-referential.

christgau's pretty far along in his critical career for the idea that compelling music can be made without obvious reference to af-american idioms to be such a revelation!!!

he's been putting classical music down for 35 years. but he said similar half-nice things about a prog-record or two in the 70s book.

the problem comes because he's been putting these terms forth for years, in much more concrete ways, elsewhere and in other pieces, and he definitely expects his readership to catch the x-references. so those of us who read him a lot (like me) do, and he alienates lots of other folx. not sure what to say to that except shrug.

ditto.

oh, and ha, my immediate first two responses to who has emotional range - S-K and Baaba Maal.

Fraught and self-involved, sure; but Thom's actually a really funny guy. I guess if you don't think things like The Castle or Buffalo 66 are funny, or can't see the humor built into personas from Bryan Ferry's to Mark E. Smith's, or haven't really listened to the lyrics ... "Karma Police" is a funny song; so are "My Iron Lung" and even "Fake Plastic Trees." "Living in a Glass House" is positively silly. People are too credulous about all the 'despair.'

Oh, and "Sulk," if not quite cheery, is a pretty bracing tune.

your wish is my command!

well i'm glad that's settled ...

i'd like to see Oolong wear that!

http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Jul/2003736220157000832004.jpg

http://www.syberpunk.com/images/oolong/pancake3.jpg

Buffalo 66 is hilarious.

[it's so cute when people defend Buffalo 66!]

well i'm glad that's settled ...

they don't have a rhythm guitarist to save their life

Oddly enough, Myxomatosis has elements in common with some African folkloric music in that it basically feels like a triple meter and a duple meter at the same time (two speeds of duple time really, since it has that 2:3 polyrhythm going through it).

http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Jul/2003751903893294663221.jpg

in fact, if you do a GIS, you can find a lovely pic of him with a roll of toilet paper on his head.

this leads me to believe that the japanese are the greatest people on the planet, except for that whole "gang-rape as a popular fixture of hentai anime/porn" thing.