Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

does "card" = valid point now?

as not the biggest fan of x's and o's style criticism myself i nevertheless think we can stop making this thread about what dan did or didnt say

it's worth noting that the reigning singing style -- american idol, post-whitney, studio-mariah, r&b machine, whatever you want to call it -- is its own kind of historical peculiarity. it's "weird" the way any given singing style is weird, it's just really really popular.

also i think its okay to have a conversation where you bring certain points into play by misreading somebody's position, just bc i didnt get what u were saying right doesnt mean you have to shoot me down and be like mean abt it, like it would have been interesting to me if you had tried to be more nuanced but like i suppose i am just imposing on ur time

Maybe I'm just a bit sick and tired of the anti-indie reflex that has always been put about on ILX. Often it feels like if it has indie-vocals or a non-pop strategem, everyone's all "LOL, this sucks I hate it", which I could also say about maybe 70% of major-studio pop .

I'll shut up about it now cos it's going to get me nowhere. I've learnt a great deal from this thread, but I'm looking forward to seeing some stuff I actually did listen to in 09 on the albums list.

i guess i am bemused that in a list of 50 tracks, a) there was only one meat-n-potatoes throwback indie song in it, b) it turned out to be Girls, and c) just about everyone participating in the thread hated the song.

that's just funny, in a statistical-accident kind of way

it's worth noting that the reigning singing style -- american idol, post-whitney, studio-mariah, r&b machine, whatever you want to call it -- is its own kind of historical peculiarity.

this style isn't even particularly dominant on the list, which features a pretty wide range of vocalists. i don't know what dog latin is complaining about. surely it's obvious that newsom and the girls singer have fairly marmitey voices? like, i've never got butthurt that some people can't get past björk's occasional screeching.

also the main point i was orig trying to make was that the imperfection of the vocals is like a big part of the point of the song. there's another song on the alb called useful chamber where the girls sing a melody in this really grating harmony and then sing it again in this pads-style almost electronically soft way. Like i think criticizing it on technical tuning grounds is missing the point as much as 2 use an example you urself brought up "ew macy gray is way gravelly"

in my experience people get pretty "LOL, this sucks i hate it" about just about anything that gets posted in a thread like this. obviously there are a lot of indie-haters around but nearly every song on the list got shat on by at least a few people.

see i definitely don't agree that an artist's personal singing/playing style or choices are sacrosanct - i just think there are a lot better ways of expressing why something is unpleasant than resorting to s/he's-hitting-this-note-right or this-chord-change-is-boring x's and o's geirdom

xp plax

yeah i agree, but i don't think you can really criticise something without referring to context

like someone said "appropriating rnb vocals but without the necc chops is a bad idea and here's why i think so" it would be a more coherent crit

samosa otm, shit gets flung from all sides at all angles around here, and the cats who adopt this indie persecution complex like they're on a witch trial for liking GAPDY or whatever need to either flee to a message board that's 100% indie rock talk, or get used to the fact that it's only like 60% on this one

can i make the point that i havent hated on anything

well good on you

ikr you already made a big deal about liking everything, whatever that means

The BEP song was almost as universally reviled as the Girls one, and that's about as far from indie as you can get.

proud to be milquetoast!

xp: yup

i agree it's unnecessary to talk about music theory on a board like this, but what is the point of even caring if a professional chorist with perfect pitch doesn't like dirty projector girls for being a quarter of a step off? i cannot, for the life of me, give a shit, and neither should you plaxico.

its not that i dont care tho, im just frustrated bc i think that dan obv knows a lot of stuff that would be really interesting and illuminating wrt to how craft might operate within contexts where ppl dont normally think abt it so much, but i just feel like here, even if he doesn't intend it (and he can blast me all he wants for strawmanning him here but like im just going on what he's saying and he isn't partic interested in setting me straight besides telling me im wrong for reasons that obv aren't clear to me /tuomas)

i meant to finish that it just feels like hes bringing his perspective to bear as more a set of prejudices than something useful

Dan's dp (lol) comments have been among my favs on this thread.

imo dan has one of the more rigid and dogmatic approaches to music of anyone on this board, w/o being a total unself aware geirbot about it, but considering how long and how often he's posted here, nobody should really have a problem w/ reading his posts that way and taking his opinions on those terms. anyway so few people know the slightest bit about the area he's so well educated in (myself included) so i usually appreciate him bringing the vocal technique pedant perspective.

because really lots of people here can be just as stubborn and immovable about much more arbitrary things without really knowing shit about shit

otm

seconded

thats fine, the reason i was gettin all snipeylike was bc i was actually interested in hearing him have an opinion that was more coherently connected with what he was talking abt. Like im all for immovable and contrary opinions and i totes agree that if we were all sliding around on some scale with no biases etc to base ourselves on then there would be no position to speak 4om.

Like I take your point and all tho

im glad nobody knows that im a singer so that when i say "holy fuck that lady cant sing" peeps dont get all freaked out and indignant

FYI i am biased against unicorns

that girls song is still really awesome btw

The thing that's kind of hilarious to me about this whole argument is that a group of ppl asked me to explain what I was talking about, I did, and then an entirely unsurprising completely different group of ppl started going "oh shut up about perfect singing, no one cares" when, you know, the point I was making wasn't really about perfect singing as much as it was explaining what I was hearing, how I was reacting to it, and what change would be necessary to get rid of that reaction.

I don't think they are trying to make a name for themselves via microtuning (ie, singing intervals smaller than half-steps) so I don't buy that as part of their aesthetic; even if it is, they aren't very consistent about sticking to it so I'd still find their execution lacking. There's clearly some level of R&B-style vocal proficiency being flaunted here otherwise the vocal line wouldn't have as many melismas in it. The harmonization choices are decidedly not-R&B and are very cool in theory, I just wish they were in tune.

Having said all that, as I mentioned several posts ago and stated when I first heard the song, I like the other components of that song a lot and they've started winning me over to it.

So IKR, the thing I'm reacting to here is that you are taking one negative thing that said about a song and extrapolating that into a blanket condemnation of the song, then contrasting that to a gut-level reaction to the wholly bizarre Joanna Newsom where I was still too busy laughing to say much one way or the other about her vocally to say I am attempting to have my cake and eat it to regarding vocals, when the simple truth is that I don't have one rigid standard to which I hold singers (outside of a baseline "that sounds like it really hurts, hope you can sustain yr career" opinion re: vocal production); it does actually vary based on genre, context within genre, and what I think I can discern of the artist's intent. Most of this is me using musical vocabulary to express an emotional reaction ("I like this"/"I hate this"); some of this is me acknowledging talent when I don't like the end result, or recognizing where someone is breaking conventional singing wisdom but doing something I like.

I am really tired of people acting like I am attempting to legislate what they are supposed to like and dislike when I talk about singing, or answer people's questions about singing technique. I'm talking about what I like and what I don't like, just like everyone else.

good post

tl;dr

lol

(and another reason why I don't make posts like that very often is that I mostly post when I am waiting for something to run or compile, so I try to be curt more than I try to be expansive, so sorry for not fully fleshing out why I was reacting so negatively earlier)

i still remember listening to front line assembly with dan and how he would drone on about the majesty of the lead singers technical acumen, dont believe his lies

hey dont knock bill leeb

(I will totally cop to being dogmatic about "if you are a pop/r&b singer, than you should be able to sing like one" tho, because it irritates the shit out of me when ppl who can't carry a basic tune make careers out of being singers, but even there it's not a hard-and-fast dogma, ie by that logic I should hate Lumidee, but I don't.)

yeah, like i said i was genuinely trying to engage you in being more expansive, and tbh i was making my point in a really confused way that ended up conflating what i was understanding from you with a general feeling i get abt ppl using "weird" styles of singing as a way to be dismissive of them.

haha I wish, in these discussions, that more people knew/would remember that I am a massive industrial head and my favorite band features vocals by Robert Smith, or that I've spent most of the past year talking about how amazing The Knife/Fever Ray is, as that might ratchet down the dogma accusations somewhat; I don't have a problem at all with "weird" styles if I think they work

^^this is what i keep saying when people accuse me of wanting everyone to sing like m.carey

i always totally appreciate dan's professional pov, obviously - can be really useful to learn what technical reasons may be behind my like/dislike of a voice - though when it comes to points of disagreement like cassie or ciara i just ignore them.

yah but in the partic case of this dirty projectors i think they do work, like i think the point is that its got a flavour of mainstream rnb pop vocals abt it, but i mean they're obv comparatively ragged and strained but like equally the music is more anemic and dischordant than most rnb tries to be, also like, it is indie rock

I wouldn't call the music "anemic" at all; that beat is very strong and not really all that indie to me. In fact, not having heard anything else by them, I would not have blinked twice had someone told me that they were a British R&B group who'd listened to a lot of RZA and Prince Paul productions.

my favorite band features vocals by Robert Smith

Prince & the Revolution features vocals by Robert Smith? That's news to me!

Totally kidding, Dan, obviously you were referring to Korn + Robert Smith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67BXnd8vNuM

see the funny thing about all of this is that the most bothersome thing about the DP song is the wheedly guitar twinkles in the first half, which were driving me slowly mad

(xp) Like, maybe it has a completely different effect in the context of their other songs, but on its own there is nothing self-consciously indie rock about "Stillness Is A Move" to my ears in terms of how the music sounds, how it's arranged, the way the voices sound or the lines they're singing. Maybe in the way the reverb on the drums is recorded; they're a little on the crisp side compared to most R&B/hip-hop productions I can think of at the moment.

This is way more "classical music nerds do R&B" to me than "indie kids do R&B", which likely colors how I react to the singing.

I'm kind of scared to even write out Prince, maybe John took that away from me, too ;_;

^_^ yay

This is way more "classical music nerds do R&B" to me than "indie kids do R&B", which likely colors how I react to the singing.

― PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! (HI DERE), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:44 PM (2 minutes ago)

is pretty otm tho, i mean the rest of the album is "classical music nerds do a talking heads covers album"