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)

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"

also if u heard the guy singing you wouldnt really be hating on the chicks voices one bit in comparison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFdZH9R1n-4&NR=1

I haven't heard him sing a note yet and I want to kill him

Joanna Newson vs. Dave Longstreth FITE!!!1

Newsom* obv.

What is very strange about this thread is that with all the shit being thrown around, Bob Dylan can walk straight through the middle of it singing a fucking song about Santa and no-one bats an eyelid.

that's because Bob Dylan is fucking awesome

i really thought he was gonna take his hat off at the end of that vid, and it would turn out the hair was attached in a cunning hairhatwig style.

enjoyed dr. c (&others) running down their first impressions btw, don't think i said that upthread

I think this is going a bit far. I do basically buy your premise here - Taylor Swift is your best friend who helps you sort out your situation by reminding you of stuff you already know, and Lady Gaga is definitely NOT that. But I think the fandom for her is still more visceral than you suggest, for many people... if Swift is best friend, Gaga is platonic girl crush. People want to BE her because she's so COOL and gets away with doing strange and wonderful things that you are too shy and ordinary to do (until you go to college and join some burlesque troupe or whatever). The details of what those things are - the bewildering forest of her "aesthetic self-construction" - provide lots of interest and give you something to link to almost daily on Facebook ("Grammy dress! heart gaga").... but people think she's *awesome*, not just intellectually interesting, etc.

This was ages ago but, firstly, me saying that Gaga's greatness is premised on the unmistakeable Gaga-esque-ness of her aesthetic isn't the same as saying people can't have an emotional and personal connection with her - and i basically agree with everything above.

Secondly, yeah, a friend chided me by saying "but isn't "Just Dance" about a totally relateable IRL situation" and it is, which is one of the reasons I qualified my comment by saying "(best) songs" - I think that Gaga has improved immensely perhaps precisely because she has cut the awkward ties between her larger-than-life persona and her initial run of relateable ordinary-experience pop songs; this is the big difference b/w "Just Dance" or "Eh Eh" and basically everything on The Fame Monster.

Re "Stillness Is The Move", I heard it before I'd read or heard anything about it, and while it struck me as the work of an indie group with their ears open, it would never have occurred to me to think of it as an R&B song.

What is very strange about this thread is that with all the shit being thrown around, Bob Dylan can walk straight through the middle of it singing a fucking song about Santa and no-one bats an eyelid.

I lolled

singing a fucking song about Santa

I don't want to hear about Santa fucking, thanks very much.

this is a fucking song
a song in which to fuck

ho ho ho ho

I think that Gaga has improved immensely perhaps precisely because she has cut the awkward ties between her larger-than-life persona and her initial run of relateable ordinary-experience pop songs; this is the big difference b/w "Just Dance" or "Eh Eh" and basically everything on The Fame Monster.

this is a tempting thing to agree with, then i remembered about "telephone" which is amazing but surely the most quotidian of all

I still lol that Lady Gaga had Beyonce guest on a reworking of "Bugaboo"

still blows my mind tbh that people hate on longstreth's voice, it's reall special i think, and basically one of the strongest in popular indie besides like antony?

Hearing Antony is a great way to put me off listening to music for the rest of the night/week/month.

that's because Bob Dylan is fucking awesome

that album made my Xmas - everyone who hears it loves it

yeah even my grandfather who stopped fucking w/dylan when he went electric really like it

Actually I love "Just Dance" now more than I did in 2008.

for a moment i read that as QE II's grandpa chiming in and "Just Dance" was a Bob Dylan song

also if u heard the guy singing you wouldnt really be hating on the chicks voices one bit in comparison

― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 1:52 PM Bookmark

dave longstreth is why bitte orca is basically unlistenable

i love bitte orca but you have to admit it's kind of a vocal feat to be that breathy and that whiny at the same time

maybe on the fringes of the Popular Crowd (close enough to be able to speak to the hot sporty boys, at any rate), enough on the fringes to fret about acceptance into it.

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:38 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Sugges

Never mind me, just enjoying lex's insightful point about the class issues at stake in Vampire Weekend.

Oh...wait. My bad.

RE: Taylor, I think her strongest suit is actually not voice or lyrics but melody and most importantly structure - her songs are interesting not just because of the (fairly average/stereotypical) situations they portray (quite well, mind you) but because she had a really good grasp on how songs WORK. The way Love Story's entire plot moves forward in the changing words of the chorus, rather than the in the verses, which mostly tread water. The way the chorus in Tim McGraw never changes its words, but drastically changes its meaning/context of "Tim McGraw" and the song in question as the audience learns more information in the verses. How changing one line in the final chorus of "White Horse" somehow manages to be totally devastating. And so on. Lex is totally OTM about how she knows better than most people when to oversell or undersell emotions and situations for maximum emotional impact.

How changing one line in the final chorus of "White Horse" somehow manages to be totally devastating.

love that. it just propels her right out of the song, out of town, out of the guy's life.

xp
longstreth's voice is catnip to me. hearing him slowly screech, croon and coo through police story live w/ coffman&deradoorian backing him up is good overload like curry or really bitter ale.

xp

oh fuck! TWO LINES. I wasn't even talking about "rearview mirror" but that is totally even MORE affecting. i was referring to "find someone someday who might actually treat me well"(which is also totally reliant on the accent pattern that stresses "one"and "day" in a particularly awesome way.)

but yeah, I could do this forever. while i can't always explain the awesomeness of taylor's songs holistically, I can always describe them as collections of wonderfully evocative moments.

"my mistake; i didn't know to be in love you had to fight to have the upper hand." is another gem from white horse

and through the weirdness of brain linkage is forever tied in my mind to Los Campesinos!, viz.

I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love
Is to like the other slightly less than you get in return
I keep feeling like I'm being undercut

On another note entirely, I am listening to "Daniel" for the first time and really digging it. Feel like these people are on a similar kick to me personally - Yamaha chamber music. I could do with dialing down the "frosty reverb" or whatever on the vocals but this is nice stuff. #2 of the year I dunno but I have no beef with this.

"Daniel" took some time to click with me because while I really dig the vocals and I also dig the instrumental 80s wash, they felt mismatched for some reason. and then at some point everything just clicked and my brain realized how marvelous it is. the "frosty reverb" was probably my gripe as the 80s wash on the production holds it back from the totally epic majesty that i suspect is buried in here, but that's not what she's going for, i suppose.

"Daniel" suffered a ton for me because I discovered it at the same time as "What's A Girl To Do?" and the latter is like far and away a massively superior song; it took maybe a couple of months for me to go "oh wait, that other song was pretty dope too" and this was after buying Two Suns mistakenly thinking that "WAGTD?" was on it.

fwiw glenn mcdonald offered to gove ilx polls the same crazy data crunching treatment he gave pazz & jop and i think we should take him up on it

agreed

I agree very much with Alex in Montreal's string of comments on Swift and "White Horse."

Hey, do we know when the album poll results will start to be posted? Next week?

yeah monday iirc

on another note entirely, I am listening to "Daniel" for the first time and really digging it.

me too, the song has pretty amazing production. reminds me a LOT of the el perro del mar ep- if you like "daniel" pls pls check out 'love is not pop'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJn-nUCzQLk

^hoping this doesn't embed (never tried it this way, so apologies if it does)