so tell me, why is Kaputt better or worse than Let England Shake?

destroyer is a pinnacle but its heights are shared by endless amounts of other good time music and i oft slip a destroyer song into certain poolside-specific playlists i have crafted. to those who have not felt the album's positive qualities (of which there are many, too many to inventory at this moment) i like to sit down with them, tell them to close their eyes, and just play the album. once their eyes are opened, their eyes are usually opened (if you see what i mean.)

I've never knowingly heard Al Stewart! I'll remedy that.

Listened to a few Kaputt songs just now, the one in the baywatch video above wasn't bad until the singing, was a bit new order-ish. the singing was terrible. Then one called Song for America - this sounds like Momus wtf?

The others don't really sound like anything in particular, people saying balearic, retro, eighties and other things, I'm not hearing any of those things at all

I've been humming "Time Passages" for days.

oh, the sax i guess?

The sax is ok! definitely the best part anyway

Then one called Song for America - this sounds like Momus wtf?

Holy shit, that's what the vocals were reminding me of! I'd had to settle for "slightly more self-satisfied guy from Belle & Sebastian", but Momus is a lot closer.

too much talk about destroyer on this thread too little about pj harvey

I still don't have a clear picture of what people actually mean when they use "balearic"

don't worry, nobody else does either

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CljGFQ8xi6U

Yes, on Kaputt you can hear allusions to '80s Roxy Music, Steely Dan (though this connection is SUPER tenuous IMO), etc, but it feels like its own weird thing and not just an aping or a cobbling together of old records. Bejar's quote above about "the tyranny of chord structure" rings true; the album meanders beautifully, it doesn't feel as rigorously composed as much of the music it gets accused of ripping off.

― Clarke B., Thursday, February 9, 2012 9:08 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. while kaputt may be in large part a pastiche of dated soft rock styles, bejar doesn't get lost in the mix. it's still clearly a destroyer album. it's not a simple simulacrum of something else, but rather a work that takes obvious influence from other works. similar to ariel pink. AP's style is a pastiche, but more synthetic than replicatory. vanishingly fine line there, i suppose, but w/e.

too much talk about destroyer on this thread too little about pj harvey

lex OTM here, much as it pains me to say. everyone's got an opinion on kaputt, but there's been very little discussion of let england shake itt. idgi? it's not like destroyer crushed PJ by some insane margin. did everyone get tired of talking about it way back when?

everyone is trolling Lex

war, man, warrr

some of the songs on LES are catchy but the idea that it's some powerful work of art is pretty lol to me, war, man..death...violence...destruction..england...

^ art shouldn't address these things?

no it prob should it's just the way she does is so hamfisted and lol

guys I listened to "England' while taking a shower today – so gorgeous.

did you learn something about violence and war

so hamfisted and lol

Meaning naive, shallow? What is the meat of the criticism?

there is no meat to the criticism; dude didn't like it on first listen so he didn't spend all that much time thinking about it (which is totally fair and not an attack)

i'm not sure what your objection is, iatee, other than standard hipster sneering at anything that comes across as too serious/earnest. like, what do you think is concretely wrong with her approach?

did you learn something about violence and war

― iatee, Thursday, February 9, 2012

that's what ILE is for

it's one-dimensional, full of cliches and self-important. but like I said, some catchy songs.

DJP: that's cool, but snidely dissing it as a "powerful work of art lol" is dickish, worse than lex traipsing through indie threads to voice generic disdain.

I mean if you guys are really moved by this album I have this thing called pink floyd's 'the wall', be ready

it's one-dimensional, full of cliches and self-important. but like I said, some catchy songs.

it's no more one-dimensional than kaputt. they're both albums with a unified voice, theme, set of concerns. nether colors outside those lines all that much, but they both leave a lot of room for exploration within them. and i'm not sure how LES is cliched in ways the destroyer album isn't. one's concerned with war and national identity, the other with romance, alienation and 80s culture. both lean on familiar sounds & conceptions, neither is saying anything terribly novel at heart.

Don't think the Destroyer is cliched at all - don't think its good either though

I mean if you guys are really moved by this album I have this thing called pink floyd's 'the wall', be ready

uh no thanks

i can't really help anyone who thinks lines like "beautiful England, and the grey, damp filthiness of ages, and battered books / fog rolling down behind the mountains / on the graveyards of dead sea captains" are clichés - that's about as ambitious an attempt to sketch a country in a few lines as you get, and it's evocative exactly like a literal sketch would be. she's a great songwriter, always has been - it's pretty interesting to draw comparisons between her previous mostly inward-facing songwriting and her first conscious attempt to put herself entirely outside the action of the songs.

i mean, you're obviously not really interested in it though, so i won't spend time arguing. your loss! i pity you.

i haven't seen any of kaputt's fans discussing his songwriting, just his "signifiers" and "sound", which makes me think there isn't much going on with the songwriting there. though there's not a great deal interesting going on with the sound either and they're not shutting up about that

I mean if you guys are really moved by this album I have this thing called pink floyd's 'the wall', be ready

― iatee, Thursday, February 9, 2012 10:28 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see, that's that sneering, too-cool horseshit again. like anything that might presume to address history & war or directly express political outrage/anguish automatically = the wall? that's reductive and frankly stupid, unless you can show that harvey's analysis really is as narrow and self-centered as waters'.

if you guys are really moved by this album

I think maybe I am? I'm just still getting into it. There's something to be said, I think, for the way it acknowledges brutality in an elegaic context.

I don't think she is as bad a lyricist as waters, no, it's just a really 1-dimensional album. young people in england. war. death. oh man. heavy. heavyyyyy.

good pop album tho.

What do you mean by songwriting, Lex? Lyrics? Compositional structures?

i can't really help anyone who thinks lines like "beautiful England, and the grey, damp filthiness of ages, and battered books / fog rolling down behind the mountains / on the graveyards of dead sea captains" are clichés

in speaking of cliches, i think iatee is describing a snidely reductive view of the album's themes. cliches like "war is bad lol" and "suffering lol".

lol you think destroyer has dimensions

xp

well you can remove the lols if you want?

well it's pretty obvious iatee hasn't actually listened to it, and it's also obvious passim that he's a div, so why bother w/him

lol, so the fact that the album has a theme makes it 1-dimensional? way to engage yr brain there

dimensions of beauty and, frankly, ethereal transcendence.

she's a great songwriter, always has been

She's really good. And a good singer. Those blue notes in "The Words That Maketh Murder" are beautiful.

i don't get 'chill vibez' from kaputt at all, it's more like steely dan where beneath the slickness it's all very uncomfortable

think we've probably found the one way in which is interesting to place these albums in opposition, and it's v. likely that ppl who enjoy the old-fashioned direct expression of les would be put off by the icey remove of kaputt and vice versa.

meh another big surprise: iatee's smugness serves as a tough protective covering for his rongness

i was definitely moved by it. its beautiful. but not just beautiful. i think she's doing really amazing/interesting/important work. and i can't say that about a ton of people working now.

white chalk kinda took my breath away too when i first heard it. i didn't hear it when it came out. that's a really gutsy record!

She's really good. And a good singer. Those blue notes in "The Words That Maketh Murder" are beautiful.

she has such incredible command over her voice - the changes from album to album are pretty astonishing

w/r/t bejar's songwriting on kaputt, one thing i think he does extremely well is the ability to make mostly meandering and mostly formless tunes very catchy. in lieu of the traditional and predictable verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure, many of the songs have 2 or 3 catchy hooks which end up being bejar simply repeating a phrase or singing a line in an unexpected and pleasant way. for an album mostly considered an 'indie "rock"' record, this is one way it stands apart and makes it special

also the way that bejar will sing a hook only one time on an album makes re-listens more rewarding imo: instead of waiting 30 seconds to hear the hook again, you're anticipating it the next time you hear the record

the old-fashioned direct expression of les

i'm not sure i'd describe LES like this - direct yeah, but perhaps observation is more accurate than expression - harvey takes on a journalistic role and the narrator's voice is outside the action at all times - it's not about her self-expression at all

also the way that bejar will sing a hook only one time on an album makes re-listens more rewarding imo: instead of waiting 30 seconds to hear the hook again, you're anticipating it the next time you hear the record

... you can't really call it a "hook" at that point, can you?