Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

I like Bloom but would not have made the HoLV comparison - don't hear any significant similarity between the two LPs/acts or even eras personally. Likewise I don't think BH are trying to channel any specific act or time period at all in any meaninful way. Don't see why trying to make an LP like HoLV would be a problem anyway tho!

Sure, sure. And also the fact I lived through, and was conscious of, the music scene in the nineties probably makes the whole concept of a revival less palatable to me than the eighties revival.

I'm a much bigger fan of the Chairlift album (which is very reminiscent of music I actually heard in the eighties without sounding like anyone specific - maybe the Pretenders? maybe the Mac? not really) than Beach House who seem to be drawing from a tiny pool of very specific cultural touchstones. Same goes with Yuck and pretty much any outre 90s revivalists - you can tell exactly which bands they've decided they want to sound like. I never got that impression from LCD Soundsystem or Fischerspooner or the Rapture - they were referencing '80s sound and fashion, but it somehow felt 'new' in its way and didn't just go for the Fall or Yazoo jugular. You didn't get people trying really hard to sing like Alison Moyet, whereas BH girl really really seems to want to be Elizabeth Fraser.

xpost

obv nashwan disagrees :-)

Victoria Legrand sounds nothing like Liz Fraser.

she does a bit though

Her voice is so deep that some people mistook her for a man when they first came out, the lyrics are very clear and she has a continental European accent. In what way does that sound like Liz Fraser?

okay, she doesn't sound exactly like her - i am playing that side up. i still maintain that so far the obligatory onslaught of nineties-styled bands feels tokenistic and pretty much a pointless rigmarole that somehow inevitably demands people follow through with. I guess people who'd lived through postpunk and electro felt very similar in the early 2000s. I just don't think this movement (if indeed it is a movement) has hit its stride. It's going through the motions in a kind of "Well, I guess we'd better start sounding like music from 1993 by now" kind of way, and dolefully and dutifully does exactly that.

Even if they were faithfully copying the Cocteau Twins then calling it "90s revivalism" is stretching the term ridiculously given the vast majority of Cocteaus records that anyone actually cares about came out in the 80s.

It took me about 0.05 seconds to think of three prominent acts who are referencing the 90s without faithfully aping the sound. There are dozens of them out there.

if her voice reminds me of anyone it's actually Jonathan Donahue and even then the overlap is well under 10%

Her voice is so deep that some people mistook her for a man when they first came out

It's true - she still reminds me of either the bloke from Cast or the bloke from the Delays.

All the greats basically.

Matt DC - BH sound like Heaven or Las Vegas more than any other Cocteaus album. How many bands out at the moment seem to fall somewhere between this album and something by Slowdive? It's become such a default production aesthetic in the last few years that I'd be desensitised to it, if, that is, I wasn't so utterly bored and averse to it.

but this is assuming you hear bands sounding like Slowdive in the same way you hear singers sounding like Liz Fraser right?

at Pitchfork while Beach House was playing I told a friend, "She's one album away from abandoning the synths, picking up a tambourine, and twirling like Stevie Nicks."

Sorry dl, but your argument's nonsense. Beach House have such a distinctive aesthetic - it's not like they're part of some big "90s revival", whatever that might sound like. If you think they're just neo-shoegazers then I would suggest you're not listening very closely.

anyway I like the album better than its predecessors and its gauze reminds me of 4AD acts but I don't hear Fraser in her mannerisms; for one thing, she believes in enunciating.

the only thing i've heard this year that reminded me of Cocteaus = around half of the Sleigh Bells LP (its biggest virtue by some measure). i'd quite happily hear a few others, if actually out there.

i'm not wrong about everything all the time, you know? just quite often.

Anyway, the Quietus have their list up now but their site is running slow.

There definitely is some Cocteaus in Beach House's sound, but for me it's mostly in the guitar sounds and the unhurried flow of the music

Good list! Is that NV on the cover of the Hirsute Pursuit record?

That was with reference to this btw:

http://thequietus.com/articles/10924-the-quietus-albums-of-the-year-2012

vatican shadow in the top 10 :)

my reaction to seeing laurel halo place isn't even annoyance, it's like...i have to restrain myself from pointing and laughing. if you like that dreadful joke of an album then irl lol at you

It doesn't reflect my own tastes much but I love the Quietus for its consistent voice - here is a realm where Swans, late Scott Walker and former members of Throbbing Gristle will never go underappreciated.

i love the quietus list. although i'll never understand their love for VCMG. Totally agree with Swans and Scott Walker in the top two. HAven't heard the TG albums.

my reaction to seeing laurel halo place isn't even annoyance, it's like...i have to restrain myself from pointing and laughing. if you like that dreadful joke of an album then irl lol at you

mature attitude.

it's so grown-up to constantly follow someone around a messageboard nitpicking over their posts!

love this quote from the Quietus list:

If someone introduces you to something new and it's not going to hurt you, go along with it and see how far you can go - Cedric Myton

it's so grown-up to constantly follow someone around a messageboard nitpicking over their posts!

you make it sound like finding a ludicrously rude and arrogant post takes some work or time.

Good list! Is that NV on the cover of the Hirsute Pursuit record?

― Albert Crampus (NickB), Tuesday, December 11, 2012 1:31 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Damn son!

i said it takes a level of maturity to which i obviously cannot aspire xp

not as long as you're pretending you're a 13-year-old

it's nice that you've taken on the selfless task of policing every flippant and dismissive post on ilx but i wouldn't want to keep you, there's a lot more out there for your eagle eye to find. run along now

lex stop acting like lex

what are you fucking piling on for now?

flippant and dismissive is fine. refusal to show any respect for subjectivity has always been taken to task on ilx and that's what i like about this place.

cause you're shitting up this thread even more than usual today

and ronan isn't?

disrespect for subjectivity = any time i express an opinion on the rap thread these days

The Laurel Halo album is fine. I can see it would be disappointing if you're coming at it from Strawberry Skies and were hoping for something a bit more pop, or maybe if you're coming from Hour Logic and expecting something you could loosely call dancey. But if view it as an outgrowth from stuff like Oneohtrix or Stellar Om Source or whatever else have you, where they're building odd little worlds out of the debris of yesterday's synths, then it makes a lot more sense. It's like she's taking that aesthetic and finding her own way of introducing song into it, as opposed to trying to twist that kind of sonic environment to fit into conventional song form and then singing on top of that.

would like a remixes LP of Quarantine (mainly aiming just to replace most of her vocals with monstrous beats - drowning them in reverb would help in this case but there's been too much of that generally over the last couple of years for sure). would also like more epic sub-bangers like Hour Logic but with her normal/nice singing on it. not heard her new single yet.

The new single is very pretty!

do find the Quarantine artwork describes the sound perfectly. sweetness soured beyond repair. beautiful yet horrendous. apart from the practically instrumental Holoday which is just the former.

this album is horrible, what the hell

xpost One of the things I like most about the Laurel Halo album is that her vocals *aren't* drowned in the usual chillwave reverb. But I also get why others find this annoying.

i might check it out in that case. why is it so bad?

xpost One of the things I like most about the Laurel Halo album is that her vocals *aren't* drowned in the usual chillwave reverb. But I also get why others find this annoying.

― mike t-diva, Tuesday, December 11, 2012 10:27 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that would be great, if she could sing

it's even worse because she CAN sing and just...chooses not to

You guys are actually making me want to hear the LH album, and I wasn't really very interested before...

yeah, it sounds awesome