//////////////shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part I: 2008 TRAX)\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

ILM tracks lists always seem to have an indie ghetto around this point.

Hopefully "Oxford Comma" ranked too, because "A-Punk" shouldn't be the only representation Vampire Weekend gets.

Yeah it'd be terrible if Vampire Weekend didn't get the critical attention they deserve.

Indie ghetto
And his mama cries
'cause if there's one thing that she don't need
it's another "wonky pop" act to feed
Indie ghetto

(x-post)

hahahahaha

ditto on the lols.

Also right there with foxes a hoy hoy on the "dance" (?) stuff which mostly sounds really lovely to me - I have no idea how to evaluate it but it's nice!

Only put dance in '' because it's a ridiculous fucking term, but don't know my balaeric from my minimal, what's house, what's techno, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Air France is not particularly twee, certainly not compared to, say, 'Sandcastle Disco'

ha.

ahoyhoy: Right, exactly - it's not my scene and I know I'm missing all sorts of subtle distinctions, but the Air France and the Gang Gang Dance both blow away my puppy's mind.

poor puppy.

Air France are the acceptable side of twee for me, the romantic sense of wide-eyed wonder rather than sickening mimsiness.

I suppose where they differ from Studio or someone is that their music evokes being stone cold sober and looking at an amazing view with someone cute, rather than being totally fucked and lying in the sun. Both are fun though.

yar. lack of annoying twee lyrics generally (aside from one or two repeated phrases) is a plus too.

I need to pick up that Gang Gang Dance record! So far that and Cassie are the only two which I hadn't heard that would've made me reconsider my votes.

Yeah what I like is that they just drop in these totally evocative vocal samples, like that bit where the woman goes "this place... is amazing!" and they don't need anything else.

air france/'sandcastle disco' is not a very good comparison at all - 'sandcastle disco', for all solange's (charming) pouty affectations, is never as infantile as air france; and it isn't sonically twee in the slightest. it's the sense of naive wonderment which matt describes which puts me off air france, i think. "child-like" is not an appealing adjective at all.

for all solange's (charming) pouty affectations, is never as infantile as air france

don't agree, and not just because solange has 'sandcastle' in the title (musically it's much more overtly sugary and shuffley than AF - easily comparable with tracks like 'Young Folks' on THAT basis. obv i'm not talking about the obvious differences in the vocals between the two there). there is nothing infantile about AF unless you're talking about like sampling children's voices in which case come on...

their music evokes being stone cold sober and looking at an amazing view with someone cute

right but so much different-sounding music does this. 'naive wonderment' and 'child-like' are projections that again can be applied to any melancholic dreamy music to support a criticism of same.

What does "sonically twee" even mean here Lex? Does this mean hating on all ambienty sounds?

I can see that Air France are at times twee and/or "childlike", but hating on that aspect of the music seems a little bit like hating on early Omni Trio for the same reason. And with both it strikes me as childlike-ness that is possible only after passing through regret/melancholy/disillusionment. Hence the effectiveness of all their little rave samples (e.g. it's not all surprising that "No Excuses" shares a sample with the first track on Zomby's Where Were You In '92 EP.

It's Frank's babbling brook thing again innit: no adjective is appealing/unappealing all the time.

I'd quite like a record that samples lots of small children going "bumbaclaat".

this 'child-like' thing could be a good separate thread discussion - as i can think of countless examples where those using it as a criticism against AF would approve of it elsewhere (dancier stuff, RnB...).

And with both it strikes me as childlike-ness that is possible only after passing through regret/melancholy/disillusionment

Yes hello COMEDOWN MUSIC.

Moreover this is where I can't finally get on board with the anti-indie crusade - it tries to hypostasize different ennervating configurations into a single monolithic quality of wrongness, which is something i think just doesn't exist in music (unless we're talking about, say, "holocaust denying" as a quality of music).

My longstanding issues with indie are much more comparable to the way I felt about dubstep two years ago: the sense that this music is/was so often being obtuse in failing to live up to its own rhetoric and/or potential. I've been pleasantly surprised to find dubstep starting to reform itself, and while indie is too big/amorphous to undergo "reform" as such, there's similar situations where pockets of music we might call "indie" draw their indie qualities into configurations that escape or (better yet) respond to the very frustrations I normally have.

Gang Gang Dance are precisely such an example; it would be dishonest to give them some kind of free pass by saying "oh no they're not really indie." Better and more interesting to ask how/why they redeem indie as an operating context.

And with both it strikes me as childlike-ness that is possible only after passing through regret/melancholy/disillusionment

i don't hear this at all, or see how it would make it better. idk those air france tracks are a bit like marcel pagnol books, it's like viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses which never come off. total pastoral overload (when the flutes come in, it's just like...stop it, ffs), and cut up really senselessly too. i don't really hate it though b/c it's too insubstantial and nothingy for that, but if i was in a room and someone put it on, it'd really start grating after 15 minutes or so.

Yes hello COMEDOWN MUSIC.

jesus NO!!

ahhh i've just worked out what air france is like a really poor take on - the blissful kuniyuki takahashi album from last year. now that is some gorgeous sample-dappled pastoralism there.

i admit i wouldn't mind hearing a touch more (any) menace in AF's stuff sometimes

total pastoral overload (when the flutes come in, it's just like...stop it, ffs)

This strikes me as a more concrete criticism really, and one I would agree with if pastoral overload bothered me in the slightest. As it is, you can slap on "omg sunshine in fields" signifiers with a trowel and I'll pretty much lap it up.

I will check that Takahashi album out though.

"Yes hello COMEDOWN MUSIC."

Yes, but i was thinking also of how Simon Reynolds describes Omni Trio in Generation Ecstasy - like a frail, mirage-like flashback to '92 rave, but unable to erase entirely the awareness of the bad drug vibes of '93.

Air France's music isn't at all trying to do that "Fascination"-style dogmatic insistence on innocence/positivity: it's music that explicitly toys with the fragility of loveliness - e.g. the double implication of a sample like "...like a dream/no, better." This is why they remind me so much of Saint Etienne, especially the tear-flecked "euphoria" of "He's On The Phone". Which makes me think of Kylie's "Better The Devil You Know", which I think my friend Catherine described as being about the hysterical joy of staring into an abyss (which is melodramatic but spot-on in many ways).

kuniyuki myspazz: http://www.myspace.com/kuniyuki

'all these things' sums up what i love about kuniyuki's album pretty well. it was definitely a default comedown album last year.

fwiw lex you're not the only person i know who dislikes air france because they're twee and I agree with you that the Kuniyuki record is gorgeous.

I don't find AF child-like at all. I dunno girl-like seems like a more accurate description. they remind me of watching sofia coppola movies (oh no twee AND indie).

It's a nostalgia for the state of child-like wonder isn't it? Reminds me of the Go Team! in that respect (who admittedly I don't particularly like, and who I expect Lex likes even less).

Is nostalgia inherently twee?

What if you're an ageing Viking getting nostalgic for your raping and pillaging days?

It's a nostalgia for the state of child-like wonder isn't it?

marcel fucking pagnol comparison gains weight! i hated pagnol so much. i also hate the go team, yes, but for difft reasons (unlistenable non-production).

i'm not particularly down w/nostalgia generally, but when i am it's almost always to do w/specific memories or situations rather than the vague meaninglessness of "child-like wonder" - i actually have no concrete memories of "child-like wonder" at all, it's not a phrase which conjures anything up for me.

Damn, you sure got my number... (x-post)

i actually have no concrete memories of "child-like wonder" at all, it's not a phrase which conjures anything up for me.

as a parent of small children, i can attest that wonder is part of the deal -- take a kid to his first circus and watch. but only a part. there's also a lot of temper tantrums, power struggles, anxiety, confusion and fear. but you rarely hear anyone invoke "child-like terror."

it seems to me that it's one of those things that you only notice from the outside - watching kids poke around and discover the world - at the time it's just what one does. though i did spend much of my childhood trying to be a blasé know-it-all

twee black metal would be something to hear.

tipsy otm, I have no memories of 'child like wonder' but it exists as I've seen it several times, both with my son and other children and I guess my parents must have saw me responding with awe or wonder back in the day. I didn't get cynical until I was at least aged 11.

Surely the whole point of nostalgia for childlike wonder is that it's actually nostalgia for something you don't remember having experienced. It's like when you've never been in a relationship but keenly feel a sense of nostalgia for an imagined love.

I'm tempted to go a bit wanky here and start talking about "retroactive positing". Childlike wonder springs into existence at the point that you become aware that it is not something you can access. Or more simply "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

The - yes - drugginess of Air France lies in how they play with e's ultimately unfulfilled (or at least not permanently fulfilled) promise to "restore" this sensation. That's the sense in which it can be literally comedown music, without being "chillout" as such.

That last para is pretty much exactly what I was trying to articulate.

<3 u guys who imply that "indie" tracks are never good enough for the tracks poll.

anyway, i'm thankful for the repeated exposure to GGD and the initial exposure to alphabeat (i like that song a lot though i don't know how often i want to listen to it). i agree that ida maria sounds like a lost 90s track but i'm not sure that's a good thing. love seeing those t.i. jams and still basically confused by air france. so yeah, it's been educational as always.

only version of 'Fascination' i get with

Childlike wonder springs into existence at the point that you become aware that it is not something you can access.

yeah, although i think the misleading term here is probably 'childlike.' we're really talking about wonder, period. and i guess that's where people (like, maybe, air france, and definitely, say, flaming lips) go wrong for me in sort of stipulating innocence or at least naivete as a precondition for wonder. or, more precisely, fetishizing the particular variety of wonder that arises from imagined innocence or naivete. as a grown-up, i can still experience wonder, including in music, through avenues that don't require any nostalgia at all. ornette coleman comes to mind (who arguably also fetishizes a kind of innocence, but it's of a more rigorous sort).

Geogaddi is the best example I can think of of ambient electronic music that mixes childlike wonderment with anxiety, confusion and fear. That said, I'm not sure I want Air France to become more sinister.

tipsy otm re: innocence and naivete, that's what i was trying to get at

Here we are, counting down the top 20:

20 - Jordin Sparks And Chris Brown - No Air
139 points, 11 votes, 1 #1 vote
75 in P&J

Oddly for an American Idol winner, on her own material Jordin usually performs most strongly when she realises that her baby-Mariah voice actually works best prosecuting baby-Janet material (see for example current single “One Step At A Time”): fluttery and almost ostentatiously pretty, with Jordin’s voice never resting on a single note for more than a moment – with Janet this is done to obscure her vocal limitations, with Jordin it’s a choice.

“No Air” is a bit risky therefore, with Jordin lingering lugubriously over heartbroken notes and phrases like she’s been shot in the chest. But death-fixated pop songs are the exception to every rule, and this suicide note is simply gorgeous, a deep pool of intoxicating emotion perfect for every wallower. Chris Brown also does fantastic, understated work, his gentle, yearning delivery providing a trace paper outline of a hidden mountain of regret.

If the song is devastated, the arrangement is utopian, all twinkling starlight tinkles and the most graceful stuttering kickdrum. The chorus, when the two get wrapped up in suffocating clouds of cumulus synthesiser is probably the largest moment in pop this year, like two giant space babies finding each other in a Hollywood remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey redone as a romance. And we haven’t gotten to the fabulous artificial strings in the last two minutes, then that absolutely desolate, almost discordant harmonised moan, and then the stadium drums come in, and, oh… words fail, truly they do.
-Tim F

I really don't get this list at all, I'd expected that to be much higher. I have no idea what's going to place where in the upper reaches of this, except Milli and Rolex.

Unexploded Bomb = Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire.

wow, i had not even heard of this song until right now, but tim you just sold it to me like a million times over.