Tell me whyyyy-y-yyyy...?
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:07 (twelve years ago) link
I'm listening to Les England Shakes and I'm crying tears. Englisher's tears!
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:18 (twelve years ago) link
that album sounded like Pocahaunted covering a Kinks record to me, but w/e
― sleepingbag, Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:19 (twelve years ago) link
if i had to choose either of these records i'd rather never listen to music again
― regal xenophobe (electricsound), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:20 (twelve years ago) link
i've listened to kaputt a few times now and it's an incredibly cold record imo
― call all destroyer, Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:21 (twelve years ago) link
Now I'm listening to Destroyer. Sounds like a fridge.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:23 (twelve years ago) link
do they drink shakes in england?
― buzza, Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:25 (twelve years ago) link
Shittest thing about both these bands part 1: Neither of them are bands.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:25 (twelve years ago) link
Shittest thing about these bands pt.2: Destroyer are not the greatest living thrash metal band that ever walked
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:26 (twelve years ago) link
Shittest thing about these bands pt.3: PJ Harvey has never been remixed by DJ Harvey, AFAIK
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:27 (twelve years ago) link
Have they released that app that stops you going on the Internet when you're drunk yet?
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 03:36 (twelve years ago) link
this is its magic and beauty
― plax (ico), Sunday, 5 February 2012 07:03 (twelve years ago) link
For me Kaputt is the musical descendant of albums like Steely Dan's Gaucho, Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees, and Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man, but filtered through a modern sensibility where sounds of the 70s and 80s are used for textural or atmospheric purposes rather than as basic songwriting tools.
― Moodles, Sunday, 5 February 2012 09:18 (twelve years ago) link
Obviously this is a drunken thread so this seems extraneous, but Kaputt is very clearly very American and Let England Shake is very clear very English. I like both, a lot, but I prefer PJ's.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, 5 February 2012 10:05 (twelve years ago) link
but destroyer isn't american...
this entire episode definitely made the US posters seem more parochial than the UK ones, which i hadn't thought was the case before
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 10:38 (twelve years ago) link
Ah, I'd forgotten I started this thread.
Parochial? Not really feeling the Destroyer album, but are you seriously suggesting some underhand conspiracy on the part of western-atlantic voters?
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 10:52 (twelve years ago) link
that's not what "parochial" means
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 10:59 (twelve years ago) link
Okay, what do you mean?
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Sunday, 5 February 2012 11:01 (twelve years ago) link
well we have better taste, for starters.
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 11:20 (twelve years ago) link
It's better because ILX says so. It's official. It's definitely better.
― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, 5 February 2012 11:53 (twelve years ago) link
Kaputt that is. Obviously.
that bonus track on the vinyl which is now also on the cd, "the laziest river" reminds me a little of talk talk around "spirit of eden". there is a lot happening rhythmically and harmonically in that 20 minute song and the best is most of the time bejar does not open his mouth!
― alex in mainhattan, Sunday, 5 February 2012 12:34 (twelve years ago) link
having now re-listened to Kaputt I will strongly endorse that last point (not re that specific track, it isn't on the CD I have) - if dude really wanted to salute his 80s MOR godheads he should in all seriousness have got someone else to sing
most of it's just not the sort of thing I'm likely to ever busy myself w/ but there are some nice 'Balearic' (I know I know) instrumental parts here and there
for some reason on 'Bay of Pigs' I had the idea of giving it to Underworld circa 'Second Toughest...' and just getting them to use it as a basis for one of their own songs (rather than a cover per se)
― bs and 'Why Do You Listen To Frog?' (DJ Mencap), Sunday, 5 February 2012 13:04 (twelve years ago) link
lol, if anything, "this entire episode" suggests that certain PJH fans are rather narrow-minded
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 13:33 (twelve years ago) link
See u in March, ILX!
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Sunday, 5 February 2012 14:15 (twelve years ago) link
I can't believe anyone would be so narrow-minded as to dislike these poor underappreciated albums. They should really consider open their minds to new strains of indie.
― Matt DC, Sunday, 5 February 2012 14:20 (twelve years ago) link
well, narrow-minded as in "unable to tolerate differences of opinion". i could hardly care less who likes or doesn't like either album.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:27 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St8uz4ioha0
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:46 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwE8dlRnsio
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQwSRlta020
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:50 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTW3-1f3krs
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:52 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ejRtQJdRWY
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:53 (twelve years ago) link
scott, u are one of my alltime fave ilx posters, just btw
― Mordy, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:54 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W3gmC52dPM
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:56 (twelve years ago) link
thanks!
that ton steine sherben clip is great, by the way. they had a very hip look.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:58 (twelve years ago) link
love the klaus & klaus act.
― Mordy, Sunday, 5 February 2012 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
You don't think Gaucho is written with atmosphere in mind????
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Sunday, 5 February 2012 16:46 (twelve years ago) link
i really hate the part of ilx where people try to kill threads by flooding with youtubes or jpegs. Its childish, just like the reactions on the poll thread.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Sunday, 5 February 2012 17:02 (twelve years ago) link
I do, but with Steely Dan, the songwriting and musicianship come first and then sounds and textures. On Kaputt, the texture is the primary concern.
― Moodles, Sunday, 5 February 2012 17:04 (twelve years ago) link
the form of one generation of artists becomes the content of the next
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 5 February 2012 17:32 (twelve years ago) link
kabutt vs let england shit
― Lamp, Sunday, 5 February 2012 17:39 (twelve years ago) link
Mass turdmantic vs 4 poop demos
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:16 (twelve years ago) link
this is otm. Steely Dan just pays a lot of attention to every detail - lyrics, music, harmony, texture, sequence, it all gets the fine-toothed comb. Kaputt seems to have begin with a structure & feel idea and put all else afterward.
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link
boy, we've got a real algonquin round table around here
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link
also in a rare moment of agreement between me and the Algerian Goalkeeper, I like Scott a lot but posting a bunch of youtubes that share the word "kaputt" is nagl imo
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:28 (twelve years ago) link
it's a good luck imo
― flopson, Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:32 (twelve years ago) link
metal poll
― buzza, Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:34 (twelve years ago) link
i really hate the part of ilx where people try to kill quality threads by flooding with youtubes or jpegs oh wait
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:35 (twelve years ago) link
I like kaputt but lex is right, awarding the best album award to pj harvey would have been a chance to deliver a slap in the face to canonical indie rock
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:37 (twelve years ago) link
yes the indie rock domination of the ilm polls has gone on FAR too long
― tebow gotti (k3vin k.), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:38 (twelve years ago) link
the arguing about popular indie rock albums domination of ilm however
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
a million lols
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Sunday, 5 February 2012 18:57 (twelve years ago) link
^^^
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
Beyonce is #1 in our hearts.
― lag∞n affiliated (The Reverend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:09 (twelve years ago) link
in my defense, i've been on ilx for ten years and i've had to put up with all kinds of crazy shit from you crazy old ladies. so bite me.
and, to be honest, i only went on youtube to look up kaputt cuz i didn't know what it was. see, i was trying to LEARN. but then i got sidetracked by german kaputt-mania. i'll go back and check out destroyer songs. just to see what the hubbub is about.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:22 (twelve years ago) link
destroyer's kaputt....so damn good.
― omar little, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
Scott Seward Image Bombings/Threads, The Complete Guide To
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
scott,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVHr5T5HO2I
― omar little, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
Scott is the best at youtube bombing imo
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:40 (twelve years ago) link
okay, this stuff isn't bad. i like the music. it's produced well. and i'm very picky about 80's retro stuff. most people are bad at it except for dance music people. i would definitely listen to this if it were all instrumental. the 20 minute thing is nice too. still wish i could find that stuff by ilm fave Studio on cd. i wouldn't know where to find it. i should check discogs. THOSE guys were amazing to me. this is way less amazing, but still okay. though it does kinda make me want to go listen to source material. but that's okay too. its a decent homage.
PJ's album was my favorite new record of the year.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:43 (twelve years ago) link
do i even do that that much anymore? when was the last time i even did that?
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:44 (twelve years ago) link
i mean i did go a little crazy at first but i think i got over it for the most part.
i forget how sensitive people are about destroyer. i remember that one legendary thread. hoo boy that thing is a doozy. for the longest time i couldn't tell if it was real or not! thought it was an elaborate prank.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:46 (twelve years ago) link
I don't know who/what Destroyer is, so Let England Shake is better
― eating a sausage as I type this (admrl), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:49 (twelve years ago) link
idgaf about any other destroyer album but that didn't stop be from realizing that kaputt was indeed the #1 album of 2011
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:52 (twelve years ago) link
gr80 you might take a listen to both Thief and Streethawk: A Seduction. They are very fucking good. I do not generally rep for much indie but that dude was on a tear for those two (tho they don't have the chill-vibe synth-wash that I suspect is a big part of kaputt's appeal for you but still I must speak up for those records, they're really good)
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
Kaputt seems to have begin with a structure & feel idea and put all else afterward.
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 10:27 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is true, but let england shake is similarly defined by a distinctive, unifying texture. hazy, abstract and seductive vs. bright, sharp and ringing. main difference is that PJ harvey pushes so much harder at and farther into the sound she's chosen.
listened to these back to back a couple times this morning, i can't say i don't understand the appeal of kaputt. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts. let england shake is quite challenging by comparison and does have its ups and downs. "all and everyone" is a bit dull, for instance, and "england" gets on my nerves. it nevertheless strikes me as a vastly superior piece of work, overall. heartstopping songs, real political & artistic ambition, and a dramatically unusual sound palette (where kaputt mostly sound like bejar hanging out in his bathrobe, taking stoned tips from kurt vile & ariel pink).
i had LES in at #6 on my albums ballot, and in retrospect, i did it a serious injustice.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
xpost i checked out Rubies last week and was kinda feeling it-- will get to those two next, thanks for the pr0 tip
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:00 (twelve years ago) link
oh england oh america
― eating a sausage as I type this (admrl), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
I'm w/ gr80 in that kaputt is pure genius, destroyer's other stuff, eh, seems okay
― iatee, Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
ok i'll listen to pj harvey as soon as i listen to the gucci tape that just dropped
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:03 (twelve years ago) link
i guess i mean that PJH takes this core sound/texture and shapes it, pushes at it, makes it do a bunch of different things. bejar is more content to let his sound be, to let it set the terms. neither approach is intrinsically superior, but i get a good deal more out of let england shake.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:04 (twelve years ago) link
destroyer, on this thread:
i took a walk and threw up in an english garden
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:06 (twelve years ago) link
I think Destroyer newcomers who are taken w. the new one should give Your Blues a go next.
― Simon H., Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:08 (twelve years ago) link
why are these two albums being compared?
― tylerw, Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:20 (twelve years ago) link
i wonder
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:22 (twelve years ago) link
ts: 'the laziest river' by destroyer vs. 'ride across the river' by dire straits
― mookieproof, Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:33 (twelve years ago) link
I would like to remind ilm that I made a much better poll kaputt vs. sound of silver
― iatee, Sunday, 5 February 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
I had some conflicting feelings when listening to Let England Shake. As with Aerial a few years ago, the album felt a little rudderless to me. I think her writing is formally experimental, but experimentalism had previously been grounded in a modernist aesthetic and this is not. I needed to know what it WAS grounded in and what the purpose was of this experimentalism and abandonment of tradition.
I've begun to think of it as some kind of new classical music that succeeds, at least in this case, on the basis of its discipline!
― timellison, Sunday, 5 February 2012 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
(Just to clarify, by "abandonment of tradition" I mean genre tradition. I don't think her music is very based in genre.)
― timellison, Sunday, 5 February 2012 22:44 (twelve years ago) link
From the little I've heard the PJH rec dives inside traditionalism to rescue a 'radical' edge that has been seemingly lost, which is a tactic sometimes used by new classical composers, no? xp
I do need to hear this.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 5 February 2012 22:46 (twelve years ago) link
i can't say i don't understand the appeal of kaputt. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts.
FYI you are working with a really bad definition of "ambition" here.
― Tim F, Sunday, 5 February 2012 22:55 (twelve years ago) link
kmt what definition of ambition could you possibly apply to that limited bitch dan bejar
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
that limited bitch
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:16 (twelve years ago) link
dan bejar is a musical genius who has been in a buch of band including destroyer, new pornographers, work with great talent like spancer krug... he has making music since 96. who is pj harvey?
― michael, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:16 (twelve years ago) link
:D
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
Regardless of what you think of destroyer, equating "smooth and sexy" (which I'm sure lex you would say doesn't apply in any event) with a lack of ambition is wrongheaded IMO.
It's the kind of thing that gets written about Sade:
i can't say i don't understand the appeal of love deluxe. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts.
― Tim F, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:23 (twelve years ago) link
― Tim F, Sunday, February 5, 2012 2:55 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
uh, thanks for the tip, tim. you wanna provide a better one? to my mind, kaputt is an album of "relatively limited" artistic ambition. it works within its chosen palette of sounds and what the artist already knows he does well. it does not challenge itself, its aesthetic or its listener to any remarkable degree. this is not a bad thing. to the extent that the album is successful on its own terms, i'd call it a virtue. hence the "consistent and comfortable listen".
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:26 (twelve years ago) link
OMG you did not compare sade to destroyer
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:26 (twelve years ago) link
The Spancer Krug? Wow...
― Conan The Asshander (Doran), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:27 (twelve years ago) link
tim i think one day you might actually kill me
i cannot breathe right now
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:27 (twelve years ago) link
Except it doesn't sound at all like any previous Destroyer albums
― Moodles, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:28 (twelve years ago) link
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), maandag 6 februari 2012 0:26 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
He, indeed, didn't.
― Flag post? I hardly knew her! (Le Bateau Ivre), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:29 (twelve years ago) link
i didn't say that. i didn't directly equate the vibe of kaputt with a lack of ambition. i merely suggested that the former might be a product of the latter. crucial difference. fwiw, i'm equating ambition with artistic experimentation and rigor, self-challenge, and the willingness to push an aesthetic hard enough to see what happens at its outer reaches. but i'm not necessarily making a virtue of that sort of ambition, or a fault of its absence.
fwiw, i think that, in terms of the definition i'm using, the diamond life is a much more ambitious album than kaputt. its synthesis sounded instantaneously familiar, even nostalgic, in its moment, but it wasn't. sade created that sound out of whole cloth, and in terms of pop refinement, pushed the experiment a hell of a lot farther than destroyer. you know, imo...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:36 (twelve years ago) link
if only dan bejar had the ambition of paris hilton
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
if you are releasing music, you have ambitions imo
― crüt, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
fwiw, i'm equating ambition with artistic experimentation and rigor, self-challenge, and the willingness to push an aesthetic hard enough to see what happens at its outer reaches.
what would the "outer reaches" of this particular aesthetic look like to you?
― Tim F, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
yeah! well you've also got "suicide" as merely "stupid pride", a somewhat hardline xtian sentiment which that indeed daring pantheism x astrology "gods are crazy / stars are blind" double whammy immediately vexes. and then yr everyday manichaean "be the devil and angel too" chaser. paris milton more like.
― rtccc (mwah), Sunday, August 27, 2006 1:17 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
let me know when bejar comes up with anything a quarter of the worth of this
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
it's ambitious enough. certainly sounds better made than most indie crud. that's my high praise.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:46 (twelve years ago) link
i mean it actually sounds like it took time to make. and there was thought involved. and craftsmanship and all that. i appreciate all that. but yeah the voice ends up distracting me cuz it just reminds me of 15 other voices. this isn't a problem for me when it comes to synthesizers. pj will always sound like pj to me. though people heard siouxsie on this album. i seem to recall that.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:50 (twelve years ago) link
impossible to say until someone gets there, right?
i can only say that, in my entirely subjective estimation, kaputt feels like the product of someone laying back in a comfortable, well-defined place and doing what feels right. let england shake, otoh, feels like the product of someone deliberately stepping out of their comfort zone and pushing through to make sense of unfamiliar territory. neither approach is necessarily any better or worse than the other, but like i said, i get more, personally, out of what PJH came up with in the process. and i'm inclined to describe it as more artistically "ambitious".
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:51 (twelve years ago) link
xp Yeah, one thing I don't get is where people calling it amateurish are coming from. Reacting more to Bejar's background than anything, I guess. If nothing else, Kaputt sounds really slick and professional to me.
― lag∞n affiliated (The Reverend), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:52 (twelve years ago) link
it sounds great. on youtube no less!
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:53 (twelve years ago) link
i would still rather buy that Studio stuff though. they no longer exist, right? is there like a 2 cd thing i can buy? the complete Studio? now that stuff was ambitious.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:54 (twelve years ago) link
that was like the last rilly good tip i got from ilm i think.
― scott seward, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
at least ldr is out there pushing her boundaries
― mookieproof, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
scott just look for Yearbook 2
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
my problem with nu-80's type stuff is that i never stopped listening to actual 80's stuff? so there isn't actually a lot of nostalgia involved! does that make any sense at all? i've been listening to bananarama every year of my life since 1982 or whatever. they are still very much current to me. okay, maybe that makes no sense. those sounds are just a part of my life. completely. so in order for me to enjoy new stuff that sounds like old 80's synth/pop/newwave stuff the production OR the songs - and hopefully both - have to be REALLY high quality in order for me to enjoy them. like i said, dance people seem to do this the best. but dance people kinda exist to reference the past and make it new somehow. its like magic. non-dance music people usually aren't so swift. but this guy gets at something interesting. its not a total time-warp. which i appreciate. he's no blue nile, but who is?
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
yearbook 2, okay, i'll write that down. thanks.
my problem with nu 80s stuff is that ppl romanticizing the 80s are reliving the hideousness of boomers goin nuts about the sixties
like even though there was a lot of great shit that bears reinvestigating/closer readings, the perils of championing an era are so poisonous that it's better to just give all that shit a wide berth
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
so you think people should never any eras, or particularly the 80's?
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:13 (twelve years ago) link
should never champion*
I don't think this is 'championing an era'. it's playing w/ many of the sounds and themes of the era but that doesn't necessarily mean it's romanticizing them.
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:16 (twelve years ago) link
i get where you're coming from but i dunno i dont listen kaputt or west coast and go "oh cool 80's sounds here" i just hear awesome fresh music
― ⚓ (gr8080), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:17 (twelve years ago) link
ka*plop*
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:18 (twelve years ago) link
otm, I think the "80s sounds" of Destroyer are greatly exaggerated xp
― Flag post? I hardly knew her! (Le Bateau Ivre), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:19 (twelve years ago) link
I agree with iatee. Dealing with archetypes speaks to our history. It may well involve "romanticization," but not necessarily in a negative way.
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
I think to be on the safe side we should avoid the 2000s and 2010s cause they are possibly tainted with nostalgia for the 80s and its associated 60s nostalgia and oh shit people back then were probably nostalgic for the 40s. No place is safe.
― lag∞n affiliated (The Reverend), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
Except the 90s.
― lag∞n affiliated (The Reverend), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:21 (twelve years ago) link
kinda. idk it's like I'm particularly reactionary abt the 80s 'cause that's the era I was sort most plugged-into-the-zeitgeist in and I'm like NO IT WASN'T ACTUALLY AWESOME IT'S JUST THAT YOU WERE YOUNG & YOU MISS THAT, but at the same time, I do think there are things about any given era that are distinctive/worth talking about/defining. But yeah when people think one era is "better" I think they're morons tbph. Like I think metal right after Venom hits, that's a really interesting era to me, but narratives in which there's a peak/good part after which there are diminishing returns/etc seem like moronic self-serving youth-romanticizing tragedies
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:22 (twelve years ago) link
No '80s revival music strikes me as an assertion that the '80s were awesome.
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
tim you're kind of not exactly an impartial party on this q am I right
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:24 (twelve years ago) link
idk aero I think you are reading this as an 70/80s retro kick when really it's more like imagining a 70s/80s alternate universe
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:25 (twelve years ago) link
In what way?
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
Sometimes I think the world was supposed to end in the 80s and somehow someone forgot to throw the switch and we've ask just been droning on ever since...theres this old sci fi short story called ”twilight” that deals with something like that
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
xp @ iatee: well I think Bejar's particular deal is a sort of meta-investigating of the romanticization of the past, which has kind of always been his deal, but there's two things in play for me: what i think Bejar's doing, and how people respond to it. I'm considerably more reactionary about the latter, I dig what he does & we're pals besides though Kaputt hits all those 80s spots that I sort of would prefer to never hear again (as vs. a coworker of mine who thinks those sounds are the greatest things ever)
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:27 (twelve years ago) link
don't you sort of adore the past unreservedly & champion much music from the 80s particularly?
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
Unreservedly? No. And partiality works both ways.
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:30 (twelve years ago) link
romanticizing? yes, definitely. championing? no.
I think the "80s sounds" of Destroyer are greatly exaggerated xp
??? it's hard to imagine a more explicit and direct musical evocation of a musical style & era, outside straight-up copycat/tribute shit.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
imo kaputt sounds like "the Saturday Night Live Show Band"
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:32 (twelve years ago) link
there's a layer of irony that prevents this from romanticizing anything imo
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
I mean he's poking fun at 70s/80s signifiers while at the same time making remarkably pretty music w/ 70s/80s signifiers. the tension between those two things is what makes the album. imo.
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:38 (twelve years ago) link
But yeah when people think one era is "better" I think they're morons tbph. Like I think metal right after Venom hits, that's a really interesting era to me, but narratives in which there's a peak/good part after which there are diminishing returns/etc seem like moronic self-serving youth-romanticizing tragedies
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 7:22 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
if I hadn't been around for both years, I'd probably pick '93. I was, though, and when I look at the '88 list, I get all BMW-driver-about-the-60s. It Takes Two came out in '88; as much I love a lotta '93 stuff (and as much as I think the strides made in '93 are kinda bigger toward broadening the genre, and therefore more "important"), hearing "It Takes Two" on KDAY was one of those "oh, shit, music is different after this for me" moments. You don't like it, so what, I don't care
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, January 8, 2012 3:20 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
mainstream rap just gravitated towards what seemed like cover versions. I enjoy a lot of those songs now and can hear all the production work & polish but at the time it seemed like a sad turn
...I loved The Chronic and Doggy Style (and Uncle Sam's Curse what year was that?) but the element of rap that was like mindblowing sheer sonics gave way to what were essentially rock records structurally - same rules as rock in terms of how you get to the vibe/effect. whereas that late 80s stuff was so Structures In Sound - but then again, Wu Tang is fully up on that when they come around, and they weren't "throwback" to me at that point, they were taking that vision to where it would have gone next if it had remained the dominant discourse, which it didn't.
not that all rap had been dense layers of Bomb Squad & not that there isn't plenty of trad song structure at play in Nation of Millions and shit but that's how I break it down to an extent, rap becoming more a new approach to songcraft than a new approach to sound.
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, January 8, 2012 10:18 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
lots of/most people currently enjoying 80s sounds were too young to remember the 80s anyway. Or not even born. So it's not about romanticising some lost golden period of youth like it is with the boomers and the 60s
― sonderborg, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:47 (twelve years ago) link
aerosmith on the money. dre ruined everything.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:48 (twelve years ago) link
i grew up in the 80s, it was shit.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:49 (twelve years ago) link
i was there too man! and it sucked for me kinda but i did love a lot of music and still listen to a lot of it but i don't want to go back and don't want stuff to really sound like that all the time. cuz that would be boring. and most people suck at it. except sub-genre people. like rap people and metal people and dance people. and goth people.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:51 (twelve years ago) link
at the same time, I do think there are things about any given era that are distinctive/worth talking about/defining.
flopson did you overlook this part intentionally or are you just too stupid to understand it? I can explain if need be. either way, it's disturbing to know that you keep a file of my posts, stalking's a terrible look imo
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:52 (twelve years ago) link
"oh no you answered a q pitting one era against another, you HYPOCRITE!" dude you are like the dumbest person on this board, real talk
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:53 (twelve years ago) link
that's an overstatement but that shit pissed me off, participating in a discussion where two eras are compared isn't the same as being some "x era RULES" dumbshit
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
yeah even with music and undoubtedly there was some amazing stuff in the 80s, I was completely unaware of it! I still like the pop stuff i liked then but i dont get nostalgic for it nor do i want anyone else now to make sounds like back then (lol he likes doom metal)
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:56 (twelve years ago) link
oh shut up you're such an unfun crank, so i recalled a post you made a month ago, that's a cheap shot
anyways i don't think that qualification exempts you from basically being a hypocrite, explain it to me please
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:56 (twelve years ago) link
and my pop stuff i liked ended about 1986 (i liked U2,Queen,PSB after that year)
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:57 (twelve years ago) link
if you can't handle being taken to task on your own inconsistencies don't make such broad claims
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 00:57 (twelve years ago) link
lol I apologize dude I'm still mad at you from a shot you took at me earlier this week & also I'm tipsy, yr right I'm an unfun crank it's a personality defect I work on, sorry I popped off atcha man I just got mad
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:58 (twelve years ago) link
it's disturbing to know that you keep a file of my posts, stalking's a terrible look imo
uncool to make light of actual stalking, fuck stuff like this infuriates me
― regal xenophobe (electricsound), Monday, 6 February 2012 00:59 (twelve years ago) link
you of all people
also my bad for deejing and pulling the "stalker!" card, that shit is bullshit, my bad
xp esoj otm
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:00 (twelve years ago) link
cool
― regal xenophobe (electricsound), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:00 (twelve years ago) link
guys madonna is performing "vogue" at a superbowl halftime show in the year 2012 right now
― ⚓ (gr8080), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:04 (twelve years ago) link
can do this though - it's one thing to champion an era as some creative peak, it's another to answer "pick a side: prime thrash vs. early dm" or w/e. there's like a plague of ppl goin nuts about "the 80s" but I as I said in my initial post, I think historical discussion's potentially interesting whereas rose-tinted back-whenism is terrible, which is where I think a lot of retro shit is coming from. iirc the thread you're citing was a "choose between these two" thread in which I participated; you're not likely to catch me swinging into a present-day rap thread goin "X-Clan was better!", I may feel that way but that's on me, it's not like I think genres have to arrest themselves to keep me happy with some idealized frozen historical-present
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:05 (twelve years ago) link
tv's muted but it looks like people are breakdancing too...good to see Maddy remembers 1997 accurately
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:06 (twelve years ago) link
why is everyone hating the 80's? Lots of great music came out in the 80's. I don't understand this thread anymore.
― JacobSanders, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:08 (twelve years ago) link
i love the 80s!
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/401279_10150594457687137_686202136_9090491_1813989338_n.jpg
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:11 (twelve years ago) link
rufus just took that of me. sorry for the GOOGLEBOMB.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:12 (twelve years ago) link
i was high the entire decade too so my judgement isn't entirely sound.
I think it can be romanticizing, but I don't see a problem with it in general. Romanticism is not something that has to be shunned because of a fear that it's divorced from reality.
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
im not gonna lie i did enjoy like a prayer just there
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:17 (twelve years ago) link
teh destroyer record sounds like al stewart not 'the 80s'
also its dope
― D-40, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:18 (twelve years ago) link
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 7:58 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink its cool--tbh i was pretty stoked for an epic flameout but i can't not accept an apology & you managed to slip one in while i was out of the room. also happy to know those posts got under your skin ;-)
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:19 (twelve years ago) link
lol fu flopson beef 4ever :)
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:21 (twelve years ago) link
how can I, drinking beer, resist this
which particular al stewart album is this synth-heavy deej
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:22 (twelve years ago) link
Year of Kaputt
― EZ Snappin, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:25 (twelve years ago) link
rule: don't ever believe any music made today is as good as al stewart
― crüt, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:25 (twelve years ago) link
I definitely thought his voice sounds a little like Al Stewart also.
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:26 (twelve years ago) link
both of them sound like Peter Lorre
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 01:28 (twelve years ago) link
al stewart mating with neil tennant or something.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:28 (twelve years ago) link
it's one thing to champion an era as some creative peak, it's another to answer "pick a side: prime thrash vs. early dm" or w/e. there's like a plague of ppl goin nuts about "the 80s" but I as I said in my initial post, I think historical discussion's potentially interesting whereas rose-tinted back-whenism is terrible, which is where I think a lot of retro shit is coming from. iirc the thread you're citing was a "choose between these two" thread in which I participated; you're not likely to catch me swinging into a present-day rap thread goin "X-Clan was better!", I may feel that way but that's on me, it's not like I think genres have to arrest themselves to keep me happy with some idealized frozen historical-present
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 8:05 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
mmm think i essentially agree with you on this. i think a statement like "I loved The Chronic and Doggy Style ... but the element of rap that was like mindblowing sheer sonics gave way to what were essentially rock records structurally" is reductive in the same way many arguments about rock post-70's/rave post-90's/jazz post-60's are reductive: rap continued/continues to be innovative in terms of mindblowing sheer sonics, despite including chord progressions and elements of rock structure
also, while we 99% of the time rightly assume that the person who shows up to say "x-clan did it better" is someone with not-super-interesting ideas about music, i believe it's the responsibility of vocal fans of contemporary music in genres with encroaching histories to counter such claims with examples of great contemporary music and vivid, well-argued enthusiasm, not to automatically call someone a moron for holding such an opinion based on an abstract and rigidly held belief that genres never regress. sometimes they do, and sometimes very smart people argue it convincingly
― flopson, Monday, 6 February 2012 01:49 (twelve years ago) link
― ⚓ (gr8080)
― omar little, Monday, 6 February 2012 02:12 (twelve years ago) link
? the past-ness, other-era-ness of the sounds in Kaputt seems like a big part of what the album's "about" to me
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:36 (twelve years ago) link
it sounds futuristic imo
― ⚓ (gr8080), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:36 (twelve years ago) link
Year of the cat is one of my favorite jawns
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:37 (twelve years ago) link
I think that sort of futurism is a specifically what-the-future-was-imagined-as-in-the-past kinda deal
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:37 (twelve years ago) link
if you take a time machine back to 1970 maybe
xps
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:38 (twelve years ago) link
how could you read the lyrics of the title track to be futuristic?
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 02:38 (twelve years ago) link
exactly. this is 'the nightfly'.
On our local sports talk station, dan ”the common man” cole is originally from detroit, so he likes to troll vikings fans by saying ” the roar has been restored” and then he plays ” year of the cat” but they edit in a lions roar every time the chorus comes in
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:41 (twelve years ago) link
\(o_0)/ you guys are so weird
― ⚓ (gr8080), Monday, 6 February 2012 02:41 (twelve years ago) link
I think that typically we can overstate the importance of retro sonic signifiers in respect of stuff that sounds a bit like 1982-1987, certainly as compared to stuff that sounds like 1977-1981, or 1966-1968, or etc.
Which is not to say that a lot of contemp. music isn't just deliberate 80 ephemera, but I think one of the reasons for the popularity of that particular era now is the fact that there are a lot of trajectories bracnhing off of it which can be fruitful to explore, in the same way that people can habitually return to punk or etc. and use it to orient themselves as they move elsewhere.
In the case of Kaputt, the album does strike me as a "what-the-future-was-imagined-as-in-the-past kinda deal" - or, more specifically, a "what-the-present-was-imagined-as-in-the-past kinda deal", but the form of the past-imagined present, especially once vocals and lyrics are factored in, is very specific and relies on following the lines of the music, the lyrics, the vocals, to where they meet as a vector. This is not a generic (I use this term descriptively rather than negatively) vision of the 80s which "we" can all identify with.
This is why I have difficulty with contenderizer talking about this album as comfortable and unambitious; whether you think it succeeds or not, it strikes me as an album where a huge amount of thought has gone into how all of these things come together, how the music frames the words and vice versa. The reductive reading of this album is all "lol he ironically uses saxaphones"; this is wrong of course but in its wrongness still points to something. The album strikes me as being about time and temporality, about fashion and zeitgeist and living in the present and what that mode of living means when it becomes a past viewed from the vantage point of a wisened future.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:02 (twelve years ago) link
i do think i enjoy modern music that reflects on the past and uses the past but that feels entirely now. which is one of the reasons i loved PJs album. it was all about the past! but it was very 2011.
and the destroyer sound is now too, but its constantly reminding me of its origins.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:10 (twelve years ago) link
so many ppl otm...
― JacobSanders, Sunday, February 5, 2012 5:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the 80s were great! there's value in resisting the lure of nostalgia, but that doesn't mean you have to write off the formative music of your youth and/or the hold it exerts on you. you just have to watch out for getting entirely sealed up in it. it's safe to dance.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:11 (twelve years ago) link
― D-40, Sunday, February 5, 2012 5:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
along with 80s new romantic smoothness, kaputt does recall 70s futurist smoothness, al stewart type stuff, and the way that sound moved into the 80s with the likes of alan parsons or w/e. still, i hear it primarily as 80s pastiche.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:13 (twelve years ago) link
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 6:36 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, February 5, 2012 6:36 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 6:37 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
aero OTM. listening to this record only as awesome fresh music, divorced from the things it's very obviously referencing and even explicitly addressing (name dropping New Order, for instance), seems crazy to me. it's like discussing let england shake without acknowledging the debt to english folk and the other forms PJH interpolates.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:15 (twelve years ago) link
"The album strikes me as being about time and temporality, about fashion and zeitgeist and living in the present and what that mode of living means when it becomes a past viewed from the vantage point of a wisened future."
this is dance music to me. techno, house, whatever. and i feel like those are the people who have explored those past 80's trajectories the most successfully. since 1990!
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:16 (twelve years ago) link
...I mean he's poking fun at 70s/80s signifiers while at the same time making remarkably pretty music w/ 70s/80s signifiers. the tension between those two things is what makes the album. imo.
― iatee, Sunday, February 5, 2012 4:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah, that's a good point. i acknowledge the irony, but this is a pretty romantic album, and the 80s moves he's copping were romantic in the first place (new romanticism, f'rinstance). so the irony's there, but it doesn't really subvert the romance. that's why i'm inclined to say that it does romanticize the 80s, overall. it uses a period voice to create much the same effect it did the first time around.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:19 (twelve years ago) link
excellent & insightful post from Tim F, as per usual - you rule, dude
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:24 (twelve years ago) link
dude is smart and shit.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:27 (twelve years ago) link
from an interview fwiw:
What ideas did you have in mind for Kaputt? What did you want to do differently, perhaps, this time?
"I had the instrumentation in mind. Treated trumpets. I had Joseph Shabason in mind, I'd spent a few weeks on tour listening to his playing and it always struck me. I had Nic in mind, cause I always do, and deep down I knew it would be good for the record to have a few explosive moments, which is something he can bring, amongst a bunch of other things. I knew I wanted played drums mixed with programmed drums, cause someone told me that's what [Roxy Music] did on Avalon. And I really like the linndrum sound. I knew I wanted fretless bass, and really loud bass in general, played in that way where what disco and new wave thinks of jazz music seems to overlap. I wanted to barely sing, by this I mean be fiercely casual; I wanted way more time for the music to be music. I wanted an absence of chord structure tyranny —though in pop music you can't really ever get away from that— and synths are a good way of doing that, kind of. And at some point I decided, not that I really wanted back-up vocals on the record, but that I wanted Sibel [Thrasher] on the record. I was also a little hung up on the record Avalon, I should be honest about that. Once in a while I thought about [Primal Scream's] Screamadelica."
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:29 (twelve years ago) link
tbh I think Let England Shake plays with temporality just as much as Kaputt and I feel like Harvey says more with her games than Bejar. I have not heard enough of either album to really dig in exigetically, but this:
kind of sums up the sort of postmodern nostalgia that Kaputt traffics in, whereas I think the ethereal atemporality that permeates PJ Harvey's album is not so simple and a hell of a lot more profound.
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:35 (twelve years ago) link
no don't think about primal scream...
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:38 (twelve years ago) link
elsewhere:
AVC: The new album has a vibe reminiscent of the softer side of early ’80s British new wave: Haircut 100, Spandau Ballet, et cetera.DB: The sonic templates I had in my head didn’t change too much, but they were not Spandau Ballet or Haircut 100. All that stuff is a strident, young, composed version of romantic. And I don’t think my singing sounds anything like those guys. And I don’t think most of the playing sounds anything like the playing on those records. I guess music that has both horns and synths pushed to the fore, and a rigorously ’80s drum sound, is gonna get compared to that shit. Maybe John Collins and Dave Carswell pulled a fast one on me and it sounds exactly like that stuff, I don’t know. I wish there were more sound effects.
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:39 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think pj harvey makes an interesting comparison point to this regardless. you liked it more? great, so did thousands of other people.
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:41 (twelve years ago) link
i think that we have found that there are thematic similarities.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:43 (twelve years ago) link
yeah you're right I shouldn't have come into a Destroyer thread talking about a PJ Harvey album xp
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:43 (twelve years ago) link
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, February 5, 2012 6:51 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah this is complete baloney, if for no other reason than that kaput sounds little like anything else bejar had done to date
― tebow gotti (k3vin k.), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:45 (twelve years ago) link
if only he'd been ambitious enough to use an autoharp
― mookieproof, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:47 (twelve years ago) link
― Tim F, Sunday, February 5, 2012 7:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
that's fair. kaputt is a subtle album, especially in comparison with let england shake, which pushes its concerns, attempts and experimentalism to the fore. i mean, i'd never say that bejar lacks ambition as a lyricist. he's phenomenally gifted, even when he's just laying out a few abstract strokes, as he does here with "song for america". still, to say that a work of art is sophisticated, mature or thematically complex is not necessarily to say that it's particularly ambitious. i'm still a bit confused about why this is such a controversial point. kaputt doesn't attempt to deliver some grand summary statement on the era it evokes or the themes it elliptically addresses. though it puts a fresh new suit of clothes on bejar's sound, it doesn't experiment much within that framework or seem to push terribly hard for transcendent moments. it's more about creating and sustaining a comfortable mood for the duration. these aren't marks against the album. self-evidently vaunting artistic ambition isn't an unambiguous good. in fact, it seems to gives rise to some of the most egregious sins of taste. a great deal of the best music is made by accomplished, mature artists attempting in a workmanlike way to refine what they do best. maybe to experiment a bit along the way, but not in any dramatically "ambitious" fashion. that's how i see kaputt, and i respect it for its modesty, cleverness and skill. the fact that i prefer let england shake says more about me, of course, than the quality of either album.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:49 (twelve years ago) link
big surprise that the Destroyer fans are smug conformists
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:51 (twelve years ago) link
tbh I think Let England Shake plays with temporality just as much as Kaputt and I feel like Harvey says more with her games than Bejar. I have not heard enough of either album to really dig in exigetically, but...
This may even be correct but if so it would be by accident, I think. Like a lot of records in this vein, Kaputt is both deep and shallow in that you can "get" it very quickly but then it holds and intensifies its resonance, or at least it has for me.
Let England Shake, conversely, is an album that wears its interpretive inexhaustibility very openly - listening to it, you know there's more to get than you've gotten so far.
So the appeal of the engagement process is quite different in that regard. Let England Shake is an actively intriguing listen; with Kaputt insight sneaks up on you.
Conversely the experience of disliking these albums is quite different: I suspect people who don't gel with LES have the listening experience of tl;dr, whereas with kaputt it's more like "is that all there is?"
These differences are worth thinking about but neither approach is determinative either of how profound or of how ambitious these two albums are in their own ways.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:53 (twelve years ago) link
like, i'd call "suicide demo for kara walker" an extremely ambitious piece of writing, lyrics as poetry style, but bejar plays it pretty safe musically.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:54 (twelve years ago) link
Maybe one sticking point for me is that as much as I really really like Let England Shake I'm not sure I see how it constitutes "some grand summary statement on the era it evokes or the themes it elliptically addresses." Or at least not any more than other records that deal with past war e.g. Piano Magic's Artists' Rifles.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:55 (twelve years ago) link
that seems very fair Tim F; I think 'interpretive inexhaustibility' has a lot to do with why I like it so much. To say I find Let England Shake is not necessarily a diss to the Destroyer album; I think LES is more profound than most albums.
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:56 (twelve years ago) link
that's an answer to your next-to-last post, Tim; my bad for not using 'xpost'
imo I'm not sure that Bejar on his own intentions/influences is the most reliable narrator in the world
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 03:58 (twelve years ago) link
Obv rock is playing this game with a handicap.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 03:59 (twelve years ago) link
Those quotes seemed pretty lucid to me. And it's understandable that he'd want to say something to contradict the idea that it sounds like Haircut 100 or Spandau Ballet.
xp
― timellison, Monday, 6 February 2012 04:00 (twelve years ago) link
― tebow gotti (k3vin k.), Sunday, February 5, 2012 7:45 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah, no, i get that. the soft and faded 80s tones are a new outfit for bejar. kaputt isn't devoid of risk, and dude isn't treading water. but the sound here is (again) similar to certain kurt vile and ariel pink tunes of the last few years, and while i love those guys, i wouldn't hold either as a paragon of artistic ambition, sonically speaking. and they did more to invent the language in question than bejar.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:01 (twelve years ago) link
as much as I really really like Let England Shake I'm not sure I see how it constitutes "some grand summary statement on the era it evokes or the themes it elliptically addresses." Or at least not any more than other records that deal with past war e.g. Piano Magic's Artists' Rifles.
― Tim F, Sunday, February 5, 2012 7:55 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
okay, then we see it differently. i see let england shake as an attempt to wrestle with the englishness and the 20th century's legacy of imperialism, injustice and violence. it allows itself to come apart at the seams, forces itself to come apart, because PJH knows that she cannot possibly say what she is trying to say, understand what she is trying to encompass. i called it "sharp, bright and ringing" earlier, but it often shares with kaputt a muffled sort of distancing, a gauzy haze that separates sounds and emotions from their origins. it sounds like an alarm, but an alarm that has been ringing forever, has grown so used to ringing that it transmits only faint panic at the edge of exhaustion. the voice of protest when there is too much pain to articulate and no hope of rescue.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:07 (twelve years ago) link
lol, "the englishness" = "englishness"
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:08 (twelve years ago) link
like, i'd call "suicide demo for kara walker" an extremely ambitious piece of writing, lyrics as poetry style, but bejar plays it pretty safe musically
I don't think it makes a difference one way or the other, but just as an FYI: those lyrics were written by Kara Walker.
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 04:14 (twelve years ago) link
i see let england shake as an attempt to wrestle with the englishness and the 20th century's legacy of imperialism, injustice and violence.
I see this, I just don't see how it's a grand summary statement unless that summary is "the issue cannot be summarised (grandly or otherwise)."
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 04:15 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, exactly. but it's not just a matter of PJH throwing her hands up in the air and saying "fuckit". she does a damn good job of describing the enormity by embodying the confusion, dissonance and contradiction inherent in the attempt. and she makes music sense of the incoherence without just getting loud and crazy, no mean feat. my main point is that she takes on a huge project and brings all her guns to the table, lyrically, musically and formally. she's attempting to do the undoable, and she takes some pretty big risks in the process. that, to me, is artistic ambition, all caps. not necessarily a virtue, but something i do respect enormously when someone has the skill, wit and soul to pull it off.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:23 (twelve years ago) link
"soul". i dunno. compassion, depth of feeling, w/e.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:25 (twelve years ago) link
I don't hear any irony in Kaputt, but I don't listen for irony in music, and when it's something I can't ignore, I usually turn the music off, like LCD Soundsystem. In Kaputt, I only hear the romanticism, but I'm a romantic person. I love 70's and 80's AOR wholeheartedly that this record draw from. I haven't listen to PJ Harvey since Rid Of Me, Is LES her folk record?
― JacobSanders, Monday, 6 February 2012 04:27 (twelve years ago) link
"music sense" = "musical sense" duh
got to start proofing this shit
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 04:28 (twelve years ago) link
I think this is a much stronger attempt at capturing the qualitative (as in categorical) difference between the two albums which you're pressing, contenderizer.
And I think it's a reasonable basis upon which to prefer Let England Shake (not explicitly vis a vis Kaputt, but over and above most albums generally), even if I feel bit differently.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 04:47 (twelve years ago) link
I'm coming to this thread late but I'm reminded that I read no single published review as thoughtful as the stuff posted about Kaputt on this and the main thread.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 February 2012 05:21 (twelve years ago) link
This is the best I can say about eighties Ferry, the Blow Monkeys, and stuff that SOUNDS like Kaputt without quite evoking it.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 February 2012 05:22 (twelve years ago) link
I feel like Let England Shake is, on one level, a protest record for aesthetes,--which may be why the record feels like an irgent statement despite having such esoteric subject matter--and being such, it is about war but it makes its points obliquely. Perhaps that is one reason for the preoccupation with WWI: she needs to peer at war from a hazy distance. And yeat, maybe not: the distance between then and now is traversed without comment in "Written on the Forehead": with very little shift in tone or production, suddenly we are in present-day Iraq, and I suspect that through the shoegazey fog that Harvey is intimating that all wars are the same war (a point maede by many creative people before her) and that war, ostensibly what the album is 'about', is also a metaphor of the 'ethereal atemporality' I mentioned upthread. History is the myth of mankind's forward progress through the centuries, but things are the same as they always have been and here is the bloodshed--the deformed children--to prove it.
That view of collapsible history is something she shares with, say, TS Eliot, along with a method of juxtaposing wildly disparate sources and allowing them to comment ironically on each other: Doran has already pointed out how the first half of "The Words That Maketh Murder" are strongly reminiscent of Goya's painting (along with Shirley Collins' WWI-themed folk songs as La Lechera pointed out to me) whereas the ending quotes "Summertime Blues". Of course collage is nothing new in pop music, but the peculiar piquancy that results from those distinct modes scraping up against each other is an effect you wouldn't find in Odelay, for example. And like Eliot, who sbsequently wrote massive annotations crediting all the different sources that went into The Waste Land, Harvey also listed everything that she sampled, or just drew inspiration from. Confronted with the thematic and compositional affinities with Eliot, suddenly the WWI preoccupation comes into sharper focus. Perhaps this is another reason she wrote about that war was that she was confronting a particular cultural moment--early 20C modernism--head on, and that is the legacy she is wrestling with. Of course the question I always end up asking is: why? What is she looking for back then that she can't find right now?
I probably have given this album short shrift: I haven't mentioned much about how she operates in the folk tradition, or how she is commenting on English imperialism; there's likely much about the album I will never fully understand. But there's no doubt that the album is uncommonly rich in potential meaning, and that it sets the bar fucking high for the decade.
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 05:46 (twelve years ago) link
Wow that's longer than even I thought it was going to be. Good luck :\
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 05:48 (twelve years ago) link
why does this shitty thread have so many posts in it? should i read it or is it some you had to be there thing now?
― Lamp, Monday, 6 February 2012 06:00 (twelve years ago) link
i really want to have some cool opinions to share with ilm re: this thread but everytime i think abt listening to 'pj harvey' on utube i start mentally totaling up all the time ive spent waiting for the subway in the morning, staring at nothing and wishing i was i still in bed
― Lamp, Monday, 6 February 2012 06:01 (twelve years ago) link
Lol I wish I had already gone to bed
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 06:04 (twelve years ago) link
holy fuck, drugs, thanks for saying what i imagined i might be thinking so much better than it might ever have actually though it, had i had the wherewithal.
Perhaps this is another reason she wrote about that war was that she was confronting a particular cultural moment--early 20C modernism--head on, and that is the legacy she is wrestling with. Of course the question I always end up asking is: why? What is she looking for back then that she can't find right now?
why? because that was the last war with which the folk tradition, the human tradition with which PJH is attempting the engage, was itself meaningfully engaged with the human experience. that was the point at which the mechanisms of society diverged from the course of human affairs, when the "merely human" became truly mere in the grand imperial scope of things. modernism was a reaction to but also a ratification of the culture of the machine, of human demographics, and that's a big part of what she's responding to, the break between the human (individual) and the ostensibly meaningful (the mechanically social). i'm gonna take my problem to the united nations...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 6 February 2012 06:06 (twelve years ago) link
think LES is over-reaching and within that its great at what it does. BUT honestly think 'the good the bad and the queen' album did it much better and more succinctly years ago tbh. 'kuputt' is a uber swazzy and fricking beautiful yacht rock album for the ages
― Michael B Higgins (Michael B), Monday, 6 February 2012 06:11 (twelve years ago) link
xp I can totally see what you mean contenderizer re: folk/humanism vs. mechanical/social
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 6 February 2012 07:21 (twelve years ago) link
there are some great posts in here about LES but i also want to make the point that it's not just its "importance" or "ambition" that make it so great - PJH's mastery of the sounds and arrangements on her record has always been incredible, and that's the case here too - as pure sound the windswept layers of "let england shake" and "the glorious land" are thrilling & unlike anything else, as evocation of an exact place both emotional and geographic "the last living rose" does an immense amount with relatively few ingredients, the way she uses specific modes of singing to convey both the emotion of the songs and the observation-from-the-sidelines journalistic quality she was aiming for is what makes it such a moving album. every sound on every song is there for a reason. and the melodies are amazing too, both the ones that sound ethereal and elemental and the ones that sound like some ancient pub drinking song.
lots of people seem to be talking about kaputt in terms of sounds and arrangements - i couldn't care less about the retro-nostalgia aspect of it b/c i mostly haven't heard the originals of what he's pastiching, though that quality would be useless to me even if i had (AND SHOULD BE USELESS TO EVERYONE NOSTALGIA IS THE ULTIMATE ADMISSION OF DEFEAT KMT). but this "fresh sounding" stuff just seems nonsense, the arrangements are dull and non-evocative and do not take me anywhere. scott made the comparison to dance music upthread and that seems key to destroyer's uselessness for me - i listen to so much balearic/nu disco stuff that effortlessly achieves the vibes i think destroyer is attempting, why would i need his failed take on it with added disgusting vocals?
i do not get the impression that a lot of destroyer fans in this thread have heard the PJH album though
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Monday, 6 February 2012 08:36 (twelve years ago) link
I'm a huge PJ Harvey fan. Katy B was in the top of 5 of my ballot. Kaputt was number 1 though. I am from England. PJ was nowhere to be seen in my ballot, i've probably listened to it twice since it came out.I enjoy the Kaputt album a lot more than I enjoy the PJ Harvey album.
Please analyse.
― Jamie_ATP, Monday, 6 February 2012 09:01 (twelve years ago) link
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, February 5, 2012 9:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
eh i was kind of trollin w/ my post in the first thread about it i think i said it sounded a lot like 'avalon' to me (which was one of my dad's '80s car trip tapes like 'graceland') which is '80s' but in a hyperspecific way, but i think the reference pts being SO specific makes it feel less like 'period pastiche' to me the way gated drums sound or w/e and more like a continuation of a discussion that was happening a few years back, like when someone revives an old ilx thread & argues with some point made by a belle & sebastian listserv fan who hasn't posted on ilx in 7 years
― D-40, Monday, 6 February 2012 09:01 (twelve years ago) link
^^^^ yeah this is part of what I was getting at upthread, this is not general 80s nostalgia. That's a fantastic analogy for it though.
Scott's invocation of dance music is useful in this regard not so much because "dance music does this better" but because this approach seems much less controversial in dance music circles, perhaps because the music's present use is foregrounded. Interestingly you don't see the word "pastiche" used so much to describe retro dance music except in respect of the most ostentatiously magpie-like produces (Pictureplane, say), perhaps because (a) panning the (sub-30 years) past for gold is so second nature; and (b) dance music then organises itself among much more specific lines of derivation and descent.
*which is correct but mostly in the sense that dance music does just about everything it attempts to do more efficiently than rock and other song-oriented musics - the attraction of rock etc. in this regard, perversely, is its inefficiency: rock struggles to evoke the layered bittersweet feeling of observing the past from the viewpoint of the present with the purity that dance music does precisely because the idiosyncrasy of the music's presentist persona gets in the way; and if it doesn't it seems lacking in persona. This is one of the more unexpected ways in which dance music can be more "functional" than rock, but it hardly bears repeating in the absence of a strawman kaputt listener who doesn't like nostalgist dance music, of which I suspect this thread contains none.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 09:18 (twelve years ago) link
Footnote above is a footnote to the "dance music does this better" claim.
Equal parts sense and guff in this thread.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 10:21 (twelve years ago) link
i dont really think of kaputt as "making fun of the 80s." its def more an ariel pink move. its not about irony. thats not to say the sonic signifiers are not there as signifiers. its dense and woozy with this feeling of time layered up and piled up on itself. it feels more like those records than they themselves do. this strange mix of machine exactness and thick, smoky density. it feels alien and strange, a kind of uncanny approximation. and yeah i do think its a sort of retro futurism but not in the "this is what the future looked like in the past" way, but this is how the future might put the past back together. its like reading a google translation, what is foregrounded is how everything is just slightly off, every angle too crooked, every surface overly buffed. its a difficult record to explain because maybe you pick up on this or you dont. but its a subtle album or an album that is about its subtleties.
― judith, Monday, 6 February 2012 11:07 (twelve years ago) link
^^^ good post.
I have been thinking for a while that judith is an a+ poster and this seems like a good moment to pause, take stock, and acknowledge that.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 11:11 (twelve years ago) link
Kaputt is to the eighties what Disney's Tomorrowland is to the future.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 February 2012 12:54 (twelve years ago) link
So I've been trying to listen to Kaputt and so far I'm coming up with nothing. I get how people like this luxurious, oddly sedate sound, but to me it's way too one-note in mood for me not to get absolutely racked off after any more than three songs.
Nostalgia in itself isn't a bad thing if used effectively. But good grief, isn't the eighties retro thing just a LITTLE BIT played out now? I think I still have a little time left for the ongoing excavation and development of my childhood decade - it's a rich seam of inspiration so why not keep tapping it? But Kaputt feels like it's trying to explain the punchline way after the joke has run its course: We get it. Wet drums, synths, yachts, saxophones - WE GET IT! FFS we got it in 2001, we get it now, but instead of subtly recalling some faded impression of the past you're just piling on the Enola Gay and Digging Your Scene vamps. Buying one of those cut-price 'Electric Eighties' compilations from the rack in the Shell garage is more likely to have an effect on me than this.
I feel that this kind of thing has been executed a lot better by others. That Gayngs album from 2010 wasn't perfect, but at least it wasn't actively annoying. Kaputt makes no bones of smacking you round the head with its touchstones. The telltale sign is on the title track: "Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME, all sound like a dream to me". This is NOT charming - it's sycophantic romance lisped in this over-affected Anglo-side accent. He's going for Neil Tennant, ends up sounding like a fruity pantomime dame. The more I think about it, the more his voice grates on me.
And yeah, if this hadn't beaten out PJ in the poll, I'd be pretty indifferent - a bland bland album by some indie guy who's decided to go "all eighties" - that's harmless enough, I can ignore it. But put it next to Let England Shake and what do you have? It just seems so effete - so asinine by comparison on pretty much every level: inspirationally, musically, lyrically, conceptually. You can't compare them because Kaputt is virtually invisible next to LES's towering heights.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 13:02 (twelve years ago) link
I liked LES, but this thread makes me want to never listen to it again.
― pandemic, Monday, 6 February 2012 13:07 (twelve years ago) link
Now more guff in the thread.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 13:14 (twelve years ago) link
I have heard it. I like it. It's her best solo record since Stories from the City, I think. But I like the Destroyer record way more.
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:06 (twelve years ago) link
Wet drums, synths, yachts, saxophones - WE GET IT!
I feel like you guys are overthinking this. For me, there isn't anything to "get" about Kaputt. That instrumental palette isn't an academic joke so much as a recipe of sounds/textures that sound pleasing to my ears.
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:15 (twelve years ago) link
xpost I think the main thing for me is how anyone can get truly excited by a record that sounds like Kaputt - discounting the vocals it's pleasant in its own way I guess. But is this really the album of 2012? I still don't think I've read a reasonable explanation as to why, and I am genuinely interested in finding out.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:19 (twelve years ago) link
Wet drums, synths, yachts, saxophones - WE GET IT!I feel like you guys are overthinking this. For me, there isn't anything to "get" about Kaputt. That instrumental palette isn't an academic joke so much as a recipe of sounds/textures that sound pleasing to my ears.― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:15 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:15 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I'm not saying that Bejar is literally making a joke of the eighties, rather his reference points feel a bit bludgeoning and explicit in 2012. Cramming in these very obvious shoutouts to the Blow Monkeys, New Order, PSB, Lloyd Cole and OMD - he might as well get a Flock Of Seagulls haircut and body-pop around the students union wearing a shellsuit and rapping The Message. His approach makes Fischerspooner look like arbiters of subtlety, and yet it's all wrapped up in this smoothed-out long-haul impression of Now! Vol.7.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:31 (twelve years ago) link
Maybe this is a US-centric POV, but I don't think Blow Monkeys, Lloyd Cole, and OMD are "obvious" reference points.
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:38 (twelve years ago) link
I find it hard to read this:
"Wasting your days, Chasing some girls all right, Chasing cocaine to the back rooms of the world all night"
as not ironic on some level?
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:41 (twelve years ago) link
xpost You could be right. Over the last decade in the UK there's been an influx of comps available from pretty much any supermarket in the country that would contain these acts.
So is this it? Is it a matter of Kaputt sounding quaint and exotic to US ears, while to UK ears it sounds a much more like a pastiche?
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:45 (twelve years ago) link
I find it hard to read this:"Wasting your days,Chasing some girls all right, Chasing cocaine to the back rooms of the world all night"as not ironic on some level?― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:41 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
"Wasting your days,Chasing some girls all right, Chasing cocaine to the back rooms of the world all night"
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:41 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Buckets of it, certainly.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:46 (twelve years ago) link
but I think it's quaint and exotic and pastiche
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:47 (twelve years ago) link
I'm now trying to imagine what reaction Let England Shake would have received (particularly from the US) had Polly Jean been listening to tons of Boston and Styx and instead of Summertime Blues, she'd appropriated lines from 'Don't Stop Believin''.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:49 (twelve years ago) link
that genuinely sounds like a more interesting album?
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:49 (twelve years ago) link
I should clarify, I'm not arguing that Bejar ~isn't~ employing irony or making statements about a previous era, but that's really not the main thing I get out of it.
― jaymc, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:50 (twelve years ago) link
There's a sadness and a nostalgia here that DL's missing. It's hard to explain; Bejar is both ironic and knowing and ABSOLUTELY SINCERE at the same time. He's not using these sounds as 'signifiers' half as much as some people are suggesting; he's using them because he loves them.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:55 (twelve years ago) link
well I don't think you can avoid the signifiers
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 14:58 (twelve years ago) link
but I agree w/ your first two sentences
lol so listening to Kaputt for the first time, it's very hard to give this a fair shake because all I keep thinking is "the Pet Shop Boys put out almost this exact same album ten years ago"
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, 6 February 2012 14:59 (twelve years ago) link
An honest answer is that I like the songs on destroyer but I wouldn't have given myself permission to accept *that sound* if not for its meat&potatoes indie rock provenance. I feel quite ashamed of this, but it is true.
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:09 (twelve years ago) link
It's fair to say there's more to Kaputt than mere Anglo-Eighties fetishism, but it's a huge stumbling block towards my appreciation of it because not only have we seen this before, but we've seen people reviving it before. So is this a continuation of the last decade's eighties revival or is it part of some hideous third wave of eighties revivalism, and if so when will the madness stop?
Trying to appreciate this on levels other than pastiche/retro, I'm still struggling. I don't find the songwriting particularly engaging. The Blow Monkeys weren't exactly a fashionable band, but Digging Your Scene succeeds in that it has a soaring ecstatic chorus breaking through the shimmer. 'Being Boring' ('Kaputt', the song's closest reference point) was wry, witty, bittersweet and somehow evoked nostalgia without pandering to the past. Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well...
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/32867/http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858855779/
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:09 (twelve years ago) link
pastiche and retro are not the same thing
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:11 (twelve years ago) link
Bejar's not a pop songwriter, either.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:11 (twelve years ago) link
xxxp
double irony thomas is that i dig the brief bits of it i've heard but won't listen to it cos of its meat&potatoes indie rock provenance :D
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:13 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:11 (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
They both apply here. I've no doubt that Bejar has nothing but love for this sound, but his mimicking of it is pure pastiche.
― Sounds Of The Baskervilles (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:13 (twelve years ago) link
DL, you have to take (the song) Kaputt in the context of the other songs on the album; he makes explicit reference to other songs in the lyrics. The whole thing paints a picture. Bejar writes (and this sounds amazingly wanky, and is, but is also kind of compelling and intriguing) about musicians and music and music journalists (I know PSBs did this too on occasion; I've just never been that taken with them), and the whole album together paints a picture.
I'm not sure I see Bejar's past as meat&potatoes indie rock. Listened to Rubies this morning; the guitar is Ronson, not Pavement (obviously).
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:15 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, this "meat&potatoesindierock" shit is meaningless...
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:17 (twelve years ago) link
it's kind of hair-splitty tbh Sick, what constitutes tru indie now. i think the general point i'm making is that i'm suspicious in some way or uninterested in what the dude's doing even tho i'd probably go to bat for a lot of stuff in the sonic tradition of Kaputt
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:19 (twelve years ago) link
This is my problem with Kaputt - I like the sonics, I'm not really bothered about whether it's pastiche or not (I think I just assumed genre-hopping was part of his whole deal, not being familiar with much of his other work) but it's kind of weak in terms of hooks and/or melody. His vocals are too one-note here ("fiercely casual" is about right) and it grates more than it might do with a different musical backdrop. He's written some incredibly poppy (and great) stuff with the New Pornographers though.
― Gavin, Leeds, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:20 (twelve years ago) link
xps ha oh shit I've started another bloody discussion on what is or isn't indie.
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:20 (twelve years ago) link
i was gonna try not to indulge. i think it's at best disingenuous to say there's no such thing as "meat & potatoes indie", the rest of the argument is just filing
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:21 (twelve years ago) link
cos i think what you're saying - and it seems totally reasonable to me - is that Bejam's indie credentials gave you a way into the album, and i'm saying that the same thing sort of locks me out of it
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:23 (twelve years ago) link
wish I had time to read and respond... two of my fave albums of last year
― I GUESS THAT CINNABON GETTIN EATEN (Edward III), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:23 (twelve years ago) link
i like M83! forgot about them/him. that album made the ilx poll right? and that stuff sounds fresh to me. if i were a teen now i would love it. i mean i don't own any of the albums but i dig the vibe. only watched on youtube. it feels like cool/hip teen music. and making the old new again. come to think of it, the french are good at the 80's. they are a very 80's people.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:26 (twelve years ago) link
so far Kaputt has come across like a less engaging version of Double
"Suicide Demo For Kara Walker" is the first song that I've actively noticed while playing the album
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:27 (twelve years ago) link
xposts SM: re: Bejar's lyrics: That is kindof interesting, although I'm not sure how I feel about this kind of thing in 2012. It feels a bit like rather than doing away with post-modernism (something we saw a lot of in the 2000s), this is now turning into a kind of meta-music, where the song is a comment in and about itself. Not sure where Destroyer fits into this picture, but I can see a parallel with the work of people like Daniel Lopatin.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:29 (twelve years ago) link
Don't know Lopatin but, afaikt, bejar's been doing this meta-thing for his whole career.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:32 (twelve years ago) link
"Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well..."
see this is also my problem. people get the sounds right and pat themselves on the back, but they don't have the songs. i went and saw the faint years and years ago during the 2nd or 5th or 8th 80's revival and their sounds were right on but the only great song they played all night was "enola gay"! it was the only memorable song they played. "house of jealous lovers" is one of the only really great 80's-inspired songs i can think of. (other than the songs i love by my fave retro acts dmx krew and lansing-dreiden but hardly anyone here has heard them so i won't bother mentioning them)
great rock or indie rock 80's-inspired songs i should say. again, not dance tracks. there are loads of those. oh and interpol had a couple of good ones early on.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:34 (twelve years ago) link
And the best song on the Gayngs album by far is their version of "Cry".
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:38 (twelve years ago) link
Thing is, you could argue that there's no way to create an eighties-inspired song without distancing oneself with a certain level of irony, whereas the OG eighties synth bands probably weren't thinking "oh yes, let's use that gated drum sound, it's totally kitsch". Or maybe they were? I dunno... Either way, they were writing pop singles whereas Kaputt is an alternative album and doesn't have that impetus to reel you in within 3 minutes.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:42 (twelve years ago) link
i just got the feeling when i heard some of the electroclash stuff in the past or whatever that people thought it was easy to mimic the sounds and lol 80's vibe but then didn't follow through with actual quality material. so maybe that makes me sore. so many 3rd and 4th tier synth bands from the 80's that hardly anyone remembers sound really accomplished to me! they did a really good job and often on the cheap too. and, yeah, a lot of indie people just don't get it. as opposed to pop people. i do think the destroyer guy is talented though. you can hear it in the music.
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:53 (twelve years ago) link
oh but this sucks though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR85bAxCX6M&feature=player_embedded#!
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:57 (twelve years ago) link
i went and saw the faint years and years ago during the 2nd or 5th or 8th 80's revival and their sounds were right on but the only great song they played all night was "enola gay"!
Ha, this reminds me of being at a friends' house when they were watching some snowboarding dvd with people like The Faint on the soundtrack - one song came up at the end and I thought "Oh this is loads better than their other stuff", watching the credits it turned out to be some early Depeche Mode album track.
― Gavin, Leeds, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:57 (twelve years ago) link
wow "Bay of Pigs (Detail)" is super annoying
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, 6 February 2012 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
lol Spotify is now playing "No Fools Allowed by DestroyER at me
http://open.spotify.com/track/259gdZPmfMClYUGs7JKo50
this is much more my bag than Kaputt
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, 6 February 2012 16:06 (twelve years ago) link
whether it was a character bejar was inhabiting or ironic self-commentary or something else i felt kinda alienated by the pov presented on 'kaputt' it reminds me of 'take care', kinda, although bejar is less loathsome than drake's unfiltered self-pitying narcissist. but theres still the glassy-eyed emptiness that turns me off, the idea of others as objects, esp women, and the commodification of xp.
― Lamp, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:16 (twelve years ago) link
Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well...
Reading this made me want to throw something.
You could just as easily write:
"Compare Destroyer's lyrics to Tennant's empty signifiers of cachets of old photos - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well..."
It would be just as meaningless and just as convincing. Empty signifiers indeed.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:24 (twelve years ago) link
hope you didn't break whatever you threw. think "empty signifiers" wasn't the right term to use.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 16:27 (twelve years ago) link
if anything I get the sense that the character he's inhabiting is the 'object'
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:30 (twelve years ago) link
world of objects
― judith, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:32 (twelve years ago) link
that sorta doesn't make sense but pretend I phrased it better
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:32 (twelve years ago) link
tim, do you like M83?
― scott seward, Monday, 6 February 2012 16:33 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.marcresearch.com/blogs/merrill/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/g_peter_graves_cockpit_airplane_1a.jpg
― You got to ro-o-oll me and call me the tumblr whites (Phil D.), Monday, 6 February 2012 16:45 (twelve years ago) link
4 songs into LES wtf is this shit lol
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Monday, 6 February 2012 17:01 (twelve years ago) link
i like both deez albumz
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 6 February 2012 17:02 (twelve years ago) link
they are both enjoyable albums by interesting artists.
― tylerw, Monday, 6 February 2012 17:03 (twelve years ago) link
^ fuckin liars
― congratulations (n/a), Monday, 6 February 2012 17:10 (twelve years ago) link
come on, guys, you like BOTH of these albums, give me a fuckin break
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Monday, 6 February 2012 17:16 (twelve years ago) link
ok
What's ironic about chasing girls and cocaine into backrooms of clubs? haven't we all done that when we were young?
― JacobSanders, Monday, 6 February 2012 17:55 (twelve years ago) link
well I did it ironically
― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 17:58 (twelve years ago) link
i mean this has little to do with the conversation probably but i like the moments when the facade of kaputt cracks slightly. the weird noise in the middle of "chinatown"; the free jazz drift at the end of "song for america." feels like reality invading a thoroughly-composed unreality.
another thought: this sort of tension and cracking is in every song on let england shake. the album's kind of vaporous and floating like kaputt but it is married to elements that ground it intensely: the lyrics, the repurposing of other, concretely-known songs
― Whiney vs. (BradNelson), Monday, 6 February 2012 18:10 (twelve years ago) link
anyway both albums are great and are trying to do different things and are variously successful at them
― Whiney vs. (BradNelson), Monday, 6 February 2012 18:13 (twelve years ago) link
ah wow, just listening to Let England Shake for the first time on Spotify, and the advert between The Glorious Land and The Words That Maketh Murder was imploring me to join the Army Reserves. Couldn't get more perfect.
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 6 February 2012 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― Gonjasufjanstephen O'Malley (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 6 February 2012 19:04 (twelve years ago) link
i guess i have no interest in whether or not england is shaking.
― judith, Monday, 6 February 2012 19:41 (twelve years ago) link
people get the sounds right and pat themselves on the back, but they don't have the songs.
this is extremely true with the new wave of retro thrash
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 6 February 2012 19:52 (twelve years ago) link
Lots of good insights on this thread. I like the idea that Bejar is not just recreating "the '80s" but a very specific '80s - not any specific album or artist, but a certain "cool" languorous aesthetic that runs through certain favorite albums of the period. Everyone seems to have their own touchstones, but for me it's mainly about The Nightfly (jazzy retro-futurism) and I'm Your Man (modernist word-play and synths).
I fully admit to not having listened to more than one song from LES, and it mainly made me want to listen to the Pogues.
― o. nate, Monday, 6 February 2012 20:16 (twelve years ago) link
Just realized I have had Let England Shake on my computer, I listened again and I like it ok. reminds me of the Nick Cave maybe. Hanging In The Wire is nice, I think I like her more subdued moments.
― JacobSanders, Monday, 6 February 2012 20:38 (twelve years ago) link
kaputt = cheesy cocktail of cheap drum programming plus throwaway lyrics plus a feeble voice plus some saxophones reminiscent of dire straits and dave sanborn. those saxes are still the coolest part btw. but do we really need this in the 2010s?
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:54 (twelve years ago) link
you're wrong and yes
― ⚓ (gr8080), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:55 (twelve years ago) link
yes, more than ever
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:55 (twelve years ago) link
pretty sure it's live drums across most of the album
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:55 (twelve years ago) link
― judith, Monday, February 6, 2012 2:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― flopson, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:59 (twelve years ago) link
kaputt is a wonderful album, one of the year's best
― omar little, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:59 (twelve years ago) link
i've said it before but i wish i'd voted for it and allowed it to pull away from 'let england shake' a little more.
― omar little, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:00 (twelve years ago) link
pretty sure it's live drums across most of the albumon "song for america" they sound awfully like a drum loop. if someone is capable to drum in such a unidimensional and mechanical way i guess we can call that person a robot.
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:05 (twelve years ago) link
I'm pretty sure Bejar said in one of those interviews that it was both live and sequenced drums combined.
― Moodles, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
i liked kaputt but it left v little impression on me and i stopped listening to it after 3/4 weeks. though to be honest, and i dunno if this is me, probably is, it takes a gargantuan album to really stamp a mark in my mind these days. not that i don't rate records, just only a particular few make me want to listen over and over and over.
i didn't listen to pj harvey cos it felt like that middle class indie thing but i heard a record on the radio recently and liked it a lot and it turned out it was pj harvey.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:18 (twelve years ago) link
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 21:54 (24 minutes ago) Permalink
Don't people feel slightly self-conscious resorting to such generic criticisms? Do we really need this in the 2010s?
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:21 (twelve years ago) link
cos it felt like that middle class indie thing
if you read the guardian you shouldn't be allowed to say these thing imo
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:22 (twelve years ago) link
thats not a snipe at ronan btw its at anyone who thinks along those lines
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:23 (twelve years ago) link
the middle classes make all kinds of music. would there be anything left if we refused to listen to 'middle class' music?
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:24 (twelve years ago) link
I suspect "indie" was the stronger pejorative term than "middle class" in ronan's commentl or at least they have to be read together. He's complained before about hearing the XX at dinner parties, and I suppose PJ Harvey falls into that category somewhat.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:27 (twelve years ago) link
xpost fair point, i just basically mean one of those artists the british media jizz about all the time in really cloying ways until you end up hating them, a darling, like for example, pulp.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:28 (twelve years ago) link
i thought the british media jizzed about everything?
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
^ disagree. seems to me that "middle class" is supposed to be the really damning accusation in garda's dismissal of PJH. indie is a value-neutral genre descriptor, after all. middle class doesn't have much function in the sentence beyond the pejorative. plus it's a familiar slam against anything that's supposedly too "easy" and "safe", a means by which people claim to exist outside and above ordinary others.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
indie is a value-neutral genre descriptor, after all.
For you.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:36 (twelve years ago) link
a lot of the talk about pj harvey is easy and safe. not her fault but it's true. liking her is easy and safe too. again, not her fault or even anything to do with her music, but true.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
i think dinner party music is the best description then
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
"indie is a value-neutral genre descriptor, after all."
well sure, i'm not a genre-bigot. but hey, different strokes. anyway, "indie" does describe PJH's sound and market reasonably well, whatever one might think of the genre overall. so it's at least reasonable to think that one might describe her music that way without intending any particularly pointed slam. the use of "middle class" in such dismissals, however, only ever intends to sneer down from a position of aesthetic & cultural superiority.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
liking her is easy and safe too
what on earth does this mean
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
man i'd love it if more middle class people listened to pj here! or people in general. i would have something to talk about with them.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:43 (twelve years ago) link
"middle class indie" isn't a term I'd use myself but I intuitively read it as referring to music that is so ubiquitously held up as a celebrated alternative to the status quo that it becomes a sort of status quo itself.
When I read music described as "middle class" (while trying to keep in mind that "middle class" means different things in the US, the UK and Australia) I usually read it as meaning that the music aspires (or is presented by the media as aspiring) toward a kind of niche-less universality, in the same sense that everyone believes themselves to be middle-class.
Dinner party music is a better term for this phenomenon in some ways but it has its own problems - it works for the XX obv but it's not like many people would actually play Let England Shake in the background of a dinner party.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:44 (twelve years ago) link
Don't people feel slightly self-conscious resorting to such generic criticisms?seriously, do we need the xth 80s retro wave, the recycling of the recycled? what new stuff does bejar bring to the table? additionally the album is as already mentioned upthread short of melodies. the interview from above where bejar talks about avalon also leaves me baffled. avalon had an aura, it had a spell but bejar's lushly instrumentated mix of too many not necessarily harmonising ingredients leaves me cold. the rich sound seems to hide a deep hollowness behind. and i also have the impression that some elements do not fit into the aural carpet. the saxophone - which i like most - often feels out of place, as if it was just a sample which has been assembled into the music. the cocktail smells fishy and probably gives a bad hangover after consumption. the only track i wholeheartedly love is "the laziest river" but apparently that is not even by him, it is by the keyboarder!
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:45 (twelve years ago) link
i don't think indie describes pj at all. she's awesome!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:45 (twelve years ago) link
the rich sound seems to hide a deep hollowness behind. and i also have the impression that some elements do not fit into the aural carpet. the saxophone - which i like most - often feels out of place, as if it was just a sample which has been assembled into the music. the cocktail smells fishy and probably gives a bad hangover after consumption.
this is a really good description of what i love about this album!
― judith, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:47 (twelve years ago) link
that she's massively popular and canonical and her quality is spammed at you heavily, no effort needed.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, February 7, 2012 2:37 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
oh come on. it's a rather harsh and disorienting album, at least relative to stuff like the XX and kaputt. grief-stricken, panicky, despairing. why on earth would we condescend to music that's "easy to like" in the first place? do we take vainglorious pride in a vision of ourselves as brave explorers venturing out into uncharted jungles of forbidding noise? do we laugh at the ants who can't comprehend our passions? do we smoke a pipe while listening to merzbow? wtf?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
there's probably donk/grindcore fans who have dinnerparties with blackout crew/napalm death on in the background.
in other-words ,i get the insult, its one i use myself, but anything could be dinner party music.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, February 7, 2012 2:48 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
what, you mean like beyonce?
seriously, do we need the xth 80s retro wave, the recycling of the recycled? what new stuff does bejar bring to the table?
You admitted it yourself: the vocals, the hollowness, the saxophones.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:49 (twelve years ago) link
the vocals? but they are not special at all. just irritating. not only that the guy cannot sing, he even does not have a voice.
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:54 (twelve years ago) link
ppl play PJ harvey at dinner parties?
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
I would totally play PJ Harvey at a dinner party
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:57 (twelve years ago) link
of course, I would also play GOD at a dinner party if my wife owuld let me, so
oh good, it's time to explain that the UK is different to different countries again
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:58 (twelve years ago) link
what does wife of djp actually play?
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:58 (twelve years ago) link
i'd much prefer pj playing at a dinner party than bejar.
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:59 (twelve years ago) link
okay, i get that, and there does often seem to be a sort of unearned snobbery built into mainstream indie culture, a tendency to take pride in a sense of superiority and difference that doesn't require any special ability or effort or entail any actual risk. but it's also a generic, nuance-free objection to a reductive caricature of that culture. hardly the sort of thing we should uncritically embrace.
When I read music described as "middle class" ... I usually read it as meaning that the music aspires (or is presented by the media as aspiring) toward a kind of niche-less universality, in the same sense that everyone believes themselves to be middle-class.
there's something very suspect about negatively describing music of "aspiring to niche-less universality", especially if one has any fondness for chart pop. for one thing, we can't so easy know artistic intent, and for another, all art has identity, even that which we're inclined to sneer at. furthermore, it's a huge mistake to damn art for the sins of the critical culture that responds to it.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 22:59 (twelve years ago) link
you're misinterpreting me but i'm not really massively annoyed about it.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
usually stuff in the vein of Toni Braxton
if I start getting into stuff weirder or more active than Massive Attack, I get frowns
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
the only music you can play at dinner parties is dave brubeck, you ppl are savages
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
btw I am certain my wife would despise Kaputt because of the singing
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:02 (twelve years ago) link
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, February 7, 2012 3:01 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah, sorry, i got carried away. it's partly that ilx's snobby, knee-jerk indie hate gets on my nerves, partly that i really like let england shake.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:08 (twelve years ago) link
btw fwiw i much prefer the john maus record to kaputt, was that ever discussed here?
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
Implying that dinner parties are at best a sedate affair at which boring couples play mellow music or at worse symptom of class prerogatives is some hackneyed shit, sorry.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:10 (twelve years ago) link
why are "dinner parties" hauled out whenever someone thinks an album's dull?
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:11 (twelve years ago) link
what kind of dinner parties do you guys attend?
i enforce a strict turtleneck-only dresscode hippie
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.minilps.net/images/stories/shop_image/product/15%20Beggars%20c.jpg
― Euler, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
not here, but in the albums results thread. i was hard on it there, as i initially felt like it was a big step down from love is real, but i've been listening to it over the last week and realizing i was rong to dismiss it so quickly & entirely. does make sense to compare it w kaputt.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
there's no room for dinner in my rock'n'roll lifestyle
― buzza, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:15 (twelve years ago) link
i only eat cocaine and pussy
― judith, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:17 (twelve years ago) link
turtlenecks are pretty cool, esp under a shirt.
i didn't bring up the dinner party thing btw, let the record show.
yeah i feel like the diff between john maus and destroyer is the diff between dance music and indie, or sonics v songs. i actually like plenty of more song-based stuff these days but the richness of the maus record is something i kept coming back to, prob the most expansive pop/dance stuff since sally shapiro imo, which i also still listen to a lot.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:18 (twelve years ago) link
Even if it's an affected imitation of Bowie or Tennant or whomever, his voice is rather distinctive!
― jaymc, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
kaputt reminded me of the magnetic fields a bit.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:20 (twelve years ago) link
i'm dropping non-sequiturs here but i am actually sober
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:21 (twelve years ago) link
i would totally play pj harvey at a dinner party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRxJr3DfLZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4d12wWBVX4
s0 safe s0 middle class
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:22 (twelve years ago) link
localgarda, let's trip balls, wear turtlenecks, and make gabber remixes of 4 Track Demos
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:23 (twelve years ago) link
localgarda likes this.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:24 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i feel like the diff between john maus and destroyer is the diff between dance music and indie, or sonics v songs. i actually like plenty of more song-based stuff these days but the richness of the maus record is something i kept coming back to...
that's funny, cuz i see maus and bejar as occupying a v similar place on the dance-vs-indie scale, both making atmospheric and rather ironic indie music that draws on aspects of 80s club pop. maus' stuff is a good deal more beat-driven tho.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:26 (twelve years ago) link
i didn't really get that dinner party music talk. surely destroyer's harmless, easy listening stuff must be the perfect background music for a standard dinner party, no? quite like sting was in the 80s but sting was better, he had tunes & some jazzy vibes.
x-pconcerning the vocals, his voice might be distinctive but it is a mumbling voice, it is introverted. he sings as if he would speak to himself. why should i listen to someone lost in a soliloquy?
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:28 (twelve years ago) link
whenever i read people talking about destroyer's yuppie 80s signifiers i'm like, man i WISH it sounded as good as that. far more fundamental problems though. boring arrangements that aren't a hundredth as good as the cocktail bar stuff you're talking about, all but non-existent songwriting, AWFUL AWFUL SINGING
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:28 (twelve years ago) link
my overall take on Kaputt was "music for people who like the idea of Pet Shop Boys but find them too aggressive"
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:29 (twelve years ago) link
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:29 (twelve years ago) link
zinnnnnggggggggg
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:30 (twelve years ago) link
his voice is rather distinctive!
one's man distinctive, another man's annoying. would like an instrumental version of this plz.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:30 (twelve years ago) link
i think maus sounds v italo influenced. but something like "hey moon" is v like destroyer i guess.
maus prob my favourite record of last year...
x-post did anyone actually use the phrase "dinner party music" in earnest about any music? i am unsure if they did.
putdowns like this are always shit, regardless of the artist involved. "it's like band x i like but WATERED DOWN", yeah or maybe it just isn't like band x you like.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:31 (twelve years ago) link
or "music for people who love Pet Shop Boys but think Al Stewart's `Time Passages' is a better idea than song."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:32 (twelve years ago) link
its cool that you typed those words into a box on the internet
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:34 (twelve years ago) link
and then hey there they are
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:35 (twelve years ago) link
i dont know what any of those things are but i get the basic rhythm of the thing
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:36 (twelve years ago) link
this thread
― ⚓ (gr8080), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:36 (twelve years ago) link
concerning the vocals, his voice might be distinctive but it is a mumbling voice, it is introverted. he sings as if he would speak to himself. why should i listen to someone lost in a soliloquy?
― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 3:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
some people seem to like more introverted and low-key singing styles. no big surprise. i often enjoy this approach myself, find it relaxing and "relatable", allows lots of room for conversational nuance, though it's not like i reject more extroverted singing.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
everyone has ideas and feelings, then they share them here
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
kaputt is just....man. phenomenally good.
― omar little, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
For the record, I walked away from Kaputt with an almost entirely neutral opinion; I didn't hate it but I didn't particularly like it either. The putdown is what you read into it; I am sure that for many an non-aggressive PSB is amazing, because a ton of people loved this album.
Furthermore, the sound palettes match a lot of the stuff PSB have been doing since Release, so it's only a shit comparison if you haven't been paying attention. Some bands do actually sound like other bands and it's not really a sin or a crime to point it out.
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
putdowns like this are always shit
is it even a putdown?
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
― omar little, Sunday, February 5, 2012 9:27 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― omar little, Sunday, February 5, 2012 4:12 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― omar little, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 11:59 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― omar little, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 1:37 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― ⚓ (gr8080), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
Yes, which presumably is why Ronan said words to the effect of: "I dismissed this as X but then i heard some of it and it sounded good!"
No attempt to define music by how it is treated culturally / in the media can constitute an exhaustive statement of its qualities (or quality). This should go without saying?
This is also why I caveated my reference to aspiration by reference to how the music is presented - in truth saying what "music aspires to" is very difficult to do with any accuracy, whereas saying how music is presented in the media is both easier and more indicative of the relationship between the music in question and social groups (as opposed to between the music and you).
But above all, you should keep in mind that not every attempt to describe the listening habits of our peers is an unconscionable attack on the music listened to.
It's possible to say that e.g. The XX is perfect and archetypal dinner party music for university educated indie listeners (and I know because I've been at these dinner parties) and still really like the music (in fact my fondest XX listening experience was at a beach bar in Nice where it was played on shuffle with Sade's Greatest Hits - what does that say?), and still really like dinner parties for that matter!
I more often put on lunch barbecues, but either way I geekily really enjoy the process of working out what music to play.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
But Dan its a sin!
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:39 (twelve years ago) link
― ⚓ (gr8080), Tuesday, February 7, 2012 11:39 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
genuine pity in my heart for u guys
mixed with a tinge of contempt of course
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:40 (twelve years ago) link
wow the shoe is on the other foot for once
― judith, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:41 (twelve years ago) link
omar killing it ITT
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
what shoe! what foot! this thread is hilarious.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
i still wanna know if tim f. digs any M83 stuff. he won't tell me. does a ronan dig any M83 stuff? who listens to it anyway?
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, February 7, 2012 3:29 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
cheap slam, but half fair. kaputt is p obviously a mood piece, album-oriented, not would-be chart pop in a PSB vein. aggression is hardly the point. and are we really reduced to ridiculing music for its perceived lack of aggression, like 80s alt people sneering at "safe" radio pop?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:43 (twelve years ago) link
the sales staff at b&b italia, two hungarian office cleaners, the middle classes (xp)
― BJ O (Lamp), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:43 (twelve years ago) link
I totally dig M83!
xp: contederizer dude, please keep up
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:43 (twelve years ago) link
for me dinner parties are almost always jazz then when everyone gets drunk it's house or disco.
x-post to scott, i only like those few older m83 remixes, where's that new yorker jpg when you need it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsC5Ecy5vio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR7gQV9vdTM
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:44 (twelve years ago) link
all the destroyer hate reminds me of the m people hatred. Destroyer = M People. Tasteful boring music that you could neither love or hate.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:45 (twelve years ago) link
i just love kaputt because it takes a lot of elements of dance music and pop music like synths and "out there" production techniques but it does it with songs that are so much more *intelligent* and well-crafted than what you hear in the top 40
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:46 (twelve years ago) link
i hate m people
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:46 (twelve years ago) link
actually tho the main thing i'm realising here after putting on that m83 remix is that superpitcher is way better than any of this music.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:47 (twelve years ago) link
this album is kinda like if you combined the best elements of the smiths with the best elements of katy b
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:47 (twelve years ago) link
so do i, ronan. But im just at the wind up now :)
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:47 (twelve years ago) link
yeah sure, i agree with you there. i'm objecting in a general sense to the tiresome, self-aggrandizing disdain so often directed at "indie" on ILX, itt and elsewhere.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:47 (twelve years ago) link
destroyer fucking wishes he could write a hook as strong as "moving on up" or "one night in heaven"
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:48 (twelve years ago) link
WHY would you feel the need to put anything to do with the smiths within a 10 mile radius of katy b, leave her alone ;_;
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:49 (twelve years ago) link
m people is to simply red as destroyer is to pj harvey
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:49 (twelve years ago) link
like a Destroyer song
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:49 (twelve years ago) link
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:50 (twelve years ago) link
the new m'shell ndegeocello album has some stuff that reminds me of kaputt, those are some of my favorite tracks on that album tbh, i wouldn't mind seeing a bejar/mshell collabo :)
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:51 (twelve years ago) link
The Destroyer album is like From The Choirgirl Hotel crossed with Aaliyah, only 10 times better than either.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:51 (twelve years ago) link
The reason it's better is that it's not manufactured or kooky, it's really intelligent and thoughtful.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:52 (twelve years ago) link
superpitcher, yeah. there's the dance thing again. its not even really a fair fight. any of those kompact dudes could make sweet 80's sounds and i wouldn't have to hear the destroyer dude singing and i would want to play it over and over again. so i guess that's really where i stand. there is just better/more enjoyable stuff out there. still would play an instrumental version of the destroyer album and probably dig it a bunch. might not play it over and over though.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:53 (twelve years ago) link
Abigail's Party has a lot to answer for.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:54 (twelve years ago) link
have you heard john maus, scott?
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
destroyer fucking wishes he could write a hook as strong as "moving on up" ― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend),
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend),
yeah Screamadelica is awesome!
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
hey, tim, what do you think of M83? (third time's a charm) okay, promise i won't ask again. he probably likes the early remixes too.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
xp: contederizer dude, please keep up]
pfft. i'm dancing as fast as i can...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
i can't believe primal scream covered m people :(
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
xxpost Sorry Scott missed your first reference to this.
I quite liked the album before the recent one. Haven't heard the recent one. Should I?
Of the earlier stuff I liked it but (predictably) preferred the remixes as well.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:57 (twelve years ago) link
okay lol at this.
no, i don't think so. i get him confused with deadmaus. i'll look him up.
x-post
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
oh boy
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
not sure what type of lol tho
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
at, not with
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:59 (twelve years ago) link
we are descending into a troll/counter-troll vortex and it is totally awesome
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 23:59 (twelve years ago) link
oh i just wondered, tim. i don't really listen to M83 much. just on youtube. i think some of it is interesting. and i like some of the old/new blends that the guy gets. i think he's often successful at it. but, like i said earlier, i think the french are really good at the 80's.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
Most tedious thing said by worthless VHS idiot JOHN MAUS in p4k interview
― buzza, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
i think the french are really good at the 80's.
sébastien tellier >>>>>>>>>>>>>> m83 who are pretty much just raw material for superpitcher to make great
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
i will say that i like this destroyer stuff more than any ariel pink i've heard. i've never heard any ariel pink that ever made me want to hear ariel pink again. some of it sounded really terrible to me. felt like the lex whenever he hears, uh, stuff the lex hates. the smiths or something.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
oh god even i like destroyer more than ariel pink, at least it doesn't suffer from that "recorded in a drainpipe" thing
fucking wish i could shove ariel pink and his ilk inside a drainpipe
the smiths are even more repellent than all these people
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
dear god, i entirely missed that john maus interview/thread :/
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
ariel punkd
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
hey scott i know you didnt ask me but i like M83 less and less w/ every album but that said i still like them a lot!
― ⚓ (gr8080), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:07 (twelve years ago) link
I can't get past Gonzalez's voice.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:11 (twelve years ago) link
That third album was very much "so much useless 80s ephemera" but in a very pure way that I thought I might grow to love if I put effort into it. I probably would have listened to it more but in honesty I find it hard to really devote myself to albums like that which I hear only after they're p4k-etc. feted, even if I like them; maybe it's some weird sense that these albums don't need my opinion </backdoor bragging>
I would like more stuff with that really gauzy atmosphere I suppose, like Bon Iver's "Beth/Rest" only not Bon Iver??? Also AMO1's "Freefall".
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
never really been able to get the hang of M-83. i liked a few songs off dead cities once upon a time, especially "run into flowers", but the album bored me, overall. subsequent flirtation with anthemic 80s pop left me cold, though the sounds were often beautiful.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:13 (twelve years ago) link
not that anyone asked...
how can anyone not like 'kim and jessie'
― iatee, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:18 (twelve years ago) link
its woozy small hours music, too much coke, walled into yourself. i want you to love me, you send me a coffin of roses. i guess avalon is a fair reference, but it misses something. its music influence by avalon in the same way that life sometimes feel like its being refracted through movies. it feels cinematic inasmuch as sometimes it feels like you get lost in being somebody else in the dark. bringing a cigarette to your lips, watching the smoke billow up through the lights in the club. this is it though, the glassy surfaces. everything is an image. how hard it is to feel things sometimes. its not empty though, its just half numb, playing itself playing at someone else.
i think this is a pretty strange album though. it doesn't help to just tell people that it sounds like steely dan, or late pet shop boys or al steward whatever. you think we're idiots? we've heard year of the cat. the album works differently, yeah its heavily influenced by those artists, but it seems really obvious that it wants to use them in a different way than to try and emulate them, or make an album in that tradition. there's a sense in which some music is "about" loving other music, or maybe not even loving other music but about the experience of other music. and so the way the appropriation of that language is functioning seems entirely different to how people want to characterise it here. that is, the comparative criticisms sort of miss the point entirely. yeah things are off, the guy has this wobbly croak of a voice, everything sounds glassily self contained, obsessively neat but weirdly off. a strange lens, the perspective doesn't work. something. but its not a failure at emulating Hats or Gaucho. it directly recalls those records, as records. as sound worlds that can be only re-accessed in this artificial way. a set of surfaces, images, movie scenes.
― judith, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:25 (twelve years ago) link
nabisco OTM
oops
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
wow plax! i am going to listen to this album now.
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:30 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, that passes Scott's quality material test.
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
then again, though that's a good deal of what kaputt is doing (reflecting the surfaces of ostensibly superficial things as means of addressing & communicating alienation), it's hard to square this reading with lyrical thrust of "suicide demo for kara walker".
re: judith
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
mr. editor, "the lyrical thrust", iyp.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
suicide demo for kara walker is the result of a weird experiment w/ kara walker where she wrote the lyrics
― judith, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
This is really spot on.
It's not so much that Bejar could never write "More Than This", it's more that he could never write a song from the perspective of the singer of "More Than This", only from the perspective of someone sitting in the audience watching Ferry sing it and wishing for a moment that that could be him, and at the same time knowing it's an impossibility.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:35 (twelve years ago) link
destroyer simply sounds magnificent, full stop. i could compare and argue all day long but i think i'll just chill with my eight month old and spin the 'kaputt' vinyl....just...one more time today.
just one more time.
― omar little, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
or someone whose sensibility isn't very close to Ferry's but sympathizes with his yearning.
xpost
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah that's a really good way to put it.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:38 (twelve years ago) link
looool omar
― ⚓ (gr8080), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:39 (twelve years ago) link
Bejar isn't interested in direct expression; his singing voice, by nature and design, isn't designed for it. Like a lot of songwriters he's stumbled into a host of deflectionary techniques.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:42 (twelve years ago) link
Ferry's rather different. Even during high Roxy he always convinced me that he cared, which is a little different than convincing me that he wanted to care.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:43 (twelve years ago) link
there you go then. w/e the source, though, those lyrics don't square with the overall themes you describe. placing it as the album's centerpiece and ending with two tracks that suggest a wrestling with america and history does give kaputt a strange spin overall. bejar invites attempts to read the whole as having concerns in common let england shake, but doesn't seem to deliver on that score. don't intend that as a slam.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
Strange that Destroyer's cover of "Leave Me Alone" is a misfire -- the sentiment is so Bejar-esque but something about the straightforwardness of the lyric and chords unsettles him enough to produce a tentative performance.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
the score bejar delivers on is smooth epic sounds to which i can vibe
― omar little, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
"Smooth epic sounds to which I can vibe/Melody Maker, Smash Hits, all sounds like a dream to meeee..."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:03 (twelve years ago) link
guys i'm listening to the new frankie rose and it kind of sounds like both of these albums put together
― ⚓ (gr8080), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:04 (twelve years ago) link
clear contender for ilm's 2012 album of the year
maybe the new order cover is bad because he could only reflect a good song through his prism of hesitant yearning and his wistful worship of more talented songwriters.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:06 (twelve years ago) link
hahaha, just kidding.
and as much as i love new order - and boy did i ever love new order - i'm not gonna make a huge case for their rhyme schemes or vocal prowess.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:07 (twelve years ago) link
what is is with 30+ ilxors and New Order
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:08 (twelve years ago) link
what is it with 30+ people and the printing press
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:09 (twelve years ago) link
well, you know, joy division/new order. i was a child of the 80's. they kept me going. JD probably still my 2nd fave band of all time.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:10 (twelve years ago) link
and yr fave?
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:11 (twelve years ago) link
bananarama!
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
classic algerian goalkeeper
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:14 (twelve years ago) link
Bananarama recorded some fantastic singles!
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:15 (twelve years ago) link
i own 30 bananarama singles and lps on vinyl. at least. but no, first would be black sabbath. then joy division. then felt. then whatever.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:16 (twelve years ago) link
LOL
― nerve_pylon, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:17 (twelve years ago) link
actually, FB3/Bananarama would be near the top for me too. bow wow wow as well. all top twenty in my book.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:18 (twelve years ago) link
you even like S/A/W era Bananarama? That's when I went off them.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:21 (twelve years ago) link
"I Heard a Rumour" is fantastic.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:24 (twelve years ago) link
would like to say the things judith has said in this thread are super great
― Whiney vs. (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:31 (twelve years ago) link
what abt wang chung
― ⚓ (gr8080), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:33 (twelve years ago) link
Re. Al Stewart + Neil Tennant equation, am listening to "On the Border" right now and wondering if Neil Tennant did not have a little Al Stewart in him anyway?
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:44 (twelve years ago) link
"wondering if Neil Tennant did not have a little Al Stewart in him anyway?"
those are just rumors.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:53 (twelve years ago) link
Year of the Cat has Spanish guitar instead of saxophone.
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:56 (twelve years ago) link
Oh wait, there's sax too!
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 01:57 (twelve years ago) link
Co-written by Peter Wood, "Year of the Cat" is a narrative song written in the second person whose protagonist is a tourist in an exotic market where a mysterious silk-clad woman appears to carry him away for a gauzy romantic adventure.
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 02:14 (twelve years ago) link
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 02:19 (twelve years ago) link
"These days," she says, "I feel modern life just like a river runnin' thru
― timellison, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 02:43 (twelve years ago) link
I listened to "Time Passages" ten minutes ago!
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 02:45 (twelve years ago) link
more like gayzy romantic adventure.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 03:06 (twelve years ago) link
Hey guys, both these albums are alright, but we should really be having a 500 post argument about whether On a Mission or 4 is better instead.
― lag∞n affiliated (The Reverend), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 03:14 (twelve years ago) link
that's easy
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 03:15 (twelve years ago) link
"Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME... all sounds like a dream to me..." is like some weird inversion of what Kevin Rowland's doing on Too-Rye-Ay; Rowland's literally singing about being in the band, on stage performing or writing / jamming / creating the song, exhorting the musicians to find something pure, etc etc, and Bejar's fantasising, watching bands (in his imagination, based on the music press), wondering what it's like. Perhaps.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:09 (twelve years ago) link
That's an interesting comparison - Bejar to Neil Tennant / Kevin Rowland to Geno Washington
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:13 (twelve years ago) link
Bejar's also writing very much from the perspective of someone who is NOT a famous successful mega rich musician; he's not chasing cocaine in the back rooms of the world, nor, I suspect, has he ever - he's a low level indie musician who's been plugging away for 15 years on idiosyncratic records which are acclaimed but which have never crossed over. Whereas Rowland actually was as successful as the people he idolised, if not even more successful in some ways.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:27 (twelve years ago) link
new pornographers have crossed over, no? they play them on all those npr-ish radio stations. sales-wise, they aren't nearly as big, but they seem to have an audience beyond indie-rock.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:29 (twelve years ago) link
"Whereas Rowland actually was as successful as the people he idolised"
one-hit wonder in the states. but remembered fondly for that one hit. NOBODY here knows the name of the singer from dexy's.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:30 (twelve years ago) link
i've certainly never seen a low level indie musician chasing cocaine
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:30 (twelve years ago) link
yeah even in the UK Kevin is idolised more than genuinely massive
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:31 (twelve years ago) link
OK, maybe Rowland's not famous as an individual, but Eileen and Geno were MASSIVE hits, both #1 in the UK, and Eileen #1 in the US too; Dexys sold a LOT of records. I'd wager as many as Geno Washington and then some.
And yes, low-level indie musicians can be found chasing cocaine, of course, but I get the sense that Bejar's more writing about the kind of people who fly to gigs on learjets than half a squiff in the toilets of Camden Electric Ballroom.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:38 (twelve years ago) link
xxpost But then he was idolising all these Northern Soul artists who probably didn't make a huge mark in the US and only had a narrow cult following in the UK. Not that that's important.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:43 (twelve years ago) link
"Together is the fifth studio album by Canadian indie rock band The New Pornographers. It was released on May 4, 2010[1] and debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200."
that's pretty good! not arcade fire good, probably, but good.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:44 (twelve years ago) link
even i bought the 45 of come on eileen. that's how huge it was.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:46 (twelve years ago) link
They played "Come On Eileen" at my teen dance club on "progressive night" and all the skinheads would do their weird little dance in a circle.
― Laura Lucy Lynn (La Lechera), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:47 (twelve years ago) link
definitely heard it a bunch on college radio at the time before it got huge. like madonna.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:48 (twelve years ago) link
Did the Pet Shop Boys live glamorous playboy lifestyles or just fantasize about this? I seem to imagine them as pretty dour people who always carry a macintosh, but I think I remember Tennant saying in an interview that a lot of his music was inspired by a wish to live the Studio 54 lifestyle but never having the chance to. So this is an imaginary culture being sold back and forth across the Atlantic from decade to decade.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:51 (twelve years ago) link
Tennant and Lowe said about twenty years ago that the stereotypes are "largely true." Tennant's apt to stay in with a glass of wine and a Shostakovich CD while Lowe clubs a few nights a week. They're older now though.
Tennant is really a folkie in a not-so-good disguise.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 14:59 (twelve years ago) link
Bejar's not idolising Tennant. He's idolising Ferry, and Screamadelica. These are who he's name checking. We need Mark S to bring the "sounds like" vs "influence" slapdown.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
dour people who always carry a macintosh
Usually dour people I see are carrying Dell laptops.
― Gonjasufjanstephen O'Malley (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 20:41 (twelve years ago) link
lowe - "i'm a mac"tennant - "i'm a pc"
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 20:50 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think I can answer this poll because my favorite song literally changes with every listen.
― Gonjasufjanstephen O'Malley (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 20:52 (twelve years ago) link
Oops. I thought this was the other Kaputt one.
from deep sea skiving to screamadelica. oh england...so much to answer for.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 21:08 (twelve years ago) link
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:35 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and new order. are we really content saying that bejar is "idolizing" these artists and sounds, though? i get the impression that he's using 80s signifiers as a shorthand for the "cinematic" superficiality that ultimately alienates the narrator. this interpretation seems to follow from what judith described earlier: emptiness and longing reflecting emptiness and longing.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 21:18 (twelve years ago) link
i get the impression that he's using 80s signifiers as a shorthand for the "cinematic" superficiality that ultimately alienates the narrator. this interpretation seems to follow from what judith described earlier: emptiness and longing reflecting emptiness and longing.
"superficiality that ultimately alienates the narrator" is accurate yet too negative a spin on the vibe at work, I think.
I feel it's more akin to, if you're single or you've just broken up or whatevs, romantic films with happy endings making you as sad those with unhappy endings (lol this makes me think of Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me").
It's not the "emptiness" of the desire that gets the narrator down so much as the impossibility of bringing it to life.
I know there have been times in my life when I've listened to, say, Hats, and I've felt that way, the impossible swell of emotions didn't same fake but it seemed sharply otherworldly, a plenitude in the music that threw into relief a lack in life.
So in a way Kaputt is like listening to someone listening to Hats.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 21:57 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, that's how i'd read it, too. i don't think that's at odds with the idea that the 80s are being used to shorthand superficiality, the conjuration of heightened worlds that can be seen but not inhabited and the alienation that arises from the discontinuity.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, I agree with that. I don't mean idolising in the way a teenager would. It's a tool in many ways. I don't doubt he loves Avalon though.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:09 (twelve years ago) link
He adores this sound palette. He loves it. There's no irony or machination there. But he knows how to use it, too, what it signifies.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:11 (twelve years ago) link
So in a way Kaputt is like listening to someone listening to Hats.do you mean that literally? in the sense that bejar makes music after having listened to and being influenced by hats? hats by the way is probably the one album in the ilm canon which i never "got" at all. there too the singer's voice is very hard to swallow. and the slow & lush music seems even more shallow. kaputt is much easier to digest than hats. just the idea of having to listen to hats drives me nuts.
― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:11 (twelve years ago) link
"So in a way Kaputt is like listening to someone listening to Hats."
oh my god you are demented. but in a good way. its a cool thought.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:19 (twelve years ago) link
i used to embarrass myself a bit listening to that first blue nile album alone in my room as a kid. i had been taught to keep those emotions in check. i wasn't used to hearing declarations of love that were that loud. and naked. i never really learned how to be completely naked. but i appreciated others who were bold in that way.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:21 (twelve years ago) link
i never listened to the lyrics of blue nile. the maudlin voice was like a wall in between the words and my ear. are they really that confessional? usually i love songwriters who seem to be totally open in their songers. like neil young or joni mitchell for example.
― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
songs
― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
Buchanan is a very stark, emotional lyricist, aye.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
do you mean
So in a way listening to Kaputt is like listening to someone listening to Hats.
because otherwise - maybe i am splitting hairs here - you are comparing a work, an artefact with an activity. there is a logical fallacy looming there.
― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
Listening to Destroyer is like knitting a hat
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Wednesday, 8 February 2012 23:12 (twelve years ago) link
kaputt is a hat listening to a hathaving fun with destroyer...
― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
yes. of course. And I don't mean it literally sounds like that, I was talking about what I perceive to be the album's general emotional content and narrative thrust.
― Tim F, Wednesday, 8 February 2012 23:54 (twelve years ago) link
i mean, keep up
― judith, Thursday, 9 February 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
fuck listening to a hat!
/obvious joke
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:00 (twelve years ago) link
everyone on this thread is wrong
― junior dada (thomp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:03 (twelve years ago) link
even if that means i'm saying mutually exclusive positions with no middle ground are both wrong. they are both wrong. go away. you're wrong.
― junior dada (thomp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:04 (twelve years ago) link
there's an album called hats?!?!
fuck all of you who like it
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:13 (twelve years ago) link
wait what is your job again?
― judith, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:14 (twelve years ago) link
nothing to do with hats
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:15 (twelve years ago) link
it's an album by The Blue Nile, lex. superior chill '80s sounds.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:16 (twelve years ago) link
i know what my favoured chill sounds are and they're not what destroyer fans recommend smh
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:17 (twelve years ago) link
vibe with me, brother (may i call u brother?)
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:18 (twelve years ago) link
(i've vaguely intended to get into the blue nile for about a decade now but this episode may have killed that faint intention completely)
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:18 (twelve years ago) link
would u ask mariah if u could call her brother?!?!
you are definitely not mariah.
― judith, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:19 (twelve years ago) link
can we all agree that 'let england shake' is considerably more of an indie rock album than 'kaputt'? it's strange that lex is spending so much energy defending indie rock.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:20 (twelve years ago) link
oh lex you sure are incorrigible, arent you
― ⚓ (gr8080), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:24 (twelve years ago) link
I think Let England Shake is more in the tradition of major label outsiders than indie rock.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:35 (twelve years ago) link
pj harvey is obviously not indie rock enough for you p4k disciples
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:39 (twelve years ago) link
way more rock than kaputt and made a *concept album* about..."war, man"
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:40 (twelve years ago) link
in England anything that sells less than 1 mil or spends fewer than 20 weeks in the chart counts as indie iirc
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:42 (twelve years ago) link
way more rock than kaputt
what ISN'T more rock than that mimsy weakling nonsense
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:45 (twelve years ago) link
cool, lex is going to tell us what rocks
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:48 (twelve years ago) link
so you're saying that rockin is a good attribute
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:48 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not even sure it's more rock. Because the electric guitar is more prominent? If Destroyer is not soft-ROCK, than what is it?
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:48 (twelve years ago) link
lex i think once you let go of the notion of "rock" = the pinnacle of music you can experience kaputt in the proper context (a context that oft involves, ime, a girl by your side and a full pitcher of sangria though ymmv)
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:49 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd2uCg25Gks
― ⚓ (gr8080), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:50 (twelve years ago) link
the m83 superpitcher remix is really awesome and id like to thank this thread for reminding me of it
― BJ O (Lamp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:52 (twelve years ago) link
so: thanks
oh yeah that is totally a gr8 remix
― ⚓ (gr8080), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:55 (twelve years ago) link
ive been listening to 'kaputt' a fair bit this week trying to hear in it the virtues that plax and gr80 hear and i guess i still prefer bejar when he was making altars out of halter tops than after his rebirth as a ladies man even while i vibe the red silk flourishes that adorn 'chinatown' or the meadows and memories through which 'the laziest river' meander i almost wish the songs were cleaner, softer, easier to please. idk ive never really listened to the stuff hes referencing here except in the vaguest way or like jennifer warnes 'famous blue raincoat' and i can here that albums sax and longing in this but its way more subtle, i guess?
― BJ O (Lamp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:00 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think you'd like The Blue Nile anyway lex.
They don't sound at all like indie or destroyer (that wasn't the purpose of my reference), but even so my sense is that you're not into any balearic vibes that actually come from an 80s pop-rock place (as opposed to being, like, disco with spanish guitars).
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:02 (twelve years ago) link
Is he a Ladies Man on this record? He's closer to embodying Death of a Ladies Man.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:03 (twelve years ago) link
My intuition is that there's far less self-conscious "signifying" happening on this record that some folks are reading into it. It makes sense that Bejar was deep into Avalon when we was writing these songs, but his voice feels assuredly and self-consciously his own. Just because he doesn't sound like Ferry or feel like he's coming from the same place in his delivery doesn't mean he's wrily resigning himself to non-Ferry-ness. That's why this, Tim, despite it being a lovely and provocative mise en scene, doesn't ring true for me:
<i>It's not so much that Bejar could never write "More Than This", it's more that he could never write a song from the perspective of the singer of "More Than This", only from the perspective of someone sitting in the audience watching Ferry sing it and wishing for a moment that that could be him, and at the same time knowing it's an impossibility.</i>
The first part is true--he could never write a song from that singer's persepective (his voice is just not that kind of voice, and he's just not that sort of lyricist)--but why does the second part follow? I think there's a certain distanced quality to Bejar's vocals across all of his stuff--certainly his New Pornographers songs--which makes me feel like that's just the way he sings rather than some sort of purposeful distancing from what he's drawing inspiration from.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:26 (twelve years ago) link
that's a weird claim too given how completely constructed a persona Ferry's is. anybody could write "More Than This," in a sense; it's not an act of self-expression except at great remove
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:30 (twelve years ago) link
I'd argue that the part of Ferry that's being expressed in what we often perceive as a "constructed" or "removed" way is just as real and crucial to his persona as, like, whatever he's like at home.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:38 (twelve years ago) link
mmm - there's an argument to be made there but it's pretty theoretical. the point is whether one buys Bejar doing it or not isn't really down to "who" either of them are but how one aligns with musical/social cues - more on the listener than on the artist
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:40 (twelve years ago) link
Sure, yes. And I'd argue (and Tim said something like this upthread: "I think that typically we can overstate the importance of retro sonic signifiers in respect of stuff that sounds a bit like 1982-1987, certainly as compared to stuff that sounds like 1977-1981, or 1966-1968, or etc.") we as listeners have a more difficult time wrapping our heads around an artist borrowing from this once (and, for many, still) beyond-the-pale era with a straight face than we do with an artist borrowing from postpunk, etc. We're seemingly still at a stage as critical listeners where we insist that a saxophone signifies with more intentionality than, say, a guitar.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:57 (twelve years ago) link
Speaking of which, that Boys of Summer guitar on The Laziest River is way more blatant a pastiche than any of the saxophone playing--which is really not very straightforward or slick or formulaic at all.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 05:59 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think it's so much that the saxophone signifies more than something else. It's just that its presence is notable in part because they're fairly big, fairly expensive instruments, take a lot of chops to play well, and not many people play them. So it's inclusion on the record or on the M83 record is a fairly notable example of someone going the extra mile.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 06:12 (twelve years ago) link
I mean, it's obviously not that unusual for someone playing some different kind of instrument to appear on a record. But I think it's notable when something like this happens - a saxophone player appearing for (to whatever degree it's so) postmodern purpose.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 06:25 (twelve years ago) link
Is there also a chance that we're perhaps overemphasizing Bejar's auteuristic imprint on the record? I mean, did he write out all of the saxophone and piano parts explicitly, or was there a lot of improvisation / collective writing involved with the other instrumentalists? I think the more we can potentially view Kaputt as a more thoroughly creatively collaborative effort, the less we can straight-facedly view it as some sort of pastiche/commentary/"record about records"...
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 06:35 (twelve years ago) link
He doesn't play or compose like Nick Cave. He gets his band in (often separately) to jam around his songs, I gather.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, 9 February 2012 07:18 (twelve years ago) link
i feel very sorry for people who describe destroyer as the pinnacle of bliss or good vibes or whatever. you have never known true bliss ;_;
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 08:30 (twelve years ago) link
if i had a boy by my side and a pitcher of sangria i wouldn't want to spoil that context with sodding destroyer, i'd be listening to some actual balearic dance music. always go for the best!
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 08:31 (twelve years ago) link
If I have a boy by my side and some alcohol (sangria or otherwise) I tend to go for something far sleazier than any stripe of balearic.
Let's have our priorities straight.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 08:55 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is nuts
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 09:12 (twelve years ago) link
We're seemingly still at a stage as critical listeners where we insist that a saxophone signifies with more intentionality than, say, a guitar.
...Speaking of which, that Boys of Summer guitar on The Laziest River is way more blatant a pastiche than any of the saxophone playing--which is really not very straightforward or slick or formulaic at all.
...Is there also a chance that we're perhaps overemphasizing Bejar's auteuristic imprint on the record? ... I think the more we can potentially view Kaputt as a more thoroughly creatively collaborative effort, the less we can straight-facedly view it as some sort of pastiche/commentary/"record about records"...
― Clarke B., Wednesday, February 8, 2012 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
it's not just the presence of "smooth sax" that causes us to view the album as deliberately evoking the 80s, as you point out in noting the guitars. the album is littered with such sonic reminders, and the lyrics draw the exact same connections even more explicitly. regardless of how we attribute authorship here, the idea that it's a deliberate pastiche is hard to avoid.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 09:20 (twelve years ago) link
The term "pastiche" doesn't sit right with me in this context. I know it simply means imitation of prior artworks but it always implies hodge-podge to me, which i don't think applies in this case.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 09:29 (twelve years ago) link
okay, perhaps there's a connotative diss there i don't intend. appropriation?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 09:43 (twelve years ago) link
There's no doubt in my mind that he'll hate it, but I am starting to doubt that lex has actually heard Kaputt at all yet.
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Thursday, 9 February 2012 11:35 (twelve years ago) link
There are two definitions of pastiche, which tend to overlap, IME:
1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also : such stylistic imitation2a : a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works : potpourrib : hodgepodge
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 15:24 (twelve years ago) link
the talk about M83 remixes reminded me of thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYFxMUQZ2LE
― Number None, Thursday, 9 February 2012 16:59 (twelve years ago) link
This album has about as much to do with Balearic as Omar-S has to do with Harold Faltermeyer.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:00 (twelve years ago) link
I also don't think of this record as pastiche, neither in its imitating sense nor its hodge-podge sense. Contrast it with something like Interpol's first record, which basically sounds like them taking a stab at Chameleons-style slightly gothy postpunk. (Forgive my dated analogy; that's just the first time in my life I heard a band and sensed immediately just how derivative they were, and so it's always been a reference point for the idea of pastiche for me.) 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, 9 February 2012 17:08 (twelve years ago) link
did you ever read my groundbreaking pastiche review of the first interpol album? it was groundbereaking.
― scott seward, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:15 (twelve years ago) link
I think I've only read the Ned Raggett re-edit.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:18 (twelve years ago) link
Clarke, if you remove Steely Dan from your equation and replace it with Al Stewart, I'm not sure this ends up being less derivative than Interpol. Maybe I'm wrong.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:23 (twelve years ago) link
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.)
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:30 (twelve years ago) link
I've never knowingly heard Al Stewart! I'll remedy that.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:33 (twelve years ago) link
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
― post, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:37 (twelve years ago) link
I've been humming "Time Passages" for days.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:38 (twelve years ago) link
oh, the sax i guess?
The sax is ok! definitely the best part anyway
― post, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:39 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― etc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:41 (twelve years ago) link
too much talk about destroyer on this thread too little about pj harvey
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:42 (twelve years ago) link
I still don't have a clear picture of what people actually mean when they use "balearic"
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:42 (twelve years ago) link
don't worry, nobody else does either
― Number None, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:44 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CljGFQ8xi6U
― scott seward, Thursday, 9 February 2012 17:46 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:11 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
everyone is trolling Lex
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
war, man, warrr
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
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...
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:17 (twelve years ago) link
^ art shouldn't address these things?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
no it prob should it's just the way she does is so hamfisted and lol
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
guys I listened to "England' while taking a shower today – so gorgeous.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:19 (twelve years ago) link
did you learn something about violence and war
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:20 (twelve years ago) link
so hamfisted and lol
Meaning naive, shallow? What is the meat of the criticism?
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:22 (twelve years ago) link
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 spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:24 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:24 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Thursday, February 9, 2012
that's what ILE is for
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:25 (twelve years ago) link
it's one-dimensional, full of cliches and self-important. but like I said, some catchy songs.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:26 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link
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, 9 February 2012 18:28 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:32 (twelve years ago) link
Don't think the Destroyer is cliched at all - don't think its good either though
― post, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:34 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:35 (twelve years ago) link
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
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:36 (twelve years ago) link
― 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'.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:37 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:38 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
What do you mean by songwriting, Lex? Lyrics? Compositional structures?
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
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".
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
lol you think destroyer has dimensions
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
well you can remove the lols if you want?
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
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
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
lol, so the fact that the album has a theme makes it 1-dimensional? way to engage yr brain there
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
dimensions of beauty and, frankly, ethereal transcendence.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:42 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:42 (twelve years ago) link
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
― ciderpress, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:42 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:43 (twelve years ago) link
meh another big surprise: iatee's smugness serves as a tough protective covering for his rongness
― flog this poster for moderation (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:43 (twelve years ago) link
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!
― scott seward, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:44 (twelve years ago) link
she has such incredible command over her voice - the changes from album to album are pretty astonishing
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:45 (twelve years ago) link
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
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:47 (twelve years ago) link
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
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:49 (twelve years ago) link
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
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:49 (twelve years ago) link
... you can't really call it a "hook" at that point, can you?
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:50 (twelve years ago) link
iatee are you just trolling lex or do i have to destroy you >:[
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:50 (twelve years ago) link
i mean i think you can.. it's just a bit more temporally shifted
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:50 (twelve years ago) link
better to leave single hooks dangling everywhere than a group of identical hooks in one place, it is much better to snare the discriminating listener.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:51 (twelve years ago) link
^__^
destroy him anyway xp
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:51 (twelve years ago) link
my working definition of a 'hook' is that catchy part of a song that i just cant help but sing out loud
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:52 (twelve years ago) link
― scott seward, Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:44 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
white chalk is fucking terrifying and, i think, a little better than LES. but LES is no slouch.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:52 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think you can only enjoy one of these records, lex and iatee are not actually symbolic of some deep truth.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:53 (twelve years ago) link
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.
i don't really care about the 80s signifiers/sound/whatever of kaputt, it's totally about the songwriting for me (though the sound and signifiers are totally part of the songwriting). diamonddave is correct, the songs are very loose in structure and feel but there are little bits that grab you and those become the hooks/choruses. plus i love his lyrics, and i don't really get people who complain about his singing - do you guys not listen to any music with "difficult" (ie nontraditional) vocals?
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:53 (twelve years ago) link
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, February 9, 2012 12:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
sure you can! why not?
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:54 (twelve years ago) link
white chalk kind of reminds me of stina nordenstam - the way she sounds so comfortable, so at home, in this terrifying and mad place
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:54 (twelve years ago) link
1-dimensional album. young people in england. war. death. oh man. heavy. heavyyyyy.
it also addresses age, memory, music, history, language and a bunch of other things. all you're doing is childishly snarking at seriousness of artistic purpose. asinine, imo.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:54 (twelve years ago) link
i don't really get people who complain about his singing - do you guys not listen to any music with "difficult" (ie nontraditional) vocals?
pj harvey!
his voice is antithetical to good vibes for me
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:55 (twelve years ago) link
the songs are very loose in structure and feel but there are little bits that grab you and those become the hooks/choruses
this reminds me of what tori amos did on boys for pele
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:56 (twelve years ago) link
mostly trolling lex, I don't hate pj harvey but I think it's funny that lex can be so vocal about something that's ultimately a concept rock album
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:57 (twelve years ago) link
I am thinking of how "hook" and "chorus" are used interchangeably in pop/rock/hip-hop/r&b
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:57 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah as I said upthread Kaputt is like tori x aaliyah
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:58 (twelve years ago) link
Ha lex was so fun to work up abt this, but now iatee has me switching sides, pj has always been amazing
Truth is, these are both really good albums and I bet a lot of the same audience like them both, only on bizarre old ilm where we constantly have to triangulate where stuff falls on the rockist/popist spectrum and remain vigilant against indie cooties would these two albums even be presented as adversaries
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:58 (twelve years ago) link
kmt tim you are too obvious in your trolling
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 18:59 (twelve years ago) link
And here i thought I was being subtle.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, February 9, 2012 10:47 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
don't really get this, and it's what keeps me at some distance from destroyer (and why i was sort of cool on john maus' pitiless censors, mentioned upthread): for me, the songs just aren't there. the vibe is certainly pleasant, but nothing really moves me or stays with me. this makes it hard to really respect bejar as a songwriter. it's not like there aren't a few hooks there, but not enough to really work as pop, and the arrangements/song structures aren't interesting enough to make up for the lack. perhaps this only demonstrates my shallowness as a listener, but if so then so.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:49 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah i'm good w/all that. i was thinking more about directness of language. i was sort of responding to iatee's summary of the lyrical content and in a way he is right because lyrically she just kind of lays it all out there! it's very old-fashioned in that way. but that allows her to do lots of other, weirder things.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:06 (twelve years ago) link
Though the big thing I well remember from this poll is lex liking tom waits! which was awesome and strange to me
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:07 (twelve years ago) link
I think it's funny that lex can be so vocal about something that's ultimately a concept rock album
eh, lex dug the swans last year, tom waits this year, your "darker" trad singer/songwriters like laura marling and nina nastasia. PJ harvey slots right in w that stuff.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:08 (twelve years ago) link
it's ok to just say you don't like something or that it's just not for you without having to come up with some grand reason why it's a failure of an album or what's deficient about it. sometimes certain albums just don't click for certain people. i listened to LES and it didn't grab me but i respect PJH and i'm sure it's a good, worthwhile album.
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:09 (twelve years ago) link
pj harvey was one of my big three teenage acts! i thought this was widely known
LES was prob the album i most enjoyed writing about last year
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:10 (twelve years ago) link
Congratulations otm - the first part (I like let England shake)
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:11 (twelve years ago) link
did you write about white chalk, lex? did anyone? i am finally hearing it and i need to read something good about it!
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:12 (twelve years ago) link
ha i reviewed white chalk at the time - only a capsule review though, weird to think PJH didn't merit a lead review back then - her canonical status has been very entrenched with LES but it's pretty overstated re: pre-LES, she's always been kind of on the fringe, lots of people dismissing her as some weird mad woman.
um here it is. v weird to read stuff you wrote 5 years ago http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/sep/21/popandrock.shopping2
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:15 (twelve years ago) link
tim i haven't seen you write about LES much anywhere
fwiw my LES review is at http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/let-england-shake-by-pj-harvey#full
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:16 (twelve years ago) link
it was w/delight that i saw pj harvey open for U2 and weird out the (unfortunately overwhelmingly) musically conservative U2 fanbase. i love pj harvey. LES was certainly one of the top albums of 2011.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:16 (twelve years ago) link
Man, White Chalk is probably my least favorite PJH album. But I can also imagine coming around to it at some point -- I haven't listened to it since it came out, probably. (Except for "When Under Ether," which I put on my best-of-'07 mix.)
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:17 (twelve years ago) link
― omar little, Thursday, February 9, 2012 2:16 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i saw this tour, too, Omar! omg she KILLED. also she is so beautiful and tiny this is apropos of nothing but i just love her.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:18 (twelve years ago) link
p.j. harvey weirding people out (see: jay leno) is one of my absolute favorite things to witness
white chalk is awesome
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:19 (twelve years ago) link
I actually didn't realize that Let England Shake was so ~widely~ lauded. Maybe b/c it got negative reviews from a couple of local critics. But honestly, until the EOY lists came rolling in, I thought its reputation was more mixed, an ambitious album that doesn't always succeed.
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i was just gonna mention that leno performance!
i've only seen PJH live four times but she was amazing each time - i keep ending up seeing her in "event" venues (first ever rock gig at the tate modern during the stories era - her worst album but she killed it live; at the troxy to kick off the LES tour, and at the royal albert hall to conclude it)
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
i saw her on the uh huh her tour, and that's probably the album of hers that means the least to me, but she decided to play all the loudest songs in her catalogue and it was delightful.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:22 (twelve years ago) link
I haven't felt anything I might say about it would be better or more interesting than what others have already said. I try (mostly unsuccessfully) to watch out for those situations.
Destroyer is a case where lots of people say rong things, so it motivates me to say more than I normally would about such a p4k feted album. Whereas if a critic likes Let England Shake they're usually in the ballpark of capturing why it's such a compelling album and then the key variable is how good a writer they are, with nuance vs grandstanding being a vector. If it needs more work from a critical perspective it's probably in lyrical analysis but as I normally let it wash over me I'm certainly not the person for it.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:25 (twelve years ago) link
PJ Harvey : weird :: Salvador Dali : trippy
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:25 (twelve years ago) link
i think pj was the last time U2 had someone 'challenging' open for them. they had a good run of those for awhile (public enemy, for one), but the last several times i saw them it was black eyed peas, no doubt, damian marley, kings of leon.... : /
maybe they should corral destroyer for a show?
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:25 (twelve years ago) link
Man, White Chalk is probably my least favorite PJH album. But I can also imagine coming around to it at some point
Mine too – the monotony of mood.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:25 (twelve years ago) link
I like LES but I don't love it the way I love some of PJ Harvey's other albums - there are a few songs I'm not crazy about and the production seems kind of thin at times. Sonically, White Chalk evokes ghostliness and dread far more effectively for me (though I realise the two are very different records).
― Gavin, Leeds, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:26 (twelve years ago) link
white chalk is a perfect album to listen to when you're ill.
Destroyer is a case where lots of people say rong things
oh it really really is
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:26 (twelve years ago) link
I loved Uh Huh Her at the time but now it sounds like she compiled castoffs for the sake of clearing out one phase of her career to begin another (and it looks more like the case now).
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
I was looking forward to seeing PJ in Manchester on the Is This Desire? tour, but she got laryngitis the day of the show. :/
I then saw her in Chicago two days after 9/11, and she was awesome.
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
what PJH era did she open for U2 in?
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
right after stories from the city, i want to say?
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:28 (twelve years ago) link
ha! weirding U2 fans out in what was probably the least weird phase of her own career
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:29 (twelve years ago) link
The pj album I actually feel moved to write about is a woman a man walked by - which is both very underrated and also prefigured a lot of let England shake (moreso than white chalk despite the shared sense of brittleness with that album).
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
spring 2001, yeah
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
yeah that album even sounds a little u2-y to me. tbf, people didn't seem weirded out at the show i saw.
xxp
― horseshoe, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
tim, please write abuot it!
other opening acts on the tour included stereophonics, garbage, no doubt, nelly furtado, jj72...
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
not sure people were "weirded out" per se, but more like "lol well this is different i guess!!!!"
yes, write about it! AWAMWB is the only PJH album that means, like...nothing to me. i don't have any antipathy towards it, but i listened to it like twice and never felt compelled to return, which for someone i love as much as PJH is deeply anomalous.
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:32 (twelve years ago) link
it's ok to just say you don't like something or that it's just not for you without having to come up with some grand reason why it's a failure of an album or what's deficient about it
otm, the lack of recognition of this is wearying. how many billions of words/minutes are wasted on this?
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:32 (twelve years ago) link
AWAMWB is the only PJH album that means, like...nothing to me. i don't have any antipathy towards it, but i listened to it like twice and never felt compelled to return, which for someone i love as much as PJH is deeply anomalous.
Same here, I liked it more than I liked Uh Huh Her or 4 Track Demos but I can't really think of anything to say about it so yeah I'd be interested to read Tim's take.
― Gavin, Leeds, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:33 (twelve years ago) link
LES and kaputt both got 8.8 BNM on p4k o_O
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:37 (twelve years ago) link
also LES was #4 on p4k countdown to kaputt's #2, which isn't that huge of a difference. i don't understand how kaputt ends up being so much more lauded but p4k than LES. aside from the fact that you know destroyer and p4k are both indie fuxx
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:39 (twelve years ago) link
lauded by*
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:40 (twelve years ago) link
Have you listened to Kaputt yet?
― Laughing Gravy (dog latin), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:41 (twelve years ago) link
23 pj harvey news stories in 2011 on pitchfork, 10 destroyer news stories in 2011
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:44 (twelve years ago) link
I'm the wrong kind of listener for PJ, I think. I care next to nothing about lyrics, next to nothing about Grand Artistic Concerns in music, and although I'm sort of ashamed of the fact that I do it, I pretty much immediately recoil from any artist who tends to be received in the way she does--that sort of near-unanimous acknowledgement of an album as Important Art. It puts me right off and makes me predisposed to be dismissive.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:45 (twelve years ago) link
you know the only reason you can get angry about the mathematical placement w/i a ranking is if the numbers actually have some magic validity, and if they do, then too bad, destroyer is objectively better, I mean look at it, it has a (1) next to it. outside of that these are two albums that lots of people liked a lot.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:46 (twelve years ago) link
any artist who tends to be received in the way she does--that sort of near-unanimous acknowledgement of an album as Important Art
lol it was not always such
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
i mean i think the "1" suggests that destroyer reached more people than pj harvey and therefore was more of a success and we simply have to face those facts.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
if you carted over 5 pj harvey fans to ilm in time for the poll, suddenly pj harvey would have the magic (1) in front of her, maybe that should be something people prepare for in advance next time, big cart of pj harvey fans
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
no shame in coming in second place for PJ, but destroyer was #1, so...
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2889/emotcolbert.gif
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:48 (twelve years ago) link
let england shake is a more p4k album than kaputt and therefore worse.
― radiant silverfish (diamonddave85), Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:48 (twelve years ago) link
Really? PJ Harvey's first four studio albums were all top 10 on P&J, and critics like Greil Marcus used to speak of her in the same breath as Elvis.
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:54 (twelve years ago) link
<i>lol it was not always such</i>
You're right... And I used to be put off by her reception as a giantess of Alterna- back in the '90s!
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:55 (twelve years ago) link
I care next to nothing about lyrics, next to nothing about Grand Artistic Concerns in music,
Clarke, I'm pretty much the same way, which is why I'm often surprised I like PJ as much as I do. But there's also stuff she's done that bores me.
― jaymc, Thursday, 9 February 2012 19:56 (twelve years ago) link
I'd like to sit with her more; plenty of folks on here and elsewhere whose tastes I admire and respect rep for her. It's just hard for me to get past the way she's framed in the discourse (and that's a shortcoming of me as a listener, I freely admit).
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:03 (twelve years ago) link
PJ HARVEY SIT ON MY FACE
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:04 (twelve years ago) link
so there aren't any canonical artists you like clarke?
i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle but i find it hard to believe.
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:06 (twelve years ago) link
not listening to music because its 'in the canon' is the most stupid thing ever. I'd even question how much you like music if you do that. People who do this seem more interested in the theory rather than the actual music.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:08 (twelve years ago) link
you're not even interested in the theory of music if you blanket reject canonical music; you are interested in the fashion of music
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:09 (twelve years ago) link
i was thinking more along the lines of a journalists theory of what music should be but yeah that too
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:12 (twelve years ago) link
to be fair every greil marcus breath is about elvis
― Whiney vs. (BradNelson), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:13 (twelve years ago) link
There are tons and tons of canonical artists I like! But they're typically firmly in the past at this point... I'm not so much anti-canon (I actually find it interesting and culturally significant/important the way we create and alter and evolve our various canons) as I am anti- obvious attempts at canon-building. With an album like this that's been out less than a year, it feels like straining to try and force it into a canon so soon. People have barely had time to live with the album and grow with it, you know? I think I dislike when I can see the seams of critical straining to assign importance and lasting value to something so newly created.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:15 (twelve years ago) link
We're so terrified of not recognizing a masterpiece when it first gets released that we push really hard in the other direction.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:16 (twelve years ago) link
and that's cool, there's a lot of crossover between the two. honestly, i'm a bit of a reactionary myself, and often reject things casually on the basis of where they seem to fit into the culture. but i recognize and try to fight this impulse - while still respecting the fact that i do have a point of view and even a "tribe". it's complicated...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:17 (twelve years ago) link
not listening to music because its 'in the canon' is the most stupid thing ever.
I'm actually always motivated to investigate canonized works; this is exactly what I'm NOT tryin to say.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:17 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not certain people are trying to canonize anything, they're maybe just doing some rankings and talking about albums they like and consider to be great (LES is one, kaputt even more of one, whether people will talk about LES for example in five years we shall see...)
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:17 (twelve years ago) link
Lex brought up the canon!
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:18 (twelve years ago) link
no point in worrying about what people will talk about in 5 years. You wont know for 5 years so talk about it in the present.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not so much anti-canon (I actually find it interesting and culturally significant/important the way we create and alter and evolve our various canons) as I am anti- obvious attempts at canon-building.
isn't that even worse though? instead of pushing back against an established tradition, you're then pushing back against anything that seems to get too much acclaim, and constantly having to calibrate this against your sense of how that acclaim equates to "canon-building". and, god, there are so many different canons in different subgroups. sounds exhausting.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
It's all good. Half – more than half maybe – of the battle waged when I write concerns to what degree I fight my biases or accept them.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
The canon rules, so many awesome jams in that funky old canon
James brown, the fall, zz top, etc
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:20 (twelve years ago) link
clarke i was more responding to i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle
which as a long time poster on ilm, i have seen these statements made many times over the years, especially back in around 2001 when i first started postibg rather than lurking. Funnily enough Tom and others did move away from this and started listening to and liking beach boys,rolling stones etc.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:21 (twelve years ago) link
It's best not to think of it as The Canon but more like "people who recorded music I like before I was alive."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:21 (twelve years ago) link
instead of pushing back against an established tradition, you're then pushing back against anything that seems to get too much acclaim, and constantly having to calibrate this against your sense of how that acclaim equates to "canon-building". and, god, there are so many different canons in different subgroups. sounds exhausting.
Haha, it is! No, it's really more a matter of feeling alienated by intense hype. It's really hard for me to form personal connections to things that are so surrounded by it.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:22 (twelve years ago) link
Oh shit, up on cripple creek just came on! Thank u based canon
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:22 (twelve years ago) link
rap canon, jazz canon, electronic/dance canon, lolindie canon, fogey canon, artfuxx canon, ponytail worldmusic canon, etc, etc, etc. so many tastemakers to oppose...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:23 (twelve years ago) link
oh i hate it when you can feel opinion ossifying around a new record that ticks every critic-friendly box and you can feel the canon forming inexorably around it. i remember getting that very clearly with sound of silver. it's probably different with LES cuz i loved it and PJH
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:23 (twelve years ago) link
i find the best way to judge music is by listening to it. Whether its in a can or not has no influence other than maybe giving the impetus to check something out. However there's a LOT of great records not in the canon that should be. And I feel that would be better served by getting good records IN the canon rather than dismissing the canon altogether.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:24 (twelve years ago) link
*in a canon
i don't think excessive hype by itself would be enough to put me off hearing a record though - usually when i try to avoid a hyped album it's also cuz i have good musical reason to suspect i won't like it
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:25 (twelve years ago) link
In other words the canon is okay if you like the artists in them
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:25 (twelve years ago) link
However there's a LOT of great records not in the canon that should be
yup that's why i don't put much stock in it. it's fairly meaningless and dry but i don't like the idea of those records that weren't "right" for it getting lost.
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
sometimes hype can put me off but later i hear it without the surrounding hype and actually like it. Which i know happens to you sometimes lex as you've posted about that before.
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
No, it's really more a matter of feeling alienated by intense hype. It's really hard for me to form personal connections to things that are so surrounded by it.
okay, scratch that last one. being suspicious of hype makes a lot more sense, though that too can turn into a reactionary position. i'm sort of oppositional (no, really!), so as much as i'm leery of hype, i find that the more time i spend on ILX, the more i'm inclined to embrace things that attract collective loathing. and that's often the overhyped flavor of the week.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:27 (twelve years ago) link
x-posts
I've posted about this on various other threads here and there (I've been on ILM on and off since 2000 myself), but I think the old-ILM tendency to canon-bash was an exhilarating attempt to shun something that felt stale and oppressive so that we could start fresh and talk about pop and whatever else in open, non-self-conscious, honest, irreverent ways. What has happened over the years, it seems to me--and I don't mean to be mean, but Lex at his most rabid really embodies this for me--is that this canon-bashing that started as an act of therapy, really, has hardened into just another critical position: pop-ism, whatever you want to call it. One of the biggest eye-opening realizations old-ILM helped me achieve is that having a relationship with music should adamntly NOT involve principles!
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:27 (twelve years ago) link
Lex you do a lot of fancy gymnastics to basically say ” stuff I like rules, stuff I hate drools”
― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:28 (twelve years ago) link
Also clarke otm w last post
it's not particularly fancy tbh
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:29 (twelve years ago) link
One of the biggest eye-opening realizations old-ILM helped me achieve is that having a relationship with music should adamntly NOT involve principles!
Honestly, I don't think this can be stressed enough.
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:31 (twelve years ago) link
here here
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
or is it hear hear
hear here
― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
ear ear
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
geir geir
― diln (k3vin k.), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
canon-bashing that started as an act of therapy, really, has hardened into just another critical position
agree w this. canon-bashing and indie-bashing (and anything-bashing) get tedious very fast. the need to constantly define oneself in opposition to one's imagined inferiors is nagl, unless it's done with a very sharp wit and/or real political substance. "cool kid" snark is semi-endurable when it comes from teens and young adults, simply because they don't know any better and their naive passion is charming, but it quickly loses its appeal after that.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
i find myself avoiding canonical or popular stuff a lot not on principle but because i spend a lot of time digging into stuff that isn't particularly 'popular', which comes from investigating music over time i guess, idk. i go from johnny cash and country into folk and fairport convention and into steeleye span and solo maddy prior and then june tabor and so on, to cite an example. sometimes of course it happens to lead into popular stuff but since the vast bulk of all music is out of the spotlight (and a corresponding percentage of excellent music is too) i end up naturally finding more obscure stuff i like. and my obscure tastes are only relative to some, by the standards of others on ILM i'm pretty MOR.
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:36 (twelve years ago) link
i think people have an idea of me as way more dogmatic than i am! i don't have principles or rules
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:37 (twelve years ago) link
prove it. go listen to a bob dylan album.
― scott seward, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:38 (twelve years ago) link
I totally get what you're saying omar, as someone in a similar situation, but it was very lol to read "i spend a lot of time digging into stuff that isn't particularly 'popular'" followed closely by "i go from johnny cash and country"
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:39 (twelve years ago) link
i tried that in 2001
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:39 (twelve years ago) link
lol well i mean a path like that would be going from popular to 'obscure'
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:41 (twelve years ago) link
position omar describes is totally cool, imo. being open-minded doesn't mean you have to embrace everything. you still get to dive deep into the stuff that excites you and more or less ignore the rest, if that's what you want. nothing wrong with dodging a canon that doesn't interest you. that's very different from sneering at canon because it's "too easy" or the wrong people like it or w/e.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:41 (twelve years ago) link
i don't want to get into this too deeply but the problems with canons is usually not what they include, it's in what they exclude. they lead to a really boring and shallow way of talking/thinking about music when taken on their own--an effort to avoid them is what led me to ilm among other places.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:41 (twelve years ago) link
When I avoid things, whether currently hyped or canonized for ages, it's usually done not at all as a matter of principle but the opposite--it's because it feels wrong to engage with it at that time. If I have the sense that I won't be able to engage with something in a relatively unmediated, unclouded way, I don't want to force myself to do it. I get flak from some of my pals about not knowing about so-and-so a current musician or recently relased record, but the moment keeping up with music starts to feel like a chore or a checklist to be monitored is the moment it starts to lose its allure and magic.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:43 (twelve years ago) link
lex you just said !
i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, February 9, 2012 8:06 PM
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:43 (twelve years ago) link
i change my mind all the time! i don't do consistency
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:45 (twelve years ago) link
hahahaha
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:47 (twelve years ago) link
Chuck Pretend?
this is a very good point, and it's what clarke was getting at a few posts back. problem, as clarke said, is that principled opposition to a suspect canon can quickly harden into thoughtless, knee-jerk tribalism.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:47 (twelve years ago) link
better to champion that which you think should be included than to elevate yourself by sneering down at what you don't care for - unless, of course, you're really fucking funny about it.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:49 (twelve years ago) link
which no one ever has been
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:49 (twelve years ago) link
I mean, the most exciting discovery I made last year was Iron Maiden, for God's sake. I kept up with electronic music fairly well because it's fun and dizzying to do it, but I basically ignored most rock and indie because I wasn't feeling it. I rekindled a love of old jazz and discovered some new-to-me artists. I got deep into Theo Parrish and Moodymann and Omar-S (yep, real late to all three parties!).
One of the advantages old-ILM had was that it felt like basically a group of people who had a lifetime of listening-via-one's-own-lights behind them, who had developed their tastes in eras that weren't so rigorously dictated by keeping up with the furious pace of new releases, finally having room and a captive peer group to make sense of the highly personal mazes of taste they'd built up over the years. I don't ever want to lose the feeling of control I have over my tastes and my pace of exploration of music.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:50 (twelve years ago) link
one thing that drives me fucking nuts about canonization is the idea that i should listen to (or worse) should have listened to thing x because it's part of a canon. if you want to demotivate me re: listening to something please just give me a version of that as if it's a good reason.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:52 (twelve years ago) link
Lex, even your inconsistency you express as a principle! ;-)
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:52 (twelve years ago) link
well, oscar wilde maybe
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:53 (twelve years ago) link
but isn't the canon for people who are not as much into music as most people on this board? a starting point not to lose too much time in finding good music. that's how i always interpreted it. a time-saving tool for the masses. as a music lover i am not particularly against canons. there is lots of good music in canons. but i don't think i need a canon. i am looking for persons with similar tastes to mine who tell me which new music they like. and some of these people are around here.
― alex in mainhattan, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:54 (twelve years ago) link
nah i think it's a tool for people who are pretty into music but also want to tie everything up nice and neatly.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:56 (twelve years ago) link
Interesting point, Alex, and I too rely on the recommendations of specific individuals moreso than any sort of larger hype bubbles or broad-scale canons. I think canons are almost a natural, organic feature of a community, though, don't you? I mean, I'd say ILM is old enough and established enough to where it can be said to have its own canon...
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 20:57 (twelve years ago) link
ilm canon = new order at the top
― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
Listen to Destroyer, they're as good as the Beatles.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
maybe it's a mistake to look at canon primarily as a concrete thing intentionally made, like a tool? i'm more inclined to view it as an artifact or by-product, this ever-shifting perceptible phantom created as a result of human communication and the categorical impulse. of course, once perceived, it does begin to be a concrete thing, like a tool, and people do work at and with it directly. chicken v egg, i guess.
or what clarke just said :/
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:02 (twelve years ago) link
a lot of people think canons are made by tools
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:03 (twelve years ago) link
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)
otm
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:04 (twelve years ago) link
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol you truly know the path straight to my heart
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:04 (twelve years ago) link
clarke and cntnrdrzr are right about how canons are developed in communities like this one. but there is a large, well-known, and pretty unchanging "rock canon" that totally sucks and extends beyond the bounds of any one community.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:06 (twelve years ago) link
This ties back to my earlier comments about hating to see critcs straining to build or add to the canon. In doing so, they're fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of canons, the fact that we don't choose our canons so explicitly and with such willpower, that they evolve complexly and sloppily over time and space.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:06 (twelve years ago) link
the funny thing abt this is that the internet has totally helped to shake up the canon -- pitchfork saying destroyer released a great record has less power today than if they said it 5 yrs ago, and says less abt the state of music than pazz & jop circa '80
lex's criticisms feel really outdated to me. At this point, there are too many rival voices proclaiming canons; if you want to influence ppl on your worldview, you need to make convincing/widespread/viral arguments that resonate w/ people. not to sound like BH Ideas, but its all networking & connections & shit. railing at some huge canon is totally irrelevant any more, b/c its way more diced up now
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:08 (twelve years ago) link
there is a large, well-known, and pretty unchanging "rock canon" that totally sucks and extends beyond the bounds of any one community.
Why is this such a big deal...? English lit has a canon. It's helpful in a way to know that if you're interested in 19th century country life then Jane Austen or Tobias Smolley wrote novels about it. No one forces you to accept them. It's just a list.
Whenever RS publishes one of its umpteenth GOAT lists and spot What's Going On I remind myself, 'Oh, right, I need to own it.' Yet I own and love (among others) the decidedly non-canonical In Our Lifetime.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:09 (twelve years ago) link
*Smollett
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
in my perfect world its nothing but goregrind and latin freestyle on the radio 24/7.
― scott seward, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:11 (twelve years ago) link
same thing & process, just on a larger scale and over a longer period of time. i wouldn't say the semi-official rock canon "sucks", just that it exists and that it has certain qualities, some positive, some negative. i mean, i like the beatles and the stones and the velvet underground. this isn't to say that there isn't room for other voices and visions.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:13 (twelve years ago) link
It's helpful in a way to know that if you're interested in 19th century country life then Jane Austen or Tobias Smolley wrote novels about it.
i don't feel like pop/rock music canons are presented in quite this neutral a fashion!
"if you're interested in music in the 60s the beatles and the stones wrote some records then"
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
and i should be careful and say i don't think the stuff in there nec. sucks, but it's more how ppl use it/talk about it that can suck. does that happen with the lit. canon? idk haven't been in that game in a while.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:15 (twelve years ago) link
people really do seriously rep for the enduring importance and quality of like shakespeare, joyce and dostoyevsky, though. it's really no different than putting leadbelly and led zep up on a pedestal.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:17 (twelve years ago) link
the beatles and rolling stones are not presented as 'part of a canon' to most people, they're presented as bands that millions of people across the world liked, important historic figures in the history of pop music, etc. etc. whereas, idk, big star are 'part of the canon' but relatively few people listen to or care about them. being on lists probably increased the # of people who listen to them, but pretty marginally in the big picture.
I think the general public 'canon' is pretty far from what people who care a lot about music think is the 'canon'. most of the world considers coldplay 'canon'.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:19 (twelve years ago) link
xp yeah true, also gets into things like scope and scale and how lit vs. music gets consumed etc. etc.
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:19 (twelve years ago) link
ftr i am slogging my way through kaputt again trying to figure it out while positing itt
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:22 (twelve years ago) link
the canon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:23 (twelve years ago) link
I think that's stretching the notion of canon way too far... We should be careful to differentiate between canon and consensus, and between those notions and large-scale popularity as well. I maintain that canon implies some temporal distance and involves the notion of serious enduring popularity/meaningfulness beyond just being widely enjoyed.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:23 (twelve years ago) link
yeah but that's the navel-gazing critics canon which really isn't v. important to many people and if it were the public canon would look more like it
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:24 (twelve years ago) link
that canon is 'consensus', all canons are, it's just the consensus of a smaller group of people
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:27 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Thursday, February 9, 2012 3:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is actually really incorrect. Lots of incredibly popular stuff gets forgotten, and stuff that was extremely marginal in its day can gain popularity even after the artist has died
there's actually a big book about this http://www.elijahwald.com/rjohnson.html
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:27 (twelve years ago) link
alright so whatever the universal itunes 'most played list' is canon today.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:29 (twelve years ago) link
Is certainly is important to many people! Popular music critics still have lots of power, and it's not as if the public operates in this separate sphere. I see what you're getting at, but I think it ignores the huge ways in which critics and critical discourse informs what the public consumes and is exposed to. This points to the fact that canons are necessarily tied into notions of cultural control, tastemaking, and influence.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:29 (twelve years ago) link
(My first sentence there refers to iatee: "yeah but that's the navel-gazing critics canon which really isn't v. important to many people "
― Clarke B., Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:30 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Thursday, February 9, 2012 1:24 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
^ disagree. the fact that one particular critical canon (and there are TONS of them out there) isn't precisely the same as overall popularity does not suggest that canons are unimportant and/or the product of "navel-gazing". critics are engaged in a dialogue with popular taste, and they do help shape it, especially over time. the rolling stone not only documented the shifts of a musical culture, it helped define and shape that culture, it sold not just purchasable objects but a collective aesthetic and cultural vision to a popular audience. pitchfork is doing the same thing today, and so is the wire, though the audiences aren't identical.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:31 (twelve years ago) link
there's a weird, shrugging anti-intellectualism to a lot of what iatee posts.
"canon" is obviously not the same thing as "whatever happens to be popular". a dictionary would tell you this.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:32 (twelve years ago) link
this entire conversation about the musical canon is making me want to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNQLJ1_HQ0
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:32 (twelve years ago) link
'most people in the world don't look at music the same way a site filled w/ music critics who look at 200 'best of lists' every year do' = anti-intellectualism
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:33 (twelve years ago) link
let's apply that line of thinking to the lit canon while we're at it
― call all destroyer, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:37 (twelve years ago) link
anti-intellectualism = pretending not to understand what a simple word like "canon" means while taking lazy swipes at "navel gazing" critics in general
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:38 (twelve years ago) link
i mean, that's fucking textbook
can we just declare iatee the Taco Mayor of this thread and move on
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:39 (twelve years ago) link
This is a good point but I think I'm more bothered by critics seeking to assert the existing canon - they're guilty of the same misunderstanding but also it also seems less necessary somehow.
― Gavin, Leeds, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:40 (twelve years ago) link
lol any argument with iatee is an inescapable quagmire of nonsense basically
― Alshipleyan Goalpostmover (some dude), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:40 (twelve years ago) link
where did all the chill vibes go???
― BJ O (Lamp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:44 (twelve years ago) link
we started talking about the pj harvey record
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:47 (twelve years ago) link
funny how conversation about the war record got all contentious and concerned with the historical placement/importance of music
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:49 (twelve years ago) link
Taco was a pretty chill band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3wEs0cS84c
In honor of the Taco Mayor and this thread generally.
― grandavis, Thursday, 9 February 2012 21:53 (twelve years ago) link
sorry for ruining yr guys canon thread ;_;
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:01 (twelve years ago) link
canon on, men, canon on
hey lamp is correct in noting the lack of chill vibes of late herein, allow me to return them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3hkPtQqk08
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:02 (twelve years ago) link
thanx omar
yknow something tells me that if we all just knocked off work early picked up a couple of bottles of wine and some fresh fruit and kicked it on the beach together these kinda unchill debates wouldnt happen so much
― BJ O (Lamp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:05 (twelve years ago) link
gis result for destroyer kaputt
http://erinsadventures.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/blog-pic-sitting-on-beach1.jpg
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:07 (twelve years ago) link
gis result for pj harvey let england shake
http://www.britishbattles.com/images/princeton/british-grenadier.jpg
― omar little, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
I think deej is right that music canons are becoming decreasingly important, I would say because more and more listeners are intersecting with music in a decentralised manner (even if only casually, sparingly, and with nothing like the intensity of yr average ILM poster).
Compare/contrast with TV which I think is in an era where canon-building is quite important. This reflects a couple of things: the fact people are still mildly surprised that TV can be worthy in a long-term sense and so feel more interested in exploring that concept, but also and more importantly that it's only been in the last decade or so that a lot of people have taken control of their TV consumption in a manner similar to the control they already had over their music consumption; it's inevitable that the first thing a lot of us then will do is look for heirarchies of taste to make this new-found sense of control feel less burdonsome.
Whereas, while the canon still exists for music (and remains stronger than for TV), it has receded from its prior pinnacle of influence to something slightly more... natural?
What inheres in both canonisation and viral connectivity is the fixity of ideas about music, the way in which the sharing of taste-codes doesn't merely share the music itself but an idea of what th emusic means, what it stands for, why it's important.
I'm rarely bothered by a record being more canonical (from the narrowest to the broadest sense: i.e. commercially and/or critically popular) than a similar or related record that I think is superior. What frequently bothers me is how that differential itself implies value judgments and biases (not towards certain pieces of music but to ideas around music) that are all the more pernicious because they're not openly admitted for the most part (and so are difficult to challenge without seeming contrary and defensive).
This isn't solved by getting rid of the canon - if anything that makes the problem harder by doing away with an obvious and easily understood target for deconstruction.
Also, by the by, there's nothing wrong with taste-principles per se, so long as you know what they are and where they fall they short. In this context, a principle is really a codified bias for the most part, and if it's codified it's much easier to put in its place (both internally and when you see it used by other people).
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:14 (twelve years ago) link
well i think its also important to note that there a bunch of sites and magazines and big national newspapers whose critics all share somewhat of a similar aesthetic sensibility that can work to codify the new tv canon whereas music criticism is becoming more fractured and specialized. like most tv critics agree on a set of middlebrow ideas abt 'what good tv is' that resonates with their audience that places the prestige cable dramas and single camera sitcoms in the 'cannon'. like the fact that the critical/institutional consensus is operating w/in a p narrow spectrum of 'tv programming' is part of what makes the cannon exist/seem impt - no one is seriously claiming that sports programming or pbs documentary series or competitive reality shows should be part of the tv canon whereas imo for the better music criticism has had to open itself up to a much wider range of ideas about what 'good music' can be
― BJ O (Lamp), Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
I'm rarely bothered by a record being more canonical (from the narrowest to the broadest sense: i.e. commercially and/or critically popular)
i was arguing upthread for the idea that canons aren't intentionally creaated things in themselves, but rather process artifacts. i think that's true on a certain level, and it's becoming more and more true in the present moment, but it overlooks the fact that we inherit the word "canon" from a context (western art and literary history) wherein the act of creating and maintaining an official worthiness roster was done very intentionally and explicitly. the canon of "great books", for instance, or of the great works of western art.
i think this will-to-authority persists to some degree in a still popular and perhaps even dominant view of 20th century popular music. blues artists like son house and robert johnson are more-or-less "officially" canonized, along with their followers and their peers in jazz, ellington and billie holiday, etc. this is followed by bop and the emergence of rock in the 50s, miles davis and chuck berry into john coltrane and elvis. then folk & girl groups and the british invasion, the prog and singer/songwriter stuff that followed, punk and disco into indie and techno and so on. this canon, both the narrative and its star players, presents itself as "officially recognized". its centrality and importance are strongly and constantly defended, both directly (the rock and roll hall of fame) and indirectly (the circulation of memes).
this is what makes "the canon" an actual canon in the art-historical sense and not just a list of stuff some people happen to like and/or consider important. its defenders are not only influential but organized, and they seem to have established a greater claim to collective authority than its detractors - at least in certain important quarters of what we might lazily call "the public mind".
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
lamp OTM about the fairly unitary nature of the narrative, re: "quality television" in comparison to the fragmentation we've seen in music criticism over the last 100 years.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:39 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is completely uninterrogated, its not just being organized, there are power dynamics at work here
the example in the book i linked is that actually robert johnson being 'canon' was a fluke of history -- that when the canon was being created, it was by a bunch of middle class suburban record collectors for whom 'obscurity' had greater value, and it ended up turning the history of the blues upside-down; however popular a blues singer was in 1933, she (and it was usually women, at least in popular blues) would be almost unknown two decades later, while a marginal unknown like Robert Johnson had become "king of the blues"
you say its 'organization' but its not -- there are many dynamics at play
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:50 (twelve years ago) link
i think its easy to see how economics and gender and race probably played roles in distorting how we remember history in that way
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:51 (twelve years ago) link
this is what makes "the canon" an actual canon in the art-historical sense and not just a list of stuff some people happen to like and/or consider important.
perhaps the most important aspect of the canon i just described above, the thing that makes it so intractable, is that it's a coherent and comprehensive narrative. it's not just an individual opinion, like "the beatles were great and important, and if you don't like them then you don't understand music". it's an integrated, collectively told history, drawing its features from every stream of popular music and music criticism. therefore, it's all but impossible to oppose in toto. to do this effectively, one would have to come up with an compelling alternate narrative for every musical movement of the last 100 years. the best the "opponents of the canon" ever manage to do, really, is to clear some space for their stories and heroes within the larger narrative, which easily adapts to such meddling. not enough importance-points allotted to 60s girl groups or chicago/detroit house? okay, fine, we'll clear some room, even build a new wing if you like. meanwhile, the canon marches on.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 22:58 (twelve years ago) link
you should really read this book, contenderizer
http://www.amazon.com/How-Beatles-Destroyed-Rock-Roll/dp/019975697X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328828397&sr=1-1
― D-40, Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:00 (twelve years ago) link
...its not just being organized, there are power dynamics at work here
...you say its 'organization' but its not -- there are many dynamics at play
...i think its easy to see how economics and gender and race probably played roles in distorting how we remember history in that way
― D-40, Thursday, February 9, 2012 2:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i don't think you're really arguing against me there. i agree with everything you say. i defend the word "organized" because i think the maintenance of the canon is done is a fairly organized fashion. this isn't to deny that there are other dynamics in play, that things like gender and race play a HUGE part.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
i probably should, thanks for the tip. but again (and it's hard to say without having read it), but even anti-canonical perspectives help build the canon, right? either by expanding it or by providing it with alternatives to triumph over. at this point, it's been so widened by appeals to inclusion that it's become all but meaningless, a history that includes almost everything. simple efficiency is arguably a bigger motivator for the creation of alternative canons the the failure of the larger of The Canon to adapt.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:07 (twelve years ago) link
god that was fucked. though it's poor form, i'm just gonna try again...
i probably should, thanks for the tip. but again (and it's hard to say without having read it), even anti-canonical perspectives help build the canon, right? either by expanding it or by providing it with alternatives to triumph over. at this point, the "official" canon been so widened by appeals to inclusion that it's become all but meaningless, a history that encompasses all of history. simple efficiency is arguably a bigger motivator for the creation of alternative canons than the failure of Thee Canon to adapt.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
it's quite different actually imo
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:34 (twelve years ago) link
yeah come on...joyce is way better than led zep. ffs.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
http://ribike.org/wp-content/uploads/detour.jpg
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:45 (twelve years ago) link
well i think its also important to note that there a bunch of sites and magazines and big national newspapers whose critics all share somewhat of a similar aesthetic sensibility that can work to codify the new tv canon whereas music criticism is becoming more fractured and specialized.
Agree with this 100% but I think this critical consensus in itself is a product of the developments I identified in my preceding post.
― Tim F, Thursday, 9 February 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
How will format effect today's youth digesting of the canon, whatever the canon includes or excludes? I mean I have a cousin who is getting into music and he's 15. He will probably never buy a cd or a record and thinks I'm very weird for collecting record when I could be like him and just download what I want. I imagine him as an example of the future average music consumer. I always thought of the canon as being a package type deal, format and all. What bearing does the canon have on someone who thinks of music as only disposable singles? I imagine very little. I dunno, this probably has nothing to do with kaputt or LES.
― JacobSanders, Friday, 10 February 2012 00:10 (twelve years ago) link
well, i think that canon has only ever really mattered to the sort of people who attach a lot of significance to the idea that certain types of music more "important" than others, and/or those who wish to have "good taste". people like that tend to look to voices of authority for guidance, sometimes even aspiring to join the ranks of the tastemaking arbiters.
music fans who aren't concerned with those things will probably have little interest in canonical importance or quality.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Friday, 10 February 2012 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
i kind of disagree, i think lots of people are or have been concerned with those things! people want to have 'good taste'
― D-40, Friday, 10 February 2012 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
or see themselves as discerning
yeah, i know. i was breaking it down to canon people vs "don't give a shit about a canon" people. not saying that either group is more numerous, and lots of folks are obviously somewhere in the middle.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Friday, 10 February 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
probably most people in the middle, tbh
deej p much 100% otm so far
i listened to the pj harvey album and realised its that thing i always make my housemate turn off in the kitchen when we are cooking. he doesn't really like kaputt either.
― judith, Friday, 10 February 2012 02:13 (twelve years ago) link
ah c'cmon, he's just swiping at tangents. grumble, kvetch...
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Friday, 10 February 2012 08:31 (twelve years ago) link
man i still can't really get down with bejar's vocals, and there are large portions of kaputt that are a yawner for me and that i have problems with,
but that "sounds, smash hits..." couplet is just all-time. doesn't really scan but perfect. how did he do that?
― dell (del), Sunday, 12 February 2012 07:44 (twelve years ago) link
he read a magizine, iirc
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 February 2012 07:47 (twelve years ago) link
Played Kaputt in the car today, every song is a jam.
― Tim F, Sunday, 12 February 2012 11:08 (twelve years ago) link
http://sickmouthy.com/2012/02/14/lets-talk-about-destroyer/
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 20:39 (twelve years ago) link
this thread inspired me to go back to all of PJ Harvey's albums on Spotify
she fucking owns
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 20:42 (twelve years ago) link
great post, mouthy.
― ⚓ (gr8080), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 20:50 (twelve years ago) link
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, February 5, 2012 5:05 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, February 5, 2012 5:38 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yes in a lot of ways kaputt feels very... canadian to me. don't ask me to explain how or why though. peace
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
Nick that's a wonderful post
― Flag post? I hardly knew her! (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
Thanks dude.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 07:56 (twelve years ago) link
Dudes.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 07:57 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, just read the blog - nice one sicko, enjoyed it
― The Invisible Superstars (dog latin), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 08:40 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, same here. loved reading that (though i'm still in camp shake).
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 08:55 (twelve years ago) link
what's that a link to
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 10:03 (twelve years ago) link
hm.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 10:04 (twelve years ago) link
can i just take a moment to laugh at whoever compared pj harvey to ts eliot
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 10:34 (twelve years ago) link
hey they both have initials
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 10:36 (twelve years ago) link
So does JFK.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 10:41 (twelve years ago) link
I'd been wondering why I'd suddenly got lots of people following me on Twitter.
― The Invisible Superstars (dog latin), Wednesday, 15 February 2012 11:01 (twelve years ago) link
good thread.
a favorite post:
there's an album called hats?!?!fuck all of you who like it― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:13 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:13 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― lute bro (brimstead), Thursday, 2 June 2016 23:30 (seven years ago) link
i just went through this whole thread again. forgot all about it. tim going full nabisco. lex bringing the hilarity. good one.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 00:56 (seven years ago) link
I'm always about the judith posts in this thread
― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Friday, 3 June 2016 03:26 (seven years ago) link
you are a judith fanboy. who was judith?
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 03:49 (seven years ago) link
oh at some point in the past year i finally listened to the blue nile (indeed, hats) and thought it was really bad
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 3 June 2016 07:35 (seven years ago) link
just another 2 billion verdicts to go and then we can all kill ourselves safe in the knowledge that culture has been logged
― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 3 June 2016 07:45 (seven years ago) link
yes why even have opinions
― the hallouminati (lex pretend), Friday, 3 June 2016 08:02 (seven years ago) link
― the hallouminati (lex pretend),
I wasn't too fond of it either after my bff Brad recommended it.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 June 2016 10:47 (seven years ago) link
Hats is cool you guys drool. First album is my fave though.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 11:46 (seven years ago) link
i listened to a few tracks off of Kaputt in honor of this thread last night and, yeah, still no....
he should have asked Superpitcher to produce it. maybe then it would have worked a little better.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 11:49 (seven years ago) link
is disco in the sky the last thing that superpitcher did? he needs to put out an album and save the world.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 11:52 (seven years ago) link
i am legit shocked that alfred doesn't care for hats
― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Friday, 3 June 2016 12:38 (seven years ago) link
all this talking is only bravado
― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Friday, 3 June 2016 12:40 (seven years ago) link
gonna relisten now, Brad, because I gotta write a film review.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 June 2016 13:03 (seven years ago) link
there's a double vinyl superpitcher comp that came out last month, looks like it collects a bunch of his singles.
https://www.discogs.com/Superpitcher-So-Far-So-Super/release/8395925
― originoo b.i.g. bizkit (brimstead), Friday, 3 June 2016 18:52 (seven years ago) link
no "softmachine", though.
― originoo b.i.g. bizkit (brimstead), Friday, 3 June 2016 18:57 (seven years ago) link
and wow i was not aware that he did a single with Westbam ten years ago
― originoo b.i.g. bizkit (brimstead), Friday, 3 June 2016 18:58 (seven years ago) link
i just ordered one. impulse buy! though to be honest i'd rather have it on CD.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 19:12 (seven years ago) link
in honor of this thread i'm gonna listen to kompakt all summer.
― scott seward, Friday, 3 June 2016 19:13 (seven years ago) link