pitchfork

howd you like the travis morrison solo albums?

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 2:00 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i like both travis albums a lot, especially the second one (i think i pazzed it at #8 or so that year). they're a little more they might be giants-y perhaps but i'm totally amazed how many people feel the gap between those and plan albums is that huge and i really fail to see what they're missing. "angry angel" is a really bad song, sure. for me, "you make me feel like a freak," "change," "song for the orca," "born in 72," "people die," "the word cop," "churchgoer," "hawkins' rock" would all make a career best-of.

i shrugged at the maritime stuff and consider the statehood album to be the only grave misstep by any plan members so far. i think travis' web-only "snacktime" and "checkers and chess" are funny as shit.

umm, come to think of it, "whip my hair" also translates pretty exactly into a rock "yelling something over and over" context -- there's not even a stretch there. it has no genre.

like, it is also nu-metal and several different types of techno

yeah that is also true -- i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

uhhh just heard "whip my hair" for the first time no lie (& saw the video) and wtffffff. like, it's okay? i gueeeess??? but like, parents, get control of yr 10 year olds! wtf. i have an 8 yr old myself & no way i'd try to turn her into a budding pop star in two years. she can sing to miley & taylor in our living room.

aren't you like 23 years old?

if that was a rihanna song it've been the worst song of her career, sorry

25 xp

don't even feel like arguing this but i'll just say that rihanna has some shit singles

and, my point is less about the quality of "whip my hair" & more about gate keeping & stigma etc

"i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross"

yeah, without wanting to generalize it to just "pitchfork," i definitely believe there's a line in the sand re: "approved" pop a lot of the time with indie/crit/people-who-consider-themselves-serious-about-music

kind of caused me to have a reverse-prejudice myself about robyn until very recently

"disturbia"'s the only rihanna song i consider very fun

never got the big deal about beyonce's "crazy in love" either beyond cool horn riff

ranked:

rude boy
umbrella
russian roulette
pon de replay
dont stop the muzak
only girl
disturbia
rehab
unfaithful
sos
hard
hate that i love u
stfu and drive
if it's lovin..
rockstar 101
take a bow

okay, so maybe it'd rank alongside "break it off" and "what's my name"......? cool

okay, it'd be better than "what's my name" -- you win

it's also better than "love the way you lie" ft. rihanna

lord "whip my hair" is like a million times better than "hard" & "rockstar 101"

ANYWAY funny that you mention "what's my name," which showed up in the pfork list even tho most ppl agree that it's a middling rihanna single -- if that's a willow single it doesn't even come close & again there would be an imperceptible change in quality (allowing for the fact that the dancehall undertones of the song are more fit to rihanna)

i've made this argument before about ciara & other stuff tho

oh i forgot about "s.o.s."

that was fun too but it's almost cheating when you have the soft cell laser noise

ciara's "like a boy" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any song mentioned in the last bunch of posts

lord "whip my hair" is like a million times better than "hard" & "rockstar 101"

okay okay yr right ;_;

idk what the hell this thread is about but "what's my name" w/o drake is not a middling rihanna song, it's absolutely one of her best. such joyous lyrics but the tinge of sadness and self-doubt in her delivery turns it into something incredibly compelling.

back to whatever

i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

I think this is less to do with pfork or whatever being anti will smith's daughter and more to do with the fact that pitchfork et. al. take some time to latch onto R&B / rap / pop / dance artists, very rarely will they start frothing about an artist in those genres on their very first single.

Pitchfork et. al. listen out for rihanna singles, there's an expectation that they'll be covered and staff will have an opinion and etc. whereas generally by the time momentum starts to gather behind the idea of a new non-indie-rock artist's first single being fanastic the moment for reviewing it has passed, and if it's not reviewed it's unlikely to then get sufficient momentum to place in end of year charts.

And this is how we end up with things like Pitchfork reviewing an artist's third single with the tossed off cooler-than-you context "remember when we all flipped out about her first single??" and if you didn't flip out about that single you have catching up to do and that's why pfork is still cooler than you.

Or something? It's such a weird set of dots to connect.

there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

nah ime that novelty value made it a lot easier for...this type of listener to embrace "whip my hair", in a way they wouldn't have done had it been by any non-megastar r&b chick? when it comes to pop, the line that people aren't willing to cross comes with artists like nicole scherzinger (see tim f's thread comparing her to lady gaga) and ashlee simpson and p. diddy (people who, the indie consensus would have it, are just there to be mocked).

re: coverage of rihanna, it's hard to escape the feeling that her worth to pfork and its ilk is entirely bound up in her fame & success, given that similar artists in her genre who don't have as high a profile as her (won't bring in the page hits!) get roundly ignored (trey songz, fantasia, keri hilson...any of them get coverage this year?)

Would agree with first paragraph, absolutely.

Would mostly agree with the second except that I think it's less fame and success per se than just celebrity and well-known backstory (and, not unimportantly, back-catalogue) conferring personality pretty readily. I think it's true to say that Rihanna can "carry" a tune like "What's My Name" by virtue of that sedimentary accumulation of associations, it's not merely more likely to be heard in the first place, but also a bit more memorable for that (pretty arbitrary in some ways) reason as compared to if it was released by a more journey(wo)man -ish R&B performer.

That same benefit of the doubt won't get extended to Kim Kardashian obv. And I don't think it's extended to Mariah (for reasons even more arbitrary).

In 2011 I want to be more on the ball w/r/t sourcing R&B albums as they leak and then pitching reviews.

yeah, without wanting to generalize it to just "pitchfork," i definitely believe there's a line in the sand re: "approved" pop a lot of the time with indie/crit/people-who-consider-themselves-serious-about-music

I don't think this applies to Willow but yes, it's always just a handful of names. From a UK perspective it was Kylie in the 90s, then Britney and Beyonce, then Girls Aloud and Sugababes, now Rihanna and Gaga. You could say this is just because they're the best examples, and there's only so much "approved" pop allowed through the doors, but they also represent a certain idea of indie/crit-friendly pop which I would try and unpack if I weren't on deadline - for one thing, it can't be coincidence that all these egs are female.

Justin Timberlake got the indie-critic seal of approval in the UK though, didn't he?

There's a case for saying that even ultra-commercial male stars are shifted into different genres by critics (R&B, grime, electro, etc) while female singers tend to get lumped together as 'pop', in the UK. The weighting towards female stars in critical circles does seem to be inversely proportionate to the gender balance of the writers though.

Their critical acclaim probably shouldn't be overstated, however. Robyn and Janelle Monae seem to be genuine breakthroughs this year but more obviously mainstream-aligned acts like GA, Britney and Beyonce - while picking up fawning articles all over the place - rarely seem to figure in end-of-year polls.

srsly though, am i the only one who considers travis' total earnestness about his taste to be a really freeing positive?

No. Reading the D-Plan website ca. 2002 probably played a part in preparing me to fully embrace pop music and stop feeling guilty about guilty pleasures. (The transition was complete after I discovered ILM in 2003.)

(note: I always felt like the dismemberment plan did this somewhere between period #1 and period #2 above, sort of baiting the audience by saying "you think this is ironic but I LIKE POP, OPEN YR DAMN MINDS ffs," which was possibly influential in the transition from #1 to #2)

Ben Gibbard's cover of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" is sort of like this, too. Midway through, he half-shushes the tittering crowd, saying "This is serious" and afterwards emphasizes the point: "I really fucking love that song."

that's an admirable cover choice, if he really does like it, i guess, but ben gibbard is insufferably annoying

In 2011 I want to be more on the ball w/r/t sourcing R&B albums as they leak and then pitching reviews.

this is awesome tim!

btw, j0rdan, i think "whip my hair" has won me over by sheer force of its hook. 8 hours later, next morning, and i can't get the damn tune out of my head all through breakfast, car drive, now at work, i mean woooooow

i only played it ONCE and all i hear looping in my brain is

I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH I WHIP MY HAAAAIRR BACK AN FORTH

still think it's kinda creepy that she looks like a pre-pubescent will smith w/ braids, tho O_O

You should hear Neil Young & Springsteen cover it

...what else would you expect the pre-pubescent daughter of will smith to look like?!

Ben Gibbard's cover of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" is sort of like this, too. Midway through, he half-shushes the tittering crowd, saying "This is serious" and afterwards emphasizes the point: "I really fucking love that song."

if he really loved it he'd leave it be :(

Why?

bc he's rubbish

Oh.

avril's rubbish too

rubbish twee indie singer with rubbish taste in pop music shockah

3. then there ceased to be anything inherently notable or interesting about the idea of an indie band covering a pop tune, unless it was genuinely an awesome cover
4. and at that point why would your indie band try covering a pop tune? it's not going to seem inherently interesting, and chances are slim that you've got a version of a beyonce song or whatever that does something worthwhile with the original

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Monday, January 31, 2011 11:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

to be all serious guy...

we go to live shows to see what artists can do with the songs they play, but also simply to see and hear the artists as human beings, to forge (or feign) a "personal connection" of some kind. i.e., the audience for live performance is often just as interested in the artists and what they reveal about themselves performatively as they are in the larger social environment or the music-as-music. in this sense, covers are personally revealing and thus an inherently interesting part of the live show, even if the performer isn't doing anything all that notable with them.

another way to look at it is to say that when an artist plays his/her own songs to an audience, the basic contract of the "live show" is upheld. an implicit promise comes with each purchased ticket: "you, my fan-friend, will spend an evening listening to songs you know and love." when material from an alien context is introduced to the performance, this implicit agreement is threatened. after all, an indie audience is collectively more likely to enjoy the indie music of the indie artist they've paid to see than they are the pop (or metal or hip hop or whatever) song the performer has suddenly introduced into the moment. fans are forced out of their "bonding moment" comfort bubbles and must ask themselves what this new thing might mean and whether or not they're okay with it.

every artist/fan relationship possesses a specific semiotic texture reflecting a web of aesthetic and social agreements. both discomfort and its partner, humor, are therefore present in any sudden transformation of that texture. there's nothing wrong with any of this.

>>>srsly though, am i the only one who considers travis' total earnestness about his taste to be a really freeing positive?

No. Reading the D-Plan website ca. 2002 probably played a part in preparing me to fully embrace pop music and stop feeling guilty about guilty pleasures. (The transition was complete after I discovered ILM in 2003.)

― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Tuesday, 1 February 2011 13:17 (2 hours ago)

xp I don't know if this contradicts any of what you're saying, but uh... I think it's a pretty well-established part of the "contract" in this case that the Plan will end the show with Travis shouting lyrics to one or two random songs over "OK Joke's Over" jamming -- not really sure that this bit of harmless and very-much-in-character fun takes anyone out of their comfort zone, altho it does give internet ppl something to roll their eyes at afterwards

of course there's a frisson of daring generated when a sensitive indie dude busts out his cover of an R&B hit, due to the fact that indie cats aren't necessarily into that kind of music, but the same thing goes on in dance music right? like the club audience is there for a certain beat & sound, and the DJ can generate tension by pushing against that box a bit, drawing in neighboring sounds or even crazy outliers. plus it's fun to spot quotations in the mix, to discern the implied narrative in a selection of records by other people.

Travis did this at open mics in college, going from say, Too Much Joy's "Crush Story" to "Baby's Got Back" or something. It was always earnest - he absorbed and loved lots of stuff, just like most people, including his audience.

I guess what I'm trying to say is just that the Dismemberment Plan is too unique a case to support a bunch of broader speculation about 'what indie dudes (are) like' -- I don't even really think of their jams as 'covers', and the 'meaning' or 'message' or whatever goes about as deep as the "Now Listening:" sidebar they used to have on their webpage.

like IIRC he did the lyrics of the Cheers theme song at one point -- is this a plea for a populist reappraisal of music usually denigrated as disposable/incidental, or maybe just a bit of fun?

hahaha there is no line in the sand of indie "approval" for Willow Smith that is or will ever be as deep as ILX's line for Ben Gibbard

seriously, though: I completely agree that there are obvious trends in what pop crosses over (under?) to this audience's attention, but I think putting it all down to what's "approved" or "okay to like" is sort of a self-fulfilling vision of things; some part of it is going to be a matter of actual taste and actual liking. that's how all crossover works, right? there's a slightly arbitrary and incomplete amount of pop that appeals here, and same for metal, and an arbitary and incomplete amount of indie that gets metalheads' attention, and so on. there are clearly types of indie/rock bands that are "okay to like" and "not okay to like" on ILX, but I'd never imagine that as some weird conspiracy of approval, just ... people's actual taste

lex i def lol'd the day you were twittering about neil young covering willow smith on jimmy fallon and didn't realize it was jimmy fallon imitating neil young...but it was an affectionate lol fyi

putting it all down to what's "approved" or "okay to like" is sort of a self-fulfilling vision of things; some part of it is going to be a matter of actual taste and actual liking. that's how all crossover works, right? there's a slightly arbitrary and incomplete amount of pop that appeals here, and same for metal, and an arbitary and incomplete amount of indie that gets metalheads' attention, and so on. there are clearly types of indie/rock bands that are "okay to like" and "not okay to like" on ILX, but I'd never imagine that as some weird conspiracy of approval, just ... people's actual taste

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 8:26 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

OTM.

otoh, there are mechanisms by which tastes get transmitted and authoritatively-granted "approval" does play into that. but that's okay, too. there are a lot of questionable assumptions behind criticism of the fact that the pitchfork audience is into the-dream but not R&B in general. i mean, pitchfork and their audience are indie-centric and there's no way around that. they're curious about the larger musical world and deserve credit for that, but their engagement with non-indie music is necessarily more superficial than their engagement with the likes of, say, wilco and animal collective. we all have the niches we more-or-less inhabit and from which we make dilettantish journeys into "new lands." maybe pfork and "generalist" critics in general are a bit pretentious in claiming to cover not just their beloved niche but music in general, but not uniquely pretentious, and i think we all know what the real focus is.