tUnE-yArDs

if you can't handle the idea that Katy Perry hollers just as much if not more than Merrill Garbus, you should probably spend less time watching videos and more time listening to what people are actually doing

that's presumptive, snide and beneath you. i can "handle" the idea that katy perry hollers. i think she hollers differently, to different effect, for different aesthetic reasons. moreover, she positions her hollering in her music differently.

But... she doesn't! That is my entire point!

wtf happened here?

maybe you should try using them how everyone else who speaks English uses them, then people would spend less time in these discussions yelling at you and questioning your intelligence

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:52 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark

and you could be a bit more intellectually generous and curious, rather than simply jumping to combative conclusions

But... she doesn't! That is my entire point!

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:53 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

i get that we view this differently, but that's no reason to turn this into a flame war

There's more than a little bit of "indie pity party" going on here that I think is a total disservice to the actual music.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

conflict aside, i'm curious about this. what does "indie pity party" mean here?

The aesthetic difference is in the way the songs are built, not in the way the singers are singing them. You could swap their material and get very credible cover versions from both of them because their voices work in very similar ways; there is a lighter, prettier head voice and a bigger, meatier growly chest voice with a decent amount of rasp.

xp: It means people are casting Merrill as the put-upon plain girl bursting out of her shell in a wall of fury, something a pretty princess like Katy Perry could never understand. It is a wholly adversarial, reactionary position meant to delineate the music as extra-special and intrinsically worthier than the pop counterparts of similar voice to her.

and you could be a bit more intellectually generous and curious, rather than simply jumping to combative conclusions

It would be easier to not be combative if you would stop using "I am going to redefine your words to suit my argument" as a rhetorical style and would just say what you mean.

Just wrapped up my first full listen and, yep, feeling pretty ashamed for my offhand dismissal of her based on the painted face promo pics and beyond stupid bandname. This is a pretty fun record.

there is a lighter, prettier head voice and a bigger, meatier growly chest voice with a decent amount of rasp.

that describes a lot of female vocalists though!

people are casting Merrill as the put-upon plain girl bursting out of her shell in a wall of fury, something a pretty princess like Katy Perry could never understand. It is a wholly adversarial, reactionary position meant to delineate the music as extra-special and intrinsically worthier than the pop counterparts of similar voice to her.

you're projecting a great deal of that, and i think the projection is distorting this conversation. i'm talking to some extent about how voices are used technically, but also about how that technical use relates to artistic aesthetics and persona. subject matter, production and arrangement are inseparable from this. that said, i don't think that katy ever allows her recorded voice to sound as raw, gritty and shrill as merrill's. that's not to fault KP in any way. i like her music and i like pop. if i'm wrong here, show me how. in any event, please don't angrily berate me for what you only imagine i'm saying.

It would be easier to not be combative if you would stop using "I am going to redefine your words to suit my argument" as a rhetorical style and would just say what you mean.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 2:02 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, they weren't really your words, to be fair. get bent brought up the "brave enough to be unpretty" argument, which i see some merit in, but comes close to the sort of indie privileging you object to.

i'd like to think i don't redefine words to suit my arguments. i'd like to think that words are a lot more complex and interesting than we often give them credit for. i spend a lot of time thinking about words, and sometimes use them in personal ways without thinking about how well my meaning is going to come across. i'm also a bit slow to process, to understand the semantic tangles that cause confusion. but if you work with me, i think you'll find i'm more cooperative than competitive in these sorts of discussions.

xp to sarahel: I know, that is part of my wider point! Specifically between Katy Perry and Merrill Garbus, while I don't think they have the exact same voice, there are strong similarities; Merrill's is "bluesier" than Katy's but not to a degree where I think it would be that off for either of them to try singing the others' songs. Another parallel would be Adele but I don't think she has the lightness of touch to pull off the quieter ty material, whereas Merrill could basically stomp all up and down all over anything Adele's recorded.

Having said all that, I am more than certain Merrill has more control over her voice than Katy; a cursory search of live performances will bear that out. However, that same cursory search will show quite a lot of grittiness, shrillness, and just flat-out weirdness in the way Katy Perry sings, not all of which makes it onto record but can certainly be heard (for example) in the vocal mood shifts on "Teenage Dream" or the about-to-bust-a-chord yelling on the chorus of "Firework" or even the transition from shouty shouty to held head voice on the bridge to "I Kissed a Girl". I'm not arguing that it is as extreme or that it is a carbon copy; I'm arguing that it is there in the first place. Merrill is very very good at what she is doing, but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

true. And that's not even unique - as others have mentioned upthread. The rawness, un-prettiness (if you will), is pretty common in avant-folk music, it's a signifier of authenticity and sincerity, etc. But it's difficult for me to separate Katy Perry's voice from the insipid cheerleader anthems she sings.

I think that, if you do, you will marvel and boggle at how a voice like that became one of the most successful pop stars of the past few years because it is a very STRANGE instrument, even in a world where Britney Spears can quack her way into millions of dollars.

she's on the cover of Vanity Fair in a low cut gown ...

Merrill is very very good at what she is doing, but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

OTM. wasn't trying to attribute any great uniqueness to MP's lead singing, just describing it. i think i hear the chorus to "firework" as a good deal less shrill & jarring than you do (or else you hear "the bizness" as less so than i), but accept the general similarities.

like my first exposure to Katy Perry's singing was while staying with a friend in Brooklyn, and he watched a youtube of hers because he'd seen pictures of her and figured it would at least be a visually appealing experience.

i'm still kind of baffled, honestly, by the turn this thread took

well, when you party with uh-us ...

I got combative when you redefined pretty to inherently mean shallow, which effectively was putting words in my mouth, and then used that as a springboard to argue against a strawman position ("I think there is a lot of shallow, vacuous singing on here that has all of the hallmarks of these pop singers I listed earlier") that was nothing like what I actually said ("I think people are overselling the strangeness of Merrill's voice, particularly in an era when a bunch of weird-sounding women are multi-platinum pop stars AND when she doesn't nearly as much on the other songs on the album as she does on the lead single")

the word "bellow" is missing from that post, feel free to insert it where you think it is appropriate

djp, i'm gonna be above quoting you telling me how you were hella wrong about tuneyards
but not above pointing it out
btw she is v v pretty in person.

for a second i thought merrill was on the cover of Vanity Fair in a low cut gown and i was gonna go get a subscription and then

I got combative when you redefined pretty to inherently mean shallow, which effectively was putting words in my mouth, and then used that as a springboard to argue against a strawman position ("I think there is a lot of shallow, vacuous singing on here that has all of the hallmarks of these pop singers I listed earlier") that was nothing like what I actually said

okay, i get where you're coming from. clarifications and apologies, then. i never meant to suggest that pretty must = shallow, only that (in my mind), it does connotatively tend in that direction, you know, sometimes. i certainly didn't mean to suggest that the prettier portions of this album are necessarily shallower and therefore more appropriately comparable to presumably shallow pretty-pop. apologize sincerely for any such (unintentional) insinuation and can see as how it might have irked.

personally, i don't see merrill's voice as "strange" per se. i see it as strong, arguably a lot stronger and more versatile than that of many multi-platinum pop stars, but that's beside the point. i see merrill's use of her voice as not strange, exactly, but deliberately eccentric and at times challenging in a way that has more in common with the aesthetics of jazz, freak-folk and art rock than with the more anthemic strains of contemporary chart & teen pop. that isn't to damn the latter in favor of the former...

the prettiness debate is odd. how do we determine whether or not a voice intends to seem pretty ("nice," etc.), and in what way? and how do we determine what the use of a voice says about the values and aesthetics of the person using it? i don't know how to answer these questions, exactly, and they're especially difficult to isolate in a pop environment that makes image and celebrity persona so immediately evident and thus inseparable from song and sound. i would still say that katy perry, for instance, strives to present her voice and self in the prettiest possible fashion, the basic strangeness of her instrument notwithstanding, and that merrill seems to take the opposite tack, making a deliberate virtue of exposing her rawer and harsher reaches. hope that's not too inflammatory...

I would say that is a reasonable statement with regards to the amount of discernible pitch correction used on their respective material, but I also think you have to consider that basic differences between the types of songs they are singing and how the same (or similarly classed) voice(s) can come across very differently depending on the material sung. One reason Merrill sounds more suited to freak folk is because she is singing music more similar to that than the current pop trends. Put her on a song like "Hot and Cold" or "Rolling in the Deep" and I guarantee you will not read her as intentionally being a weird singer.

(IOW part of why they cone across that way, IMO a big part, is difference in genre)

Interesting thread!
_Don't_ be put off by the alleged lo-finess of the first record.
There's an intimacy on that record that is gone (but not forgotten) on the new one.

Put her on a song like "Hot and Cold" or "Rolling in the Deep" and I guarantee you will not read her as intentionally being a weird singer.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 3:23 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

perhaps that's true, but MG seems very much in control of her art, so i suspect that if she'd decided to cover songs like these on the album, she'd have adapted them to the deliberately eccentric pop style she's currently cultivating. which becomes a chicken v egg thing, i suppose...

Also, there's a modus operandi at work here in MG's music
You can hear it on the first record, how she limits herself to a digital recorder and home-recording
In her live show, how she uses non-computer based looping
Switching from drum to drum with a Vocal Mic, Held In Hand
You can see it in her physical self, her embracing of the manliness of her body and voice
I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

I am late and typing too fast

You can see it in her physical self, her embracing of the manliness of her body and voice
I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

OTM, that's part of what i was getting at. i think it extends to her use of her own voice.

or, i'd agree, rather...

I don't disagree necessarily, what I am saying is that Merrill as pop singer is going to be very different from Merrill as self-made indie artist.

_Don't_ be put off by the alleged lo-finess of the first record.
There's an intimacy on that record that is gone (but not forgotten) on the new one.

Totally - it's nothing anybody who listened to Shrimper cassettes, say, would ever think of as all that lo-fi in the first place. The vocals tend to be less histrionic - which is a totally valid criticism of the new one imo! - even though I don't think she'd quite figured out, lyrically, what she wanted her band to be about at that point. And since she's forced to work within the limitations of her recording technology a lot more, when things peak or clip too much, the results can be really striking. That bass drop at the end of "Little Tiger" is still probably my favorite moment in any of her songs.

http://www.marriagerecs.com/shop2/744/tune-yards

Vinyl nerds should check out the LP, which has some of my favorite DIY vinyl packaging ever, and which was very key to me in shaping the aesthetic.

I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

cosign on that, i think. still trying to get at the root of what i find compelling about this.

we have this idea that music which is to do with er female anger is bound up with inchoate expression, with yelling and banging on things; i find this record compelling because of how merrill's vocal chops let her switch from sweetness to bellowing on a dime maybe undercut this

i mean, a part of the project of the record is dealing with violence and gender in ways which quietly muck around with our usual terms of reference: so in the bit i quoted above it sort of signifies that the musical analogue to the FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE she just DOESN'T UNDERSTAAAAND is actually a very tight piece of playing; or that she uses the sweetest of all possible coos for the 'policeman shot my baby' bit; or "your powa inside, wrecks me like a lullaby"

OK, I confess I've been avoiding this because of the name, but, uh. This is great. This is great! How could I have been so petty for so long?

Exactly. THis is the album of the year. Don't let the odd capitalization put you off.

For what it's worth, here's what I thought:

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/tune-yards-whokill-round-7toms-choice/

This song is incredible. And I can most immediately hear in it the African - High Life - Fela Kuti - Zaire - 70s Afro Pop big band style. I believe that we all influence one another, its just a matter of who gets access to the widest disemmination regime. Paul Simon had his Graceland, hipsters dance on Soul Nights with few black people around. I cant wait for the Zimbabwean band that is inspired by Morrissey that sells out Chinese stadiums and is managed by R. Kelly, we will all sing praises.
twentyeighter 2 days ago 2

I can't wait for that either

Been hearing a lot of hype about this band, but I just. can't. get into it. Her voice gives me the same physical sensation as someone running their fingernails down a chalk board.

Clearly others don't feel this way, so maybe it hits some weird spot in my brain.

I think it's the vocals that make it for me. I like how raw and loose and emotionally expressive they sound against the music. The live vocal and string playing angainst the electronic music reminds me of the first two Le Tigre albums, in spirit. There are places where I was reminded by the Minutemen, as well. I'm not crazy in love, but I do like it.

I also don't quite like her vocals and the lyrics -- there's something about it that reminds me of the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university.

She's a lot more fun though. Ordinarily I'd agree with you about This Kind of Voice.

the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university.

I stayed away from this for awhile because she seemed like an Ani DiFranco-style identity politics type of act. But holy mackerel was i ever wrong. It's the album of the year. And she's not dabbling in African music. She sounds like she knows it backwards and forwards.

The music itself I like, but her voice reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs

I always read this band's name as fUcK-tArDs

lol feminist undergrad rock music is basically something i can never ever hate on

there's something about it that reminds me of the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university

haha this is like ... this is an opinion, not just that you have, but you are willing to share, & go on record as having? ok then

dick

lol

This album did not test well with the eight-month pregnant women in my household demographic, its been banned from being played around her lest it enduces early labor.