tUnE-yArDs

I'm still boycotting based on the stupid capitalization. Can't get over it.

Tune Yards? More like Turd Tunes if you ask me!! Thank you thank you that was my Mark Prindle impression.

I have a nagging feeling that the Brute Heart album from this year shits all over this; I'll probably check it ou just to confirm...

This is kinda weird, because I didn't really notice any particularly big hype bandwagon surrounding this record. I noticed the name and the annoying capitalisation and wrote them off as some jobbing tweepop band.

This was my favorite from 2011.

tUNe-Yards gets the Chuck Klosterman treatment:

I'm not really in a position to argue for (or against) the merits of tUnE-yArDs, simply because I've barely listened to w h o k i l l. Had it not won the Pazz & Jop poll, I might not have listened to it at all. It's been on my iTunes since whenever it came out, I know my wife loved it, and I had no problem with it ideologically. I just never got around to playing it. Somehow, I hadn't read a single story about tUnE-yArDs, so I wasn't even sure what genre of music it was supposed to exist alongside. The only thing I knew was that the words "Tune Yards" were spelled "tUnE-yArDs," which seemed like reason enough to ignore it (not a good reason, but a reason nonetheless). But then it was voted no. 1 in this poll, which made me think, I should at least know what it is.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7490324/chuck-klosterman-tune-yards

To which Maura responds:

Most frustrating about the piece, written by one of the country's most celebrated music writers on a high-trafficked platform: It seems to have been the result of a listening session or two in a vacuum, with only Wikipedia and a couple of preconceived notions about Garbus being kind of "out there" as research assistance.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/01/tune_yards_pazz_and_jop_chuck_klosterman.php

chuck klosterman is one of the country's most celebrated music writers?

things are worse than i thought

I think that Klosterman's point is only nominally about tUnE-Yards though and mainly about the way critical acclaim functions within the tiny niche of "serious" pop music.

xxp

klosterman is a fucking idiot

that was one of the worst pieces of published writing i've ever read

I had no problem with it ideologically.

what on earth does this even mean

The album w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs was just named record of the year by voters in the 2011 Pazz & Jop poll.

I'm guessing this doesn't mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article's opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece.

Took him at his word, stopped there. Seemed like an okay article to me.

Is he paid by the adverb?

he's paid in Trident Layers

tuneyards will have to keep making records in the next five years so people don't laugh about her in 10? did i read that right

I think so. She has to stay relevant for a while or risk being remembered as the punch-line to a "what were we thinking?" joke in 10 years time.

the same advice Talking Heads got after Little Creatures topped the poll, right?

Well, Talking Heads had already established their brand pretty well by that time. Klosterman cites Arrested Development, Fischerspooner and Cornershop (whom he professes to still like) as cautionary examples.

that was one of the worst pieces of published writing i've ever read

obviously you don't read Grantland often

I think so. She has to stay relevant for a while or risk being remembered as the punch-line to a "what were we thinking?" joke in 10 years time.

i don't really get this. i still like all the music i liked 10 years ago; i'm not embarrassed by my taste at any point in my life. the worst part of "what were we thinking" may be the "we" -- thanks for including me in your own self-consciousness, dipshit.

frogbs don't hurt em

(not calling o.nate a dipshit, just to make that clear)

full disclosure tuneyards don't really do anything for me

but klosterman doesn't really bring any content here. i wrote out his argument in one sentence and it really doesn't hang together that way either

full disclosure i think he's a dunce

lurking unexamined under his whole style is a lot of nixonoid worry about 'the direction of the culture'

i wrote out his argument in one sentence and it really doesn't hang together that way either

Pretty much true of all the grand theories that Klosterman advances in his pieces. He's a poor man's Dave Barry not Foucault - don't over-think it.

Cornershop (whom he professes to still like)

i wonder if the album these guys came out with this year is better than w h o k i l l

it's a really bizarre piece of writing--he goes in doing a sort of faux-naive i'm going to listen to this without context thing and proceeds to.....consider her career in a larger context!

merrill should call her next album "n a t u r e a b h o r s a v a c u u m"

When you read a critical assessment of a CD, movie, book, if the writer has done his or her job, at the end of the review, you will say to yourself, "I should listen to that CD" or "I should see that movie" (if it's a positive write-up). When one reads Chuck Klosterman, one doesn't think, "I really ought to see this movie." One thinks: "Gee, I sure would like to hit that fucking douche bag Chuck Klosterman in the head with a crowbar."

haha who said that

theres a pretty great (and unnecessarily cruel) article on Klostermann up somewhere, which I didn't find, but I found this:

http://dmbysc.blogspot.com/2006/09/klosterfuck-or-if-this-is-voice-of-my.html

here's the thing about Klosterman, he actually wrote in a book that Rush were "tree huggers" and possibly a Christian band because they wrote the song "The Trees," which either proves he never ever paid attention to the lyrics or even heard the song, which is such an obvious Ayn Rand polemic it's not even funny

i wonder if the album Cornershop came out with this year is better than w h o k i l l

It's great!

also big ups 2 brute heart!

here's the thing about Klosterman, he actually wrote in a book that Rush were "tree huggers" and possibly a Christian band because they wrote the song "The Trees," which either proves he never ever paid attention to the lyrics or even heard the song, which is such an obvious Ayn Rand polemic it's not even funny

this is really Klostermann's shtick, he often readily admits that he doesn't pay much attention to the stuff he reviews or doesn't care much about it, instead choosing to talk about himself and what it all means, man

man, i wish i could care about this. alas.

on a much lighter note; imagine my surprise when i navigated to ESPN to watch NBA highlights and saw a picture of tUNEYARDs. *triple-take*

write about sports, plz.

Folks who read Klosterman deserve everything they get.

Whokill was the 2011 version of Blueberry Boat for me. Inexplicable but compelling. I wish there were more albums like this out there than nth-generation indie rock landfill.

(ignoring the T-Y spelling restrictions. It reminds me of the Sarah Jessica Parker character in LA Story. Yes I spell fIREHOSE, Firehose.)

fight the real enemy http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

nobody gives DâM-FunK shit for his capitalization. :-(

or hyphenation, even.

dave cool, what is it that you don't like about tune yards, since you're being friendly

Hey I wonder if I can listen to Blueberry Boat on Spotify...

(Sorry I didn't mean to cross post that!)

i haven't listened to that record in years. no idea what i would think of it now.

dave cool, what is it that you don't like about tune yards, since you're being friendly
--this is funny u bitter dork (forksclovetofu)

im not going to say anything bad about tune-yards. she works very hard and doesn't need people on the internet bringing her down!

That's why they call him Dave Cool.

ha, i will need to get dinner with dave cool so we can discuss this in an a LESS COOL environment

true story: i discovered ilx in 2003 by googling "chuck klosterman"