A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

But they do SO MUCH MORE than just straight MBV copyright infringement, they take that sound and meld it with so many other things that it becomes one more element in the mix, rather than a straight up rip. I mean, if Shieldsy was gonna sue anyone, Ringo Deathstar would be far more at the top of his summons list.

Excellent WCC.

I was going to refer to "Shieldsy" too but i bottled it.

I played a sus 2 instead

Love to you all

Yeah SVIIB is increasingly and deservedly its own beast album for album. The touchstones are inevitable, the synthesis and extrapolation was not.

The last time I saw him, he commandeered my table and spilled wine all over me. I can call him Shieldsy if I like! :-P

I mean, if Shieldsy was gonna sue anyone, Ringo Deathstar would be far more at the top of his summons list.

Otm but I mean you cannot deny how much of a straight rip "When You Sing" is

3 songs in and this is soooo much better than the last one

Technically, it'd be copyright infringement of the Weatherall remix of My Bloody Valentine, so you'd have a hard time proving anything! And considering that remix is one of my favourite things OF. ALL. TIME. I'm just happy that it exists.

I am really digging this, although it feels like the album doesn't really shift into gear until "Low Times"

(my main complains-v-much-in-character comment is "plz use more syncopation")

xp to Kate yeah, I feel p much the same. Like, it's shamelessly blatant and yet I dont give one single rat's ass--it's just heavenly

Can you pls not use my government name? Thanks.

ack shit sorry, will (not) do

i love that this is a co-release by Vagrant and Ghostly.

its like my teens and my twenties collaborating to make me happy in my thirties

^^^ otm, I had to laugh when I saw both logos on the back

Actually, having compared these two, I think that When You Sing is more like the original than the Weatherall remix, but i love them both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqFAMyngGlw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseSx_hPJyQ

Christ that was so amazing live. Especially the bits where Benjamin whipped out the hollowbody bass to play the Peter Hooky bits on the new material. Words cannot... just, wow. They're so HUGE sounding live. I was skeptical about live drums, but it's totally kicked it up another level and somehow made it even more dancey?

Also LOL at the Knife's support set.

incredible show, my ears are still ringing. didn't feel the lack of the third member - certainly didn't stop them sounding even more expansive and BIGGER.

i thought, compared to the last time i saw them, that the guitars were more dominant in the mix to the vocals; but while the voice wasn't as prominent, alejandra's personality was way more in the spotlight. felt a couple of times she was still unsure of what to do as ~the frontwoman~ but it was almost as though, instead of being layers of sound, she was conveying her songs more sharply. this was only a subtle thing i felt, though.

CANNOT WAIT UNTIL SHOW HERE IN APRIL

What he said.

My right ear is chiming like a bell, I blame that last encore of Sempiternal.

They've always had more guitars than vocals! they're a shoegaze band, after all! I think it's just the last venue was so tiny that it couldn't handle the power of Benjamin's pedalboard. It definitely felt *bigger* than many times I've seen them, but that was the live drums, I'm sure.

Extra keyboardist/vocalist did fill up a lot of the space, but I'm still going to do a *sniff* over missing Claudia because she was always so lovely (and she would always say hi to me.)

They are just my favourite fucken band in the world, that are still existent. They just take little bits of EVERYTHING I LIKE and mix it all together in the most WCC-friendly fashion.

Radiowho?

P R E D A T O R

the endings to "white wind" and "low times", so sudden they left me gasping

P! R! E! D! A! T! O! R! That! is! What! You! Are!

Man, I did not want to cross Alley by the end of that song.

Listening to Low Times now, and just remembering how MASSIVE that burbling synth breakdown into the ending sounded. (Also how it sounded like Forest Families by The Knife crossed with New Order.)

Holy shit, they're playing Amsterdam next sunday! Must re-organize my agenda...

Also LOL at the Knife's support set.

(ugh sorry 'bout "their"...)

No, that was a joke. There was no support band, but someone stuck on Silent Shout on random while SVIIB set up their keyboards, so we were joking "oh, hey, it's like a Knife support act but without the masks."

If you can in any way see them, this tour, do so. They are sounding SO HUGE.

Ah, I was a little bit afraid of it being an injoke after I posted my exlamation mark larded post.. :-)

Will definitely try to go!

I've been a bit obsessed with 'When You Sing' for the last couple of days, possibly the best pastiche of that sound I've heard.

Katy Perry twitter promotion

lol:
http://i.imgur.com/a8B38.png

I've been trying to figure out which, exactly, song it is that When You Sing rips off pays homage to. And it's such a weird thing because, although it does manage to sound like it's totally Soon, it's about 3 or 4 different MBV songs all mixed together, with bits and pieces of elements taken from many different songs.

It just does that sound SO WELL. And it manages to capture the bits of that sound that I really really liked, the density, the interlockingness, the dancefloor dynamics of it, rather than just being a copycat of a specific MBV song, it's like they've completely captured the entire aesthetic on a conceptual level. It's not even that magpie thing we were discussing with Radiohead, where they try to do something, do it wrong, and then end up with something brilliant by accident. It's like SVIIB took MBV's entire aesthetic and almost managed to go one level up, and do something even better with it.

I think of Saint Etienne when I hear "When You Sing"

I agree about how well it captures the essence, but takes it up a notch. I think the drums have a much better sense of groove than Shields drum programming ever managed on Loveless. Plus the EQing on the production I'd how I wish those Loveless remasters to sound like if they ever turn up.

To my ears, it's 75% Soon, with a bit of the guitar tone from 'Sometimes' on those exquisite guitar "drops", and some of the circular whammy-bar/sampler pitch bending from tracks like "I Only Said". Plus 5% horns from The Boo Radleys.

Yay! On my way to Amsterdam - any other ILM 'associates' present tonight?

"White Wind" on repeat x 10. This restlessness has always been. Have to love an album where everyone's repping a different favorite track.

Sweet Christ the lyrics are terrible. What happened?

What? I don't think the lyrics are terrible at all. I love the nastiness and edge of bitterness, but then again, I would.

Nasty and bitter is fine, but dull and trite is not. And did they ask Steve Kilbey to title the album? Oh well, initial impressions... I'll give it a week or two. I never like things off the bat.

p - r - e - d - a - t - o - r

(I like Steve Kilbey's bad puns but that's another story)

::hangs head in shame::

Also, yes.

P! R! E! D! A! T! O! R!!!!

that outro just kicks complete ass; this is a really great album

I don't really listen to SO7B for lyrics so the outro to "Low Times" leaping out at me so strongly is a new experience.

i'm definitely noticing lyrics a lot more/sooner/more immediately on this album

my god, "When You Sing" is just fantastic

I love dude's harmony line, it's so simple and yet so effective

Dude? "Dude"?

his name is Benjamin.

It is all about the Benjamin.

This album sounds like that Toni Halliday solo LP from before Curve.

No, not really it doesn't. If you're talking about Scylla, it's much better produced than that.

It does occasionally sound a bit like Curve in places, but jeez, you say that like it's a bad thing. Curve were freaking awesome, at least for the first couple of albums before the breakup and reform.

I'm talking about Hearts and Handshakes, from 1989. And it is a very, very bad thing.