A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

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.

Well, maybe I need to hear this solo album, then, because quite frankly I think this album is amazing and I'd be happy to hear anything remotely like it.

Hearts and Handshakes is really kinda good if you're predisposed to Toni fandom in the first place, but I totally get why it sold bupkus.

I was playing tracks off the first two albums on my ski weekend and people got all antsy and wanted me to turn it off because it was "too aggressive" (!)

They then put on a Pandora station that played as its first track... "Santeria" by Sublime

I don't understand people at all

people are the worst.

Record Store Day 7"
"Kiss Them For Me" & "When She Was Me"

What? As in the Siouxsie cover?

That's my guess as well. Add that one to my need list on RSD.

Oh. My. God.

If that's true... I will just die of happiness. Because that is one of my favourite Siouxsie songs of all time (I think I voted for it on the Singles poll, because Monitor wasn't a single) and it is just *so* perfectly SVIIB in both sound and sensation, like thematically as well as the sampledelic loop thing.

Oh dear, now I have the inescapable desire to hear Monitor.

I should have known, during that moment in their live set that they almost broke into Happy House, that they were massive Siouxsie fans.

OMG, they just told me it is, it is, IT IS a cover of the Siouxsie song.

::dies of utter happiness::

How can this not be the best thing in the ENTIRE world?

I posted their Siouxsie cover upthread a year ago!

http://vimeo.com/16176931

Really happy they went ahead and recorded it.

"Kiss Them For Me" was embarrassing, it sounded like a Paula Abdul single. I hope their cover is better than the original.

The thing to remember is that I have the memory of a guppie!

listening to this album for the first time now. it seems to have a much more direct and charged sound with a lot of the songs striking me as even more focused and anthemic than usual. i'm also hearing much more uniformity from track to track compared to their other albums. it's all pretty joyous. there's a simplicity and pragmatism that really cuts to the chase and plays to the bands strengths.

"reappear" is an early favourite.

"white wind" = very playful and jaunty. definitely the most different sounding thing on here.

yeah, and "when you sing" is totally soon-lite. i don't really get it. while it's an obvious MBV nod on a certain level and invites direct comparisons, it just seems to be cruising along passively on its own momentum, totally lacking the menace and snarl that make "soon" so memorable. you could say it's not looking to channel these same fireworks (and you'd most likely be right), but i just find it strange that they chose to broadcast the MBV influence (right down to chord changes, tribal-esque rhythms, guitar sound) so loudly.

I do not think "menace and snarl" when I hear "Soon"; I think "hazy swirling cotton candy".

(And to be perfectly honest, I'm really struggling to think of a world - except some alternate reality where I'm still 15 and still playing high school tribal warfare with the mean girls - in which Siouxsie covering Paula Abdul is somehow a *bad* thing?)

"he's a COOOOOOOOLD-hearted SSSNAKE!!!! lookintohisEEEEEYYYYYES his EYES his EYES -uh-OH! -uh-OH! Whoaaa! HESBEENTELLINGLIES!!!! LIES! LIES!!!! ah-wwoooaaa-OOOAAAA-oooh"

Come on, that'd be awesome.

which Paula Abdul singles sounded like "Kiss Them For Me"?

Not specific ones, just the general vibe. I could hear Paula sing it, which is fine for her but for Siouxsie... I don't know it seemed pretty thin and fluffy. Not a favorite.

So apparently School of Seven Bells are recording a Radiohead cover?

STOP THAT. STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. MY MUSICAL CRUSHES MUST STAY SEPARATE AND NOT RECOMBINE LIKE THIS.

What song?