The Lumineers

Functional and fashionable, these wardrobe staples will get you through many a “Ho Hey” ho-down or riverside writing session.

oh boy

Coming around to the "it's a joke" stance, much to my relief

i just wish that tumblr left bon iver out of all of this.

he's definitely part of the problem tho

Yeah I'm quite happy to let guilt by association affect mob psychology here.

Keep the modern devices tucked away, and accessorize without sacrificing any of what makes you you.

killin it

re: bon iver i always find this comforting

http://boniverotica.tumblr.com/

"new authentic" heh

the "everyboot" is genius

a part of me feels compelled to defend these rustic authentic bros, using the same argument i would always use to defend hipsters: aren't they ultimately harmless? and couldn't our society stand to be a little more, not less, tolerant of whimsy and self-expression, even if it means standing up for a lame, embarrassing, kitschy aesthetic once in a while?

you have to take what i say with a "pinch of salt" though, yesterday i was defending the poetry of suzanne sommers on another messageboard.

it's cynically deployed. blame the system in part but the overwhelming presence of lumineers imagine dragons etc in ad campaigns shows how 'authenticity' can be just another pose in our lovely hypercapitalist world

plus the songs are fucking terrible, not just musically obvious but lyrically bankrupt. have you listened to the lyrics of 'it's time'? it's a monologue that's barely worthy of a dorm-room bro trying to explain to some girl why he needs to see the world before he settles down with a girlfriend

harmless rustic authentic bros. would be okay but ne'er have i come across one who didn't also have rustic authentic ideas about gender roles bubbling away somewhere.

the new goo goo dolls single sounds like these guys. dashboard confessional bro started a new band just to sound like these guys.

it is a depressing trend

yeah i'm not a fan of the trend at all. it feels like a degraded form of like, neutral milk hotel, and all the '00s bands that used archaic instrumentation -- beirut, etc.

I blame the Arcade Fire. I am ALWAYS happy to blame the fucking Arcade Fire.

that's funny. i have also always been deeply prejudiced against the arcade fire. something about their theatricality seems to straddle the line between authenticity and camp in a way that feels disingenuous.

i'm not even of the opinion that arcade fire are the *worst* band in the world, i just don't really like their thing -- but they have been a terrible influence on music in the past 9 years.

yeah i agree with that. i think they are (really) good at what they do, but something about their schtick is unappealing to me. i feel like i am more opposed to their most recent album, with its operatic, pseudo-political title, than their first album, which i think i probably liked when i was in hs

Dude's taking the gag straight to the people: http://forum.mumfordandsons.com/t/12831.aspx

Interesting that the lineage is indie rather than what we in the olde days called alt-country. Like, I don't get the sense that there's much overlap between Son Volt fans (who apparently still exist, as does the band) and the Lumineers/Mumford scene.

Cosign on Arcade Fire being one of the root causes of this. I read tons of glowing press without ever hearing their records, and then stumbled across them one night on Austin City Limits thinking, "What the HELL is this" until their name finally flashed on screen.

this stuff feels like roots music stripped of any roots -- like it signifies back to basics but doesn't even know what the "basics" are.

Agreed. Lumineeros (what are we calling these people?) are also way more twee imo.

i was agreeing to son volt overlap -- stupid xp

I think I have heard about 15 seconds of "Ho Hey" in total, because every time I encounter it I either change the radio station or exit the room where it is playing

I heard it on the radio last night followed immediately on the same station by Enrique Iglesias ft Pitbull, "I Like It"
Lol radio programming in 2013

yeah they play it between bruno mars and justin bieber out here. which is kind of interesting but mostly lol.

this is a larger question, but do you think this is a particularly bad year for top 40 radio?

YES

do you have any suspicions as to why it is so bad? i would say that music taste has become so balkanized by the internet that the radio has become exclusively the domain of un-savvy music listeners, people in high school, who don't even have an ear for good pop music. but then, why is that coming to the fore now, and not five or six years ago, or something?

I always feel like the cranky old man when i say this but I believe there are a few main culprits for the decline of decent top 40 radio:

1) Decline of music education in public schools (and probable decline in private or individual music ed too)
2) The old record label system, for all its flaws, does not have an adequate replacement in terms of something that can support an artist financially for a while while developing a record (i.e. a large advance)
3) More advanced data usage on pop music has led to the pursuit of surer hits, less risk-taking

may also be that talent is going elsewhere, big labels aren't sexy anymore, etc.

it's because of the way we consume music & the way businesses track the consumption of music

there are almost definitely 10-year-old kids listening to Lumineers mp3s who weren't even born when "New Slang" changed everyone's lives

also maybe since the decline of the album format, big labels don't want to throw their weight behind more ambitious/interesting artists, and just sort of cynically sign artists that can reproduce a predictable, proven formula, like young money style rap or bieber bubblegum or mumford-type alt country pop or whatever.

I am kind of ambivalent abt music education in American public schools; in my experience a large part of it seems to be Huey Lewis fans teaching kids to play corny regimented jazz fusion

In my experience (which was the mid-'80s), it was a Lionel Richie fan telling all of us kids to listen to real music and not that Prince crap which nobody would ever remember in 10 years. (Our marching band's version of "All Night Long" was kinda cool, to be fair.)

We did actually play Huey Lewis, too -- "Heart of Rock n Roll" was a show-stopper for the high school jazz band.

in my experience, it was someone teaching us what different instruments sounded like mixed in with learning to read music and learning to sightread

And how to tell the difference between 12 different Sousa marches.

i was in my high school jazz band as well and we mostly played adaptations of jazz standards, like salt peanuts or a night in tunisia or even like herbie hancock songs. it was sweet.

I am kind of ambivalent abt music education in American public schools; in my experience a large part of it seems to be Huey Lewis fans teaching kids to play corny regimented jazz fusion

― Heyman (crüt), Friday, April 12, 2013 12:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but you need some vehicle or other for teaching kids to play/write passing chords and melodies that span more than three notes

i feel like knowing how to read or play music is not a precondition of having good taste though, and taste is something that is driven at the producer end. the reason top 40 radio is bad is not because there aren't good musicians out there.

shit, i meant "consumer" end.

i had to do a dance routine to "great balls of fire" for flag team in high school
i remember being conflicted because it was totally uncool but also super fun

most of my music education experiences were overwhelmingly positive. i feel like i have lots of amusing/happy memories of performances and whatnot. i did wind up getting kicked off the flag team though.

the reason top 40 radio is bad is not because there aren't good musicians out there.

There are plenty of good or potentially good people on the top 40, even. We just seem to be in one of those ruts where there's a crop of drab newbies sharing space with people who have made plenty of good music but are in various stages of water-treading or underperforming. You could have a top 40 with Justin Timberlake, Pink, Rihanna and Britney in it that was a lot better than the one we have.

(Of the established pros on the chart right now, only Taylor is at the top of her game.)

and she is pretty much uniformly terrible, ergo

None of which excuses the Lumineers and those who sail with them, obviously.

cosign on taylor swift being terrible. unless she is reading it; then i'd feel bad.

i'm not smart enough to hate this stuff on any critical level but as an old i can't hear any antecedents past arcade fire or nmh or what have you either and therefore it doesn't line up with my consumer experience of americana. i like a nice twang where is the twang. also some jangle. where are the second-hand shout-outs to mcguinn, parsons, or dick dale.

i think bluster is an accurate shorthand descriptor of the new authentic aesthetic; i tend to like ruckus music, tho. i don't hear any ruckus in new authentic.

it's like cowpunk never happened.