The Lumineers

i feel like the reason i don't like their whole spiel is related to my intuitive sense of what they "represent", something it seems others on this board share, and i guess the authenticity discussion is just a way of unpacking that sentiment. i don't think there is something objectively worse about the simple pop melodies they turn out and the simple pop melodies recorded by some of my favorite groups -- it's all about how this material is presented, how it is framed, which is related to their "sound" but also to other things, like the niche they seem to fill in the culture. i mean, their music is more enjoyable than jandek's, but it irks me, whereas his music fascinates me, and i think it's worth asking why.

i'm also not sure if what i am talking about necessitates looking into their "intentions". the material itself, it seems, lacks self-awareness, in that it presents us with hokey, old-timey, nostalgic pablum, and there is nothing in its presentation to indicate the artists' understanding that it is all a conceit. i don't know: the music doesn't seem to relate to its source material in an interesting way. it's one-dimensional.

an act that is still basically a pop band but which employs "nostalgia" toward more constructive ends, or richer ends, is, i think, beirut. the music feels thoughtful and not lazy, even though it is at the same time pretty on a superficial level.

I'm always shocked when a band so brazenly gloms onto some fashionable sound, like putting on a new suit. I mean, did these guys walk around wearing Olde Tyme stuff with banjos, see Mumford on TV and go, wow, likeminded souls!! Or did they shape their image around some pre-defined trends? I've always wondered this when, say, U2 is being all U2-y, and then the next thing you know, there are a dozen of bands that sound like U2. Or Coldplay. Or Arcade Fire. Just the Zeitgeist? Coincidence? Or simply shameless? Like, if you were the Lumineers, and this was your thing, would you second guess yourself because your thing is the same as so many other things? Like, shit, maybe I should shave my beard and dress differently? Or does arrogance and ego take over and you think, fuck it, I will do this fake folk and work boot shit better than everyone. Or, do you think, even more arrogantly, all these other poseurs can step off, because we are the real deal, look at my suspenders and listen to me yelp? You'd think they'd make even the most modest efforts to differentiate themselves.

eh the mumfords were only popular for a year or two before they put their record out. it seems more likely they were just doing that style for a while and benefited from its popularity than that they scrambled to 'copy' such a broad and established sound/look.

i feel like the visual aesthetics of this sort of thing have been around in the indie world for a while... i mean, look at that modest mouse promo. i think these bands are different because they are just always going for the least common denominator of what appeals to twinkly eyed, romantic-souled indie fans. it's just so depressingly predictable.

in related news, idk if anyone here is a prozac nation fan, but elizabeth wurtzel has outed herself as a fan of mumford and sons. seems like a pretty brave thing to admit to. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/128313/in-bed-with-bob-dylan

fleet foxes at least seems to approach the rustic campfire schtick from their own angle.

idk if anyone here is a prozac nation fan, but elizabeth wurtzel has outed herself as a fan of mumford and sons. seems like a pretty brave thing to admit to. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/128313/in-bed-with-bob-dylan

― Pat Finn, Monday, April 15, 2013 5:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every elizabeth wurtzel blog post lately amounts to "fuck the world, I'm a mess and I'm staying in bed and eating ice cream in my pajamas" so I wouldn't say this is exactly "brave" in her context

i'm also not sure if what i am talking about necessitates looking into their "intentions". the material itself, it seems, lacks self-awareness, in that it presents us with hokey, old-timey, nostalgic pablum, and there is nothing in its presentation to indicate the artists' understanding that it is all a conceit.

Fair point.

xpost lol. for some reason, i still like wurtzel's style. there is something admirable in her unwavering commitment to act like a self-absorbed teenager forever, no matter how horrible it makes her look to the outside world.

yeah what Pat said. It's not like anyone is accusing them of "Not Actually Being From The Turn Of The Century"

That's not partic admirable imo but to each her own.

idk, i feel like it's "authentic" in its own way.

I feel like being "committed" to not growing up isn't really properly defined as "commitment"

oh it totally isn't, and her whole ego seems to be built upon an insane illusion that by sleeping late and doing drugs in her 40s or whatever she is bravely rebelling society's narrow expectations for what she should be doing, and that somehow readers will admire her for that. this worldview is, of course, inauthentic. but the fact that she like, never backs down, and just kind of lives in her own world, not ours... idk, it is authentic. she is authentically pathetic.

I guess so. A lot of people live that way and just don't write about it. I don't know if she's braver for writing about it or just more narcissistic.

hm. i don't know. what i like about her writing is that it gives expression to a worldview that, as you said, seems pretty common in my experience.

also she seems to savvy not to understand that she is coming across as desperate and narcissistic, but for whatever reason spurns those criticisms at every turn. she seems very in control of how she presents herself.

*too

I decided to find out who the Lumineers are influenced by and I got

Drummer Jeremiah Fraites exclusively told BANG Showbiz: ''The first thing I got into was Beethoven. I remember getting one of those CDs that was all piano stuff by Beethoven and that really influenced me a lot, I love classical music.

''Then the next band I got into was Guns N' Roses. I don't really know how that transition took place, but I think I really grew up listening to lots of different types of genres.

''I love cinematic music and anything strange and weird. Wesley [Schultz, guitar] and I write all the music and he grew up on stuff that his father liked such as Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen. I think there's a blend we bring to the table, where we don't have the same exact influences, but write well together.''

so, okay then.

I was thinking about similar things recently when I saw some ridiculous band whose every stylistic and sonic element seemed taken directly from Animal Collective - I figure I can make a pretty nuanced aesthetic argument about bands taking sonic (and other) referents that they don't know the roots of, and so in some way not really understanding how the sounds n structures they're using function in the ear of the listener who knows that stuff, leaving us with a displeasing uncanny or 'inauthentic' mess in the Mumfords or Lumineers manner. But ultimately I like plenty of stuff that could easily pass as a casual ripoff of this or that, so I don't know what to do with that other than accept that the argument kind of goes out the window if the bands somehow happen to be 'good' despite what I'm thinking of as their higher-level artistic failings.

I dunno, I'm not a huge fan of Mumford & Sons or the Lumineers or anyone else trafficking in this sound, but nor do I completely understand what it is about a certain kind of earnest rock band -- Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, and Arcade Fire -- that gets ILMers riled up so much. Part of it, I gather, is that these bands' presentation of "authenticity" is pernicious inasmuch as it encourages people to see them as much better or more important than they actually are. (In contrast to most other pop music, which is recognized as "just" pop music.) But I think the reaction to that phenomenon among certain "knowledgeable" music fans is to treat these bands as much worse than they actually are.

xpost to Merdeyeux, i think that is similar to the impasse contenderizer described upthread: any "rule" you make about what separates good -- or authentic, or original, or any other value-laden critical term -- from bad, is bound to have many glaring exceptions that you can't account for. like, i mentioned before i like beirut, and their thing is also producing an effect of warm, fuzzy nostalgia by bending older folk forms (mostly european in their case i think, but i'm far from an expert) to the catchy pop song format. there is nothing "critical" about beirut's music, and there is also nothing partic. "self-aware" about it like with the rolling stones who exploited the dissonance between who they were and what their music sounded like. but it still "works" somehow (for me), while the lumineers don't, and it is hard to account for this. like, the whole thing doesn't "feel" as contrived as the lumineers, and any contrivance i am aware of in the act of listening doesn't feel like a bad thing, kind of like how a tastefully, period-appropriately furnished colonial house doesn't feel artifical, even if it has modern appliances. the contrivance is able to feel natural; the illusion works even though it doesn't...

i think what might be going on is that "good" bands have a more unified, meaningful aesthetic vision than bad bands. they are able to sound like themselves, even when their source material is super-obvious, and comes from all over the place. i think the "mess" you hear with the lumineers song is like how orwell described sloppy thinking: pre-fabricated phrases and ideas are "tacked together like hen-houses." a good band synthesizes their source material in a way that is "meaningful", even if it is hard (or impossible) to articulate what exactly this "meaning" is.

sorry if that was super-long.

i think there are way more long posts itt than the subject requires but that's just me

hey ho stfu lumineers the end :)

if we work hard enough we'll be able to figure out precisely why we should be telling them to stfu, and then they'll have to agree!

some enjoy finding the corn in a turd, some step over it, i guess

pf, i think you're trying way too hard to ground your rejection of the lumineers in some empirically observable failing on their part. like, in orter to justify disliking them, you feel you have to solve for the difference between good and bad bands.

as i was suggesting earlier, your distaste may have more to do with you than with them. to have a certain kind of taste, after all, is not to be right. it is to be particular.

well then. I guess we can just pack up ILM and go home.

tbf, you can do a lot worse than all of these bands (I assume; I've only heard the one Lumineers song). What I hate about it is that it is so mundane, so far from anything challenging or interesting. Heard the last Coldplay described as rice pudding, and that's about it: it's a fine use of leftover white rice. I don't get why people hate on Arcade Fire, who are tangential to this. I think that band does try to challenge its audience while aiming for something grandiose and moving and relevant. It's the worst elements of Arcade Fire that get stolen by bands like the Lumineers, who lack sound and vision, like they were drawn up as a dorm room idea before anyone even picked up a guitar. Like, one of them goes to the other with a pencil sketch - "I've got an idea for a band!"

Coldplay bother me because they have this numbing, lulling quality. They sound like the feeling of being on a moving walkway in an international airport. There's nothing wrong with comfort music, but to me they feel like comfort music for people who only ever listen to comfort music. I don't want to overproject about their audience, but that's what I hear -- three time-tested chords, a "pretty" arrangement, a very steady, non-dynamic pulse, a "pretty" melody not sung with too much of any single emotion, not even quite melancholy. SSRI music. I guess maybe this all sounds a little adolescent of me.

It bugs me because it's pretty safe to begin with, yet at every turn they make decisions to be even safer. There are ways to make all this stuff interesting, but they are not interested in that. Bands like Mumford are what you get when you start out with warm rice pudding and work down from there.

But hey, they're fun to make fun of, which is important, too. U2 won't be around forever.

I guess maybe this all sounds a little adolescent of me.

it does, tbf, but i think you and JiC are pointing your critiques in the the right direction, describing what you want and aren't getting from acts like the lumineers and coldplay. you want to be challenged, unsettled and interested, pushed out of your comfort zone, offered something other than soothing reassurances. as i suggested earlier (in talking about my own tastes), this perhaps indicates a critical or even an alienated stance vis-a-vis some hazily constructed comfort-zone status quo. extended far enough, these sorts of dissatisfied, oppositional desires can even acquire a political dimension, as they did in 70s punk and 80s indie rock. psychologically speaking, there is something adolescent about critiques of this type, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I think this music is adolescent.

I think this music is pre-adolescent.

i still fill like there is more going on here than just the fact that the lumineers are "bland" and "unchallenging." there are many bands i like that are soothing and reassuring; i listen to "music for airports" all the time. dismissing blandness, or nostalgia, or whatever as categories is too simple and i don't think it gets to the heart of the issue, which i do think has something to do with what you could broadly call "authenticity." the lumineers are presenting us with a transparently contrived entertainment product. it's not that they're "bland", it's that whatever they are presenting doesn't seem to be coming from an honest place, and that doesn't express anyone's specific, coherent artistic vision. it tries too hard to please and isn't interested in saying anything.

i mean, my 74-year-old mom is no dummy, but she exclusively listens to comforting, soothing music. she especially likes enya, windam hill-style new age ambient, and slack-key guitar. (this isn't entirely an artifact of age. she's always gone for soft, warm pillow music.)

my interests are somewhat different, but i don't have to pronounce enya bad and wrong in order to validate that. around christmas time, you could do a hell of a lot worse. mom & i can happily agree on john fahey and leonard kwan. the gap between windam hill and eno's ambient work is often very narrow.

afaict, the main sonic difference between that stuff and the lumineers is that the lumineers are a hell of a lot more insistent. they're not content to chime and burble away in the background. they want to occupy some forward space with their yelping and light bulb stomping. as a result, they're harder to casually permit if you're not actually a fan. fuckers need swatting.

dismissing blandness, or nostalgia, or whatever as categories is too simple and i don't think it gets to the heart of the issue, which i do think has something to do with what you could broadly call "authenticity." the lumineers are presenting us with a transparently contrived entertainment product. it's not that they're "bland", it's that whatever they are presenting doesn't seem to be coming from an honest place, and that doesn't express anyone's specific, coherent artistic vision. it tries too hard to please and isn't interested in saying anything.

that's where we differ. i don't see any reason to accuse them of dishonesty or even the lack of a coherent artistic vision. i assume they genuinely like the music they make and have a clear idea of what they're going for. and there's nothing at all wrong with trying to make an audience happy. the happy they're offering just happens to bug the shit out of me. it's entirely personal. i hate them.

maybe. i guess for me, personally, it's not accurate to say that i don't like blandness because i like a lot of bands that are inoffensive and immediately pleasurable. i think the difference between the lumineers' sensibility and even something like the oft-maligned fleet foxes' is subtle, indefinable, but ultimately has something to do with artistic seriousness and, yes, authenticity, which is a word i am using in a possibly idiosyncratic way.

good thread though.

can't imagine that's the consensus, but i'm enjoying it :)

The difference between this band and Fleet Foxes is as vast as the difference between CSNY and America.

i think the difference between the lumineers' sensibility and even something like the oft-maligned fleet foxes' is subtle, indefinable, but ultimately has something to do with artistic seriousness and, yes, authenticity, which is a word i am using in a possibly idiosyncratic way.

constructs like "artistic seriousness" and "authenticity" are awfully hard to nail down. tbh, i think they're often a kind of critical cheat, a lazy means of freighting simple expressions of taste with an unearned aura of significance. if we allow room for play, costume, irony, humor and pleasure-seeking in art, then it becomes very hard to draw simple, clear battle lines between the real and the fake, the serious and whatever we imagine might oppose it.

xp lol

The difference between this band and Fleet Foxes is as vast as the difference between CSNY and America.

to their death

xp i feel like there are certain "spirits" in which play, costumes, etc. can be done that are different than others (cf. my annoying explanation upthread of the difference between inauthentic authenticity and authentic inatuthenticity). it may be impossible to make real "rules" about these kinds of things -- and if there are rules that seem to work most of the time, there are always lots of acts that transcend them somehow and it's hard to tell why -- but i feel like these differences are real, and significant, and i think that these are the things we respond to when something appeals to us or repels us. in the case of the lumineers, i just think it's more complicated than the fact that they are bland and unexciting, idk, i just think the cultural politics of these types of things are more complex than that.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQnvTwT9jcp1CBpaHRSacVLBoOmBvMTB_zA5dMyDryd_BNNntrAnw

and lock

probably about time for this thread to be put away tbh. i hope the members of the lumineers discover it one day and find something to think about.

careful, don't tip your hand

not enough Lumerians in this thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozznS-lGslo

i dig that lumerians track.