Years & Years

man this album is really good

lol at this thread btw. "sam smith meets walk the moon...but good", "what if bieber...was good", all otm. have to say i don't really get the 1975 references tho, other than they're both british dudes

"meteorite" is pretty weak tho tbh

Aren't't The 1975 Australian?

lol no what

Years & Years and The 1975 don't sound alike, but there is a strong structural resemblance between the pro- and anti- factions in respect of both bands.

The fact that Lex likes the first and hates the second actually quite neatly encapsulates all the differences between the two: Y&Y less indebted to rock or indie except in the broadest sense, and concomitantly more thoroughgoing in their grounding in dance music; Ollie's voice has limitations but does not carry a strong white Brit regional inflection; the lyrics romanticise the abjection of gay adolescence rather than the abjection of straight adolescence, etc.

But if Lex is the tipping point state in this equation, more broadly the typical reactions to each group tend to turn on a lot of the same dynamics - the way in which they occupy a space between good taste and bad taste, between "real" and "fake", such that even some people who are comfortable embracing (say) chart-pop will blanch at what they consider to be an objectionable blurring of these boundaries (though they wouldn't necessarily phrase it in those terms).

I'm reminded of an excellent Tom Ewing article from the dawn of time:

Proponents of Proper Music criticism tend to talk about rock and pop records being ‘real’ or ‘fake’, and the assumption seems to be that its ‘realness’ lends a patina of quality to a Shelby Lynne album which is absent from a Shania Twain one. I don’t hear it myself but if that’s your thing, fair do’s. On the other hand as I say I’ll take the transparent bogosity of a Shania over the veiled bogosity of so many indie rockers any day.

Anyhow, the real/fake distinction might have told apart the Monks and the Monkees back in ’66, but in today’s ultra-referential industry it needs refinement up a level. So we can now talk about records which are Real-Real, in other words which mean it for purposes other than making money off people who want their records to mean it. Depending on how cynical you are, this category might stretch as far as Nirvana on one hand and the Dead C on the other, or may not actually exist at all. It’s the easiest type of music to think about, is Real-Real, and the toughest to actually identify.

We can also, though, talk about records which are Fake-Real, whether by design – Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” – or by misjudgement – The Manics’ “Masses Against The Classes” – or by simply being trapped in rock history like a mammoth in a tar pit, like Primal Scream’s recent work. Even when Fake-Real records start life with the noblest of intentions, there’s a crucial gap between their desire to say or be something uncompromised, and the abilities of the people involved to pull it off. Bad Fake-Real songs never lose the unmistakeable whiff of the second-hand record shop: when I listen to Primal Scream’s “MBV Arkestra”, all I want to hear is MBV or the Arkestra, not the lumbering mess of noise which actually squats on my turntable. But there are good Fake-Real records – comedy ‘punk’ like Jilted John which twenty years on sounds easily as nervy and felt as the Buzzcocks, or the Magnetic Fields’ many superb forays into rhinestone synthpop. These have an exciting awkwardness to them – their cynical imitation of genre formulae feels arrogant and tentative at the same time.

Real-Fake records, meanwhile, include commodity pop and little else. But unlike coca-cola, the secret formula for pop changes weekly, and throwaway commodities soon enough become ‘design classics’. Chart pop is often described as lightweight – a more accurate description would be low-density, because it stays mercifully free of interrogation and interpretation, of the creative traces and authorial intentions that listeners love to cram rock songs with. With rock – the Real-Real – the life being lived through the songs is, vicariously, the artist’s, and not the audience’s. How could it be otherwise, given the Real-Real’s professed indifference to whether anyone’s listening or not? Pop is blanker, but more open too.

The Real-Fake is public domain and ephemeral, which is only to say that the media forgets about it quickly. But the D.J.s remember, and so do the fans. Stick with a Real-Fake song long enough and you might end up its only friend, all its tawdry public meaning now yours and yours alone. That’s why the fan clubs for one-hit-wonders are often more passionate and fulfilling than any Beatles or Stones fandom could be, because they’ve turned the tables, shifted the balance of power from star to consumer.

And finally the Fake-Fake – the Elephant 6 bands, the power-pop perfectionists and bands like Saint Etienne, who get called ironists when they’re really only know-it-alls. Fake-Fake is what happens when pop steps out of its context and into history. It tends to be remarkably enjoyable: its only flaw is its sense of propriety, of – as Josh would have it – “pop as a style” bounded by certain rules. This is a necessary fiction – the only rule in Real-Fake pop is an accountant’s slide rule, but Fake-Fake bands tend not to sell many records – but it’s a fiction nonetheless, and it accounts for so many groups’ entire careers having a slightly fusty, pointless air, like people whose hobby is putting ships into bottles.

Do I really believe that this taxonomy works? Not a jot – although it’s as good as any other system of pop I’ve seen. The only way to define pop is by listening to it, even if for a lot of people, pop is simply whatever they don’t want to listen to. Mutable, capricious, and cash-driven, pop – contemporary pop – is the most compromised, controlled kind of music there is, but it’s also the freest from long-term stylisation of the Wilco/Wynton variety, and its appetite for novelty drives innovation in the musical marketplace (all the fastest-moving scenes from the 50s on have been singles-driven, and so in some way working on the pop model). In the end, we need it as much as, and because, it needs us.

Tom's taxonomy was very influential on my somewhat bluntly popist thinking circa 2000, incidentally. But (and this is not a criticism) it doesn't cleanly apply to groups like The 1975 or Y&Y (or many other groups and artists obv, but stay with me here), who don't really fit into any of its categories - "meaning it" too much to be clearly real-fake or fake-fake but carrying too strong, too obvious and self-acknowledged a whiff of inauthenticity to be real-real or fake-real (which can be inauthentic but is premised on trying to obscure that fact). They've got an extra fake or real chromosome which muddles up the classification process.

So the praise and criticism of each group (at least here) tend to mirror each other in their opposition: haters say, "I see what this music is trying to do but it fails in its attempts, it is a hollow shell of better music", while fans say "this is like a lot of awful music but somehow redeems all those terrible impulses."

yeah I don't know why I though they were Australian -- sorry.

I don't at all hear the similarities between these acts! Attitudinally, Y&Y sound like Pet Shop Boys without the jokes.

great post tim

"border" is my sleeper fav, i love how the chorus morphs into this totally unexpected thing. the entire mood of the song shifts so suddenly

okay, "memo"

completely obsessed with this album now

i wanna choreograph a very sad dance to "memo"

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 2:23 PM (nine months ago)

OH LOOK SPEAKING OF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skOAT87JVbU

not good :\

i don't hate it but it's pretty generic by their standards

Feels to me like Ollie trying to entrench his status as a gay club pop icon. It lacks that air of desperation which makes "Worship" (its closest antecedent, I think) so effective.

yeah this song is weirdly balanced. i appreciate that the video is as gay as possible though

Sounds kind of like a Kylie minogue album track

I hope it's a bit of a red herring

yeah i'm assuming it's a one-off for the soundtrack and not suggestive of the kind of stuff they're going to do. the hook is pretty generic but the writing especially is nowhere near the level of some of their best work, which can be so evocative and almost surreal -- to compare choruses describing extreme weather events, for example: "it's shaking the sky, and i'm following lightning / i'll recover if you keep me alive" vs "you hit me like a meteorite"

yeah it strikes me that many of their best lyrics sound like English by non-native speakers.

like a lot of recent soundtrack work i think they served an audience of theoretical new listeners something generally pleasing that hews close to their sound but contains less nuance than the songs on their own album

btw this is suuuuch a good road trip album

love this record

11-year-old secular sikh student of mine kept singing 'king' when i taught him this winter, was kind of lovely

where rtc at

― k3vin k., Tuesday, 27 September 2016 08:24 Bookmark

it good i liked it. never got the easy breezy slick dance pop vibe from it tho. album aptly titled, very intense, wracked, beseeching, supplicant/domineering/calculating evangelical egotism (some mileage in comparison w/matt 1975 but not a lot)

also curiously totally medieval. good soundtrack for wooden planet spec script alien3 probably

it is really medieval

they're recording album 2 now

Fascinating adjective.

if you guys were wondering who that was bopping out of CVS with a 4pack of toilet paper in his hand, that was me listening to "real"

I had been wondering about that

#PSEN 0005 - We have received word that the audio sounds of // SANCTIFY --- will be aired on pirate radio station @bbcr1 at 7:30PM GMT by non-sanctioned human @anniemac //.. this is NOT an authorised station in Palo Santo -- report to authorities if you hear this using #SANCTIFY pic.twitter.com/sy5LIYhxOe

— Years & Years (@yearsandyears) March 7, 2018

new song today it seems

not sure how i feel about it http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060dx8y

Olly's hair has not improved.

sounded dece but not like a Hit Single

it's an all right song!

sounded dece but not like a Hit Single

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, March 7, 2018 4:02 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i agree. it's an interesting little twist on their sound but i'm surprised it's the first single.

it can be like one of those singles they made videos for on their first album before "king" that were arresting in some way but obviously not going to be hits

I fuck with it, sounds like a very 2000s pop take on a communion album track

on replay, not super into this

i still kinda like it but it feels to me like a song that could have been on album 1 just w/ slightly different production that doesn't quite do it much favors

it's a little underwhelming, definitely not the same level than some of their best work...though it's better than "meteorite"

I know it's the way it is, but this strategy of testing and teasing the market with dribs and drabs has the effect of dampening my enthusiasm but idk that's mem.

*me

july 6th

put it in my veins

also curiously totally medieval. good soundtrack for wooden planet spec script alien3 probably

― r|t|c, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 2:08 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god bless rtc

already freebasing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psn18d-4hBI

not feeling this new single, feels way too twee and like it was written as a commercial jingle?

co-written/produced by Steve Mac so that explains that

yeeeeeeah... i think the songwriting is great but it almost sounds like a sigala song

*cough*

oh boy

I was underwhelmed by the singles but this actually turned out alright I think. “Karma” and “Hallelujah” both slap and “All For You” especially. It’s a bit les Kitsuné than the first one production-wise.