Car Seat Headrest--Teens of Denial

How are so many people in this thread defending this band name

Talkin' shit about Dan Bejar in this Billboard profile:

The indie circuit in particular attracts a certain type of artist that has talent but, also, attitude problems. It’s a circuit where artists can basically choose exactly how popular they want to be, and, sometimes, they’ll choose to alienate people rather than try to make it work on a larger level.

Do you have anyone in mind?

I don’t want to criticize artists, but I think like maybe someone like Dan Bejar. I really like a lot of his material, but I remember reading [an interview] where he was saying that the first New Pornographers record was shaping up to be a really big deal, so he knew that he didn’t want to be involved in that and started his own thing. It’s like come on, why can’t it be about the music. If it’s good music you shouldn’t throw it away just for the sake of your own reputation. Growing up I saw the romantic figure of the maverick musician who isn’t down to play industry games and will get successful by accident, then spend their careers messing with the heads of the industry and the audience. There was certainly an appeal to that, and then I grew up and started personally encountering artists who had this attitude. And they’re shitty people.

ums otm this is friend's band indie rock as generic as it comes. just listened to 4 songs and the effect was making me want to listen to Pavement.

Otm. After listening to it yesterday I just ended up listening to Stephen Malkmus.

I don't completely hate it, but I definitely think we don't need any more music like this.

I like this band but the early lo-fi DIY was much more weird, peculiar and interesting. Now he has a proper band behind him, his music is a bit less inspired and ordinary. A lot of the tracks are needlessly long too. "Drunk driver/Killer whales" and "Drugs with friends" are good tunes tho

that quote in billboard is so profoundly stupid.

also i gave this album a concerted shot driving around today and it actually kinda sucks, the songs aren't catchy and the performances are not good at all.

/mu/ was where his early albums first got attention & a fanbase built up there but he's denied ever posting there fwiw

i enjoy most of this but mostly because it fills a specific indie rock comfort food niche. the flaws are pretty obvious though

i'd like to see him do better but i guess it's a bit worrying that he still hasn't figured out track lengths, it's a big issue with everything he's done.

Love the record and the overlong tracks, it is part of the charm.

Yeah I think you people who don't like this record need to get your ears checked! Cause this is an excellent record, particularly the song Unforgiving Girl.

Otm. After listening to it yesterday I just ended up listening to Stephen Malkmus.

I don't completely hate it, but I definitely think we don't need any more music like this.

I should resist the urge to comment, but this could be the single silliest post I have seen on ILM this decade. Why does guitar rock get attacked for even existing? Could you imagine the outrage if someone said the same thing about a new rapper or dance band? "I tried but started listening to Public Enemy. We don't need any more music like that."

People would be livid and rightly so.

fwiw I've met Dan Bejar and he's super nice

Also, I'd take Bejar's worst song a hundred times over a minute of music by this corny indie twerp

I like Dan Bejar and Car Seat Headrest.

I like nachos

Fair enough but I don't think we need food like nachos anymore

xposts

Well...false equivalence and all that, but to address your first point - I'm not attacking guitar rock, just crushingly mediocre guitar rock.

No nachos? If someone said that about vegetables people would be livid.

another night on the message booooooard

🍸

so livid rn

i am also feeling livid

livid is way too vivid for the mehness of contempo grrtarro

so terribly lame to mention bejar by name

Do I need to repost this guy's episode of Amoeba's What's In My Bag?

just watched it. it's really not that bad

come on man

he's just a shy guy who likes indie signifiers with an annoying voice

Fair enough but I don't think we need food like nachos anymore

― Treeship

i like nachos, but i don't think we need a new nacho recipe that tastes just like all the other nachos i've eaten in my life. like, your nacho recipe has 12% more green onions than the nachos at chili's? well sign me the fuck up.

I always "need" new music, because music's not like food. when you're hungry any food tastes good. bad music doesn't sound good when you're starved for music. also, I like nachos, but I eat nachos maybe twice a year. when I like a song, I listen to it a million times in a week and then effectively discard it. then, every once in a while, when reminded of it, I'll put it back in rotation for a bit. I'm not just like "well, i have 75 Pavement songs, guess I'll never need another indie rock band again because I can just listen to these ad nauseum" it doesn't work like that

nachos only exist in the moment you're eating them

More reason for some to hate him/them:

NPR Tiny Desk guy Bob Boilen has this as his #1 album

Teens Of Denial lifts me out of my day-to-day routine. I admire a lot of music, but this is what I want from music

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/12/08/504579202/bob-boilens-top-10-albums-of-2016

this is what I want from music

this is both tragic and pitiable

he also lists lucy dacus which is a great indie rock record by a 19-year-old

lucy dacus >>>>>>>>>

I haven't listened to this yet, but legit question- does ilx not like this because it's actually a weak record or is it more because ilx is adverse to blatant "indie rock" tropes/styles that generally appeal to demographics younger than this site regardless of the strength of the record itself? Like is the defensive cynicism a bit thicker than normal prior to listening to it? It's way up on almost every year end list and I'm getting a resentment vibe here. There must be something special about it. kornrulez6969 is right in the sense that overt indie rock as a genre is least likely to have the amount of apologetics pop/dance/rap does around here from what I've seen.

All that being said, if I finally get around to it perhaps I'll agree it sucks who knows.

it's def over-rated but not without its charms

i thought this was pretty decent and there are def some good songs but i felt like i heard way catchier indie rock albums this year

Going to stop trying to defend a throwaway comment because yeah of course people shouldn't stop making indie, and it's not awful or anything. I like a lot of things that sound exactly the same as a lot of other things, I just don't like this thing that much. But I guess it is irritating when the critical attitude doesn't seem to move forward that much. There are any number of amazingly creative indie albums that came out this year, but it's things like this that get all the hype and it just seems a shame. It's not bad, but for me it just lacks passion.

i love identical death metal records and identical ambient records and will take 1000000000 more of them pls

i don't think this is necessarily "more of the same" indie nonsense, it's clearly got some sense of ambition, i just think that ambition actively detracts from the songcraft, which is merely ok

really the beef as ever isn't so much with the artist as with the tiresome as fuck music hype machine that renders this arguably mediocre fare inescapable while something like, say, the new Votaries album Psychometry gets next to no hype at all despite purveying arguably superior music. the beef is therefore a reaction against this critical process, because while all criticism is subjective, sometimes that subjectivity ends up pandering in am arguably lazy way towards records that have had their momentum ready-generated, for whatever reason. this is a beef towards a new criticism. my criticism. which you are free to ignore.

see also everyone tripping over themselves to praise frank ocean's new clothes, largely because the critical momentum is already there

no, my beef is with the artist--even if we limit ourselves to "indie rock" i don't think this is very good music, and that was my opinion way before year-end list time.

i think 'will toledo' can make whatever the hell he wants tbh, although that doesn't mean we might need or like it

xp Dave otm

call me...yeah Dave's fine

I don't get the Parquet Courts comparison, even if I put aside the fact that I prefer Parquet Courts.

i don't really see much musical ambition as maybe this dude never played shows much before he wrote so he never got to see what it looked like when ppl started going to get beer or take a piss during the boring stuff?

agreed w/alfred wrt parquet courts, feels like ppl just are throwing 2 names together

Dave

It's a good record... if you enjoy the genre? I'll add that it's an even better story, perhaps the hype is music journalists zeroing in the story more than the actual record? Seems to be a common trope with publications that covers indie music. I haven't read a single year end list that doesn't mention CSR's bandcamp origins. As it has been said above, the genre produced better albums this year and not receiving half of the year end coverage CSH is getting. (My Woman is my prime example).

Going through as many Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reviews as I could when I got obsessed with the record in 2009, I realized most 'indie music' publications could write about is the label war that birthed the record and the music itself was pretty secondary.

bandcamp artist makes good, fucking fairytale of 2016 right there. i stand with the bandcamp artists who will never make it *folds arms*

Neverban Dave Jagger