What Is Rockism ?

re: bands who do retro better, the string of pre-hiatus Graveyard albums comes to mind, as well as the first Blues Pills.

there's lots of good retro cos mostly it manages to evoke an era rather than a specific band and adds its own flavor to it.

the vocalist for this band mostly sucks because he's such an impersonator that he has to contort his voice to do things it isn't really built to do, which is why it sounds competent, but doesn't have the 'body' of Plant's voice.

Like his intonation in his lower register is clearly manipulated to be similar to Plant's and as such it sounds weird, like karaoke, and his high pitched wails are reedier.

be amazed if this kid doesn't have vocal cord nodules in like....a year.

That makes sense, yeah.

Wolf People's Steeple some kinda recent watermark as well, in terms of deliberately retro sounds that are somehow not completely played out

I hadn't heard about Dead Sara getting a WWE plug but that's great news, they could use a lucky break or seven

These Led Zeppelin comparisons always make me wonder if the listener has ever really heard the band. In musical terms they have more in common with the Meters or Pentangle or Eddie Cochrane or whoever than any of these caterwauling+riffage! bands.

engagement with the details of the music can miss the wood for the trees and a review like that has its own use and value. there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary, its like asking to take the politics out of an issue or insisting we can just rationally debate the facts

― ogmor, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 3:11 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i roundly disagree with this but i would

i would say in this particular case though the band’s music is so shallow that i’d have trouble describing it with any depth

but in normal situations: you can have both

xps I also don't get the persistent tipping of When The Levee Breaks. Is this mainly by people who aren't nuts about Zeppelin? I mean the production is sublime but to me it hardly seems representative of the band's strengths

I'm interested in "retro-fetishism" being used in a pejorative way in that review. What's the difference between retro-fetishism being "overly precious", and being a clearly studied and loving tribute? I mean, a lot of the music Pitchfork has loved over the last few years could reasonably be described in both ways. It just seems like that, in this cultural moment, white male boomer-canon classic rock is the 'wrong' (read: not hip) retro to be fetishising preciously. I feel like a blatant tribute/rip-off to late 80s Janet Jackson would probably get BNM for doing basically the same thing.

I'm sure this band will be fine or whatever - they seem popular outside of internet music nerd circles. But it seems pretty transparent to me that this review was, as someone said above, written as brand positioning for Pitchfork, and was approached without an open mind. It kind of makes me want to root for them a little bit. But whatever, I think this review says more about Zeppelin's (and 60s-70s blues rock) changing place in the popular music canon as opposed to Whether The Greta Van Fleet Album Is Good or Bad.

― triggercut, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 6:05 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm cannibalizing my own FB post here but Pitchfork is on board with giving Best New Music to Car Seat Headrest who are a slavish a poor imitation of workaday 90s indie rock as Greta Van Fleet is of Led Zep

here. the last track is amazing and also a zep rip-off apparently

https://youtu.be/x-cvvpiqL-w

― imago, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 2:40 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is good!!!! but really sounds nothing like led zep. imago go on Chapo listen to Physical Graffiti

re: bands who do retro better, the string of pre-hiatus Graveyard albums comes to mind, as well as the first Blues Pills.

Graveyard and Blues Pills bored the shit out of me. Witchcraft and Horisont were much better.

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

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

I have no idea why anyone would find these bands exciting and Graveyard (esp circa Innocence and Decadence) boring but ears are funny things

you can have any mixture you want of analysis of the details and analysis of overall gestalt, I just don't think largely focusing on the latter is some abdication of serious critical responsibility

xpost

I know the differences are minuscule, but somehow these bands do it for me where the other two don't, even though I wanted them to. In the case of Horisont, it's because of how much they remind me of November, an amazing early '70s Swedish band that almost nobody remembers.

v good reasoning in the context of the rockism thread tbh

fwiw I would invite GvF to play a six hour private house concert for me before I would ever grant Car Seat Headrest a full minute of my time

Also, anyone here dissing GvF on the basis of them being cartoonishly, unimaginatively retro who also reps or has repped hard for Alabama Shakes or St Paul & The Broken Bones has some explaining to do

I can't believe I am now suddenly defending this horrible band

You’re settin’ up strawmen & knockin’ ‘em down! 😉

there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary

Treeship brought up aesthetics, fwiw; I was talking about engagement with the actual music.

But I don't agree, in a lot of cases. If I talk about why I like Odessey and Oracle and I say, "I think it differentiates itself from other records from the time in its approach to harmony and melody and that it's soft, but retains some good energy," none of that is even implied social commentary.

Also, anyone here dissing GvF on the basis of them being cartoonishly, unimaginatively retro who also reps or has repped hard for Alabama Shakes or St Paul & The Broken Bones has some explaining to do

I can't believe I am now suddenly defending this horrible band

― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 9:22 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILM favs St. Paul & the Broken Bones

xp that's a really great description of why Odessy & Oracle is a masterpiece, never heard it put that way but you nailed it

Alabama Shakes have kinda disappeared, huh? That last album was actually pretty solid and not at all in line with the hyper-retro touchstones being tossed around, iirc

the fact that some things are definitely red and not orange does not mean there's a clear distinction between red and orange

xp

brittany did a solo project i think--thunderbitch

yeah, i recoiled from the shakes' first project, but loved the second

What I said on the other thread:

there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all, or at least I don't think it's any truer than saying "there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and physics".

― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Wednesday, October 24, 2018 8:45 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tbf, though, you clarified your position, ogmor, and I understand it better now.

I've heard Physical Graffiti! IIRC I loved Ten Years Gone and obviously Kashmir but didn't find much of the rest particularly exciting. I'm sure I could put together a LZ compilation from all their albums that I'd enjoy

If this isn't Rockism...

https://imgur.com/a/dgFzB8f

Oops:

https://imgur.com/a/dgFzB8f

the fact that some things are definitely red and not orange does not mean there's a clear distinction between red and orange

― ogmor, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 10:39 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're making the apples and oranges idiom complicated

ppl have been appealing to physics to justify and explain aesthetic/musical preferences & principles since ancient times so it seems like an apt comparison. I'm taking 'social commentary', 'social positioning', 'sociology' (?!) or whatever other reductive name you want to give it to refer to the wider human/social/human significance, or if you like, the semantics behind the semiotics. The Actual Music is the means to an end* - das effekt as bach wld have it - and when the ends are rotten it seems masochistic to insist we dwell on exactly how they were achieved

*w/ standard caveat abt redundance of authorial intent, things being repurposed, misheard, mutable &c.

Yeah, I do think it is. I just hear "you can't separate the music from the physics" far less than I hear "you can't separate the music from the social commentary/political context", at least from the sorts of writers who are discussed most often here. But the position you were taking was less extreme than the position I originally thought you were taking (and which is one I have heard elsewhere).

Danava are cool btw.

although I'm listening to Chris Lightcap now

Middle school aged kids still want to learn these songs on guitar.

One notable thing is that apparently Bon Jovi has become a solid part of the canon, at least as far as these kids are concerned.

is it Wanted Dead or Alive?

That intro part is pretty fun to play and sounds more complicated that it is so it makes u feel cool

Yeah, I was asked to teach that one for sure. Also, a kid requested "It's My Life" from guy who was training me at a new gig last week.

I went with some friends to see Wolfmother a few years ago, they were ok but I chiefly remember this couple’s conversation outside the show:

Girl: I'd rather see Led Zeppelin, y'know?
Guy: I'm not gonna lie, I'd see them, but it's not what it was.
Girl (gesturing at the venue): THIS isn't what it was! This isn't even what it is!

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

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

I’m not looking for masochistic dwelling on the horror of bad music. I don’t believe, though, that this band is all manufactured nonsense that can be explained away with those two statements. I ‘d like to know more about how and why their music fails, if someone thinks that that it does.

yeah it's funny like if this was some hairy old band from cleveland that was exhumed for a numero group comp rock dorks would j/o over it

Boy the last Endless Boogie record was a drag.

I ‘d like to know more about how and why their music fails, if someone thinks that that it does.

Their music is plodding, rudimentary & graceless; the singer is a shrieking abomination; his lyrics are risible; the songs' melodies are unremarkable. The guitar riffs are OK.

Why do you think it succeeds?

Was just listening to that long first song - I was surprised that they were able to capture a little of the folk melodicism that was there in late '60s/early '70s British hard rock. I know it's partly a Zeppelin thing...

But I thought it was cool. That's a cool thing for a 19-21 year old to capture. The song is constructed nicely.

I don't mind the lyrics.

I cannot tolerate his voice at even the lowest audible volume.

c'mon tim this band is garbage and you know it

Alabama Shakes have kinda disappeared, huh?

They're off raising kids and shit. Might be a while before the next LP.