The XX

Missy, Aaliyah and Dubstep yeah, but for some reason I have a real problem with Mariah being mentioned?

well, take it up with them! they're the ones talking about mariah. you can vaguely hear it in the way the voices are layered, and something about the way they phrase their lyrics.

aw i'm sorry "lex pretend". well done on being ignorant about Young Marble Giants though.

they don't sound much like ymg no, just like they don't sound much like missy elliot, or much like dubstep. i just hate that rock critic romantic shit where young people couldn't possibly be aware of any music made prior to 2003

haha, its just that the other influences actually make sense to me beyond "hey they just like them" a little, but I honestly can't hear Mariah at all. (the missy song I think of most is pass the dutch btw)

I mean, I grew up listening to a load of dodgy goth because I was a teenager in the 80s, so sure, that's part of mine own "influences" but I'd be surprised if you could listen to any song I've written and say "that sounds like Bauhaus" despite the fact that being a Bauhaus fan was hugely important in my process of growing up and artistic development.

think of late mariah. layered vox and subtle, bassy production. "breakdown"!!!!

the missy this kinda-sorta reminds me of is early missy, with tons of space, before she started bellowing.

You know, any indie fan in england over the last five or so years would have heard mention of a few dozen "seminal" post punk bands in write ups for Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand etc and sometimes they look them up inbetween going to raves in Dalston (aren't these kids from south-west London?). I doubt pretty heavily that these kids only listen to RnB and Dubstep and were all "hey, we should form an indie band." So I'm gonna take it as given that they have a pretty similar frame of reference as I do having grown up with pretty much the same indie stuff as well as pop stuff.

uh i am in my twenties and grew up in london a massive music geek, with a circle of music geek friends, and while i probably read the words "young marble giants" in a music mag a few times, no-one i knew ever talked about them. I have to this day never heard anything by them. You are more special than you think you are, plaxico!

IKR, you are sounding more and more like The Onion's Area Man who can NOT believe that his girlfriend has NEVER seen Appocalypse Now.

i think i always assumed young marble giants sounded like throwing muses?

I remember walking into a julian graves a couple days after the reissue came out (they have this fancy licorice that I totally love) and Salad Days was on the sound system and the teenage goth who was working there had the cd left on the counter.

you can just tell they've listened to them.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:57 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no you cant, unless you read the press release

i dont pretend to know to what extent they consciously, unconsciously or simply did not cop their style from YMG's but in terms of approach to songwriting & performing, the entire understated minimalism of it is 999x closer to YMGs than any attempts to legitimize themselves by pretending that they're direct descendants of mainstream R&B

IKR, you are sounding more and more like The Onion's Area Man who can NOT believe that his girlfriend has NEVER seen Appocalypse Now.

― girls just wanna have mixtapes (Masonic Boom), Tuesday, September 15, 2009 6:09 PM (3 minutes ago)

only if the girlfriend made kinda surreal war movies. I'm not trying to put on like YMG are this totally FM friendly band that everyone knows, it just reminds me of when Bloc Party had never heard of Gang of Four, I find it hard to swallow that even if they didn't cop straight off that they sounded like this band (who even if a few of you don't think they sound like, a lot of other ppl do) that nobody would have pointed out the similarity or brought YMG to their attention off the back of it BEFORE they released an album and got massively hyped.

you can just tell they've listened to them.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:57 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no you cant, unless you read the press release

― BiG HoOs is the one claim!!! (deej), Tuesday, September 15, 2009 6:13 PM (3 minutes ago)

I DO think that they sound more interesting in the context of having Burial and Timbaland as influences than Young Marble giants, but deej otmfm pretty much.

*TOUTED as influences

yeah i dunno, at the end of the day it's hard to say unless you're in that person's head...i guess it's either good or not at the end of the day.

plus lots of times stuff gets kind of put out there by the press, like all those bands that were supposed to sound like joy division but sounded way more like echo and the bunnymen IMO

I'd kinda guess that the people who are being all gobsmacked open-mouthed and doubting their stated influences have never actually been in a band, or written music, or had the experience of how "listening to and wanting to sound like X" can actually lead to "sounding like Y instead."

This is part of the nebulous problem with this idea of "influence" - that it doesn't always work as straightforwardly as casual music critics would like it to.

Part of the amazingness and creativity of music is when you start out aiming to sound like one thing, and end up sounding like something totally different.

I could see how you could refuse to believe it would happen if you've never experienced it, but it still seems a ridiculous (and slightly arrogant) thing to insist that a band MUST be influenced by a band they'd never heard of.

you can hear it in retrospect if you actually pay attention to how they're using their voices and instruments, rather than just what they sound like.

xps

k8 otm

kate has it right, and I don't know why this is being so strenuously debated. my own stance on this record is similar to m@tt h3lg3son's, and I will keep an open mind towards them

oh jesus guys -- i dont care if they took from the bible & jesus, im talking about what influences are readily evident.

& no, theres basically nothing in these vocal performances that makes me go "Hey this is missy elliot x dubstep!!"

well that's cool, but i wasn't

xp

i mean, you're right, a lot of times, influences dont work in a straightforward, obvious way. And other times, artists like to say they're influenced by things that make them sound more interesting

you can just tell they've listened to them.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 11:57 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xp???

well, I think that the listing of influences thing has always been used almost as a consumer guide "if you like that..." thing, but that's not really something we need anymore given how easily accessible any music we want to hear is now with the tiniest bit of internet savviness so maybe this RnB Dubstep thing is a way of putting the band in a context where different nuances are picked up on such as the groove or the spaciness or the electronic flourishes and atmosphere, or the compactness instead of the standard indie lineages that makes killjoys like me say "well you know there's this band that you sound REALLY like btw." Because I think there is a feeling that those lineages reached a point where they were starting to strangle the experience of listening to new music because (and I believe this truly) there is no real way of denying obvious precedents anymore given how easy it would be to check them out in this day and age (remember all those handwringing "record collector rock" editorials that music magazines were full of about five years ago?)

it's what kate said about influences - listening once you wouldn't hear certain things, but once the band have specifically cited what they grew up listening to, it becomes apparent in retrospect.

xp

this RnB Dubstep thing is a way of putting the band in a context where different nuances are picked up on such as the groove or the spaciness or the electronic flourishes and atmosphere

exactement

still think it was a bad press line though...probably the sort of thing which it's best to make known in an interview

i wouldn't really have thought about this that much if I didn't think the guy was smokin hot btw

hmm...this is one of those ILX things that sort of fascinate me, like i am totally mystified by the love for this.

― President Emeritus, Fancy Chord Club (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, September 14, 2009 7:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

based on the two BORING ASS songs at the top of the thread this. theres gotta be better stuff to hone yr critical chops on people jesus

reminds meeeeeeeee of shiny toy guns actually

listening to shelter, theres something here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIC0R2wjZ8s

tremendoid see if u are feeling this

ha xp

totally! slowness totally appropriate. she's in love with bending the note at the end of lines, she finally found a place for it (like a jeopardy contestant who says some wrong shit three times until its the right answer)

i usually don't judge so quick but i cant deal with the pacing atm. certain artist you just want to push em or shake them like a baby (like you shouldnt shake a baby) chelonis jones hits me like that on some songs. shelter though..

The music reminds me of Breathless, or 17 Seconds era Cure. You can hear a bit of dubstep in there but it's kind of 'under' the songs. A bit 4AD too, maybe Dead can Dance or something. The man's voice gets very annoying and the girl has a tendency to try and bend the note in the last word of every line she sings.

I can see the YMG thing too, in the space the songs have, what's left out, but they don't atcually 'sound' like them.

quick note: it's possible for people to be in bands, and make music, without being encyclopedia-brained muso types; i know most of the people i know who are in actual regularly playing bands aren't the people who also know a shit-ton about music. - have actually been asked of a ymg cd i was playing "hey, isn't this a hole cover?"

i think maybe musos want the mental processes of making music to be identical to those of knowing about music

& i don't think this band is a point you'd arrive at starting from the young marble giants

I think, actually, being an encyclopaedia-brained muso type can actually be harmful to being a music-making person. Like, you can never do anything new without thinking "argh, that's not new, that's a b-side of some obscure indie band from the 80s!" which can be kind of crippling. I imagine that not having this weight of history hanging over you can be very freeing.

Dude, THIS is name-dropping. So far in the thread this band reminded of:

Aaliyah
Cocorosie
Rhianna
The Cure
Missy Elliott
The Chromatics
Mariah Carey
The Pixies
Young Marble Giants
Morcheeba
Chris Isaak
Whitest Boy Alive
Cassie
Shriekback
Everything But the Girl
Tricky
Jesus and Mary Chain
Massive Attack
Felt
M. Ward
LOW
The Birthday Party
Red Right Hand
Moderat
Breathless

...you left out Dead Can Dance.

see? It was not easy.

getting big Vengaboys vibes from this myself

^ didn't want to be the first person to say this. also, rednex

this thread is just a pale rip off of ____

Their cover of 'Boom-Shack-A-Lack' really brings out elements I'd never really noticed in the original.

can we add Chairlift to that list pls?

Red Right Hand is a Nick Cave song, it was part of me saying I thought they sounded a bit like the birthday party but then saying that it was only because the sound was so crap where I saw them that they sounded completely different.