The XX

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.

I think the funny thing here is that this band are so minimal that it's VERY easy to project lots of soundalikes or thinkalikes on them as influences.

If I wrote for The Guardian I'd write some crap like 'this record is the history of pop music from 1981 to these days'.

and then I would rule the world.

what is funny is how easily this is sitting on my ipod with clubroot, distance and that fourtet/burial, not suggesting that it sounds anything like them, just that the transition doesn't jar.

i was serious when i said shiny toy guns btw. probably rong but serious, haven't heard stg in at least a year

really liking "crystalised" so far and the album reminds me a bit of the awesome D Lissvik album from last year. I still play that one all the time.

u forgot Tim F's Insides meets Colder comparison. which is true tbh now that ive listened to this more. esp. 'heart skipped a beat'. im loving this now. def. up in my top 5 of the year.

Ha if the Insides album came out now people would probably believe it was dubstep influenced. Given dubstep in the broad sense means atmospherics + bass + torpid tempos any such "influence" can be real and still meaningless. Any well-produced UK post-post-punk can make the same claim.

The R&B references strike me as kinda misleading unless you're the kind of person who thinks Aaliyah's blankness is good because it makes her sound like an indie singer. To flip it the other way round and put it more sympathetically, I get the sense that what The XX like about R&B is stuff they also like in music closer to their own style, and then try to emphasise it - reserve, brittle perfection, emphasis on phrasing etc. So the real meaning of "woah these guys like dubstep and R&B" may be "therefore they probably also like and make the kind of indie that we who like R&B and dubstep can get with."

All that said I think The XX would do a totally life-changing cover version of Missy's "Hot Boys".

In fact it shocks me that no-one has tried that trick yet.

(if any indie group wants to hire me as a svengali this is my real email address)

All that said I think The XX would do a totally life-changing cover version of Missy's "Hot Boys".

ha, oh shit, yes.

unless you're the kind of person who thinks Aaliyah's blankness is good because it makes her sound like an indie singer.

Excuse me while I take a hammer to my cranium.

the bit on islands where he goes "that bridge is on fi-er" is so great, each line of that voice has this little gap that makes the following symbol sound like the extension of a yawn.

*verse, not voice

All that said I think The XX would do a totally life-changing cover version of Missy's "Hot Boys".

In fact it shocks me that no-one has tried that trick yet.

Actually Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Dear Nora did that a couple of years back...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaFrln3wGU

...WHY DID I STOP LISTENING TO CASIOTONE TWO ALBUMS AGO >:(

That's fucking awesome.