GAPDY poll

fwiw this is the proper reaction to animal collective:

I've never listened to Animal Collective, but I edited a feature on them as a favor to a friend, and it made me want to tear the writer's arm off, set it on fire and use it to torch the homes of the bandmembers and their families.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:53 PM Bookmark

i hate the dirty projectors for all time for blatantly soliciting critical BJ by way of phony black flag swagga jacking.

fuck dirty projectors.

i hate albums where i feel like they wrote press release before they even recorded a note

phoenix

D - semi-interesting ideas executed really, really irritatingly

lex otm

― freezoni appleby 2010 (Curt1s Stephens), Wednesday, 20 January 2010 21:42 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha i love it when the lex and i agree, it's like planets aligning

yyys - good album
phoenix - good album
dp - good album
anco/gribear - nah mate

i hate the dirty projectors for all time for blatantly soliciting critical BJ by way of phony black flag swagga jacking.

fuck dirty projectors.

― Na'vi Girls (Need Love Too) (M@tt He1ges0n), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 5:06 PM (41 minutes ago)

aw it was kinda cool tho

nah im with M@tt on this one

the only one of these i came close to hearing is ANCO when grady spent a good hour on chat one day desperately trying to get me to download the rick-roll leak. i listened to it like 2 weeks later and was like "lol" and then deleted the folder.

I never heard Animal Collective but liek, I totally hate them already.

I HATE EVERYTHING THAT PEOPLE LIKE ME LIKE

I'M SO ANGRY THAT PEOPLE LOVE AN ALBUM I ONLY REALLY LIKE THAT I'M GOING TO START THOUSANDS OF THREDS ABOUT THEM

grizz - veck -never heard but they r boring
anco - merri pavvi - anco r a gr8 band but this is only ok
phoenix - wolf - girlfriend is an alltime classic, but this is their worst, best thing here by a mile still
dirty pro - bitte - stillness is the move>useful chamber>>>>>everything else
yyy - blitz - never heard. i like a couple songs by them ok

xp: TELL EM WHY YOU MAD!

dp's are on some next level shit, and i feel like even though their music is press-release friendly, their style feels natural (and not especially contrived) to me.

dp are way less than the sum of what are pretty mindblowing parts

I thought phoenix - wolf was Wolfmother's Phoenix BTW

oh the album is called cosmic egg never mind

AY AY AY

i probably would have been perfectly happy listening to all of these albums if i hadn't started reading ilm this year.

grizzly bear is way above all the others for me

A>>P>G for me.

I continue to think that Grizzly Bear's album is inferior to its predecessor. - OTM. I liked it OK, but it erred a bit too much on the side of button-down for my tastes & I miss the rustic, huge reverb thing they had going on w/ Yellow House

D & Y are on my list. Per the former, I wasn't huge on the Black Flag thing, tho I hear BO (heh) is quite different? Same goes for the YYYs pretty much: loved Fever but didn't really get into the last one. I probably would have checked this one out earlier if I'd known it was such a cause celebre, but I didn't realize that until all the end-o-year lists started appearing.

who really cares about the black flag thing, anyways? yeah it's a dorky factoid that makes you sound interesting when you tell someone about it at a party, but is that really a bad thing? i mean, hate the album cause it's not yer bag of tea, but i'm all for that sort of novelty concept-album if they all turn as good as that one.

ADPG haven't heard Y

weird, maybe it's because it came out so damn long ago but i dont seem to notice any discourse around Veckatimest anymore, or even ppl objecting to it placing on all these lists.

well it did come out after mpp... idk, it kind of makes sense to me. when compared to anco's super dense electro mess, dirty projectors' awkward math pop, karen o, and phoenix dude's french accent, it's a pretty pleasant and unintrusive album.

as in, even if you're not into that sort of thing you wouldn't mind having it play in the background once in a blue moon.

APYG

i quite like the first three. grizzly bear is kinda boring, and i find dirty projectors really intolerable.

re: Grizzly Bear, I think it's great in the background, but also rewards close listening. It seems it's been pretty much dismissed by ILX. I'm not sure I understand that...is it because of perceptions of the bandmembers as generic hipsters/poseurs? It's definitely a somber album, which probably turns some people off. I can also understand people thinking it's too subdued and straight-laced, but I like that it's able to convey extreme emotion with such restraint. I also don't get Xhuxk's comment about it being "hookless, gutless, grooveless, shapeless..." (on single jukebox). The melodies and arrangements are pretty great imo.

I didn't love "Yellow House" as much when I first heard it...it felt shapeless and lacking in hooks (with the exception of "Knife". I'm appreciating it more now in retrospect. It's just a different experience, more atmospheric and less structured. It also didn't suffer as much from being overhyped.

who really cares about the black flag thing, anyways? - I wasn't bothered by the concept, just sorta lukewarm on the music.

i don't think anything about grizzly bear is bad, really, and i definitely like some songs (i definitely preferred yellow house). i just don't think the thought "hey i should put on grizzly bear" has ever crossed my mind. listening to them felt like homework.

on the other hand, the fact that i really enjoyed yellow house and haven't listened to veckatimest more than two or three times is probably just reflective of a shift in the sort of music that interests me over the past few years.

kaykay^

I really like Dirty Projectors. I think they're fun and cool.

phoenix

― max, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:40 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

phoenix

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:52 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

phoenix

― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:11 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

phoenix

A>Y>P*>D>G

* tho their previous record killed this one

phoenix - i just listened to this one more than any of the others. it's really solid and good for just about any occasion.
yyys - also solid, good pop record, "zero" is a transcendent single imo
grizzbear - i really like this record and think that ppl completely missed the point of it. if it was a record from the 60s everyone would venerate it, but because it's from now it gets hated for being "too indie"
dps - this record is ok but rise above was much much better; i think they actually need some kind of framework like the black flag thing because otherwise they have too many ideas and it just kind of falls apart.
anco - i gave this a ton of chances but i never liked these guys and probably never will

dp - amazing album, took a long time to get into, it was worth the work. feel like a i 'know' this album now. listened to 50+ times.
phoenix - empty music. drummer is ace though. really want to like it cuz the vibes are so nice but it just leaves me cold. listened to about 20 times.
yyys - never really paid it much attention, singles were good. have heard most of it 3 or 4 times.
anco - bought sung tongs lp and gave it away. after spotify run through this isn't any better. the bits that are meant to be momentous or meaningful don't do anything for me.
grizzly bear - a friend of a friend was recording with this guy apparently. that's as much as i know about him. so no comment.

i heard grizzly bear is a chill bro

Kinda furry imo.

* tho their previous record killed this one

definitely agree, even if i'm voting for WAP

Best to worst ranking:

1. YYYs – Best album by consistently great band.

2. AnCo – Solid album by consistently interesting (if not always great) band. Possibly their third or fourth best album, though.

3. Phoenix – Singles are pleasantly inoffensive. Don’t get the “top 5 of 2009” hype. Haven’t heard the album.

4. Dirty Projectors – lex is right. Interesting ideas, poor execution.

5. Grizzlies – Anything I’ve heard from Veckatimest makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

Voted YYYs.

YYY, P >>>> major drop off >>> AnCo >>> falls of a cliff >>> DPs, GB

the critical narrative around DPs praising them for their engagement with r&b is possibly the most infuriating of the year, given that 90% of the time it comes from critics or commentators who have a 10% engagement - if that - with r&b themselves

i blame you lot for making it 'cool' to reference rnb in reviews, blurbs etc. aside from the cheesy breakdown in stillness is the move i don't hear any rnb on this album. the melismatic vocal stuff doesn't sound anything like an rnb singer to me.

what is this about poor execution? the playing is flawless throughout. totally inspiring in places, the guitar solo on no intention, the drum rolls on temecula sunrise, the close harmonies the girls hit, the clunky, syncopated rhythms, use of hocket to break melodies up. this album was a total breath of fresh air after not really feeling any songy guitar indie whatever music for a while. also like how they never sound like they're trying too hard, or like they're trying to manipulate you into feeling something <- pretty sure this is why i don't get on with the phoenix + anco albums.

YYY - It's Blitz!. Although it waves in the middle, helluva finish. One of my favorite records of the year, by a band I found insufferable in 2003.

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca. Interesting bits that don't cohere.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Blah Blah. I listen to the seven-minute track on my work computer a lot. The rest is a mash of Radiohead, Hot Chip vocals, and "Kids Incorporated" perk-pop.

The rest.

kinda think "don't cohere" is a big part of the point

Even if it is, so what?

The DPs album reminds me of the first TVOTR record in the sense that I admire the ambition and intellect and I know something interesting is going on but - aside from Stillness and Two Doves - it's not something I ever want to listen to. They're a band I've mentally bookmarked in the hope that their next record will pull it all together in a more satisfying way.

that's how i feel about their earlier output, for me this is the album that put it together in a wholly pleasurable way

Well, the other possibility is that this in fact their Dear Science/Merriweather Post Pavilion and I just don't like what they're gunning for, but I'm an optimist.

new songs by both "y" and "p" out this week

the phoenix song is horrible, jesus

I like the YYYs song

Can someone please make a video essay on whatever the hell was going on here pic.twitter.com/LxBSJSPfCO

— jack fernandez news and updates (@jackanfer) May 23, 2023

https://uproxx.com/indie/blog-rock-best-albums-all-time-list/

“Can someone please make a video essay on whatever the hell was going on here”

The Twitter user @jackanfer, who is presumably under the age of 30, posed this question atop a list of seven critically acclaimed albums from 2009. The first five – Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ It’s Blitz!, and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest – were such common fixtures in year-end top-tens that they inspired an acronym of “GADPY” as a deeply online shorthand for indie rock hegemony. This post soon became the main character on Twitter for the next few days because people chose not to take the original question as rhetorical.

Ian Cohen should have given ILX a shout out or even just Whiney.

I now see mookieproof did post this already, I found out by the article that posted today, sorry.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51xnSwWmLZL.jpg