Best Coast

I dig this band mostly. Better than Dum Dum Girls. Probably not quite as good as Vivian Girls. I'm seeing them live next Tuesday woo.

"When I'm With You" is insanely catchy, and less overshadowed by the "CAN'T YOU SEE I'M LO-FI" production of her other songs... I hope she keeps moving away from the played-out ultra-reverb stuff. (The video is nice too)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sj5_WITMpA

I dig this band mostly. Better than Dum Dum Girls. Probably not quite as good as Vivian Girls.

this, pretty much. i like a couple of her 45s a lot, and the EP is pretty strong, but i wouldn't say everything she's done is great. one of the recent singles that i can't immediately remember the title of was weak, as is some/most of her earlier stuff..

she's great. i am struggling with song titles but 'this is real' & ' gloomy' are dope too. the neko case thing on the new record was surprising more than super-great

oh dear, were i in a band and someone said i wasn't as good as the godawful vivian girls i would be utterly depressed. best coast is great though.

when i'm with you is a blast of sunshine.

video's good too.

evil clowns.

for me it goes dum dum/mayfair set>>>viv gals>>>>>>best coast. i like pocahaunted and all, but this stuff just kinda bums me out.

love 'em. liked "sun was high" just fine, but flipped over "when i'm with you" and really like "our deal."

dum dum girls remain my fav of this particular scene. does grass widow count? them too.

yeah, grass widow is better than all of this other stuff. dunno why i forgot about them!

thanks, mike and jon. i'd never heard of grass widow before, but their debut disc is on emusic, and the samples sound great. i've earmarked it for download.

i wonder why this band -- unlike, say vivian girls or best coast -- have remained so far beneath the radar.

song sounds like a less interesting Vivian Girls w/ in higher fidelity

the holding a cat at the end of the video is cute for sure though

rolling my eyes at everyone who's so off-put by lo-fi, reverb, song titles (wtf). i don't get how that sort of stuff makes people so uncomfortable and hesitant about liking stuff, like as if they're blinded by the trendiness and can't actually tell if they like them or not.

great fan-made video for "sun was high (so was i)": http://vimeo.com/5385161

indie guilt on ILX shocker, film at 11

it's not really that complicated ppl are just sick of fucking reverb and fake lo-fi production that you don't even need to have in 2010

you don't "need" to have any aesthetic

i get what you're saying -- technology has advanced enough that we aren't limited to a lo-fi sound -- but that doesn't mean that sound isn't still available, and that doesn't mean people shouldn't use it. i think it's more interesting to say why that aesthetic does or doesn't work for a particular song or band

what we really need is a back-to-basics movement. maybe just some guys. with beards. and guitars.

acoustic guitars.

of course, i could see why an indie fan would be "sick of" that aesthetic, because it's been a thing in indie for forever. but, like, even you like the Vivan Girls' last record, right? some people still pull it off well. i like the first Vivian Girls' record

Daniel, I think you should join Fleet Foxes

i cannot grow a beard that majestic.

also, i am too old to be in a band. even the fleet foxes.

one is never to old to play acoustic guitar & have a beard, as patchy or unmajestic as it may be

patchy it would be.

anyway, nothing wrong with a lo-fi aesthetic filled with reverb. done well, i still appreciate it. besides, does that really characterize best coast's sound? its more 60s-girl group/surf rock homage, to me.

if you buy an electric instead of an acoustic, you can start a lo-fi band, forgo the beard completely, *and* save money on production costs by using a cassette deck instead of a modern studio

ksh, there are days where, if i could give up my law practice for a gig with a band, i would.

of course, i'd have to be able to play even passably.

not in indie rock you wouldn't -- buy a guitar, learn a handful of chords, and start singing the first thing that comes to mind. send the demo to a blog. you will be featured on Stereogum in a month's time

xxxp yeah that's getting at the problem--a lot of bands are trying to explicitly give themselves a "retro" aesthetic through recording techniques. i think it rarely works well. it's not really a problem with the second vivian girls record because a) the songwriting is going in a completely different direction and b) i'd characterize their production more as just "noisy" than anything

wait, you're saying . . .

I COULD BE FEATURED ON STEREOGUM?!?

within a week's time, if you're very lucky & willing to eventually have your lo-fi tunes featured in a KFC commercial

xpost to cad

sure. one of the problems with indie rock, and with any genre, really, occurs when a band assumes certain signifiers (lo-fi production, a certain guitar sound) w/o its being an "essential" part of their sound. it's the difference between a band's putting on ill-fitting clothes b/c tradition or current trends present those clothes to you as an option & having a certain aesthetic as an inherent, "essential" part of one's aesthetic

things are more nuanced than that, but that's the best way i can think to describe it right now

having a certain aesthetic as an inherent, "essential" part of one's aesthetic

switch that first "aesthetic" for "sound or production choice"

The true test is whether the songs hold up despite the lo-fi aesthetic. I'd argue that "When I'm With You," the stuff on the DDG album, etc. are sturdy enough to withstand any production approach. Same as the Shrimper acts from a decade ago; as we now know, the Mountain Goats' songwriting lends itself to boombox production or lush 4AD-sponsored studio craft.

And I happen to like a minimal, low-tech approach anyway. If I haven't gotten sick of it since playing early Beat Happening on the radio in 1985, it's not going to happen now.

it's just another production option for an artist. there's nothing inherently wrong with it at all.

there's a band called Grass Widow, too? fuck, i've fallen asleep

it's not really that complicated ppl are just sick of fucking reverb and fake lo-fi production that you don't even need to have in 2010

― call all destroyer, Saturday, May 1, 2010 12:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

maybe i just like lo fi more than most but it's hard for me to relate to people who are all "i can't tell if i like this song because its LOFI and REVERB and SUMMER and i hate all those things because they're so trendy right now." are people just really picky about production or

i am pretty picky abt production so

this really isn't about trendiness--it's about laziness, and bands choosing production techniques that cover up poor musicianship, singing, and songwriting and then saying it's an aesthetic choice. i'm not saying this is happening intentionally, but i do think it is happening.

since there's no way to judge why an artist is making a particular production choice--unless you ask them, and even then "intentional fallacy" yada yada--i just try to judge them on the final product & whether it sucks or not

ppl are just sick of fucking reverb and fake lo-fi production

by "ppl," i assume you mean ILM posters who still maintain some sort of an interest in indie rock, b/c most indie kids probably don't care & the majority of the population doesn't know that Japandroids or No Age exist

(No Age isn't even a great example -- a lot of the Losing Feeling EP doesn't even sound lo-fi)

it seems some people are pretty sick of lo-fi production at this point, and now any band regardless of how good they are will just get this knee-jerk "I AM SO FED UP WITH THIS SHIT" as if people have lost all ability to discern good from bad and are so repulsed by the ubiquity of the production style it's like their way of rebelling against it by just complaining and shitting on every instance of it. i think best coast's best songs pull it off beautifully, reverb et al all perfectly complementary to the style and overall vibe imo.

lol ksh you accused "ppl" of indie guilt and i am saying it is much more likely that "ppl" are not into this particular aesthetic

the problem with best coast was as soon as the youtube video started i was like "oh, it's this again"--i mean it wasn't offensive as a song or anything, i can't even really remember it atm, and i am NOT saying i hate all or even most of the stuff we're talking about, but like, it just seems like more of the same to me at this point.

but i'm really only arguing this because ksh thought it was a good opportunity to be all lol indie guilt as if he wasn't starting new threads about wilco 6 months ago

i think best coast transcends "oh, it's this again" by not being one of these ppl

this really isn't about trendiness--it's about laziness, and bands choosing production techniques that cover up poor musicianship, singing, and songwriting and then saying it's an aesthetic choice. i'm not saying this is happening intentionally, but i do think it is happening.

― call all destroyer, Saturday, May 1, 2010 2:42 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

i totally get that for someone who actually dislikes and has to, like, overcome the production it would be a nuisance. but if you're already into or unaffected by low fidelity, wouldn't you just listen to the actual song and respond to its melodies/chords/performance isntead of making such a big deal out of the use of reverb?

her solo stuff has been really great

but yeah overall i mean bands get forgotten about...how many people care about Grand Funk Railroad? Quicksilver Messenger Service? Kix (sorry Chuck)? Orgy? The Grass Roots? Vertical Horizon?

all those bands were way bigger than Best Coast

I wouldn't really lump eleanor friedberger in with this...

that said how many bands had like a single on 99 records in '81 and still tour off it

Grizzly Bear are pretty forgotten for sure

Dan and Chris Bear from that band scored Past Lives this year and we’re all hoping they get a deserved Oscar nod for it (personally rooting for Mica to win it, tho)

grizzly bear may have broken up or whatever, but they are not forgotten.

it's been said many times before, but whatever bands were on some level "cool" ~10 years ago are almost always seen as lame/boring/uncool in current times. that's where grizzly bear is imo

Tune-yards!

Maybe the funny thing about the memory-holing of peak indie/gapdy is that there was a disconnect between the critical discourse and popular music - post poptimist eoy lists may age better wrt reflecting actually popular music (although there's a whole thread for post-poptimist canon building)

These bands are from more like 15 years ago. The year of gapdy was 2009.

There are definitely musicians from that era that I have not lost interest in, but I didn't think anyone considered the MP3 blog bands of the late 00s were viable long term or even medium term at the time. My recollection was that most people would hear a catchy and derivative jingle, look for the band and .rar on Google, download a folder with 12 identical songs, put it on a playlist called 'driving around with Barbara' and forget about it within a month. It's funny that it was an alternative to the mainstream pop of the time because it's whole mode of consumption was so relentlessly about disposability. If this music had any capital in the hipster wars era it was hearing and disposing of a song/band before it your friend with a veterinary surgery haircut decided they were her new favourite band or subsequently you heard it at American apparel.

This is not even a dismissal of the motivations of those actually making the music, who were likely no more or less sincere than any other hype cycle of pop bands. I'm sure plenty of people believed in what they were doing but the vehicles that propelled this stuff did so much to encourage instant amnesia.

I also feel like so many bands had really similar names.

Maybe it's the same or worse now. I imagine that canny big budget stars have just lifted some of the viral marketing ideas from bands/musicians of that era to diversify their portfolio. Taylor swift and Beyonce seem like examples of this in some ways. Billie eilish.

the most curious thing about this whole conversation is that the best of the Best Coast albums is California Nights which came out in 2015 and therefore missed "peak indie"

I don’t personally identify with that post at all, plax!

Ugh the last thing I wanna do this lovely morning is post about Pitchfork but from 2007-2012 the indie music scene was entirely defined by that website’s aesthetic and the musical values it espoused

It’s always been weird to me that “GAPDY” is this thing. Who made that up? Why are Phoenix and YYYs in there? Phoenix are French pop who took off in like what, 2004? and we’re Coppola famous? YYYs were even earlier? They were a Vice Magazine band. Why are they included in this acronym and why not Vampire Weekend instead? Makes no sense to me

Haha “we’re Coppola famous” we certainly are

The origin of "GAPDY" is that albums by those five bands dominated year-end lists in 2009. I think Whiney coined it?

____

How many lists are gonna be fuckin AnCo, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Pro and Phoenix in different orders?

― my adrian langs a ton (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:35 AM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

...

i do have to say that grizzly/AnCo/phoenix/dirty pro/yeahyeahyeahs (GAPDY) are all perfectly fine albums, but to call them the BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR really just means that you're not listening to enough records.

― my adrian langs a ton (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, December 10, 2009 2:06 PM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Pazz & Jop top 6 for 2009 was those albums plus Neko Case at #3.

As for tUnE-yArDs I’ve always had the same opinion of that band: the first album bIrD-bRaInS is amazing and it played at every good party in Canada the year before she got famous. It’s a great album. They do amazing film scores now. Also listen to Ruth Garbus.

@ jaymc omg wow!!!

For whatever reason I was sitting here thinking “did Whiney have something to do with it?”

Ha. Here's Rob Harvilla in 2010:

Your friend and mine Chr1st0ph3r R. W31ng4rt3n last year around now spearheaded this thing called GAPDY, wherein he chastised critics for lavishing praise on the same five, indie-centric 2009 albums: Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Phoenix, Dirty Projectors, Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Is there any doubt VW shows up on this year’s tortured anagram, alongside Arcade Fire, the National, LCD, Sleigh Bells, etc.? (Can I sneak Dream or Deerhunter into that list so we can make VNDAL?)

since i brougth GAPDY into this discussion, i meant to place it in contrast with the 2010-2012 stuff like best coast. the gapdy bands (and the ones listed in jaymc's post right above mine, and some others) and basically indie/indie-adajcent artist who first got big from 2001-2007 were the actual "legacy acts" of "peak indie".

The indie/indie-adjacent stuff that broke out in 2010 and after--stuff like best coast--didn't have nearly the same cultural footprint. The "moment," whatever it was, was basically done, even if money was still flowing for a few years.

So it’s a critic thing, and not a notion that ppl actually listened to that cluster of bands as, like, a “taste profile”? I don’t know that Dirty Projectors ever had much of a “cultural footprint”…

which is not to necessarily discount anything cosentino said. i do think that whoever said upthread that "trendchasing" is endemic in the type of indie folks who read p4k was otm

the dirty projectors guy wrote songs for solange on a #1 album and worked on that kanye song, they were definitely the least commercially successful of those bands but there is some cultural footprint there

My sense is that Peak Indie was the result of the 2000s boom in blogging and file-sharing, yes, but also a wider media ecosystem that increasingly took cues from what was happening online. Crucially, it was a time when there was a rise in new digital media outlets, and a desire on the part of traditional media to keep up. But it was also a time before poptimism had fully taken root in music criticism, before diversity became a more prominent consideration in decisions about media coverage, and before online pageviews warped media incentives. (These things are all intertwined.) So in the late 2000s you had a lot of white indie fans in the position of being tastemakers, which gave a lot of cultural visibility to the big indie acts of the era.

Didn’t The xx also dominate 2009 EOY lists(?) Guess I don’t remember. I’m sure Whiney knew what he was doing with his zinger, but I’ve also never rarely understood with those bands had to do with each other… now I get the concept anyway.

*really understood (I “rarely” understand anything!)

The xx was #7 on the 2009 P&J (right behind Grizzly Bear). So yeah, we probably could've made it GAPDYX.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090228101636/http://hypem.com//

I argued as early as 2007 iirc that the dominant “problem” with Pitchfork was the decimal ranking system, applied across genres. I intuited that it would be “bad for music” over time. That it would create a musical landscape that would privilege “good recordings” over “interesting creations”. That it would celebrate music that was pacifying rather than music that was revolutionizing. That it would naturally skew white and male and straight and upper-middle class. That Pitchfork’s influence had grown to such a point that prospective collaborators (publicists, for example) would just bluntly ask “what’s your Pitchfork score on your latest release?” when assessing if they should work with an emerging artist.

I furthermore said that bands were going to change the way they made music. They would start making creative decisions that would favour Pitchfork’s metric. I’d seen friends tell me about their next record and I’d feel Pitchfork’s influence in them. I tracked these decisions within myself and my own creation. I mean… Deerhunter’s arc seems to me to be the best example of this, I guess

I know I already invoked Nabisco in this thread, but this 2009 piece by him is an interesting look at the cultural status of indie at that time and how it got to that point:
https://pitchfork.com/features/article/7704-the-decade-in-indie/

Deerhunter is interesting in this context because Cox seems to have basically stopped making music, after being so active for years… (unless he’s doing stuff I haven’t heard about)

was abt to say he did that record with cate le bon but... that was apparently in 2019

looks like he played a solo show for the first time in years a few months ago but deerhunter seem to have quietly broken up. not a band i ever quite understood the hype around

Fading Frontier is all time for me

have seen them live a few times, too noisey for me

there was a time when it seemed like my local venue booked every bnm artist they could (and that was a lot) and... I guess I went to all the shows

p4k was such a monolith

the most important reason GAPDY took off is because it's fun to say

every one of the GAPDY bands are leagues better than Best Coast too

someone mentioned the 10 year cycle of being considered kind of lame about 10 years after the peak which is true (with a nostalgia boost at 20 years) but the one problem they will have, as compared to I don't know disco or hair metal or grunge or pop punk or nu metal, these bands weren't really that popular in real world terms compared to and of those genres, it was more than they dominated the conversations about music in a certain media/Internet/social media niche

sorry for the typos

Cryptograms + Fluorescent Grey is a perfect double vinyl album imo, one of the best of this century

I liked Microcastle (especially) and everything else, sure; the dissonance that I felt around their peak-popularity (Halcyon Digest, great title in retrospect) was that it felt as if some decisions were made to make the music more blog-friendly, and... blogs were friendlier.

I don't exactly understand what nabisco's thesis is in that P4k piece but it is always such a pleasure to read his writing, thanks for the link jaymc

the one problem they will have, as compared to I don't know disco or hair metal or grunge or pop punk or nu metal, these bands weren't really that popular in real world terms compared to and of those genres, it was more than they dominated the conversations about music in a certain media/Internet/social media niche

I think this is exactly right

it really seems like much of that music was specifically based around a scene that was very much of the moment, perhaps even more about the social aspect than other music scenes were. this doesn't NOT describe the scenes swirling around disco, hair metal, etc, but i think a lot of the PFM indie of the time just also doesn't stand up to scrutiny thru the nostalgia lens, a lot of it disappeared into vapor because it was pushed to prominence by that particular niche, and you really had to be there. i didn't have to be there for zeppelin or sabbath or abba, but maybe for the GAPDY groups the subsequent generations aren't going to understand it at all? idk i also know that doesn't strictly describe GAPDY, it happens to all scenes. UMS otm obv.

That is probably true to some extent but to another (larger) extent the opposite is true, in that so much of this was consumed by many through platforms that did nothing to build/maintain scenes or communities. So much of the audience was instantly accessed through content aggregators, mp3 blogs, BNM. A good chunk of the initial enthusiasm for band A could come from an audience with little additional buy in. Next week there would be something else coming out of the hose. Coming in the gap between the end of CDs and the return of vinyl it also meant that even if you played something a lot one week it was so easy to forget it even existed a week later. When I visit my parents house I still find all the CDs i bought when I was a teenager but I'm sure a good chunk of stuff I listened to in my 20s has been totally deleted from my memory when I lost an iPod shuffle in Spain in 2011.

i think that goes hand in hand a bit with the era being ephemeral, something that existed as an in-person scene but which was didn't exist as widely in terms of physical media (not a minor thing; that does lend itself to music not being memory-holed.) so it winds up feeling so much further back in time, maybe.

all my MP3s from that era i downloaded and burned onto a bunch of MP3 CDRs and then lost the whole damn thing. def had some GAPDY-era stuff on there. i think in fact it was primarily all that (plus a decent chunk of revived lost albums posted on MP3 blogspots that have now been properly reissued.)

Something that might not be relevant but still might be interesting: I observed and it’s been confirmed by many others that across the board, sales of physical media at shows have spiked immensely over the past decade. A colleague of mine said he thinks it’s because “people are going to record stores less, seeing a merch table is an exciting thing”

xp It was also right before Spotify destabilized the role of indie music as status symbol for a certain type of educated consumer who knew which blogs to follow. I find it harder to look back on that stuff and see something with an enduring cultural significance when it feels like it was so quickly swallowed up.

the most important reason GAPDY took off is because it's fun to say

This is why I got no support for my acronym YPDGA