Gayngs Chub Licker

"last prom on earth" is actually one of my least favorite things here, but it seems to get high praise? idgi. "faded high" people!

besides gaudy side of town and cry, i like 'no sweat,' unsurprisingly

Faded High has graduated to my favourite track on the album also.

(Chub Licker was a reference to the anticipatory Fall new album thread which was around when I first posted this.)

"No Sweat" is great also, yes.

I may never get to hear the album because I just keep listening to "Gaudy Side of Town" over and over again.

Live version is just as wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyqVh2KN09E&feature=related

This album was surprising flop. Don't think I saw it on a single 'top ten of 2010' list. I thought this shit would blow up. Maybe they should have sang more about the beach.

dope vid!

Man this record really falls off at the end doesn't it. Still, the good stuff is pretty damn good and 'Gaudy Side' has been my nonstop jam for a while now....

one of my most listened to albums of the latter end of the year, but seriously this thread title. i never would have clicked on it had i not been searching for it

I thought the title of the record was chub licker for the longest time. Glad I didn't GIS it.

This really reminds me of the 'National Trust' album from a few back 'Dekkegar' and a bit like some of the Shaun Smith stuff...basically White Americans take on R&B...

If I'd heard it before the poll, I'd have put Relayted right near the top of my ballot. I absolutely love it.

Why are people comparing this to How To Dress Well? That album didn't move me at all. This however, this is like being hurled into orbit in a tiny metal spacecraft while listening to Radio 2 under heavy sedation. It's got more in common with Ariel Pink than anyone else, if only for the "pop through a dirty lense" approach.

The original 'cry' fucking rules
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxtPRF6NG7I

the last ten seconds are awesome

finally listening to the album, this is rad

i was totally disappointed though when that cliche romantic electric bell piano patch showed up at the end of "crystal rope" and it turned out to just be interlude noodling and not the intro to a real song

this is the worst album in the world, and the fucking up of the totally awesome original godley and creme is its feed you a crap sandwich calling card

lets agree to disagree

nah this is shit.

srsly have no idea why this cover exists outside of hipster lols look all my pals are in a video recreation + look we can pitch shift too. its completely terrible. and lots of these peeps are great when they're doing their own thing, but its like their shitty one off "lol aor" joke is the fucking critical bees knees. wtf

sorry to go so aggro, im just so bummed out that this seems to be the new face of the MPLS/STPL music scene when it is just so laughably awful and irritating in every way

pretty sure lots of ppl like it for more than 'hipster lols'

well i think the point is that it's NOT going for lols & instead it seems to most ppl like they have a genuine appreciation for the music

huh

i mean im glad to be wrong, but nothing in their version of the video says anything other than "pomo obscure reference that people will get if theyre in the know oh shit look we got that actual old dude to be in our video check it" to me. obv part of this is that i think the cover itself is pretty much 100% nudge nudge get it awful.

and sorry if im being a jerk to people that actually enjoy it, i just have no idea why they do.

i agree w/jjjusten

also "they have a genuine appreciation for the music" is really not an adequate defense - i have a genuine appreciation for mariah carey - doesn't mean anyone needs to hear me try to emulate her - i know this and so should gayngs, if they can't actually pull it off, which they can't

"they have a genuine appreciation for the music" i'm only using this as a defense against the idea that they're in it for lols

"they have a genuine appreciation of the music" is only being said in response to people who erroneously assume the project is "lol aor".

Whether it's good music or not is a separate question (it is though, FYI).

i don't really know, it's impossible to really, what their genuine motivation is, but i think the accusation, here & elsewhere, of a band being "in it for the lols" comes when their music is an overt attempt to mimic or revive a particular aesthetic that gets it not-quite-right, so it's part & parcel of their failure of execution

Ha Xpost

It's not an overt attempt to mimic though lex, they're mixing all sorts of ideas.

You don't even like any of the stuff they're influenced by!

they're mixing failed attempts at good ideas with straight-up bad ideas

Like for example I don't know how anyone can look at that live video 20 or so posts up and not get buried under the smug grossness of it? This is not a bunch of people appreciating anything, it's a gross "oh shit lol let's all wear white tuxes" lampoon parade.

Xposts

jjjusten otm re: video/ wink wink nudge nudge. fuck this band.

that said, i still really like about half the songs on this album but i really hate the other half

lex and jjjusten so off the money ITT it's untrue. i know it might be hard to believe, but not everything that references an influence from the past is supposed to be ironic. also, there's a lot more going on in Gayngs' music than simply paying tribute to mid-80s AOR. if that g&c cover hadn't been on the album, maybe people would be focusing less on this aspect.

It's not so much that Gayngs aren't ironic (though this is hardly their focus) but that there's a huge spectrum of possible constellations of irony and sincerity and "meaning it" and feeling slightly self-conscious about your influences or maybe just reflecting on them and trying to come up with a different take or maybe just doing what you do but being aware that nonetheless what you're doing is somewhat retro and cannot help but be perceived that way or etc. etc. and it's really reductive to act as if the presence of any of those qualities = nudge nudge wink wink.

People acted the same way about electroclash at first as well. Now that we've been so constantly surrounded by early 80s dayglo ephemeralia for so long we're numb to it and we don't read into it nearly as much as we did 9 or 10 years ago.

“The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.'"

anyway i dont really read this as "smug" at all, but even if i did... who cares? i like a lot of smug bands. musicians dont have to be earnest and humble to be good

ALSO "cry" is HARDLY an "obscure reference"! it was a top 40 hit with a hugely famous music video

god i hate eco

tim OTM in any event, focusing on their sincerity/smugness/seriousness/joking is kind of a red herring. they are likely joking/serious/earnest/smug/ironic/innocent all at the same time, to various degrees. also there are like 40 people in this goddamn band i doubt they all feel exactly the same way

lets agree to disagree

Whenever lex complains about a band (which seriously seems to be happening like 24hrs a day. How do you live being so unhappy all the time? When do you sleep?), it just makes me want to listen to them.

lol good luck with that

I really don't want to dogpile on lex here, but jaxon sort of hits on a point about what bugs me about lex from time to time. He is a great writer and his enthusiasm for stuff is thrilling and contagious (I wouldn't have given Girl Unit a chance without his "Wut" love), but it does get old seeing him pop up in thread after thread to remind us how much he hates "indie". I guess its just frustrating to see someone spending more energy on stuff they hate than stuff they love, but thats long been a complaint of mine with certain critics and I don't think its likely to change.

i'm fairly sure that about 80% of the music i talk and write about is stuff i love, repping for it and pointing people towards it - the rest is shit music that too many people within my purview are talking about (fkn radiohead DIE, why does any fucker care?!). i hate on that with relish. this adds up to a total of enjoying myself 100% of the time

also smugness only works if you've got something to be smug about!!!!

(gayngs don't)

(blah blah unformed argument w/r/t opulence/decadence/innocence/that blithe balearic beach glide/the paris hilton album)

yeah, i mean, we agree about the smugness charge, its a red herring

I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.'"

a real man would just say "i love barbara cartland madly"