jop jop jop pazz and jop 2011

because tuneyards isnt underground music.

the underground is a very diverse very weird place atm and one in which 'approval' has increasingly less meaning

as an idea this sounds awesome, but i wonder if it is in practice and/or if it's true. one of my pet theories is as sales not only matter less but don't exist for a lot of free mixtape!/band camp sects of indie, it seems like actual number of fans or even how fanatical that fanbase is matters less than having the right kind of exposure on the right kind of sites, not just for the power of the co-sign but to put you in the category you aspire to be in, subculturally, which means more and more emphasis on bullshit 'approval' from an increasingly lame array of tastemakers

oh Lamp

everyone's a sellout to somebody ::looks on wistfully, wipes a tear::

having read the whole thing i think there's a few ideas happening and he doesn't really tie them to his central which is about the evacuation of a broad swath of indie from the results.

basically he's looking for the new brooklyn and not finding it and my response would be don't hold your breath because logistically and economically no one wants to be in an indie band anymore.

because tuneyards isnt underground music.

haha okay what

I'm curious to know what your metric for "underground" is.

i like this because lamp is right and people questioning lamp are right

pj harvey album is pretty awesome, as is the tom waits. i really like the wild flag lp and destroyer as well. tried to give tuneyards a shot but it wasn't my "thing."

Does he point out any "bold and brave" that WERE, actually, ignored? (Sorry, I'll read it.)

maybe not on 4AD? idk this seemed so self-evident to me that im a little taken aback by it being at all controversial...

basically he's looking for the new brooklyn and not finding it and my response would be don't hold your breath because logistically and economically no one wants to be in an indie band anymore.

my take was that he already heard the new brooklyn and found it wanting. and plenty of ppl want to be in bands? idk. i agree with larges parts of some dude's post and i think scotts right in certain ways abt how everyone is a rush to move fwd to the next thing the whole early-adopter 'i saw them when they played a set in a closed ethopian restaurant' and how that colors the music that gets talked abt. but i think this also drives the rebloggers and the tastemakers and the tumblr whites to chase cool rather than codify it, things are p wide open for any weirdo w/a drum machine rn

I like weirdo underground music as much as the next joe, but it's by design only going to appeal to a small number of people. I think the problem lays squarely on ... music criticism itself!

Anywho, VV, Spin, Stylus, Pfork, etc., are all magazines meant for a wider audience. Don't think they're going for the art snob crowd, and it's hard to blame people for not being interested in one particular permutation of culture.

Tim F*nney did not vote this year, I don't think.

If I'm still receiving invitations it wasn't to an email address that still works. I know that this can be fixed but it's the kind of administrative detail that's beyond my very limited powers of self-organisation.

most indie rock has been pretty conservative since the dawn of the 90's. that's when normal people started making it.

We're constructing all the wrong binaries -- imo this debate isn't "art snob" versus "Britney fans." The metiers of all the magazines you mentioned is, in part, to put the spotlight on an unknown act. Otherwise they're into necromancy, like MOJO.

even arty magazines love their old favorites. okay, there are like TWO arty magazines, one?, but they will write about the red krayola forever.

btw it increases a site's hit count when an Underground Act gets a positive review (ask Pitchfork or Stylus), so you can't separate the mercenary reasons for looking for unknown artists.

Conservative doesn't mean bad, though, of course. I'm interested in why I don't like indie more whether it's conservative or not.

i don't think the conservative nature of indie/undie types means much now. maybe it would have meant something years ago. its just what a lot of that music is now. its what things have become.

Does it not mean much because the alternative is uninteresting?

the alternative to conservative indie music? hell, no, there is a lot of amazing stuff out there. truly amazing and in no way conservative. or maybe you meant some other kind of alternative.

A binary exists in the mind of the creator. Imagine a giant list of all sorts of styles, interests, and approaches ... and picking one amongst those many. That's what I meant.

Journalism serves an audience, so it needs to fulfill that, too, and I'd imagine they hire people who reflect that audience to some degree, and that probably limits the scope covered.

I'd love magazines to cover more interesting and challenging music, even music that's not indie(!), but not sure how much of an audience that serves really. There's no ethical imperative that says it has to be that way.

it doesn't serve a large audience. to write about more challenging stuff. but you can do it anyway.

wtf are you guys talking about

hahah

Maybe that goes into limited scope of audience -> hired writers reflecting audience. Not many o' thems trailblazin' individualists out there anyway, so it's not surprising they don't pop up often. But it's great when they do.

Internet magazines of the last twelve years (at least) have published thousands of words of crap indie bands they've defined as "challenging."

*of = on

most people like non-challenging music. it's cool. life is challenging enough.

Maybe that goes into limited scope of audience -> hired writers reflecting audience. Not many o' thems trailblazin' individualists out there anyway, so it's not surprising they don't pop up often. But it's great when they do.

I'm not sure if you want a cue card with all the anointed trailblazers of the last twelve years or a violin to play.

No Scott, I wondered if you were saying that it didn't matter anymore whether indie was conservative or not because the non-conservative indie archetype of old - scum-rock or whatever - is probably not the way FORWARD from this point out of conservative indie.

and scott, you're an example of someone who's been writing about non-mainstream acts for years!

i honestly don't know what the way forward is, time. or if there is one. i focus my attention on people who intrigue/enlighten/inspire me and i don't worry so much about history/the futute/scenes/genres/etc. i'm older now so maybe i just don't care as much about that stuff. i care a LITTLE still. music has been a big part of my life. i look for individuals now who are doing good work. or work that i enjoy. and i spread the word about them as much as i can.

"tim" not time...

I'm not sure if you want a cue card with all the anointed trailblazers of the last twelve years or a violin to play.

Haw haw, not really my point. More like, people who've charted away from the same ole will cover material away from the same ole. I meant a more simple conclusion, but I appreciate those people, so I put it jokingly romantic.

i just don't worry about "crazy" avant whatever stuff being any more popular than it is. i wish every music magazine devoted a little time to it. like spin did in the 80's. its not ever gonna be popular. like spectrum said. i'm happy to have the 500 words a month that decibel gives me to write about weird shit. i wish more web and print writers would expand their horizons a little bit more (or a lot more), but we all wish for things. most writers on ilx are pretty damn open to new things! wish every music writer was.

I guess I would just say to that point that I like the idea of a "bold vs. not bold" dichotomy instead of a "conservative vs. not conservative" one.

lol man i am shocked by the gorilla vs. bear top 30 and how little of it i know #old

can i also just reiterate while were all still here tht the gvsb dude is like a real life version of one of whiney's indie critic caricatures and the idea that his voice/taste/site shld stand-in for 'underground music' fills me w/despair

Wait, what is "terrible" about scottpl's essay exactly?

Black Up hit us harder than anything since Person Pitch dropped back in ‘07

try 2 remember always just 2 have a good time

This is no time to quote Prince.

btw if someone did whiney's suggested anti-'corny indie fuck' edit of the poll wouldn't the top three be kanye/jay, adele, & paul simon?

crossing my fingers for a TuNeYaRDzzz/PaUl sImOn worldbeat collaboration. shit would be hot.

what is "terrible" about scottpl

I hate lines like: "easily digestible, rooted in collective memory and experiences, lo-fi enough to mask amateurishness", when none of those dismissals are particularly true. There's no shortage of truly bad chillwave, electro-pop, and other blog favorites to demonstrate this.

I'm loving the past few years of music because a lot of vows of chastity that straightjacketed indie music for decades fell off in the last 10 years. I credit the laptop becoming today's pawn shop guitar.

btw if someone did whiney's suggested anti-'corny indie fuck' edit of the poll wouldn't the top three be kanye/jay, adele, & paul simon?

Don't forget about Drake!

Or maybe he counts as a corny indie fuck now.

i think iver and foxes votes correlate more strongly with drake votes than they do with kanye votes (though probably most of the people who voted for the former voted for kanye too)

I hate lines like: "easily digestible, rooted in collective memory and experiences, lo-fi enough to mask amateurishness", when none of those dismissals are particularly true. There's no shortage of truly bad chillwave, electro-pop, and other blog favorites to demonstrate this.

this seems like a fair description of the shit i've heard p much

i mean its not like he hasn't championed stuff that falls into this ~style~ either. but i don't even dig into this music like that either, and i know that describes more than a few things w/in the spectrum

can i also just reiterate while were all still here tht the gvsb dude is like a real life version of one of whiney's indie critic caricatures and the idea that his voice/taste/site shld stand-in for 'underground music' fills me w/despair

― HOOS steen is it anyway? (Lamp), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 8:47 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol duly noted

most indie rock has been pretty conservative since the dawn of the 90's. that's when normal people started making it.

― scott seward, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 8:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ugh this post is so gross