so tell me, why is Kaputt better or worse than Let England Shake?

It's fair to say there's more to Kaputt than mere Anglo-Eighties fetishism, but it's a huge stumbling block towards my appreciation of it because not only have we seen this before, but we've seen people reviving it before. So is this a continuation of the last decade's eighties revival or is it part of some hideous third wave of eighties revivalism, and if so when will the madness stop?

Trying to appreciate this on levels other than pastiche/retro, I'm still struggling. I don't find the songwriting particularly engaging. The Blow Monkeys weren't exactly a fashionable band, but Digging Your Scene succeeds in that it has a soaring ecstatic chorus breaking through the shimmer. 'Being Boring' ('Kaputt', the song's closest reference point) was wry, witty, bittersweet and somehow evoked nostalgia without pandering to the past. Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well...

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/32867/
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858855779/

pastiche and retro are not the same thing

Bejar's not a pop songwriter, either.

xxxp

double irony thomas is that i dig the brief bits of it i've heard but won't listen to it cos of its meat&potatoes indie rock provenance :D

pastiche and retro are not the same thing

― iatee, Monday, 6 February 2012 15:11 (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They both apply here. I've no doubt that Bejar has nothing but love for this sound, but his mimicking of it is pure pastiche.

DL, you have to take (the song) Kaputt in the context of the other songs on the album; he makes explicit reference to other songs in the lyrics. The whole thing paints a picture. Bejar writes (and this sounds amazingly wanky, and is, but is also kind of compelling and intriguing) about musicians and music and music journalists (I know PSBs did this too on occasion; I've just never been that taken with them), and the whole album together paints a picture.

I'm not sure I see Bejar's past as meat&potatoes indie rock. Listened to Rubies this morning; the guitar is Ronson, not Pavement (obviously).

yeah, this "meat&potatoesindierock" shit is meaningless...

it's kind of hair-splitty tbh Sick, what constitutes tru indie now. i think the general point i'm making is that i'm suspicious in some way or uninterested in what the dude's doing even tho i'd probably go to bat for a lot of stuff in the sonic tradition of Kaputt

Bejar's not a pop songwriter, either.

This is my problem with Kaputt - I like the sonics, I'm not really bothered about whether it's pastiche or not (I think I just assumed genre-hopping was part of his whole deal, not being familiar with much of his other work) but it's kind of weak in terms of hooks and/or melody. His vocals are too one-note here ("fiercely casual" is about right) and it grates more than it might do with a different musical backdrop. He's written some incredibly poppy (and great) stuff with the New Pornographers though.

xps ha oh shit I've started another bloody discussion on what is or isn't indie.

i was gonna try not to indulge. i think it's at best disingenuous to say there's no such thing as "meat & potatoes indie", the rest of the argument is just filing

cos i think what you're saying - and it seems totally reasonable to me - is that Bejam's indie credentials gave you a way into the album, and i'm saying that the same thing sort of locks me out of it

wish I had time to read and respond... two of my fave albums of last year

i like M83! forgot about them/him. that album made the ilx poll right? and that stuff sounds fresh to me. if i were a teen now i would love it. i mean i don't own any of the albums but i dig the vibe. only watched on youtube. it feels like cool/hip teen music. and making the old new again. come to think of it, the french are good at the 80's. they are a very 80's people.

so far Kaputt has come across like a less engaging version of Double

"Suicide Demo For Kara Walker" is the first song that I've actively noticed while playing the album

xposts SM: re: Bejar's lyrics: That is kindof interesting, although I'm not sure how I feel about this kind of thing in 2012. It feels a bit like rather than doing away with post-modernism (something we saw a lot of in the 2000s), this is now turning into a kind of meta-music, where the song is a comment in and about itself. Not sure where Destroyer fits into this picture, but I can see a parallel with the work of people like Daniel Lopatin.

Don't know Lopatin but, afaikt, bejar's been doing this meta-thing for his whole career.

"Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well..."

see this is also my problem. people get the sounds right and pat themselves on the back, but they don't have the songs. i went and saw the faint years and years ago during the 2nd or 5th or 8th 80's revival and their sounds were right on but the only great song they played all night was "enola gay"! it was the only memorable song they played. "house of jealous lovers" is one of the only really great 80's-inspired songs i can think of. (other than the songs i love by my fave retro acts dmx krew and lansing-dreiden but hardly anyone here has heard them so i won't bother mentioning them)

great rock or indie rock 80's-inspired songs i should say. again, not dance tracks. there are loads of those. oh and interpol had a couple of good ones early on.

And the best song on the Gayngs album by far is their version of "Cry".

Thing is, you could argue that there's no way to create an eighties-inspired song without distancing oneself with a certain level of irony, whereas the OG eighties synth bands probably weren't thinking "oh yes, let's use that gated drum sound, it's totally kitsch". Or maybe they were? I dunno... Either way, they were writing pop singles whereas Kaputt is an alternative album and doesn't have that impetus to reel you in within 3 minutes.

i just got the feeling when i heard some of the electroclash stuff in the past or whatever that people thought it was easy to mimic the sounds and lol 80's vibe but then didn't follow through with actual quality material. so maybe that makes me sore. so many 3rd and 4th tier synth bands from the 80's that hardly anyone remembers sound really accomplished to me! they did a really good job and often on the cheap too. and, yeah, a lot of indie people just don't get it. as opposed to pop people. i do think the destroyer guy is talented though. you can hear it in the music.

oh but this sucks though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR85bAxCX6M&feature=player_embedded#!

i went and saw the faint years and years ago during the 2nd or 5th or 8th 80's revival and their sounds were right on but the only great song they played all night was "enola gay"!

Ha, this reminds me of being at a friends' house when they were watching some snowboarding dvd with people like The Faint on the soundtrack - one song came up at the end and I thought "Oh this is loads better than their other stuff", watching the credits it turned out to be some early Depeche Mode album track.

wow "Bay of Pigs (Detail)" is super annoying

lol Spotify is now playing "No Fools Allowed by DestroyER at me

http://open.spotify.com/track/259gdZPmfMClYUGs7JKo50

this is much more my bag than Kaputt

whether it was a character bejar was inhabiting or ironic self-commentary or something else i felt kinda alienated by the pov presented on 'kaputt' it reminds me of 'take care', kinda, although bejar is less loathsome than drake's unfiltered self-pitying narcissist. but theres still the glassy-eyed emptiness that turns me off, the idea of others as objects, esp women, and the commodification of xp.

Compare the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics to Bejar's empty signifiers of cocaine backrooms - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well...

Reading this made me want to throw something.

You could just as easily write:

"Compare Destroyer's lyrics to Tennant's empty signifiers of cachets of old photos - one is slick, literate pop; the other, well..."

It would be just as meaningless and just as convincing. Empty signifiers indeed.

hope you didn't break whatever you threw. think "empty signifiers" wasn't the right term to use.

whether it was a character bejar was inhabiting or ironic self-commentary or something else i felt kinda alienated by the pov presented on 'kaputt' it reminds me of 'take care', kinda, although bejar is less loathsome than drake's unfiltered self-pitying narcissist. but theres still the glassy-eyed emptiness that turns me off, the idea of others as objects, esp women, and the commodification of xp.

if anything I get the sense that the character he's inhabiting is the 'object'

world of objects

that sorta doesn't make sense but pretend I phrased it better

tim, do you like M83?

http://www.marcresearch.com/blogs/merrill/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/g_peter_graves_cockpit_airplane_1a.jpg

4 songs into LES wtf is this shit lol

i like both deez albumz

they are both enjoyable albums by interesting artists.

^ fuckin liars

come on, guys, you like BOTH of these albums, give me a fuckin break

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

ok

What's ironic about chasing girls and cocaine into backrooms of clubs? haven't we all done that when we were young?

well I did it ironically

i mean this has little to do with the conversation probably but i like the moments when the facade of kaputt cracks slightly. the weird noise in the middle of "chinatown"; the free jazz drift at the end of "song for america." feels like reality invading a thoroughly-composed unreality.

another thought: this sort of tension and cracking is in every song on let england shake. the album's kind of vaporous and floating like kaputt but it is married to elements that ground it intensely: the lyrics, the repurposing of other, concretely-known songs

anyway both albums are great and are trying to do different things and are variously successful at them

ah wow, just listening to Let England Shake for the first time on Spotify, and the advert between The Glorious Land and The Words That Maketh Murder was imploring me to join the Army Reserves. Couldn't get more perfect.

lol

i guess i have no interest in whether or not england is shaking.

people get the sounds right and pat themselves on the back, but they don't have the songs.

this is extremely true with the new wave of retro thrash

Lots of good insights on this thread. I like the idea that Bejar is not just recreating "the '80s" but a very specific '80s - not any specific album or artist, but a certain "cool" languorous aesthetic that runs through certain favorite albums of the period. Everyone seems to have their own touchstones, but for me it's mainly about The Nightfly (jazzy retro-futurism) and I'm Your Man (modernist word-play and synths).

I fully admit to not having listened to more than one song from LES, and it mainly made me want to listen to the Pogues.

Just realized I have had Let England Shake on my computer, I listened again and I like it ok. reminds me of the Nick Cave maybe. Hanging In The Wire is nice, I think I like her more subdued moments.