Ariel Pink

That article is putting words in Ariel's mouth, imo. The "beta males" line didn't read to me as "let's get revenge on the alphas by slyly seducing girls with our intellect" thing but a "fuck alpha males, let me deploy the word 'prey' to compare them to predators"

In the original Wire article Pink talks quite explicitly about getting revenge on alpha males through using his intellect to seduce women. Women aren't allowed any agency, they're just vehicles for male competition to get 'pussy in the pocket'. How delightful. Classifications such as beta and alpha are such reductive bullshit anyway. Pink's thinking on gender and queerness is totally idiotic. So I don't think Joe Kennedy was putting words into his mouth at all.

OH REALLY? yuck.

ugh I feel like I'm getting stupider just thinking about this

but is ariel pink's damage really indicative of broader trends in indie music?

yes, as explained in the article

maybe in a different article!

Don't forget about Peep Show! Also, apparently, evidence of problems with the indie cultures.

The sense that the sexual democracy of that scene is a sham, amounting ultimately to the perpetuation of the same old male privileges in a more passive-aggressive way, is one of the (many) things to have consistently undermined twee's claims to political credibility.

secret sympathies here w/ paglia i think

But who has ever claimed that 'indie culture' is sexually democratic? If we're playing this game, then surely such scenes are inherently constituted from those standards.

maybe my problem is that i can't unpack the uk'isms. "Remember all those guys who really loved Le Tigre or Electrelane or Bis or CSS, but ultimately might as well have been in the triples-for-singles meat market up the road when it came to putting their money where their emancipatory mouths were?" what is triples-for-singles and how does that indicate that sexual democracy in twee scene is a sham?

i had no idea twee aspired to political credibility! i thought it was just a mostly spent aesthetic movement. and i never thought of ariel pink as twee? more as psychotic?

I didn't get that bit either, don't know what it means. I sort of am unclear how people hooking up at indie clubs distinguishes those clubs from... any clubs. But you know Ariel Pink is shit so feel free to smear them with whatever. Apparently the guy is also a massive racist too, I can tell by how annoying I find his music.

the bit about triples-for-singles i mean.

also no doubt plenty of people are crepey, but actual meat market shit clubs really are a level above and we shouldn't forget this.

this part is pretty terrible too:

"There's no direct continuity, but twee and its attendant bookish 'niceness' is one of the guiding influences on the Amerophile Dalston aesthetic Luke Turner described in his recent piece on Swans for Riot of Perfume."

there's no direct continuity but it's one of the guiding influences?

also who the fuck are Tullycraft and what do they have to do with Ariel Pink?

I assume it means triple measures of spirits for the price of a single measure xp

Ariel Pink isn't twee. They use the concept of the 'beta male' to move from Peep Show to AP to twee. Which is problematic, I think, but still coherent.

Triples-for-singles is, I assume, triple shots of alcohol for people without partners. But I'm extrapolating from context here, I've never actually seen such a thing advertised.

xpost ah, Mencap has it, I suspect.

I do always enjoy articles about how passive-aggressive 'nice' guys are raging assholes, this particular one didn't seem well argued tho.

also who the fuck are Tullycraft and what do they have to do with Ariel Pink?

You do realise that the fact that you don't know who Tullycraft are doesn't reflect badly on the author of the piece? I'm not saying that it reflects badly on you (they're shit), but the fact that you seem to think it is some sort of flaw in the article that YOU don't know something, does make me wonder about the rest of your points.

I assume it means triple measures of spirits for the price of a single measure xp

i thought triple measures for people who are single!

and can prove it in a voigt-kampf test involving images of happy couples

who is MikoMcha

emil.y, I think it is the responsibility of the writer to contextualize new information. he does a poor job of explaining why Tullycraft matter to Ariel Pink outside a vague stream of consciousness that they are both connected through this beta male construct. a better writer would do at least a cursory job of explaining the relevance between the two.

but the fact that you seem to think it is some sort of flaw in the article that YOU don't know something

Yes, I think this is a flaw in the article.

oy i mean it's several incidences of a widespread phenomenon, the connecting link is basically 'these are the horizons of the (pop) culture i engage with'

it's the quietus ffs, by their standards this is pulitzer-worthy

i am happy i'm not the only one who'd never heard the term triples-for-singles.

tbh that entire paragraph about bookish 'niceness' seems to make about four leaps that we just have to accept to get with with wider argument.

just another reminder that we expect so much less from music writing than we expect from other writing

who is MikoMcha

Errr... why? Just a long time ILM reader, occasional poster.

well i just wondered if you'd registered purely to defend ariel pink from charges of misogny

I'm usually on hip-hop or dance music threads.

twee and its attendant bookish 'niceness' is one of the guiding influences on the Amerophile Dalston aesthetic

yeah i don't really see this in dalston... i don't even see it in fashion to a great degree.

Besides, I wasn't defending him, as you can read from my posts.

but the fact that you seem to think it is some sort of flaw in the article that YOU don't know something

Yes, I think this is a flaw in the article.

Why? They mention a band who lots of people do know about, they give the title of the song, which is fairly self-explanatory in its relevance, and then they discuss the pertinent gender issues surrounding such statements. Why is this a flaw instead of you bemoaning that their cultural reference points are not exactly the same as your own.

And I will restate, the article is not "look at these guys who are following Ariel Pink in their misogyny", the article is "Ariel Pink's recent misogynist comments are representative of a nasty undercurrent in the indie scene".

Straight white cis dudes: "not defending Ariel Pink, just saying this article is shit because of oooh, all these terrible mistakes they've made, look, they mentioned a band I've never heard of, pshaw, how can anyone take this issue seriously if THESE are the standards?"

i think you're overlooking some pretty terrible ideas + arguments in that article bc you dislike Ariel Pink - many of which are terrible bc they have nothing to do w/ Ariel Pink!

i wish i could find a link to hopper's where the girls aren't, which i think ran a similar thesis about emo music but wasn't terrible

also, this is for sure more offensive than anything that seattle indie band has ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQcNo9yWbM

Depends what you mean by "dislike Ariel Pink". I haven't heard the new one but his music is mostly great. I wish he wasn't an asshole.

Besides which, you're completely failing to read my posts: the article is not "look at these guys who are following Ariel Pink in their misogyny", the article is "Ariel Pink's recent misogynist comments are representative of a nasty undercurrent in the indie scene".

I am interested in this because I AM PART OF THE INDIE SCENE AND I KNOW IT TO BE TRUE. Which is why I wish there had been a better job made of dissociating "indie" and "twee" - they're both horribly misogynist, but I feel like their operant modes are rather different.

I think it's tricky to begin with to make sweeping claims about a particular scene - but especially when it's unclear that the specifics of the scene are actually a part of said scene, or related at all. is indie just a synonym for twee? what does drinking heavily at a club have to do w/ ariel pink's psychotic home recording aesthetic? there's this beta male idea, but that crosses scenes + genres. the author could just as easily have said: ariel pink's beta male misogyny occurs throughout music including this emo band Cute is What We Aim For - and it would be equally coherent! which is to say, not really coherent at all.

xp that's kinda the problem with the article though, it points in the general direction of the misogyny found in some subcultures (which particular ones, it's not quite clear), but without unwrapping that you get the people who know it's already the case filling the gaps and agreeing and the people who don't think there's a problem not seeing where the substance is.

I don't want to go through the piece line by line, but it's not just this one complaint. There's numerous leaps in logic here and assertions that aren't born out in the piece. for instance: "In fact, it's in some ways a visual analogue to twee indie-pop's greatest musical crime, Tullycraft's 'Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's too Stupid to Know About'"

What is the visual analogue? "chinos and deck shoes meet satchels and rusting bikes?" what do chinos have to do w/ this Tullycraft song except that maybe one of the band members wears them? are ppl who ride rusting bikes more misogynistic than ppl who don't bike at all?

There's always a moment in a thread where things begin to turn...

For the record, I agree that Ariel's comments are off-putting and offensive. Not sure about the other links in the article (I don't know about UK indie clubs), but for what it's worth indie scenes in my experience are often defined by the double-standards that this article is sketching out. Doesn't strike me as newsworthy in particular. That's why I don't hang out at those kinds of places.

article about itself in online music publication

is indie just a synonym for twee?

Try reading my posts.

what does drinking heavily at a club have to do w/ ariel pink's psychotic home recording aesthetic?

The article never said it did. It said that the beta male seduction technique is just as sexist as the boorish males of the meat market clubs.

there's this beta male idea, but that crosses scenes + genres.

Yes, it does. However, you're just throwing it in as a vague concept mentioned in passing, when "this beta male idea" is the central fucking point.

ariel pink's beta male misogyny occurs throughout music including this emo band Cute is What We Aim For - and it would be equally coherent! which is to say, not really coherent at all.

Yes, it could have said that. But it is not an emo magazine. Its audience are not predominantly emo kids. It is a call to examine privilege and pretence in its own backyard. A reference to an emo band would be pointing the finger, rather than attempting to address one's own problems.

What is the visual analogue? "chinos and deck shoes meet satchels and rusting bikes?" what do chinos have to do w/ this Tullycraft song except that maybe one of the band members wears them?

There's this thing, it's called semiotics.

I'm going to drop it. I don't think it's a particularly well written or argued article but I see that the point it is trying to make is important enough that stylistic concerns are irrelevant.

if anyone genuinely thinks chinos/deck shoes/rusting bikes somehow nails down a particular type of person or the things they are into, then that's sort of crazy.

lol