Savages

with music this good i really don't care how it's packaged. great to finally be excited about a relatively new band.

i like the album and live tracks quite a bit, but i'm still half on the fence. i mean, i've seen a lot of similar stuff come and go over the last 6 or 7 years without attracting this sort of attention tsunami. (look at me, i'm the lex.) then again, most didn't have the pop & human interest appeal, so no surprise i guess.

Yes, love that the feted indie rock album of the year sounds like early 80s Siouxsie crossed with Throwing Muses.

Hmm, hadn't thought about the Muses in comparison.

Don't get the Muses comparison - they had way more more personality and always the capacity to tip into bubblegum. They had interesting songs not just po-faced versions of cool style. This crew sounds more like a fashion statement.

yeah i'm also on the fence... feel like the british are distinctly good at ruining their young bands

the marketing push on this band is ridiculous

the album art appears SEVEN TIMES on the Quietus review page

http://thequietus.com/articles/12140-savages-silence-yourself-review

“From the first rehearsal, it was very productive— we weren't just there to tell each other we're great,” remembers Milton, who arrives for her one-on-one grilling carrying a copy of The Fountainhead.

: /

it's allowed if someone is 21 or younger.

well, preferably 18 or younger, but let's be kind.

they are like teeny tiny fashion models and that can only help their cause. i like the singer's lil' ian curtis dancing. what DO the people who were in elastica do now, by the way? do they have bbc chat shows or something? after britpop you never heard about the singer anymore.

but anyway i like these guys way better than something like interpol cuz these guys are adorable. like xmal-lite. i dig the guitar sound too. if you are gonna have the 485346634th 80's revival you could do worse. i mean who needs vampire weekend now?

squares

I really don't get the Interpol comparisons. Everything I ever heard by Interpol was enervating and terrible, pretty much the polar opposite of what I get from something like "Husbands"; which Interpol songs are the ones containing barely restrained fury and violence because I'd love to hear them

I can't take Husbands seriously because the chorus sounds so much like Horses by Patti Smith. Along with the Ian Curtis aping - it was an unfortunate way to put yourself out there I thought.

I was obviously wrong though since they do seem to have got people genuinely thrilled.

the interpol comparisons are lazy shorthand for "postpunk revival" imo

and the attendant hype cycle

80's pastiche is 80's pastiche. both Interpol and this band are taking from the same sources.

Read the guardian profile at the weekend, couldn't decide between "they seem cool" & "they seem like tossers". Think the author of the piece was trying to suggest the latter tho.

Read the guardian profile at the weekend, couldn't decide between "they seem cool" & "they seem like tossers". Think the author of the piece was trying to suggest the latter tho.

I was all set to listen to this and actually quite excited, so I listened to the first few songs, but it was beautiful and sunny outside and it just sounded so wrong in that context and also just fucking rote and y'know eight years too late so I just couldn't be bothered. I might come back to it in September but it just feels like the wrong time for them in every way.

Savages are a serious band. They named their first single, Husbands, after a grim 1970 Cassavetes film, whereas their other inspirations include Philip K Dick, pornography and German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten.

artsy types pronouncing that they're influenced by pron is just the funniest thing

dudes like pitbull and ranking and tom zanetti should totally start dressing like quakers and communicate solely in edicts like DEGRADATION IS THE ONLY TRUTH while not changing their music one bit

Multiple xposts: okay sure, but Interpol was always super boring and terrible and Savages are not so far

I've been chuffed about this band since I heard the single last year, and love the album. There's a handful of bands dipping into post-punk influences lately, like Grass Widow, Talk Normal, Pins, New War, Big Joan, Deep Time, Merchandise, etc., but I don't know that you could call it another revival. Most of the 80s influences are blended with all sorts of other stuff. Beth's vocals may occasionally sound like Siouxsie Sioux, but not anymore than she does Karen O. Music and arrangements don't make me think of the Banshees all that much. I hear fleeting moments of Stranglers' bass sound, Birthday Party in the guitar. But the muscular sound/production has more in common with Fugazi, Converge or Coliseum.

People seem to be okay with the fact that you can find literally thousands of bands influenced by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Stones, Cream, Zeppelin, Free, Sabbath, Lynnyrd, all the way up through White Stripes, but as soon as there's a whiff of anything from the post-punk era, the originality police come out in droves. Look at the comments on the Quietus review. They can grumble all they want and stay at home fondling original editions of Metal Box, but they'll be missing out on some great stuff.

Pins just finished recording their full length. The Savages album will be hard to top but I hope they get close.

I am all for the blending. the old and the new. which is why this band sounds better to me than other lesser 80's-aping stuff. like, I can see these women getting as much inspiration from people like sleater-kinney and pj harvey as they do from all the usual suspects.

the singer's group before Savages:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpAqUfu91GI

very very PJ here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bWojuvmwuU

she's an amazing frontperson to build a band around, for sure. hott Ian Curtis is a winning formula in my book!

comically boxed in by the period perfect postpunk costuming

Yeah, this band is so OTM it's almost not OTM, but I'll take it. At least until everyone else likes them for being so OTM, at which point I will declare them not OTM and move on to something more OTM. Which inevitably is the stuff this band resembles. AKA, "the money."

It's too soon after the last post punk revival. Other genres are available for inspiration.

Pre-punk?

Someone forgot to send them the memo. Sorry ladies, the genre overlords allowed post-punk inspired bands in the 90s and early 00s, but this decade is off-limits. Why don't you try your hand at some nice folk rock?

Maybe these guys are actually referencing '90s and '00s post-punk revival! Post-post-post-punk?

Reminds me of controller.controller from a few years back. Maybe better with mood, but less so with the hooks. NOt moved, seems a tad too restrained. I just want to seem them rock out.

would you guys say there is a flight from presentism involved in the hype surrounding this band?

matador records baby, it's their raison d

I can't take Husbands seriously because the chorus sounds so much like Horses by Patti Smith. Along with the Ian Curtis aping - it was an unfortunate way to put yourself out there I thought.

― Hinklepicker, Saturday, May 4, 2013 10:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ok now I can't unhear this.

I've found them a bit lacking in actual tunes. But, you know, there's something attractively astringent about their music.

But the behind-the-scenes stuff surrounding them is very off. John aka Johnny Hostile seems almost Kim Fowleyesque in his manipulativeness and desire for control. Rebecca made mention of that in her Guardian piece, but it was all very WTF last year (I know their ex publicist and ex manager).

the genre overlords allowed post-punk inspired bands in the 90s and early 00s, but this decade is off-limits. Why don't you try your hand at some nice folk rock?

― Fastnbulbous, Sunday, May 5, 2013

There were cynics in the '90s and '00s too.

I listened to the whole album, it's ok but not clicking in a major way yet & I feel like if you're gonna be into this band you prob need to really be into them & I'm just not feeling inclined to make that leap of faith & devotion. Yet. Matt otm; maybe in the autumn it'll make more sense.

Also when you're not in the mood the seriousface stuff is just funny, I mean

coz you have no face
you have no face
you, have, no, face

http://www.bubblegun.com/toons/images/hace1.gif

why the blank expression?

kind of sound like a gothy version of wire, very taut and spare. i like the furrowed-brow intensity of it all but i don't think the songs are really there just yet

even with those catchy riffs and hhoks, this band is too flashy, too formulistic, and too hollow at the end. (to my taste).

like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Suede, i predict Savages will also have the same future as those bands, for better and for worse

They could do way worse with post-punk influences. Plus, the songs' feminisit narratives are great. I'm rooting for them.

The same future awaits us all nostormo. But yes, this band is crap.

Plus, the songs' feminisit narratives are great.

nu board descrip

puts on dunce cap*

Feminisit brostep

like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Suede, i predict Savages will also have the same future as those bands, for better and for worse

― nostormo, Monday, May 6, 2013 7:34 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What a tragedy for Savages.

I'm not very familiar with band outside of the music on its first album - which I love - so I had no idea Jehnny Beth had been acting in films. I only discovered this at a screening of Anatomy of a Fall (the Palme d'Or winner at this year's Cannes Film Festival) and I thought "that caretaker looks very familiar, where I have seen her before?"