Savages

DJP otm throughout

i do think it's fair, though, to suggest that savages are quite deliberately constructing their music and presentation from elements of a specific retro style. making pop music is rarely an act of creation ex nihilo, but one of the things that makes pop interesting is the potential for novel synthesis, old things put together in unfamiliar ways. there's not much opportunity for that here. it's a faithful reproduction of what has been.

personally, i don't see anything wrong with that. i love lots of formally constrained garage punk that doesn't push at the parameters so much as make a glorious racket within them. i have a deep-down fondness for the style. i'm less devoted to angsty post punk, but i do like it, so i appreciate savages with a bit less enthusiasm.

the question for me is, "what separates a good throwback act from a bad one?" imo, it's usually some combination of tunes, energy, and an interesting take on the familiar. seems to me that savages have the energy covered (and then some), and the songs are decent. there isn't anything about their approach that really surprises or intrigues me, but that can wait. i'm generally supportive, but not yet a fan.

You obviously don't need to be distinctive; if you did, half the dance music I see celebrated on this site would get ignored.

― far too much asshole flesh (DJP), Thursday, May 9, 2013 10:15 AM (45 minutes ago)

this is a good point. we accept that dance music doesn't have to be "distinctive" in order to succeed because we accept that the success of dance music is defined in large part by its functional qualitis. if it makes people want to dance, it's good.

we can evaluate rock music by similar criteria. if it makes people want to get drunk and loudly misbehave in small clubs (or parties or w/e), then it's doing the job. i imagine savages are quite successful by that measure.

so are they basically the Sha Na Na of post-punk?

if it makes people want to get drunk and loudly misbehave in small clubs (or parties or w/e), then it's doing the job

What if it makes you sip wine and talk thoughtfully on a divan?

I might come back to it in September but it just feels like the wrong time for them in every way.

look outside, your wish has been granted.

I've tried listening to this album a couple times on my headphones when I get into bed at night. I usually make it about one song in before I'm completely unconscious, so I guess you say that the music makes me sleep soundly. That's not a criticism, btw.

making pop music is rarely an act of creation ex nihilo, but one of the things that makes pop interesting is the potential for novel synthesis, old things put together in unfamiliar ways. there's not much opportunity for that here. it's a faithful reproduction of what has been.

I disagree with that last statement. I don't find them faithfully reproducing any one postpunk band's style (the Joy Division comparisons, again, are especially weird to me - there's exactly one song that, to my ear, has Hook-esque bass and an imitation of that instantly recognizable Martin Hannett drum sound). Hell, half the guitar work sounds (as has been stated upthread) like the work of East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys, and a lot more sounds like Ron Asheton of the Stooges. Neither of those were postpunk bands. So they're imitators, but they're also magpies, pulling stuff from here and there and reassembling it. And again, the songs are good ones.

Joy Division? Really? Huh. I don't hear them at all

when i think of the vast futuristic universes created by disco, funk, jazz, and prog/psych in the 70's and punk - the most conservative and retro movement outside of dixieland - gets labeled "revolutionary" i just laugh in that way i have of laughing. i mean i like punk cuz i like rock but it was about as revolutionary as my granny's chamber pot. fashionwise, it was a kick, i'll give you that. POST punk, on the other hand, is another thing all together. cuz then all the secret prog fans made records and we were off to the cosmos again.

this is otm. love you, scott seward.

Hell, half the guitar work sounds (as has been stated upthread) like the work of East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys, and a lot more sounds like Ron Asheton of the Stooges. Neither of those were postpunk bands.

Yes, the beginning of "Husbands" keeps reminding me of "Holiday in Cambodia." There is a thread of hardcore in their sound, for sure.

("We draw on everything from proto-punk to post-punk to hardcore punk.")

x-ray spex and the slits sound pretty 'revolutionary' to me.

I disagree with that last statement. I don't find them faithfully reproducing any one postpunk band's style (the Joy Division comparisons, again, are especially weird to me - there's exactly one song that, to my ear, has Hook-esque bass and an imitation of that instantly recognizable Martin Hannett drum sound). Hell, half the guitar work sounds (as has been stated upthread) like the work of East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys, and a lot more sounds like Ron Asheton of the Stooges. Neither of those were postpunk bands. So they're imitators, but they're also magpies, pulling stuff from here and there and reassembling it. And again, the songs are good ones.

― 誤訳侮辱, Thursday, May 9, 2013 11:11 AM (50 minutes ago)

sure, i wasn't trying to draw a clear line between copyists (obviously beholden to a specific and formally codified style) and synthesists. most musicians fit somewhere in between those poles. the DKs guitar is a bit of a surprise, but it's period-appropriate, and there are few left field jabs of that sort in their sound, imo. the references seem pretty narrowly curated, limited, by and large, to late 70s/early 80s postpunk. that they're able to evoke that moment without being obviously derivative of any specific predecessor is to their credit.

then again, there are TONS of garage rock bands that sound like a polyglot mixture of post-sonics/seeds/stooges/VU influences, but few try to argue that they're anything other than conservative and perhaps derivative, even if enjoyably so. you can be derivative of a general style, after all.

when i think of the vast futuristic universes created by disco, funk, jazz, and prog/psych in the 70's and punk - the most conservative and retro movement outside of dixieland - gets labeled "revolutionary" i just laugh in that way i have of laughing. i mean i like punk cuz i like rock but it was about as revolutionary as my granny's chamber pot. fashionwise, it was a kick, i'll give you that. POST punk, on the other hand, is another thing all together. cuz then all the secret prog fans made records and we were off to the cosmos again.

i know you've read it but this is the thesis of "rip it up and start again"

think a lot of the discussion itt is pretty silly, feel like ppl are getting hung up on things that are, like, common underlying assumptions we take for granted when talking about music. maybe we could unpack why ppl have so much trouble coming to terms with liking a post punk band in 2013? people still listen to rap music & it's barely any younger. maybe it's because post-punk went away and then came back, in this case largely intact? maybe because the people who were originally into it are now older but still influential in uk music press & have made a series of misguided attempts to bring it back? maybe it has to do with how post punk became new wave & has been part of pop music dna ever since?

think a lot of the discussion itt is pretty silly, feel like ppl are getting hung up on things that are, like, common underlying assumptions we take for granted when talking about music. maybe we could unpack why ppl have so much trouble coming to terms with liking a post punk band in 2013? people still listen to rap music & it's barely any younger. maybe it's because post-punk went away and then came back, in this case largely intact?

yeah, but post-punk isn't really equivalent to rap. rap is a big umbrella, like rock. post-punk matches up better with like, 80s era "old school" rap. if someone came along spitting in a fastidiously retro kool moe dee style over vintage beats (or w/e), there'd be exactly the same kind of push back. maybe a bit less, as "retro rap" is somewhat fresher as a concept than "retro rock".

More bands should ape Newcleus.

well if we're going there, more bands should ape Euromasters

when i think of the vast futuristic universes created by disco, funk, jazz, and prog/psych in the 70's and punk - the most conservative and retro movement outside of dixieland - gets labeled "revolutionary" i just laugh in that way i have of laughing. i mean i like punk cuz i like rock but it was about as revolutionary as my granny's chamber pot.

i see where this is coming from, but punk isn't just the conservative/conformist loudfastrules thing. it's also an ethos and sensibility that extends out into a hugely diverse body of art: crass, the cbgb's crew, no wave, flipper & the germs, gary panter, wire circa document & eyewitness, survival research laboratories, transgressive underground cinema, english postpunk, american indie and hardcore, noise as music, extremists like swans, "industrial culture", "pigfuck", etc.

tangential to this thread, but i get bugged by the "punk = ramones & pistols, lol punk is conservative" argument.

Gabber Gabber Hey.

xpost

xp yeah obv scott/simon reynolds are overestimating the vast futurism of disco funk jazz prog/psych and underestimating the radicalism of punk, i mean obviously scott owns some pretty cosmic disco records but that doesn't map onto your average 1977 listener's experience so nicely. the idea that punk was revolutionary was a product of cliches existing at the time, but that doesn't mean we can an equally misrepresentative cliche in the other direction made today is any better

contenderizer otm

I've never actually read any of simon's books. don't tell him. I like him though.

simon introduced me to joy press and the first thing she said was that she was a big fan of mine! omg I almost died! I love her. made me wish that I wrote more. #braggin

Anyone been watching the stream?

Crowd looks upset they can't check their texts

i love this sense i get (perhaps entirely manufactured) that they're working with sounds and symbols and emotions that are way more powerful than they know exactly what to do with. like the whole "wrote you a story" bit with hit me was ridiculous and out there, but then they pulled it into a strong performance.

on the other hand they seemed totally pro at the end of the set -- not exhausted and etc. at all but just like they could deliver a performance that seemed like it took all their energy, but it was just that, a performance.

which isn't a bad thing either.

Yeah I'm a bit turned off by the melodrama/over-seriousness about them but am very much liking the songs and they perform well it seems.

okay, I THINK I've found the ultimate influence on Savages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmqe47KNZ6M

this album is.....ok? they seem like they would be good live, but i'm not overly enamored w/the songs or the sound of the record.

Great ambient music, in the sense of "It's definitely Siouxsie/East Bay Ray with further noises and therefore easy to have playing without worrying too much." (I assure you, a compliment.)

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, May 1, 2013 10:30 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, but I perceive a subtle cut in the ambiguity of "ambient" (or at least a slightly less sanguine compliment). Savages' product is calculated and tight, attractively ernest but v. controlled, and the energy/intensity/excitement they exude is at the core cold and mercenary. their blunt rapaciousness in the context of indie rock seems fresh after two decades of ironic/furtive/incidental/fortuitous/idealized ambition, and they remind me most of early U2, not so much in sound as in presentation and affect. if they can thread the needle and define themselves outside of the postpunk revivalist ghetto (while still sporting its mystique), they might be huge. (their music atm is bloodless and tasteful pastiche, but they're probably already negotiating w/ heavyweight producers w/bags of big tunes, so w/e).

well that's why if you watch the videos of the singer's previous group - there are a lot of them including a rather precious acoustic indie rock thin lizzy cover - you see that this is someone working lots of angles/styles in the search of...a hit? a career? something that will stick? and then on to savages which is art directed up the wazoo. which is fine by me. ambition doesn't turn me off. I will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Madonna's debut this summer with cake and balloons.

and they are definitely a band that sound-wise could go anywhere.

I have no idea how successful he previous group was. maybe they were huge in france. maybe she has already had some chart success? haven't read anything about that.

It is very art directed. Makes me wonder how they create records like this if any one member isn't exactly on the same page... even when it comes down to things like when the drums come back on here, and what instrument is playing by itself there, etc.

Seems like it would real work

would be

careful arrangement should be real work

the strokes: UK edition

if only these guys wrote songs like the strokes

Wow, with this much hype, soon they could be as big as Fischerspooner!

You obviously don't need to be distinctive; if you did, half the dance music I see celebrated on this site would get ignored.

A lot of the best dance music is pretty distinctive, but in general it's meant to be faceless, meant to slot seamlessly into a wider whole. Rock music by contrast is all about personality, if a rock star doesn't hold your attention, isn't the most riveting thing you can see or hear at any point, then they're doing something wrong. I know a lot of US and UK indie-pop undercuts this to an extent but with a band as in-your-face as Savages I still feel there's something missing.

Like I said they do feel like there's something there as well that could develop into something fantastic by their second or third album but they seem kind of half formed at the moment.

If your producer is called "Johnny Hostile" then don't be surprised if people take you less than seriously. People in rock who call themselves Johnny anything should be conscripted.

didn't realise she'd done a thing with bo ningen. cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAXYdAR2f3Q

The PR / Marketing for these folks is raging full on..I see an ad for them on every other site.

I've listened to the album a few times now and.......it's good. Not amazing. I'm not too fond of "Strife," "No Face" or "Hit Me," but the rest is fine (ignoring "Dead Nature" here). I wish it was mixed better - it's a bit too dense for my liking - it needs some more space. There isn't much Joy Division-sounding on the album, but I thought of Crispy Ambulance a couple of times. Jehnny Beth doesn't sound much like Siouxsie besides the "uh uh" things on "Husbands" (I prefer the single version of that, to be honest). The lyrics aren't as good as Jehnny probably thinks they are, but I can ignore that. The bassist is REALLY good though.

I had no idea this band was hyped at all until Matador announced the LP... Some friends were talking about them last year so I gave them a listen and dug it enough to buy the 7" and the live EP. I liked that stuff enough to pre-order the album at my local record store and bought it on the day of release. This is the first time in years that I've bought an album without listening to it thoroughly beforehand, so I am disappointed that I don't like it as much as I hoped.

I don't spend much time worrying about people's motives or looking for clues about who they're ripping off, but I don't think emulating obscure (by general public standards) bands from decades ago is a guaranteed path to superstardom. Maybe I'm naive to think it isn't totally calculated, but they could be copying top 40 pop stuff with guest rap stars and probably reach a much wider audience than they will with this type of music.

Enjoyed Shut Up today - thought about Echo and the Bunnymen for some reason while listening - not that this detracted from the tune.

Good spot on Crispy Ambulance. There's a bit of Warsaw, Kitchens Of Distinction, Southern Death Cult, Diamanda Galas... I think the Banshees thing is pretty uncontroversial though. They're more like a Limey Interpol rather than Strokes surely?

It's pretty depressing the amount of misogynist comments I've had to delete off our site about them. Of a really lame... "I'm not sexist but... [insert sexist comment here]" type.

Yeah, that is pretty depressing actually. It's 2013, for fucks sake...

Southern Death Cult is a good spot I think.