Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

Shooting for, that is. (I don't think of Simon Reynolds and Shooter Jennings as being all that similar. Shooter, by the way, is conducting a conversation between country and L.A. sleaze metal.)

Marion Raven acoustic tracks

Clip from Break You video

Frank, have you listened to all of Into the Rush yet? "Rush" was good enough to kind of blind me to a few other songs (which for the most part sound more like "Rush" than "No One" or the covers) with some strange, even frightening content. Not in the vein of previously discussed "Because of You" or "Confessions of a Broken Heart," either...there's something even darker happening in a few Aly & AJ tracks (particularly "I Am One of Them" and to a lesser extent "Sticks and Stones").

apparently he never heard kanye west! (a minor 2005 footnote, but still.)

"Shooter" by Lil Wayne may well be Southern hip-hop conversing with Shooter Jennings too.

Random musings: There seems to be a lot more rock in contemporary pop songs (Duff, Lohan, Clarkson kinda) than there was just a few years back when R&B and dancey hip-hop seemed to be the favored angle (Britney, Xtina). Then there was the teen version of songstresses (Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton). I dunno, pop sounds *younger* now than it did. Granted, I don't think the Duffs/Lohans have the voices to carry R&B songs, so that could explain it.

I mean, I suppose THIS is Simon's real point. But honestly, anybody who believes indie rock (and maybe grime or crunk) is the cutting edge of innovation anymore (anybody who believes indie rock has been the cutting edge of white popular music in. like, the past 20 years) hasn't been paying attention. (And that said, I'm not at all sure that indie-rock *hasn't* somehow miscegenated with grime or crunk. And I'm even less sure that I'd give a shit about it if it did.) (And what do "cutting edge"s have to do with good music anyway?)

I like "End of Me" more, despite the thing being more pretentious. (Despite?) The music to that one sounds like a doomy version of "Theme from a Summer Place" (at least in the part where she sings, "If I'm caught in the middle I know it will be the end of me"); her voice climbs cliffs and takes sharp turns.

By the way, she lives in NYC these days, so maybe you could drop by and ask her what's up with the U.S. release. (I suspect the record company just doesn't think she'll sell big here. M2M really didn't get much play in the U.S. after "Don't Say You Love Me.")

Marit was the self-effacing one, would sometimes trade leads with Marion but often seemed willing to stay back and do the harmonies. Her voice was matter-of-fact whereas Marion's was emotive. I really didn't know what to expect. In the four years since The Big Room, in occasional postings on her Website, she'd mention her admiration for Paul Simon, Conor Oboerst. This doesn't sound like either of them. The rest of the album may still be a surprise. I like it, that I don't know what to expect.

I hate to say it, but she does sound refreshingly grown-up (she's probably 20 or 21) compared to all the angst-kids of approximately her age we've been talking about on this thread. This doesn't necessarily make her better. Or even more genuinely grown-up. But it's attractive, playful.

I think Simon is talking about music made within the UK in his comments quoted upthread, rather than simply that which charts there.

Probably true, though I swear I read an interview in a metal zine once where Cristina Scabbia said one of her favorite bands is Destiny's Child! Not sure if or how that ever manifested in her music, however. And it's possible that certain of Amy's, Annete's, and Cristina's goth forebears (Kate Bush? Siouxsie?) mixed up soul and goth in ways that they don't. If you go back to the '80s, certain gothy singers definitely did, I think: Jeanne Mas, Mylene Farmer, Laura Branigan, maybe Pat Benatar. And beyond women, the obvious king of soul-goth pop will always be Michael Jackson! But where is Michael Freedberg when we need him? This is totally his territory. Yet I still agree Kelly might be doing something new.

Psychedelic meaning, like, the Yardbirds? Uriah Heep? "Manic Depression" by Jimi Hendrix? Or what? (I probably agree too though.)

Am I misreading the piece in thinking that there's a tilt that says that the Kaiser Chiefs and Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys are amiss for not taking in crunk and grime, whereas crunk and grime aren't amiss for overlooking Kaisers et al.? (Not that such a tilt - if it's there - is necessarily wrong, but it shouldn't be a habitual tilt.)

Anyway, one of my long-time (over)generalizations is that most r&b-soul-hip-hop is still pre–Rolling Stones, and most rock is pre–James Brown (which implies something that probably isn't true: that somehow Brown and Stones represent everybody's future). Anyway, by "pre" I don't mean that James Brown's children don't draw fruitfully on the work of the Rolling Stones children and vice versa, but that they draw on it without understanding it (or the understanding is in the mind but not in the heart or the social practice). So they use what they draw on for their own purposes. But then, while I do think that most subsequent r&b etc. does understand James Brown, I wouldn't say that most rock gets the Rolling Stones either. (And maybe it doesn't have to, but anyway...). And "most" doesn't mean "all," of course.

Maybe the Rolling Stones don't get the Rolling Stones either.

Anyway, thinking about the white-black convo means thinking about the miscommunication and noncommunication.

A friend

Last night I heard "Our Truth," the new Lacuna Coil single, and I was disappointed. Starts with eerie plinks, ominous bass, a distant female wail, none of which is surprising and all of which I'm used to (whether the genre be goth or crunk), then metal guitar and the woman enters the near frame singing but not wailing. All of which is fine, except they've crunched me and moved me far more in the past. You basically have to wait to 1:10 for the harmonies to kick in, and that's where I start liking it: a jump from gloom to glorious consonance, which is usually what I like most about Lacuna Coil and the Gathering anyway. Which is to say, their tracks rarely hit me overall (the way the great Evanescence singles do), but the interplay between gloom and pretty harmonies provides a lot of good moments.

Video's up on Launch Yahoo, if you're interested.

Also heard Reggaeton Ninos' version of "Oye Mi Canto": "The remix with kids on it!" Great song anyway, and I love the kid chants.

Also - RBD. Latino Electro-pop of vaguely indeterminate origin that's all over the South American charts like a quite good rash. Any ideas?

She had a second album somewhere along the way that came and went without my even learning of its existence.

Mr. Swygart, move your eyes up a few posts for info in regard to Marit Larsen.

The Larsen's pretty quality, yes. Very much liking the handclaps.

In return You Hurt Me is the new Hooverphonic single, and the video can be found on this page. Like Marit, this may not be teenpop, but it's damn close - closer than, say, Goldfrapp, for instance. It has a piano bit.

(Chuck, I worry about getting scooped by talking too much about unpublished writings on the internet, but yeah, there's Yardbirds in there in my psych/goth thing and tons of other stuff!)

They're no El Presidente, admittedly, but El Presidente are only for a certain kind of teen.

(sorry, my computer doesn't have long or short vowel marks.)

"They opened a string of high-profile dates for Ryan Cabrera."

Shouldn't it be "They had a string of high-profile dates WITH Ryan Cabrera"?

BTW for those who might be interested: chart is here, complete with soundclips (5 seconds on mouseover, 30 seconds when clicking og loudspeaker symbol).

Fr Kog - I will give ver Raven a spin a little later on.

Best Marion Raven songs: "Crawl" and "End Of Me".

The Marie Sernholt single is tidy too.