ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014

Pretty sure this board used to be a Belle & Sebastian fan forum.

yeah any band that comes close enough to that scene generally makes that move eventually and i don't blame them, way more loyal fanbase & big summer circuits to hit

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 30, 2015 10:58 AM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah its way better, the fans actually love music too

Wonder if PJ Harvey will drop a new LP two weeks before Xmas so we can really test this.

This board started out thinking Loveless and Kid A were the best albums ever iirc

haha even the early board's official indie hate mascot ethan was a belle & sebastian fan

who isnt?

that said a song like 'Seasons' winning the tracks poll would've felt like much more of a break from tradition

I wouldn't equate "rock values" with "indie values" nor say that either set of values has remained consistent over a half-century

i'm american btw

theyll be on the bonaroo/jam circuit w/3 years, ive see it happen before, bet

TWOD is on the Bonnaroo roster for this year. I haven't been too into I've heard by them, but I might check them out there -- hazy guitar jams can be fun.

And yes, it's not hard to imagine them going over well with the My Morning Jacket fanbase, e.g.

xp If ILM's mission is to correct historical rockcrit injustices and oppose Pitchfork and all it stands for, then maybe there should be a sign on the door.

lol @ lex's timsplaining

the discussion at this point has zero to do with whether or not it's okay to mock indie. of course it is, you big dummy. if fgti had come in yesterday with "lol, more landfill indie crap", then i'd have filed the post with strychnine's and quickly moved on. however, the fgti post that triggered all this was a good deal more subtle and interesting than that, so i treated it in kind. mockery is fine for what it is, but when your ability to deal with a genre is wholly defined by childish "my team rulez, your team droolz" bullshit, then you've become irrelevant to more nuanced discussions.

our job is to fight the indiearchy

i do agree that yesterdays rock/today's indie are the voice, in a way, of a dominant culture. that's probably worth discussing, and it's where i'd left things at the end of my last (long) post. i didn't push it any further, cuz this is the point at which fucks cluster.

srsly you do not want to go down that road
way too much time has already been devoted to the war on drugs as it is

the war on drugs will never end tbh

Was secretly hoping that Aphex Twin's placing would cause a reevaluation of his catalog, a process called The War On Drukqs

who isnt?

― wizaerd (Lamp), Friday, January 30, 2015 11:04 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me, lots of people here

I wouldn't equate "rock values" with "indie values" nor say that either set of values has remained consistent over a half-century

― example (crüt), Friday, January 30, 2015 10:07 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no crut, you know ROCK VALUES...the ones shared by Motley Crue, Grateful Dead, The Clean, and Jesus Lizard

I find Lex's genre-battle approach both exhilirating to read and completely alien to how I think about music.

Enjoyed all your posts contenderizer

i think ppl should be using 'atmospheric' to describe that war on drugs records. doing a kinda scott seward disoriented grandpa thing here but i dont really have a sense of what ppl are talking about when the say 'indie' rn. i did really like the war on drugs records, listened to it a fair bit but i feel like it kinda falls into that matt p thread about 'inconsquential music' i was reading like its not really situated w/in the current aesthetic or social context for 2014 indie? its just sorta... its own thing but not in a tastemaking way. idk

― wizaerd (Lamp), Friday, January 30, 2015 7:53 AM (25 minutes ago)

oh, do disoriented grandpa! i love that.

good post, kidding aside. agree that "atmospheric" is a good description of the vibe-based pleasures offered by lost in the dream. that's what i was getting at in describing it as functionally ambient: songwriting aside, it creates & maintains a distinct sonic environment, one that many find enjoyable for obvious reasons. i'm not eager to distance it from "indie", though. indie's a big tent, and the war on drugs don't seem so terribly out of place slotted alongside acts like kurt vile (obviously), the hold steady and even fleet foxes.

also, good call on the thread connection with matt's "inconsequential music". i'd wanted to rope that in yesterday, re: indie generalism's magpie mentality, but i could make it fit and had gone on forever already.

Contendo making cool and interesting posts. Lex otm as always

Just to be clear, my usage of the word "competent" was not meant to be demeaning in any way or suggest that somehow functional music is less-than uhhhh "art music" or what you will. I am a card-carrying AC Newman fan. "Generic indie" bands make up 90% of my client base. But yeah, sound of the monoculture. When the comfort of a steak and a bougie ragout is available to me then I can enjoy this music recreationally. The only time I work up a sweat about "too music indie rock" is when I see festival line-ups and there are no girls or queers

"Generic indie" bands make up 90% of my client base

indie rock well
much clientele
anything u need
he probably sell

also the way these "serious debates" play out is a good reminder that i'm still basically lobbing jokes from the ILX kid's table

Would like to say that the AWVFTS record was a major code-crack for me. I feel like a lot of people on Erased Tapes have been on the comfortable side of the field, closer to the "not-as-good-as-actual-chamber-music" of fifteen-years-ago post-rock than something that is new and profound. But yeah they cracked the code, ATOMOS is an enormous watershed moment to my ears. All the discipline of Feldman but with a lovely elegance. Really melted my heart and I've spent my whole life smiling politely at that style of disguised easy listening music whither it's Sigur Ros or Tim Hecker

Ive been wanting ti check out Winged Victory since 2011. Maybe it's time I finally did so

ILM indie mockery is fine but it teeters on close-mindedness and hi-fiving each other's narrow tastes a lot of the time

does it, though

yep

*hi-5*

there's a lot of indie love on this forum, it just tends to not manifest on the poll rollout threads as strongly as pop / dance / r&b etc love. probably because 'indie' is so fractured and ill-defined that it doesn't really have the same type of rallying points

imo its because indies know they are shameful

i certainly do

lol no its because indies are ruthless appropriators of everything else

feel like were finally getting somewhere

http://bygonebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/vote.jpg

enough shame to know they need to appropriate everything else, not enough shame to refrain from it

I don't recognise P4k indie as worth giving a shit about, the rampant conservatism is anathema to anything definable as worthy in the sense if beind independent. Soundtracking a Harvester meal seems about right. Would not identify as indie, UK DIY definitely bcs a lot to be proud of. Indie rock is growing old and mostly very boring.

The bad records are bad because they make a horrible sound, not because of where they are in the supermarket

lol no its because indies musicians are ruthless appropriators of everything else

kinda vibe ilms place in the vanguard of indie cultural appropriation tbh - making the pop country and adult r&b nabes safe for the p4ks of the world to plant their eoy lists in.

tru

btw i enjoyed the mr twin sister record its neat

no one is innocent

musicians are ruthless appropriators of everything else

otm

Lex pretend otm with his last two posts

Would like to say that the AWVFTS record was a major code-crack for me. I feel like a lot of people on Erased Tapes have been on the comfortable side of the field, closer to the "not-as-good-as-actual-chamber-music" of fifteen-years-ago post-rock than something that is new and profound. But yeah they cracked the code, ATOMOS is an enormous watershed moment to my ears. All the discipline of Feldman but with a lovely elegance. Really melted my heart and I've spent my whole life smiling politely at that style of disguised easy listening music whither it's Sigur Ros or Tim Hecker

― sonny and sber (fgti), Friday, January 30, 2015 5:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hey, great you warmed to this man! Remember your initial reservations,but you cracked it alright :)

Lex pretend otm with his last two posts

― The Ghost of (strychnine), Friday, January 30, 2015 1:04 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if lex is kid rock i guess yr joe c.