Years & Years

"Without" is just so fucking gorgeous.

come on guys, this music is crap.

― cod latin (dog latin), Friday, 10 July 2015 15:20 (Yesterday) Permalink

yes everyone is lining up correctly

Can't get over how amazing "Memo" is, and how accurately Ollie captures that sense of desire rendering you vulnerable and ashamed that is... If not unique to the gay experience then certainly uniquely framed by it.

― Tim F, Saturday, July 11, 2015 5:35 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean three out of the five singles to date have been about this to some extent so it's obviously an idee fixe but I think "Memo" captures it most nakedly and powerfully.

fav of the new records is "Ties"

Mine is probably "Worship" which I hadn't heard before.

Are these guys this year's The 1975?

their style is more in my zone personally but the parallels def seem obvious

coming in peace here to observe that the posters on the london underground for both bands have been strikingly similar in style & layout - the comparison occurred to me when i first saw the y&y poster - later, i saw this thread and the savage garden comparisons etc and listened to a song or two and all was confirmed

another similarity being ownership of extremely commonplace & generic one-word songtitles, an aesthetic decision i don't really condone but one i think i understand

and the cipher is complete

Are these guys this year's The 1975?

Ha! Now it all makes sense! They suck too!!

Deej is right, the battle lines forming here only make me more confident of my opinion.

ah you can't make disagreeing with dog latin into some kind of point of character

why not apart from laziness

i mean i guess you can, but not in such a specific context

to be clear i just meant that it really is just the fight over The 1975 all over again.

Come on dude even Imago is feeling sheepish about vocally hating on them.

I just spent about five minutes with what I vaguely assumed was a Savage Garden melody in my head and then actually paid attention and realised it was actually 74-75 by the Connells. Now I can't really remember what Savage Garden actually sounded like and having read this entire thread I'm none the wiser about Years and Years either.

Not trying to be combative, more saying that it seems like the strong objections are coming from similar people and expressed in similar terms, and one knows where one stands on one situation it's easy to apply the precedent to another.

It's almost comforting, really, to the extremely limited extent that knowing where one stands in an internet discussion about music taste can be described a "comforting".

Years & Years sound like about 20 other things, many of which have been mentioned in this thread & none of which are particularly evocative or convincing artists to suggest an ilxor check this group out, so you fall back on "...except better than that sounds" over & over

weird wording but i assume u guys are used to that from my unedited ilx posts by now

^^^^

and as I have said before I think this fact is precisely one of the band's appeals (as it was with the 1975) - the sense that they're almost "redeeming" a lot of qualities that typically are executed quite dubiously.

but then I don't expect everyone to share my sense of creeping exhaustion with needing to define things by reference to a virtuous closed circle of good taste, which tends to reduce talking about music to the question of who can concoct the most enticing PR copy.

Gonna try to start liking this band now, pull the rug from everyone

I listened to some of this and found it largely insipid but it really does serve to illustrate quite how long it takes for a sound to translation from blog buzz to genuine mainstream.

Like you could have concocted a Hot Chip / Cut Copy song with vaguely Booka Shade-esque production in 2006 and it would have made sounded not dissimilar to this while being totally on-point and making zero splash in the real world, but fast forward nine years and one Sam Smith and bob's yer uncle.

Yeah, it's always been that way. It's just easier to track point A to point Z now because it's in your face all the time and never goes away unless you shut off the internet.

Matt's historical analysis is broadly correct although I think whether it's a mark against the later music comes down to whether that process of mainstream integration is simply weakening the music's force or recasting it.

e.g. In 2000 I thought that Kylie's "Spinning Around" was the "last word" in filter-disco's infiltration of pop in a fairly insipid way, whereas a year and a half later "Love at First Sight" took the same idea and turned it into a new pinnacle.

most of this just kinda passes me by but "Memo" is indeed really nice

For a change u guys should just agree w us bc we are always right

pleased the "this year's the 1975" observation (and ensuing argument) have already happened

also strangely comforted that kitsune still exists and continues to release on-brand music

Gonna try to start liking this band now, pull the rug from everyone

― The Bends by Radiohead (imago), Sunday, July 12, 2015 12:08 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

your internal taste chess is 0.000000001% as interesting to other people as you seem to assume

I only said that coz my taste was commented upon, jeez. idc really, the hunt for good music uber alles

chessthetics

idrc about your taste in music & its vacillations either obv although i will rep for your taste in tennis & its players (ever considered being an actual tennis journalist, u'd be great)

years & years have some cool synth parts, on reflection & dancepop probably needs more openly gay content (i'm not rly qualified to say for certain though)

not my thread so this will be my last post, think of it as an olive branch and an assurance that i won't go all dumb snob come the eoys (rly. it's just too exhausting) ok made it all about me again lol peace enjoy the sounds

for some reason "shine" reminds me of kate bush

anyway

I have been enjoying 'King', however the context for that is hearing it on family car journeys where it appears on Now 90 as a welcome respite between the twin horrors of Ed Sheeran and Maroon 5. That synth riff thing makes it the best song for Tarzan impersonations since Baltimora.

years & years have some cool synth parts, on reflection & dancepop probably needs more openly gay content

I thought "King" was somewhere between "likeable" and "nothing special," but I'm nonetheless interested in them for this very reason. But is the album significantly better than, say, Neon Trees?

Really loving writing about this album.

album is really good!

they just did a terrible version of "earned it" in the live lounge :(

This album is to One Direction what Carly Rae Jepsen is to Taylor Swift: the electropop realization of a promising earlier idea.

I'm increasingly of the view that anything worthwhile derives at least some of its worth from containing hints of things that sound terrible on paper.

The idea that animates most great art in any medium tbh (not saying Y&Y are, yet).

Really loving writing about this album.

:D

"Here, and on the album’s other highlights, the air of mercantile anonymity feels generous rather than cynical, the music as anxious to accommodate its imagined audience as Olly is his lovers, to be the song that made you dance all night even though you can’t remember a word of it now (i.e. to be the best song ever, as One Direction rightly observed). How else could you end up with a song like "Worship": a bright xylophone bounce for the verses, and a chorus that references gospel via diva-house via the Wanted’s "I Found You"? Appropriately, the band sounds too delirious to feel any shame."

<3

Tim, this was lovely.

link?

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20831-communion/

I'm in love with the good songs.

Liking this album. Oddly all the best songs are the end. That's weird.

i still maintain that all the songs are good

some less so than others...not sure i even see the objections to 'eyes shut' as an outlier, reminds me of when ppl were so bent out of shape that NERD rerecorded the album with "real instruments" even tho several of the songs sounded better/hit harder that way

Otm

jordan are you british now?

first record is still so wonderful

Yeah.

The second is half wonderful, and I love its bonus tracks.

Thoughts on the new album? I'm underwhelmed. He's becoming more conventional or is more distracted.