Years & Years

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

nb i don't think its 'better' w/ this organic sound per se, just that it's still basically the same song

oh i'm totally into "eyes shut" now

The edit made it seem like I was rejecting the lesser songs more firmly than is the case. There are better and worse songs here but it's a relative thing.

besides which sometimes the worse songs become better over time

for instance i'm finally having a moment with "take shelter"

I really like "Without". Not so keen on "Ties" actually. But the only thing I have on Spotify on my new phone is this album and Sam Hunt's "House Party" and I really NEED to experience this album like that song, like have someone come over, dance around the couch to it and have ~~~FEELS~~~~ between the singy bits.

I'm still not feeling "King" or the back quarter.

link's not working to tim's review?

the album is just a bit too long imo, although i think as the songwriting becomes clearer that might solve it

weird to me that tim was selling this band upthread as being uncool or on-paper terrible bc almost every reference point i think of seems v credible to me (i mean they're basically a proper pop hot chip), except the gigantic fuck-off hooks...i almost wanted to say pet shop boys but there's none of the detachment, it's more idk, erasure or savage garden.

dude's voice is fine enough when it's being swept up and along these delirious synths but is horribly exposed on the sparer/slower songs and as for the bonus acoustic tracks, just noooooo

pfork links always break here, copy and paste the url

it's def Savage Garden.

dude's voice is fine enough when it's being swept up and along these delirious synths but is horribly exposed on the sparer/slower songs and as for the bonus acoustic tracks, just noooooo

this is my problem with the slower material.

idk I think in 2015 being a "proper pop hot chip" is not actually credible slash on paper seems like it would be played out to the point of toxicity?

I mean you could describe a lot of Walk The Moon in precisely the same terms.

i'm unfamiliar w walk the moon but i didn't hear any imagine dragons or sam smith in here, like this

"Mr Brightside (Thin White Duke Mix)" X "Night Air" X "Climax" X "So Good To Me" was an idea whose time had come

which is a LOT more tastemaker-friendly is also more otm. but i agree that there's something about them that doesn't lend itself to that and i think it's the massive open nature of the melodies

I've gotten so that I tear up whenever "Shine" comes around (I've gotta regulate my listening). By the time it gets to the last repetition of “Can you see me I’m shining/And it’s you that I’ve been waiting to find” I'm in bliss (and “I’m following lightning” a few seconds earlier is a beautiful image).

where is the chorus melody of "worship" lifted from? driving me nuts

"take shelter" has emerged as my favourite i think

Yeah I can't really be dealing with the dude's voice, nor the blustery Coldplay type choruses.

would love it a lot more if his voice was less weedy but for the most part it's covered up well. choruses are way camper than coldplay, much more ~pure pop

Yeah but there's something very 10s stadium pop about the choruses that puts me off, I'm trying to put my finger on what it is melodically but it's definitely proliferated since Viva La Vida.

is it m83

m83 have hooks at all?

i'm sticking w savage garden/erasure. the image and sound is very '10s but the melodies are what stick out as different

less the hooks more the "10s stadium pop" vibe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8fAsYRWiAs

Emre's the cute one imo