twenty one pilots

Yeah, they really are. At their best they're almost a metalcore Mars Volta.

cool, i'll check them out. i've never actually heard them, just seen students at my school with the shirts or drawings in notebooks. I actually have no idea how "big" they are

that nyer piece was garbage guys come on

"let me list a bunch of recent rock bands because i don't know how to describe sound but i want to place myself above this"

i liked that new yorker thing. i thought it did a good job at explaining their appeal/what they are.

lol i thought it was p good snark, it's the nyer's stock in trade. maybe if i liked the band more i'd be more critical of the piece.

i didn't even think it was that snarky.

i just feel like music writing of that sort is useless if you want to know what the act sounds like and not what their fans purportedly think. bad writing. but the new yorker's music writing has been at sea lately so.

it was trying to explain their popularity though. not review the album. and i thought it succeeded in describing why teens like them. i thought it was written well. and i hate everything.

like, if someone said: what's up with those guys? i would have them read that.

i just dislike that kind of bemusedly removed pop sociology but i guess we can agree to disagree

It's not just teens though, my 30-something friends who stopped caring about new music like a decade ago all have 'stressed out' or 'ride' in their ipods/spotify/iphones.

it's not just bemusement though.

I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack for a horror movie sponsored by Hot Topic, in which the great and terrible horror was just learning to be you.

sure it's snark but it also feels really perceptive to me, it cuts through to something important about the how the band project their identity onstage and how that connects with people

most people writing removed pop sociology wouldn't have bothered going to a concert. a field report! i dig that. i was just re-reading greg tate's review of a bruce springsteen show in new jersey and i could read that kinda stuff all day long.

sfj spent most of his last few years at the new yorker explaining what songs sounded like and it was super boring imo

but i also don't need to read a 20,000 word nu-journalism account of a twenty one pilots show. not that anyone is really doing that. maybe john jeremiah sullivan could do it.

i was trying to read that grover lewis anthology recently and my eyes started glazing over. zzzzzzz......soooooo long. and so dated too in a way. the attitude. the allman brothers should have kicked his butt.

(same thing happened when i tried to read that old nik cohn rock book recently. ugh, get me out of here...)

that graf is boring! also i go to shows all the time :p

aw c'mon

sorry but yeah i'm not! it's a totally facile observation

well maybe but imo it's deliciously put.

there are other things to be said that could be more about the music, or just about any music - like there are actually tons of "remember when you were a kid, and having a parent, when you were a kid???" songs in the charts. there have been for years now. which you wouldn't know from that article. "don't you worry child" by swedish house mafia. lukas graham. there are so many more than i can't think of right now because i've spent time actively trying to block them out. (lukas graham slipped through the net)

i just googled "pop songs about being a kid" and this article was on the first page of results. i think we can all agree this is a valuable resource.

http://www.chilldad.com/10-dirty-pop-songs/

yeah and the "'member that" positioning is especially strange given how aggressively pop has skewed younger over the last two decades

i like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUBW8bkjQ4

the other new song is way more "someone's lazy idea of a twenty one pilots song"

this song is cool and good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmL9TqTFIAc

and the album itself is surprisingly good and engaging throughout. their rapping will always be kinda repellant to me but it's well-balanced with the mutant rock/pop/r&b/trip-hop record that the rest of this is

big Sunday NY Times profile last weekend, tldnr

new album blasting downstairs at student pit

i find it encouraging that a band this huge made such a weird and collagistic record but i also think this album may be too arty to sustain what blurryface did

my bro convinced me to listen to this and i kinda liked it, wasnt expecting to liek any of it. some parts kind of sounded like manchester orchestra to me. wish they would drop the rapping obv.

Jumpsuit is carrying the linkin park torch nicely. prob my favorite song on here

"bandito" is mine, it absolutely rules

Bandito and Morph are great.

"they suck but the basic materials they work with could be good." from brad about their earlier material was completely otm, but i didn't expect them to ever actually deliver on that potential, this album is pretty good!

kinda surprised that this album has been pretty ignored critically, like this band is massively popular and clearly has enough going on that surely critics would have something interesting to say about them.

"Nico and the Niners" is still pretty dreadful though and I don't think "Pet Cheetah" really works for me either

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sO-Y1Zbft4

they're good now

Solid mainstream band I think

relistening to trench today, even better than i remembered, probably better than i characterized it upthread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_9Kf0D5BTs

aiight maybe i've done the full heel turn, i love this song

"bandito" is so good, i nearly forgot

also i will halfheartedly defend most of blurryface at this point. i... like "ride" now?

here let me ruin vampire weekend for you *slowly turns up volume dial on twenty one pilots "ride"*

most 21 pilots superfans would tell you that blurryface is a mainstream concession and vessel is the real shit but i find vessel real juvenile still. some of the hooks are wonderful ("ode to sleep") but many of the almost-good songs are still like rube goldberg machines of bad decisions. what's worse than the rapping? nearly every time this band breaks out the ukulele

of course, trench is >>>>>>>>>>

even the uke tracks work

"shy away" is underwhelming, just feels like part of that small wave of major label pop rock bands who tried to sound like the strokes (neon trees etc.)

it's not bad but kinda forgettable and uninteresting which is the last thing this band should be. even when they've been horrible they were at least interestingly horrible making the worst musical decisions possible etc.

on the plus side: no rapping!

idk it’s a really well-written song imo. everything a hook

been stuck in my head for a week

I will rep for blurryface. Great songs, great visual aesthetic too. Saw them twice live in this time (w/ my teen kids) and the energy start to finish was impressive (band and crowd). Surging quasi pit filled most of the room. Many backflips were flipped. Show climaxes with Tyler on a 30 foot steel pillar above the crowd singing Car Radio.