pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I don't know, the faux-string orchestra buildup in 'Over the Hillside' makes me cringe (I say this as someone who mostly listens to classical music) and that nasal, overly simplistic synth riff after the initial chimes in 'The Downtown Lights' made me laugh. Nice voice, though – that's not the 'kitschy' part, as far as I'm concerned.

xp

I like love the Blue Nile just as they are, but some days I am a tiny bit sad that they weren’t actually a collaboration between the bands Blue and Nile

The sustained intensity of "The Downtown Lights" is quite something, not a/c at all

lol at "not because they're objectively a lot better than bad brains or whoever"

see what I'm saying?

oh wait, misread

the reason why they're coming back into consciousness these days is because a lot of currently popular and acclaimed bands cite them as a major influence, not because they're objectively a lot better than bad brains or whoever

― porg and bess (voodoo chili), Monday, January 8, 2018 3:21 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course there's no objective truth about who's more consistent than who but if there's a style of music which is ignored by critics even though its best proponents are, lets say 'on par' with bad brains then yes they're going to get more attention w the distance of time

i didn't really mean bad brains, as a random example idk the teardrop explodes i remember hearing super music nerd ppl talking about like they were a big deal maybe a decade ago but come on they're not on blue nile's level. there's prob some other obvious examples

you guys act like your idea of what's taken seriously is detached from subjectivity even though you'll be dismissive of some artists & enthusiastic about others, we argue all the time on here that x album is better than y, i don't see why it's off the table to suggest blue nile might have been underrated relative to their quality for a long time! except that you think its a Conspiracy that pitchfork likes them now

also i dont care about any of the indie bands that apparently have taken their influence from blue nile & that stuff had zero bearing on why I personally got into them

I don't know, the faux-string orchestra buildup in 'Over the Hillside' makes me cringe (I say this as someone who mostly listens to classical music) and that nasal, overly simplistic synth riff after the initial chimes in 'The Downtown Lights' made me laugh. Nice voice, though – that's not the 'kitschy' part, as far as I'm concerned.

xp

― pomenitul, Monday, January 8, 2018 3:39 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ppl laugh at sincere things bc they make them uncomfortable

the sincerity of blue nile codes to me as a kind of aesthetic bravery, a vulnerability, which is Cool but often tends to seem so more in retrospect

I agree wholeheartedly but I don't hear that at all in The Blue Nile. So that's not what made me chuckle. 'It's all subjective anyway', etc.

d-40 OTM - subjectivity is the name of the game. unless you're so and so

had not heard the album until now -- this is basically sophisti-coldplay

lol jesus

MC LOL Jesus.

how are we loling now

Somewhere between ILM and the rest of the internet.

Listening to the album for the first time now myself - the first song sounds like something that would play on Miami Vice while Sonny Crockett has neon-lit sex with a woman you know is gonna die before the end of the episode.

Kaths

nice takes itt

it wasn't even as much of a diss as it probably sounds! just if you told me that this was a new Coldplay single I would believe you

i was having a lot of trouble actually expressing how i feel about hats earlier so here's a tim f post that is prob still the best thing i've ever read about the blue nile Blue Nile Poll: A Walk Across The Rooftops or Hats?

like, to my ears, this is at least as close to the album as the xx or Jessie Ware are, even before correcting for ~30 years of changes in production trends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnLNG0WnGsI

sounds a lot like their first two records with the edges taken off

Coldplay sound way more u2ish to me still, i don’t think it’s entiiiirely off or something but

i think he was lol-ing because that was some turrican-level elevating personal taste to the level of objective truth

― porg and bess (voodoo chili), Monday, January 8, 2018 1:53 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This logic, incidentally, explains a lot of the conversations in the rap threads on this board as well

not sure what you're getting at, but ok

In other news, pitchfork does celeb gossip now

https://pitchfork.com/news/lena-dunham-and-jack-antonoff-break-up/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video

Oh wonderful, another Blue Nile discussion.

Turrican doesn't like Blue Nile tho...

― niels, Monday, January 8, 2018 8:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I fully expect the Blue Nile doesn't like Turrican either so it's all good

― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Monday, January 8, 2018 8:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never met the Blue Nile and vice versa, but if I did I'd ask them how they'd feel about injecting some excitement into their music for a change. I imagine it wouldn't go down well, but that wouldn't be my problem.

Roxy Music's Avalon has everything the Blue Nile albums but does it so much better that it isn't even funny.

i don't see why it's off the table to suggest blue nile might have been underrated relative to their quality for a long time! except that you think its a Conspiracy that pitchfork likes them now

completely otm

not to derail thread from the topic of Blue Nile, but kinda curious about how the idea of a p4k conspiracy works these days - anyone know if there's a strong editorial team working to make the site appear to favor a certain aesthetics? I know a lot of posters write reviews there and participate in polls, but never got the feeling they were under any obligation to comply with "p4k rules"

A conspiracy that starts with the subtle promotion of the blue nile

I want to believe

haha, yeah

ilx still gonna ilx in 2018

Don't think anyone suggested a conspiracy, just some speculation about what inspired this particular Sunday Review. Idk why it's so strange to suggest that Blue Nile's recent critical re-evaluation might spring from the group's unusual influence on modern pop/indie. I mean, isn't that a major reason why bands' reputations grow over time?

By unusual, I mean "disproportionate influence based on their popularity/critical regard during their own era"

Did ILM cause this Blue Nile re-evaluation?

K3vin went to considerable and admirable lengths tbh

Idk why it's so strange to suggest that Blue Nile's recent critical re-evaluation might spring from the group's unusual influence on modern pop/indie

prob bc i don't know what these acts are beyond jessie ware and the 1975

Here's what it says in the review:

But just as Big Star became a symbol for the fame-averse underdog ideals of ’90s indie rock, the Blue Nile have proven newly influential. You can hear their heavenly chill on recent albums by Destroyer; their lowercase romance in the xx; their intense intimacy in Majical Cloudz. When Buchanan joined Jessie Ware to co-write a track on last year’s Glasshouse, it became clear how his band’s work had been reflected in pop music’s patient, moody turns

ah lol that's right, i def read that review

I definitely remember reading references to Hats in the early 2000s as a masterpiece, one of the best albums ever made etc, I think it's always been the case that people who liked then *really* liked them

Kendrick Lamar Doesn’t Address Trump at Football Halftime Show: Watch

I don't know why people are fixated on pitchfork's quick-hit news writers doing what the quick-hit writers for every single site do

I get the anxiety about the Blue Nile. I can still remember the first time I heard Hats, turning it off after about 30 seconds, finding it unbearably over-produced and 'adult contemporary' (as someone sneeringly said upthread). And, on the surface - because of the stately pace, the production, the sheen - I think they do still feel a little like that: devoid of excess and practically affectless. But having come back to it and persevered (due to, like a lot of folk on here, persistently hearing it spoken of in hushed tones by people I respect) I can see that it comes from a place of absolute sincerity, and that that lack of excess is part of Buchanan's mode of expression. Their sound, that sheen, is oddly a form of austerity, I think. And Buchanan has an older sensibility about him. I dunno, I want to say Edwardian, but that sounds fucking ridiculous.

I'm kinda suspicious of people like Buchanan, mind. Stuart Staples is another one. Like, they seem to live their art, which is fine, but it must be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? 'Your new boyfriend is him off the Blue Nile? Hmm. Have you been out for a drive yet?'

If only it were 'devoid of excess' and 'austere'… Feels like we're talking about a Rorschach test at this point.

Don't think anyone suggested a conspiracy, just some speculation about what inspired this particular Sunday Review. Idk why it's so strange to suggest that Blue Nile's recent critical re-evaluation might spring from the group's unusual influence on modern pop/indie. I mean, isn't that a major reason why bands' reputations grow over time?

― porg and bess (voodoo chili), Tuesday, January 9, 2018 7:24 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But what caused their unusual influence on modern pop / indie? Some of the biggest fans of them on this board don’t even listen to that shit

(The answer is: their music is very good, better than many of their peers who earned more attention at the time, and ppl are just discovering them because of that)

I don't know why people are fixated on pitchfork's quick-hit news writers doing what the quick-hit writers for every single site do

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Tuesday, January 9, 2018 9:55 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I only thought it was funny to be suggesting to watch something NOT happen

Their sound, that sheen, is oddly a form of austerity,

otm

"the sincerity of blue nile codes to me as a kind of aesthetic bravery, a vulnerability, which is Cool but often tends to seem so more in retrospect"

i bought the first album when it came out and i have a very clear memory of feeling a little funny playing it alone in my room at home. it felt really naked to me. emotionally. and i guess i wasn't used to that in my new wave. i would have had to think of crooners/sinatra for a comparison but it didn't even really sound like that. i thought it was great though and i played it a bunch. i mean, i was a judas priest and minor threat fan at the time so i was used to operatic declarations of emotion. but the feeling that the blue nile gave me was different. "smalltown boy" was my favorite single by far a year later so i was definitely ready for more opera in my life. and the first this mortal coil album was probably my most played album of 1984. high drama big star was exactly what i needed. maybe blue nile got the ball rolling for me.