the worst of GAPDY
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 4 January 2019 22:33 (five years ago) link
noooo way! I hardly revisit MPP, honestly can't remember the last time I did, as opposed to all of their other records (including the new stuff). I'll never forget listening to the leak on Xmas night 2008, absolutely mind-blowing experience... but it is very "hi fi" for lack of a better term, and that polished sheen wears your ears down after a while. Is this how people regarded Nevermind in 2001?
― flappy bird, Friday, 4 January 2019 22:44 (five years ago) link
Not sure about polished. they as a band were making some quite deliberate sonic choices including this sort-of pixilated electronic harshness that they'd grown increasingly keen on.
They'd always been a band that had experimented with noise, or more often drones - the acoustic pastoral phase between Campfire Songs and Feels made great use of that.
And before on the early Avey and Panda albums, you still got the sense they were experimenting with lo-fi noise-making equipment.
But from Strawberry Jam onwards, the songs started getting smeared in this chippy synth ooze; Avey took to doing his chimp-screech voice a bit too much; there was less subtlety, less space for the band to breathe; and everything just felt claustro like looking at an old CRT far too close-up.
By MPP, the songs had matured but their content was starting to align with the Kinfolk lumbster set of that time - big beardy men with soft voices and a fondness for log cabins - a watering-down of the freakfolk scene that AC had also been lumped in with.
I can see why people weren't and still aren't so hot on the album, but I also felt that ILM at the time was unnecessarily cruel about it, and AC, at the time.
Almost all the hate was aimed at 'My Girls' - not a particularly great song, and neither particularly representative of their overall sound. MPP, despite its flaws, is a diverse album with at least three 'hits', a good few deep cuts and of course a good bunch of unmemorable or just plain annoying songs.
― frame casual (dog latin), Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:02 (five years ago) link
great post dog latin
I do love My Girls
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:04 (five years ago) link
I recoiled from this album on contact.
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:07 (five years ago) link
really their first five albums - Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished, Danse Manatee, Campfire Songs, Here Comes the Indian, and Sung Tongs are their best imo
of those, Campfire Songs is the one that means the most to me
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:14 (five years ago) link
it's a decent, not great album that was way overrated at the time with corresponding excessive backlash. one of their better albums but certainly not their best or some sort of defining album of the 00s or anything
it's definitely a more polished sound than anything they'd done before, their previous works were all relatively lo-fi in sound, sometimes to good effect but often just sounding like a muddy mess like on strawberry jam
i probably love about half the album and don't really care for the rest much at all - that organ arpeggio on 'daily routine' is still really grating to me, something about the beat drop on 'in the flowers' doesn't quite work for me, 'also frightened' is ok but feels a little empty, 'taste' is pretty nothing-y
the 'also frightened' issue applies to a lot of this album i guess, it's so heavy on the reverb that things don't quite hit as hard as i'd want them to and often leaves nothing between the psych-y ambience and the fairly low basslines
my girls still rules though
― ufo, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:24 (five years ago) link
Thing is, the EP that came out around the same time, 'Fall Be Kind' was excellent.
Everything I liked about the band but balanced by their more electronic-infused sound (sans the horrible mid-range cacophony).
Lots of ideas, plenty of room to build a vibe, a more obviously melodic angle. I really like it.
― frame casual (dog latin), Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:26 (five years ago) link
had to look up whomst the Y in "GAPDY" referred to. earnestly thought it was Yeasayer lol
― resident hack (Simon H.), Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:29 (five years ago) link
xp "their previous works were all relatively lo-fi in sound, sometimes to good effect but often just sounding like a muddy mess"
don't agree with this for their earliest works, only with strawberry jam onwards
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:29 (five years ago) link
oh yeah the reverb too. so many bands were doing this super washy reverb thing, but rather than sounding cool and shoegazey, it felt synthetic, like a software reverb had been applied liberally to each instrument, including the ones you wouldn't normally add reverb to.
― frame casual (dog latin), Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:30 (five years ago) link
still really like this album though the chorus to "My Girls" is arguably the worst lyric of all time
― frogbs, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:30 (five years ago) link
really?
I don't care for fancy thingsOr to take part in the freshest waveBut to provide for mine who askI will, with heart, on my father's grave
I love those lyrics
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:42 (five years ago) link
Sung Tongs will always be my favorite but I can hang with this one. it does have a little too much of that 2000's era technicolor vomit effect going on though, and Avey's yelps are always intolerable
― sleeve, Saturday, 5 January 2019 03:47 (five years ago) link
love the album, it's all tracks, the lyrical sensibility on the record is something they'd been organically working towards for several years (as the article points out). I wasn't here on ILM for the thrashing, but this was a major album at my high school. I think I burned a dozen or so copies not only for my friends, but people that were maybe casual music fans and just discovering them. suddenly me and my friends' favorite band was 'breaking thru' in a meaningful, observable way. it was awesome.
I do think it's funny how the article frames the Xmas leak in nostalgic terms, I mean give me a break. they were freaking out at the time. and the idea that albums don't retain peoples' attention for an entire year anymore? please. maybe not animal collective records, but DAMN. was inescapable for all of 2017.
also, when I figured out what GADPY stood for, I couldn't believe it. lumping those bands and those albums together with MPP is insane. and I like Bitte Orca. I remember the YYYs being really good. but give me a break. Fleet Foxes? ok Veckatimest had some tracks, but still. absolutely not.
― flappy bird, Saturday, 5 January 2019 04:57 (five years ago) link
GADPY?
― austinb, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:09 (five years ago) link
2009:Grizzly BearAnimal CollectivePhoenixDirty ProjectorsYeah Yeah Yeahs
I dunno, in retrospect I think all of those albums were pretty good
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:13 (five years ago) link
lumping in the Phoenix record is especially insane. and yea, I agree the rest are pretty good. MPP was a major milestone. it was the tall tree.
― flappy bird, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:18 (five years ago) link
xp a Whiney thing if my memory is correct
credit to him that it's stuck
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:19 (five years ago) link
it's "GAPDY" fwiw
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:21 (five years ago) link
Phoenix is the one I most want to go back to, especially in light of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez video
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 05:38 (five years ago) link
one of my favorite albums. i know they're not everyone's thing, but this honestly was one of the great bands of the centuries.
listening to it now makes me sad though for some reason.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 06:44 (five years ago) link
also i strongly disagree with the person who said they hate the lyrics to my girls. i'm with dan s -- they're poignant and perfect
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 06:49 (five years ago) link
They're dangerous and stupid
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:00 (five years ago) link
!
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:02 (five years ago) link
why because they're heteronormative and glorify homeownership, which isn't sustainable?
My Girls is the most egregiously American song I've ever heard, with a song about and for black queer safe spaces re-appropriated to be a song about a rejection of community for safe ensconced family units built on acquired family money in remote ex-pat locations, a literally "I'm stealing from Detroit house to reject 'community' and build a house for my wife and child in Lisbon" realness, it is Donald Trump as a song good luck with it, and I'm a fan of this band and the man who wrote it, still: probably the worst song ever written, it is "Taxman" except built on a Frankie Knuckles sample
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:05 (five years ago) link
interesting fgti, wasn't aware of the personal history of that song or of any re-appropriation, I just related to it as a godparent (it was released in the year after my goddaughter was born, I think it will always be connected to her in my mind)
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:23 (five years ago) link
If I've ever being annoying at a dinner party, be assured you can put this song on and I'll be out the door in 15 seconds
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:36 (five years ago) link
lol
― Dan S, Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:38 (five years ago) link
I want Funk Flex to drop a bomb on that fgti post
― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 5 January 2019 07:46 (five years ago) link
Lol some real nonsense in this thread
― Οὖτις, Saturday, 5 January 2019 16:17 (five years ago) link
i'm into fgti's posts even though i love that song. i hadn't thought through the implications of that frankie knuckles sample.
i always saw that song as a kind of millennial ode to the vanishing dream of home ownership. the suburban life that counterculture always told people to resist, suddenly, doesn't even exist as a fallback for many of the types of people who would listen to AnCo. (obviously, for many, it never existed as a "fallback.")
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:41 (five years ago) link
― flamboyant goon tie included,
otm -- loathe this song
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:47 (five years ago) link
the YYY album is still by far the best album on that incongruous list.
http://youtubedoubler.com/rlF5
― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:59 (five years ago) link
the YYY album is still by far the best album on that incongruous list.― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 5, 2019 5:47 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 5, 2019 5:47 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
It's Blitz! is not just my favourite Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, it's easily one of my favourite albums from 2000-2009 and it still holds up 10 years later. Merriweather Post Pavilion is a joke of a record from a joke of a band, and thankfully pretty much everyone realises this now. It certainly couldn't have been any more apparent to me in 2009.
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:15 (five years ago) link
it's only on ilx that "everyone" dislikes MPP. many consider it a classic.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:32 (five years ago) link
the band's new stuff doesn't inspire enthusiasm but "my girls" is part of the indie canon
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:35 (five years ago) link
Many people considered Brothers in Arms a classic in 1985 yet attitudes had changed towards that album by 1995. Same thing applies to Merriweather Post Pavilion's reputation from 2009 to 2019. I'm of course not talking about sales here - Animal Collective were never that big and never could have been.
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:38 (five years ago) link
i just don't think there has been a consensus turn against it. the people who loved animal collective now mostly see that album as a really nostalgic artifact from a different time in their lives.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:40 (five years ago) link
there isn't any embarrassment when it comes on someone's playlist.
Assuming that it makes their playlist to begin with.
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:47 (five years ago) link
but this honestly was one of the great bands of the centuries. lol wow
― (•̪●) (carne asada), Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:49 (five years ago) link
sorry just meant this century, which hasn't been going on too long
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:53 (five years ago) link
They were a fun little band for a minute ok but one of the greats ?
― (•̪●) (carne asada), Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:00 (five years ago) link
maybe not. i really liked them in high school and college and i think they helped me learn to appreciate a wider sonic palette at that time.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:10 (five years ago) link
So let’s say they were on of the bands that had the greatest impact on you. Totally fair and understandable
― (•̪●) (carne asada), Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:14 (five years ago) link
I was in my mid 20 hanging around Brooklyn a lot at the time so experienced it totally differently
― (•̪●) (carne asada), Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:16 (five years ago) link
i was 19 going on 20 when it was released in late 2008. i remember listening to it in my girlfriend-at-the-time's dorm room, for some reason the mattress was on the floor. i remember thinking i could tell it was going to be big--they were moving to a more accessible sound while still keeping true to what was unique about them
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:20 (five years ago) link