thread to dis hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about

Caterina Barbieri - are we really that starved of vaguely pretty synths that we need to be praising this boring, inert and basic music? I read she's a modular synth user but it just sounds like a MIDI arpeggiator with a reverb preset being used in unimaginative ways.

Vampire weekend is some weak boring ass shit

wary of a double CD about settling in / domestic family life from Bill Callahan, after Dream River, which was a fucking snoozer

The love for vw makes my head hurt, it would be hard for me to think of a more nails on chalkboard sound than theirs. The smugness honeyed into “knowingness”, the utterly deracinated arrangements and melodies. They’re really a product of the Obama era, reeking of unexamined comfort allayed enough for the pundit class by a milquetoast ‘wry’ or ‘searching’ quality ... if they popped up in 2015 as a bunch of fresh faced Columbia grads marketing their sound as “upper west side Soweto” I wonder if reception would have been different.

the lyrical content of the first two vampire weekend records is pretty much all examined comfort

i like that as a band they’ve changed significantly between records and yet the lazy dismissals of them use the same old reference points

It’s ok to dislike a band for purely aesthetic reasons, you don’t have to go blaming Obama(!)

Lol fair points what I was trying (evidently unsuccessfully)to say is that the examine but not enough in a way that preempts an interesting examination and just is another point scoring thing imo. I don’t care about them really personally, I’m sure we have the same politics, it’s more the universe they created. I feel like there’s a bit of having it both ways and a sort of highly focus grouped vibe that’s off putting. And they really haven’t changed that much? I guess that’s my thing, feels like they’re graded on a curve

But anyways y’all can go post in vw love thread, haters only here

^

thanks, Obama!

Moreover it’s I think a mistake to separate aesthetics from politics. That stance leaves one open to cringe analyses such as why do indie rockers never want to bass but it doesnt follow that the two spheres are hermetically sealed off from each other

haters only here

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Tuesday, May 28, 2019 11:36 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess you'd rather post wrong things in a vacuum, who can blame you

I've never heard a VW song, i don't think, and am pretty okay with that.

cosign

they have a ska song in the soundtrack to the movie stepbrothers but if you're not a cineaste like i you may have missed that film

brad, this thread is specifically to complain so we don’t muck up the main thread

“Wrong” things lol

okay, i listened to a few minutes of a few of their songs to try to understand and yeah, Vampire Weekend fucking suck and are everything i hate about music lol

I've never heard a VW song, i don't think, and am pretty okay with that.

I heard most of one once. And I saw Step Brothers, but I don't remember anything about it except that it was maddeningly unfunny, never mind the soundtrack.

I don't think it's hyped, but the new Sun Kil Moon? AWFUL. To the point where I'm genuinely curious about his motivations. Lyrics continue on the same stream-of-consciousness / diary path as previous albums, production is muffled, vocals are croaked, plus a 22+ minute track is relegated to 2nd cd. It's almost Andy Kaufmann-esque, as if he's daring his audience to stay with him.

https://media2.giphy.com/media/SJb0vHduIW8wM/giphy.gif?cid=790b76115ced9ede35496c344da9c143&rid=giphy.gif

oh FFS

I can't recall the last time I've actively hated an album as much as I Am Easy to Find.

All these intermittently intriguing signifiers for compositional sophistication wasted on utterly meaningless melodies sung over and over with the smug conviction that they are worthy of our attention. A vanity musical, all of it.

And the requisite major-key arpeggios meant to intimate a new, wiser, less egotistical 'me' post-midlife crisis, augmented by charmless guest vocalists so as to remind us that this is the sound of trve adulthood (only grownups will understand), of hope won through – well, what, exactly? There is no pushback, no counterpart, just the sound of a band honing their ability to deceive themselves and, I assume, their listeners.

(I still hold Alligator and Boxer in high regard, so this isn't me dismissing The National outright.)

good bc nothing else you said made any sense

i'm sorry i keep ruining this thread everyone but i'm v tired of taste edgelordiness on this board

Is it so hard to entertain the possibility that we may not hear things the same way?

it's a record about trying to deal with the end of life, i feel like most of the songs are about the apocalypse, and there is almost no hope in it whatsoever

so i can't see getting anything about "adulthood" from the text

it's possible for us to hear things differently but you have described a record that i am easy to find is not

unless you mean the music signifies "adulthood," which, not even sure how music can do that

except from projection without and like radio formats

https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/6c550c251a6fa4a15acc5a3890081b6e

sometimes one just really dislikes stuff and needs to vent, I guess that's the theoretical difference between this thread and "post a controversial musical opinion" which sounds more like what you (justifiably) dislike (imo)

(originally I started this thread for imago to complain about year-end poll albums fwiw)

that being said I think spirited defenses are also totally legit here and thank you for that Brad, but let's not begrudge people their genuinely felt hatred

sorry that first "you" was an xp to Brad

i mean i've even used this thread to hate hyped-up records that i can't hear anything in but is remains v bizarre to me for someone down with alligator and boxer to loathe the new national, the posts smack of bringing ideas to a record that the record itself doesn't contain, and that shit makes me furious? for some reason?? these days???? feel like i'm refighting old battles on ilxor dot com pretty regularly lately

anyway a good thing for me to do is actually shut up and not open this thread, sorry pomenitul

By the way, I care very little for lyrics in general, unless they leap out at me, but I do think the emotions this record exudes on a non-verbal level are very much in tune with the kind of music aimed at signifying psychological growth and hence maturity in dramas about unravelling families and how they ultimately make up by setting aside or accepting their personal demons.

Now, you may disagree with this, and I don't blame you, but I find it interesting to read about how others experience the music I love (or loathe), as there is something fascinating about the sense of estrangement it can impel.

So I find it quite striking that you would describe the record in ontological terms (it *is* or *isn't* this or that), because your description is the furthest thing from my own time with the album. One of us may be wrong sub speciae aeternitatis, sure, it's not impossible, but I wouldn't dare venture that far.

the national are def up there w/the worst bands i've ever heard, i enjoyed when that one poster called them 'featureless' like 8 times in one or two posts a little while ago because that is smack dab otm. no clue what the new album sounds like but i assure you it's awful

it's good music for sad dads

i'm sorry i keep ruining this thread everyone but i'm v tired of taste edgelordiness on this board

someone whose opinions are 2edgy4u

I'm not a dad but I'm a complete sucker for sad melodies so maybe I wouldn't dislike this record so much if it lived up to the band's reputation for melancholy. Once again, lyrics are nearly meaningless to me, so that might explain why.

Not a big national fan but they don’t evoke my loathing like “vampire weekend” does

all 'indie' music is just an absolute affront

sad dad music to me is Dan Fogelberg and “leader of the band”, which my dad would sadly listen to. (I have no opinion on the national)