new york times' kelefeh sanneh on the white stripes, get behind me satan and retro-rock

I like the new single, but please ...

Please tell me an editor tacked that beauty on.

YOUR 11 FAVORITE MISSPELLINGS OF KELEFA SANNEH'S NAME, FUCK

You might think that retro-rock bands would water down the music they borrow from, but the opposite tends to be true: everything comes back more vivid

...which if anything sounds positive (but then again, is it?).

Sanneh is nowhere near as good at broadsheet populism as Petridish (which isn't saying much, I concede) and makes just as many factual errors. (Bloc Party Scottish? I sure hope someone got fired for that) Why is this site perpetually fascinated by such a mediocre writer?

I think we've just spotted the flaw here. ;-)

"snotty" maybe its because he's 1) not mediocre and 2) covering music that no one else is covering in the new york times in a comprehensive and intelligent way? Did you see how happy matt sonzala was with sanneh's houston rap scene piece?

Having less ideas than the people they rob from.

That was how I read it anyway.

Ignores rock that doesn't scan between a gap ad and the indie shop, more to life than what's on Pazz'n'jop, standard grumble grumble

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I scanned this really quickly. Apologies. I'm not sure I agree with "You might think that retro-rock bands would water down the music they borrow from, but the opposite tends to be true: everything comes back more vivid." at all fwiw.

x-post there's a lot of bands don't make pazz'n'jop but play rock that depending on your sympathy, you may or may not consider retro. He's right to note the retro tendencies popular today (though it's pretty easy to make a case that every band synthesizes their influences) but if he's going to accuse 'rock' in general of it I'd wish he'd acknowledge more of rock.

and ok um, Bloc Party is even more devoted to jittery guitars and clipped bass lines than its post-punk forebears Gang of Four, who are currently packing in young fans on the alt-rock oldies circuit. Devotion?

I'm really sympathetic to his point that retro != unoriginal, but I wish he did a better job of pointing out what makes these groups unique rather than weirdly implying they're better.

this isn't even true. oh, i could go on and on... (well, maybe it was a mild shock to him, but i don't see how. he probably hears more music than i do. or maybe he missed the 10 years of brian wilson worship and blooze explosionisms. or even the 80's soundz that have been pumping for almost a decade now.)

Yeah, it's incredibly lazy. The fact that the Strokes are pegged as the revival point shows how effectively they were able to build their own myth *and* how rapidly it was fallen for. I'm not saying that the myth can't exist or doesn't have a purpose -- or even that it's not entertaining, it is. But stating something like this by rote -- I'm sorry, but I so don't buy it.

"Why is this site perpetually fascinated by such a mediocre writer?"

no idea. dont think hes terrible, i just have a hard time figuring out if he ever has anything he really wants to say, or if hes really saying anything that exciting at all. it all just seems desperately middlebrow, inoffensive, mild and MOR.

or "maybe its because he's 2) covering music that no one else is covering in the new york times in a comprehensive and intelligent way? Did you see how happy matt sonzala was with sanneh's houston rap scene piece?"

well scene-people/specialists usually love it when their scene or local artists or whatever get bigged up in a large newspaper, even if the coverage isnt that great or special. its like 'oh cool such and such big paper is covering it! thats coverage for the scene! thats great!' or theyre just so overcome that some bigwig is doing something on it, their pants get wet and they dont care about anything else (except drying their pants).

'My Doorbell' doesn't half sound like 'Let's Go Dancing (Ooh Reggae Dancing)' by Kool and the Gang.

If the Strokes are seen as being more in the garage rock vein (as opposed to the nu wave vein), then the trend dates back to the late seventies w/ bands like DMZ and such. There was the whole paisley underground thing concurrent w/ tons of garage rock revivalism in the '80s. Genre never really died, but started kicking again quite a bit in early '90s w/ Gories, Mummies, Cheater Slicks, Night Kings, Supercharger, etc.

I guess part of it is just having someone at someplace like the NYT who's at least listening to and aware of a broad range of music. I'm less hung up on his value as a stylist than as a sort of populist critic in the Roger Ebert mode who can make potentially obscure things seem accessible -- and who has pretty good taste, too.

i'd love to see some of this brit daily paper writing that's so much better than sanneh's times stuff (which is generally way, way better than this white stripes review by the way.) i'm not being sarcastic, though i guess i'm being skeptical. i never had any idea that the brit press had much to say about music at all in this day and age. i sure haven't seen it do so, but i'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

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aren't the strokes supposed to sound like television and other 70's dudes? i actually never thought they were that retro to begin with.

Not at all! I do it too. It's no more absurd than any number of other ways of spending time. The absurdity is part of what I enjoy.

I was thinking more of certain scenes that tried to slavishly imitiate acid house or detroit techno. Or west coast '90s rap songs that used Parliament loops. Sure, it's incredibly lazy to call that stuff retro which was my whole point. It's equally lazy to dismiss the Strokes or White Stripes as being retro. The term retro is mildly descriptive at best but it doesn't work as a criticism.

For example, I think Lenny Kravitz sucks but not simply because he's retro. It would be hypocritical of my to criticize him in those terms since I love for example Stereolab who is even more ridiculously retro.

As a criticism, the term retro is just a lazy shorthand that stands in for the old biases for originality and authenticity. It's a way to criticize music you don't like by implying that it's not doing anything innovative or that the artists and fans are merely playing with a nostalgiac pose. But my point is that these standards are not applied consistently. Another artist with an equally retrograde sensibility will be given a pass if the critic likes his music.

Adding rapping to p-funk tracks (as well as turning them into, you know, three minute pop songs) is a huge difference. Obviously its all relative but I think its entirely reasonable to use the words "retro" in some situations.

I dont think he uses "retro" as a pejorative at all! You're reading a lot more into what he's saying than he actually wrote.

(I dont think its ks's best article by far - he's much more at home with hip-hop, pop, etc....i didnt like his slint piece much either - but I think he made some good points, even if he also made some rather broad generalizations)

i mean, the search for antecedents is one of the favorite forms of critical one-upmanship but it could go on forever and in this case i think sort of misses the point.

Re Amateurist's point: perhaps the article is understandably focused on the US, but if we're talking about bands/movements with "nationwide, not-just-college-radio-type exposure" based around "selfconscious retro-ism" then surely the model for this is Britpop??

But yeah, The Strokes are part of a different "movement"...

well, all of the bands I listed above had nationwide, not-jus-college-radio type exposure, actually. and i'm still not sure anybody has explained what the strokes are retro *to* -- they don't sound like a '60s garage band, they don't sound like the velvet underground, they don't sound like television, they don't sound like the cars; basically, the one band they really sound like is, um, the strokes. and yes, they do *draw* on those influences, but not more than, say, black crowes/urge overkill/local h/everclear/weezer/buck cherry/oasis/etc drew on allman brothers/bad company/elvis costello/cars/ac-dc/t. rex/beatles/etc. which is to say, if the strokes are "retro," i still really don't understand how those (quite popular) '90s bands were *not* retro. unless you're just talking clothes and haircuts (though, as i recall, urge overkill and the dandy warhols kinda dressed in period garb, and so did the black crowes, though obviously the perioid was different). strokes do what rock bands pretty much *always* do -- they recombine influences that have already existed. (which is also what hip-hop acts sampling old funk records under '70s-style soul vocals and daft punk mimicking eurodisco and kenny chesney shuffling mellencamp/petty/buffet and the killers mixing up duran/gang of four/"queen bittch" etc. do, obviously. i'm not sure i see a difference - they're all retro, or they're all not.) and though i really don't want to dissect kelefah''s piece--it' really doesn't bother me all that much, and he can be a great writer in ways unheard of among daily paper critics--i do think his main point here is to put forward the idea that white stripes suddenly came up with this idea that you can recombine different parts of old sounds into a new sound. and my quesion is: who *doesn''t* do that? so yeah, as he says. maybe it IS time to retire the term 'retro-rock'" (assuming anybody actually uses that term in the first place -- isn't it sort of a straw man? though maybe i just talk to and read different people than k does). but it''s not time to retire it because of the new white stripes LP (which, as somebody above said, sounds good, and pretty much the same as their other albums, on which they recombined old influences as well; i'm glad kelefah loves it, but they never sounded particularly purist to me) it's time to retire the phrase because it really never meant all that much in the first place!

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not sure i agree with this (there are *lots* of models for this kinda {bowel} movement), but i think it's an interesting thought, since didn't the strokes actually hit first (and perhaps bigger) in england? they definitely seemed to be on tour there a lot, when they just had EPs out. (in fact, i think their first EP may have showed up on american shores as a UK import.) and the same thing has happened with some american post-strokes new-new-wave hypes since -- definitely the bravery and the scissors sisters (if they count); not sure who else.(do interpol have brit hits? in the states, near as i can tell, they've never gotten much beyond college radio, though anthony can check the charts and correct me i'm wrong.) so maybe the reason i don' t notice the movement as much as some other people here is that i don't read the british music papers, who may well have invented the movement in the first place...

The LA Sunday Times today turned the subject of this thread into a grease spot with a story so big, the pictures alone take up more space than the column inches of Sanneh. The photos, of which there are four of Jack and Meg White, are all bigger than your head! Get the print version, cut them out and use them as masks!

Robert Hilburn travelled to Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, strike that, Detroit, MI, to interview Jack and a silent Meg White.

Excerpts, you'll swoon:

..."Get Behind Me Floyd" is a daring creative advance..."

"The White Stripes' Jack White is ready for a break as he slips behind the wheel of his vintage four-seat..."

"A new sound of independence..." (in 50-point pika, or whatever the designation is for lettering that's really big)

"The fifth album proves they've earned their stripes..."

"...the recording sessions left even the normally workaholic White drained..."

"Everything about Jack White's car, from the upholstery to the tinny radio -- is original - except for the supercharged engine features that make the car roar loud as a jet..."

"White makes his way back to the living room and sits in a chair by a picture of Rita Hayworth..."

"She was a metaphor for everything I could think of...the red hair, the innocence, the fact that she lost her memory to Alzheimer's..."

"I hate the celebrity stuff," [said White]. It trivializes everything..."

"Meg's so shy it's probably a relief Jack does all the talking..."

"Whatever his musical path, White is unlikely to temper his musical vision..."

http://www.latimes.com -- ya can't miss it. Subscription site, use
Bugmenot.

I'll give 'em a pass on the car though: could be a Detroit thing (search, Woodward Dream Cruise)

http://www.woodwarddreamcruise.com/Photos.html

I suspect that from a UK Press perspective, The Strokes weren't really a reaction against non-rock (though there were still a lot of "Rock is back!" taglines) so much as a reaction to not-so-rock rock that had had a lot of currency at that point in time - on the one hand US pansy-psych-pop like latter-day The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, and on the other hand the mournful MoR of Coldplay and Travis. The battlefield as such is more intra-rock (and only a small part of it) than rock vs [x].