pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Lol

Beef Squash Spice--rejected Spice Girl names

i love that there are two writers credit in the beef squash article, a 5 paragraph article about an instagram post

seems like a beef squash bot could handle it

https://www.thehealthimprovementcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Beef-Stuffed-Butternut-Squash.jpg

(l-r) Drake, Kanye

they're cowards for not giving adele bnm

nb, i haven't heard the album

haha i haven't either but those type of reviews are the weirdest to me, where it's clear they love it and it's written as a rave but they sit there and - for whatever reasons - make this decision that we are not giving this best new music

I haven’t visited pitchfork regularly in years but decided to do some end-of-year scroll today through sites, looked at theirs first, and they review like a dozen albums every week? (don’t fact check me, maybe it’s 5-10). I maybe just need to set some news feed to skim and selectively look at music every week

3-4 a day during the week I believe, there are dips and pauses

Beef squash is when you and a bro mash your penises together.

"Greenwood must be the only artist who has both headlined Coachella and collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki, the Polish composer whose turbulent tone clusters he often evokes in The Power of the Dog."

Beth Gibbons recorded an album with Penderecki... just off the top of my head

ya, but she's like . . . a girl.

Two Jonny Greenwood soundtrack reviews within a week seems a bit much. Maybe cover those in one joint review and give a slot to... anything else

there's not a lot out at this time of year

tbh puzzled by their #1 album being a 30 minute album/EP? where half of it were spoken word skits so there were like, 4 actual songs on it?

Anyway, whatever gets more people to listen to Jasmine Sullivan I guess

Sorry to resurrect this trope, but the long blurb says absolutely nothing about the singing or music (other than her narratives are “packaged as confessional R&B”). This is still a music website, right?

still working through my calculations of 'nice to see l'rain getting hype' vs 'grumpy that l'rain's superior debut album didn't get this hype'

you’ll survive

xp the hype that you give is the hype that you live

Squid: Bright Green Field
Squid belong to a cohort of UK bands who are marrying the rhythmic economy and literate alienation of post-punk with the instrumental dexterity and formal ambition of prog. Drop in on the first few minutes of any given song from their debut full-length and you might hear only the former: The guitars are tightly wound, the hi-hats are ticking away, someone is nervously shouting. Stick around a little longer and the world opens up. Jazzy fills poke in at the edges, grooves dissolve into long stretches of synthesized drone. The songs may stretch to seven or eight minutes, but they’re never indulgent, eschewing individual showmanship in favor of scorching collective peaks. –Andy Cush

this is really annoying to me for some reason, just completely ahistorical and ignores entire scenes and traditions of post-rock, math rock, chopsy punk like nomeansno, sui generis weirdos like cardiacs or cheer accident or u.s. maple or melt banana or giddy motors, like a thousand bands that were doing things operating in a sphere between postpunk/punk/noise/prog

One in three marriages between the rhythmic economy and literate alienation of post-punk, and the instrumental dexterity and formal ambition of prog, end in divorce.

yeah seriously, and they're not even very good at it xp

idk, the bolded part still seems true even if it doesn't include a two paragraph sidebar on Dazzling Killmen

Like take out all the extra stuff, it's pretty inarguable

Squid [are one of many] UK bands who are [combining] ... post-punk with ... prog.

heh i just ran into the main killman at the jeff parker show last friday

thing is, i don't really see any of these bands as influenced by prog

I'm w mississippi, post punk was interlinked w prog, it's like saying they combined the impact of rock with the passions of roll.

this is really annoying to me for some reason, just completely ahistorical and ignores entire scenes and traditions of post-rock, math rock, chopsy punk like nomeansno, sui generis weirdos like cardiacs or cheer accident or u.s. maple or melt banana or giddy motors, like a thousand bands that were doing things operating in a sphere between postpunk/punk/noise/prog

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, December 8, 2021 1:22 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i thought you were gonna say This Heat which would have been a good example (although i didn't read andy as implying that they are are the first bands to ever mix prog and post-punk) but i disagree that most of these bands are doing something related to Squid. i personally don't hear any prog in us maple. nomeansno are a skate punk/post-hardcore band with above-average amount of exotic time signatures. as far as skingraft bands go melt banana and the whole noisy speed-core sound is its own thing, i do hear some influence of like six finger satelite/chinese stars in the sharp guitar stabs and rhythms

I'm w mississippi, post punk was interlinked w prog, it's like saying they combined the impact of rock with the passions of roll.

― Freeze Instr., Wednesday, December 8, 2021 3:50 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

imho they are pretty different. it seems wrong to me to think of, like, Yes as somehow "interlocked" with Gang of Four. i think of the canonical post punk bands as mining tension from minimalism, restraint, repetition. p much the opposite of prog

i'm still kinda ambivalent on squid, mostly because the singer annoys me and some of the lyrics are cringey. but i like a lot of the album

it seems wrong to me to think of, like, Yes as somehow "interlocked" with Gang of Four. i think of the canonical post punk bands as mining tension from minimalism, restraint, repetition. p much the opposite of prog

Nah, listen to what Chris Squire was doing on Yes's late '70s/early '80s albums, Going For The One and Drama. There's some real aggression and minimalism in there. Everyone else around him is going nuts, but he's the anchor.

Ruins are the missing link between prog and pigfuck / Skin Graft-style post punk imo

I didn't say that Skin Graft was prog, I'm disputing the claim that this stuff is actually tied to prog in any real way, rather the continuation of many threads of underground rock. I think anytime something is chopsy or weird people use prog as a lazy term. I don't think Squid has shit to do with prog.

thing is, i don't really see any of these bands as influenced by prog

not even like, black midi? i don't particularly hear it with squid but it's certainly more prominent in other acts in that whole scene

squid are easily my favourites though, but they're more firmly in the post-punk revival bucket (& their take on it is particularly strong), rather than the skronk of black midi etc who are maybe more distinct and experimental but less compelling

Ruins are the missing link between prog and pigfuck / Skin Graft-style post punk imo

otm, amazing band

Keith Levene was a Yes obsessive, Lydon a Van der Graaf Generator and Can aficionano, This Heat of course, Robert Wyatt, arguably Eno, Henry Cow / Slapp Happy fades directly into postpunk-type stuff, Peter Hook was way into the Groundhogs, Conny Plank produced early Ultravox and Phew, the connections were direct and real.

Gang of Four is one example where it doesn't work as they were more into Free and Dr. Feelgood along with funk

There were a lot of genre vectors washing around in postpunk - reggae obviously and pervasively, britfolk (Green Gartside loved Steeleye Span), hope taping weirdness etc. But to treat "prog" and "postpunk" as wholly discrete forms that the band Squid is uniquely connecting in 2021 is only possible if your historical grasp on postpunk starts with the Rapture and Hot Hot Heat.

Squid mention Neu! as an influence in interviews

To me Squid sound like a band based 90% on side B of Remain in Light

(Another link: Adrian Belew went from playing with Talking Heads to being a member of King Crimson mark 2 iirc; Fripp's path in this era is another case in point)

Devo's first album was kinda proggy too. there's a straighter line here than a lotta people think. P-Model started as a prog group called Mandrake that was way into Yes. if you listen to their (very proggy) demos, you can hear a lot of the stuff that made it to their hyperactive Zolo pop debut.

Didn't he come to Talking Heads from Zappa's band to begin with? So prog->new wave->prog/new wave crossover or something? Also that was surely at least mk 3!
xp

I haven't heard Squid, though.

Iirc, Rush were one of the only contemporary mainstream rock bands Carducci praised in Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

& fripp played on fear of music a little too

squid's key influences are very obviously like, talking heads, neu! and the fall. not really anything people haven't heard before but they're particularly great at it to my ears

good posts

it would be a miracle if there weren't any influences or overlaps in personnel between post-punk and prog bands, just due to it all being all of a broader rock scene in a particular time and in a small number of cities with a lot of open minded people in it. still, if you put Rush and Joy Division side by side on a mixtape it would be jarring eclecticism. krautrock is way more simpatico with post punk imho

I'm pretty sure I have done that.

Fantastic posts Freeze Instr.

My main problem with any of these Windmill Scene writeups is that they treat all the bands as equals when they're clearly going for distinct things. Squid do feel very Krauty/TH-y but for every successful Paddling or Pamphlets (which are both very good) there's a GSK or Narrator to induce terminal cringe. They're young though, they'll improve. It's imo scary how good Black Midi are already.

Also, if you want good proggy postpunk from recent years, I could make a playlist from The Fall's final lineup that would best anything else, they really were the gold standard right to the end

Rush were themselves prog/new wave crossover by 1980.xps

I made jarring mix tapes, though, tbf.

Anyway, I should listen to these bands. Kalakendra festival on rn tho.

Some great posts, I probably overstated my case it just really raises my hackles when writers throw out "prog" lazily anytime something is vaguely technical or non standard

I don't see these kids sitting around listening to Gentle Giant

I can very easily see Black Midi doing that tbf!

https://www.talkhouse.com/morgan-simpson-of-black-midi-talks-with-bill-bruford-king-crimson-yes-on-the-talkhouse-podcast/