Summer 2010 Music
Read more for a few short reviews on some albums I’ve been listening to. What have you guys been into?
Devo – Something for Everybody
Just got this yesterday having heard nothing about or from it and I’m totally into it. There’s no doubt that it’s still Devo. Same great song writing and aesthetic. If anything, their array of electronic noises has expanded quite a bit and they’ve got a little less angular and a little more beat-oriented. But man, really fun album. I bought the iTunes LP for this, which was pretty cool, too. I was pumped about the idea of getting liner notes and videos and extras and cool stuff with albums when they first announced it, but this is the first album that was released as an iTunes LP that I actually wanted. Definitely worth the extra $2.
Chemical Brothers – Further
Totally caught me by surprise. I had no idea they were coming out with anything new and I saw it mentioned on Twitter. So I grab it and I’m floored. My favorite thing I’ve done since Dig Your Own Hole. They’ve definitely updated their sound — you won’t find any Big Beat breaks here. They’ve gotten trancier, a bit more experimental, and it’s pretty great.
Whitefield Brothers – Earthology
Heard these guys reviewed on NPR one morning and was totally intrigued. Chill house and hip hop with a focus on finding all sorts of indigenous sounds.
Crystal Castles – S/T
I know these guys have been crazy hyped for a while now, but I never bothered to check them out till recently when I heard they use a lot of 8-bit instruments. Yeah, I’m a total sucker for nerdy shit, so what? Anyway, turns out they don’t really use that many 8-bit instruments. But they do create some really fantastic noise and manage to keep it danceable and fun.
Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Rush to Relax
Really fun garage rock, reminiscent of a lot of the stuff from that Nuggets Comp Kev posted a while back.
Wolf Parade – Expo 89
Nothing’s standing out to me the way Hungry Ghosts and I’ll Believe in Anything did on their first LP, but I definitely like this more than At Mt Zoomer which was a big dud for me.
If you want to listen, you know where to look.
Comments
I need to grab that Crystal Castles. On a similarly hypey note I actually like the Sleigh Bells record.
The Holy Fuck record is getting a lot of spins.
And I’m in a minority but I like the new Broken Social Scene quite a bit, probably because it took a slightly more electro turn than what they’ve previously done.
The Yeasayer disc is holding up pretty well for me after a couple months now.
I need to still grab the new LCD as well, but everything I’ve heard on the Sirius channel Jay mentioned which has been playing the crap out of it has been fairly dissapointing. Either monotonous or too novelty (Drunk Girls…Pow Pow, etc.).
I didn’t realize Holy Fuck had a new one. I’ve enjoyed each of their releases a bit more than the last, so maybe I’ll get really into this one. The last one was just “pretty good.”
I stil haven’t checked out the new Broken Social Scene or Yeasayer. My friend Vince gave me a copy of Sleigh Bells which I totally forgot to rip. I should do that.
This is actually the first Holy Fuck record I’ve heard. It’s a total ass shaker.
Yeasayer is probably my favorite record of the year so far. Then again I’m a sucker for old school english style electronic music (OMD, Depech Mode, etc.) and this is pretty much right from that book.
Yeah, Holy Fuck seems to be getting gradually more interested in rhythms. The first EP and LP had almost no rhythm. The last album was the first to feature a legit four-to-the-flour beat.
You’ve totally sold me on Yeasayer, though. I didn’t know they sounded like that. I thought they were another bearded indie rock band (and, for the record, Band of Horses can burst into flames for all I care).
Yeah, definitely check out Yeasayer.
And the new BOH is definitely “meh” for me considering how much I loved their previous 2 albums. But I’m still convinced if I pulled a stunt similar to what Bill and Maggie tried last April Fool’s day and sent you the record under a different name, with a picture of 4 overly skinny dudes with annoying foppish hair cuts and ironic cabana wear, deck shoes and tight ironic t-shirts, and told you how their harmonies were done based on traditional Ozark folk melodies and how they actually got an Appalachian mouth harp player to play on the record, that you’d bite and be at least moderately accepting of it.
But that’s all assuming that I have some sort of bias against them. I don’t. I don’t know anything about them. I just got that record The Funeral and I thought it was kinda boring and sounded like a million other bands. Then I got the next one and it sounded exactly like the last one. My dislike for them has nothing to do with any perceived authenticity or lack thereof. They’re just boring. And they sound like that other band I hate that you love. What’re they called. They have that album Z.
It’s not that you have a bias against them, but you have a bias for and a predilection for fairly pedestrian bands that sound for the most part extremely similar or that are just as straightforward as they are but who exhibit or are marketed with some sort of perceived or faux authenticity or shtick. Real Estate, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend….I could probably think of a few others but those come to mind as bands I know you like. There’s absolutely nothing that makes those bands anything other than straightforward rock bands that sound like a million other bands and definitely not a daylight’s whit of difference between the others that you don’t like. But you like them, I maintain because they each present and market themselves with a pretentious air or angle about them. Whether it’s Fleet Foxes supposedly authentic rootsy harmonies (absolutely no better or different than those of BOH or My Morning Jacket), or Vampire Weekends fake african music shtick, or Real Estate’s “beach” vibe.
All those bands are fine and I personally like them but they are also by the same standards just as straightforward and “boring” in the same way. And yes, I know you’ll maintain your stance that there’s something different about those bands that sets them apart. And I say that there is, only that thing is some pretentious marketing angle repeated ad nauseum. You need some sort of hook to like a “rock” band, but it doesn’t matter whether that hook is real or just a gimmick.
And my original point being, if I played you the music but presented it with some marketing hook or gimmick, I think you’d be more open to it, even if that hook was bogus. I mean I fully admit that I’m more likely to hate a band because of things like that. I totally ’fess up to my anti-pretentious bias.
And yes I fully realize you and I will be having this debate until we are old(er) and gray(er). That’s what’s fun about it. And for the record I don’t think you are pretentious, but I think you are fond of other’s pretentiousness.
Band of Horses makes me feel bored and like I should be doing something else.
Fleet Foxes makes me feel like I’m a cabin in the woods and maybe I should go pick berries so I don’t starve.
That is why Fleet Foxes has an appeal that BOH does not.
(It’s totally a My Mental Bullshit thing, is what I’m saying, and I’m saying that I will never ever get into BOH because of it)
I don’t even disagree. I just maintain that’s all because of carefully cultivated image and marketing behind Fleet Foxes as much as it is anything to do with the actual music. I’m not even devoid of it myself. I love Bon Iver more than probably any band mentioned in this thread. But if he didn’t have the whole novel backstory and cultivated vibe that was part of everything you read about him, it would totally be just another indie rock/folk band/album/whatever.
I actually think the Bon Iver backstory detracts massively from that record. I heard it and was like, “What an asshole.” And then I read the lyrics and that was just a fifth grade disaster.
I gotta disagree with you to a certain extent here Kev. I can’t really speak for Hutch, but I personally don’t feel as though I’m influenced by marketing for any of the bands you mentioned because I don’t even know where to find it. I don’t really read music blogs too much, so unless you consider the little reviews posted here or the intros the Sirius/XM DJs provide before playing a song “marketing”, I don’t even know how I would be exposed to it.
That Bon Iver album is fucking amazing regardless of any backstory.
Fleet Foxes DO have a rootsy vibe. Whether it is authentic or nto I didn’t need anybody to tell me that.
What Jay and Maggie said. I don’t know about or give a shit about whatever “carefully cultivated image and marketing” a band might have. 90% of the albums I listen to are just things I downloaded cause someone said it was good. I don’t read PItchfork’s reviews. I don’t read Stereogum or research bands. I just listen to the albums.
For all I know, Fleet Foxes live in a goddam cabin and Vampire Weekend were born in Africa. Grizzly Bear make me feel incredibly spaced and creeped out. Real Estate make me feel winsome and happy about living in New Jersey. What makes it pretentious? That they do it on purpose? That they’re not actually african/woodsy/creepy/newjersian?
What’s wrong with wanting a hook? Why is it so bad or even worth discussing that yes, I am mostly interested in bands that have something unique about them. I don’t give a shit if it’s a put on so long as it doesn’t sound some watered down shitty version of something else. Obviously I’m trying an arbitrary, personal line in the sand about what is too derivative of something else, but so what? Music is subjective, right?
Band of Horses have nothing interesting about them. They write boring songs in a boring way about boring things. There’s nothing that stands out about them. They sound exactly the goddam same as everyone else. The four bands you mentioned all have unique qualities that make them stick out and easily identifiable.
Since when is being unique and standing out from the crowd a gimmick?
I tried to think of a band that was gimmicky and I immediately come up with Tilly and the Wall. If you haven’t heard them, or at least their first album, they’re an indie rock band that writes indie rock songs. Why are they gimmicky? Instead of a drummer, they have a tap dancer.
So why do I consider that a damnable gimmick and not just a unique quality? Cause it’s a decision made entirely and for the sole purpose of being unique. It does nothing to actually improve the music and, in many ways, you end up with a slightly lesser product than if they’d had a drummer. And if they’d had a drummer, they’d just sound exactly like everyone else. It’s practically a non-entity; something that’s entirely there for show and nothing else.
Contrast that to the aforementioned Vampire Weekend or Fleet Foxes, these are band that are making legitimate, stylistic choices that dramatically effect the actual songs being produced. When you hear a Tilly and the Wall track, you go “Oh this is TIlly and the Wall. How do I know? I can hear the tap-dancer.” When you hear a Vampire WEekend or Fleet Foxes song, you go “Oh, it’s so-and-so. I know because it sounds like them.”
I don’t mean to make it about BOH vs. Every other indie rock band. You could replace them with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Beach House, The National or any other band who you’ve decried as being ridiculously boring and “just a straight rock band.” Which is also why this discussion didn’t happen in the thread where we mentioned Owen Pallet opening for the national and you used that line. Because there it’s totally valid. I don’t like him, but I can’t deny that he’s doing something drastically different from the guitar/bass/drums/vocals rock band. Same thing if we talk about Animal Collective or Holy Fuck or Yeasayer. I totally get the "I don’t like straight forward rock bands, but I like (insert any of those bands I just mentioned). Shit, I’ll even probably agree to that statement myself (minus the Owen Pallet part) a lot of days of the week.
But in the realm of straightforward rock bands that is where the difference lies in terms of how the bands niche and market themselves and what angles they choose to play up (even if those same elements are present in but not played up in other bands who are considered less interesting).
And I definitely call BS on saying you don’t read or aren’t influenced by reviews/interviews/whatever. Because on certain fronts you’ve definitely echoed other reviews takes and influences and reference points that I just don’t think anyone would come to independently especially after certain things were echoed in a lot of previous reviews.
Like I said, I’m guilty of a lot of this too, I don’t deny it. I’ll fully admit it I buy into hype and back story and the cultural wave of the moment and obviously I’d like something that is unique over something that is not. I just don’t think that exists in certain areas where people maintain that it does. But I also just have a tendency to like bands that sound similar and ultimately there’s not a lot of music I really hate. And maybe part of it is being so old and having been through so many cycles of seeing what comes and goes, what gets popularity and what doesn’t and which things surprisingly or not end up having more lasting impact and which just burn somewhat more brightly briefly because they choose to ride a particular wave.
I also fully realize I’m the only person for whom discussions of music marketing or cultural impact or what peripheral factors influence our taste are interesting so I apologize for always engaging in this discussion.
So has anyone listened to the new Devo yet? THEY ARE SO OLD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqPY6EZpsWg
But still so good. I think I like them cause they’re being marketing to old nerds.
Until the vocals it sounded like a cover band doing Head Like A Hole.
John said:So has anyone listened to the new Devo yet? THEY ARE SO OLD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqPY6EZpsWg
But still so good. I think I like them cause they’re being marketing to old nerds.
Sorry, but that was pretty terrible.