I need to get that fuckhead from WAVVES off the top of my precious blog. How about we allow some awesomeness to ensue? Is that something you'd be interested in?
* Andrew W.K. was already a made man for "Party Hard," but this GIF (old, but I only discovered it now) ought to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card for one, if not two, felony charges:
Seriously. He can commit two murders, and he'd still be in the black, morality-wise. This is so enthralling. I can't stop watching it. It's like if the Zapruder film were fun!
* French juggernauts Phoenix have contributed three videos to the semi-improvised and semi-acoustic Les Concerts à Emporter series. "1901" is below, while equally awesome versions of "Lisztomania," "One Time Too Many" and "Long Distance Call" are elsewhere at La Blogothèque.
There will be at least one more mention of Phoenix before Christmas. Assuming I actually bother with a year-end list. As I said in the comments a couple posts back, I kinda feel like abandoning the listmaking process, washing my hands of it entirely, is the ultimate tribute to this particular year.
* To reiterate a comment on my recent Passion Pit post, Stereogum's list of upcoming 2010 releases. Just a cursory glance at this list is enough to place 2010 way, WAY above 2009 as far as quality goes. It's like night and day. And that list doesn't even include May's rumored Arcade Fire album!
My point: given those developments, and the objective impending awesomeness of at least 8-10 of those releases, why spend more time thinking about 2009 than absolutely necessary,? Am I right? I can check out We Were Promised Jetpacks and call it a year.
* In fact, fuck it. We're going 2005-style on this list. Off the cuff, no thought, and very little explanation:
Best Album
1) Passion Pit - Manners (best front to back) 2) Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (genius songs, but sags in places) 3) The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love (most underrated) 4) Franz Ferdinand - Tonight (totally awesome & unfairly underrated) 5) The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (their best in forever) 6) Metric - Fantasies (fun poppy throwback) 7) the xx - xx (nice new-wavey debut, potential one-offs) 8) Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts (made them super-famous in the UK this year)
I can't even think of ten albums that I'd want to list. Art Brut, A.C. Newman, Trail of Dead, and Royksopp get honorable/partial mention. Tegan and Sara get an incomplete for me not listening to it yet.
Best Songs
1) "Little Secrets" by Passion Pit 2) (tie) "Lisztomania"/"1901" by Phoenix 3) "Daylight" by Matt & Kim 4) "The Heartbreak Rides" by A.C. Newman 5) "Gold Guns Girls" by Metric 6) "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear 7) "Don't Upset The Rhythm" by Noisettes 8) "Crystalised" by the xx 9) "Watching The Planets" by The Flaming Lips 10) "Ulysses" by Franz Ferdinand
The only thing about indie rock more disappointing than its music is its labels. Inventing some nonsense term like "blipcore" or "nu-jungle" or whatever to describe indescribably odd music is so facile that the labels aren't even relevant. I got to the point where I could speak these terms (sort of) by realizing that you basically just smush words together in some vivid-sounding manner depending on how you feel. It's basically a bunch of arrogant crap. It's a rare pleasure to encounter a classification that actually works, that isn't just the verbal equivalent of "you got chocolate in my peanut butter."
A few minutes ago, while reading an excellent write-up of highly recommended 1000 Times Yes reviewer Christopher R. Weingarten, I was introduced to a word so fantastic that I felt compelled to share. It even gets its own paragraph. Behold:
Holy hell, is that a fantastic term. In a sea of names whose sounds are better than their meanings, I believe this is the most accurate that I've ever come across. Every single band that qualifies as shitgaze is, in fact, very shitty! No Age? Sucks! Vivian Girls? Unlistenable! WAVVES? Goes without saying! Combine "shit" with the evocatively deprecatory -gaze suffix, and you've got maybe the biggest face-forward diss possible. It would be like inventing a subgenre for Animal Collective and Neon Indian and stuff called "overratedgaze" or "waste of fucking timegaze," and then having the label stick. I can't imagine what I'd do if that happened. [Ed. note: not true; what would happen is I would get an erection.]
Anyway, shitgaze calls out the vast majority of the laziest, most unfairly overexposed indie acts on the planet, the bands that can't help but appear in my worst-of lists. It's a real thing, and it's awesome. Sure, many of these bands could adopt the term ironically, or as a compliment, but I prefer to pretend that it's nothing but an insult. I hate the music, but I love the word. My day is better thanks to shitgaze. So there.
Holy jalapenos in a hot pocket... it's been almost six months since I said a damn thing. The last thing I said was "Grizzly Bear is awesome," and the only activity is a gaggle of Google-ogling haters reminding me that my Hate Binky post is the #1 search result on Google for "Animal Collective sucks." Not complaining about that per se... cause hey, fight the powers that be. But I have hit blog bottom, and it smells like moth balls down here. Time to bust out the biscuits and strike up the band.
So let's see what I've been up to, culture-wise:
DINING & TRAVEL
I ate cream cheese on a bagel. I ate smoked mackerel. I ate at one of Las Vegas's finest buffets, shortly after eating the best Egg McMuffin I have ever had. I drew a picture of myself with blood pouring out of my mouth in crayon at a $30-an-entree restaurant. I ordered filet mignon shortly after drawing said picture. It was delicious. The filet mignon, not the drawing. The drawing was underdone. Those things happened over the past six months.
FILM
My Netflix queue has become a cesspool. I still haven't finished my Best Movies of 2008 post, and it's almost 2010. Not that I'll be writing a 2009 post from the look of it... I have seen exactly one film in a theater since the last time I posted anything here: the sixth Harry Potter movie. It was great, until the end, when it absolutely blew. How do you make the most devastating moment in the series totally boring and matter-of-fact? Makes me want to puke in a sorting hat.
TV
Lost. That's about it. Almost done with season two, and so far it's everything I'd hoped for. Mad Men's been awesome, but that ain't news.
MUSIC
Kind of a blah year for Teh Rock. To invert a Louis CK truism, nothing is awesome, and everyone's happy. Really? We're happy that Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors are the only things we can really hang our hats on this year? We're fine with that being the direction of music?
The only real victory of the year, musically speaking, the only true, top-to-bottom legitimate contender for Best Album of 2009, is Manners, from Cambridge's own Passion Pit. Continuing the burgeoning trend of New Order/Devo fixation, as epitomized by the likes of Cut Copy and Holy Fuck and Hot Chip, Passion Pit have brought the synth-heavy sound to bright, fun, bouncy new places. There's nothing complicated or challenging about them... I don't see PP changing the game or blazing new trails in music or anything. But I don't care. Manners is flat-out incredible from start to finish. All the words being used to describe Merriweather Post Pavilion that I hated so much? "Danceable," "universal," "accessible," and so forth? Those words describe Passion Pit.
Behold:
"To Kingdom Come"
"Little Secrets"
"The Reeling"
See? Isn't that some fun-ass fun? You know it is.
(Also of interest is Andrew Kuo's thoughts, visualized, on a show of theirs last year as well as their debut EP, Chunk of Change.)
Basically, this is the one breakout masterpiece of the year. Manners is the only front-to-back excellent album of the year; even Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has its uncompelling moments. It'd be great to hear another breakout pop album before Christmas but I'm not holding my breath. It's not that kind of year. (Embryonic doesn't count, cause Embryonic is fucked up.)
It's bad enough that my primary musical fascination since the beginning of the summer has been late 70's/early 80's punk (Buzzcocks, Wire, Minutemen) and post-punk (Gang of Four, Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu) and neither (Elvis Costello). I've gone 30 years back in time to find something that moves me. I don't think I'll be able to do this again next year.
But until then... Double Nickels On The Dime, you are fabulous.
I never thought I'd say these words, but here goes:
I like Grizzly Bear's new song, "Two Weeks." I like it a LOT.
I'm as shocked by this as anyone. I'm supposed to hate that song with the flame of a thousand cases of gonorrhea. And yet I don't. What's wrong with me???
I hate Grizzly Bear as much as anyone else. They're a quartet of effete, self-serious twats who make Vampire Weekend look like the fucking Dropkick Murphys. I could rant for hours about their meritless rise to stardom, fueled by a legion of headphone-riddled professional-ish bloggers. They are exactly what's wrong with indie "rock" at the present moment, forcing me to put rock in double quotes.
Here's what I wrote about their breakthrough LP in late 2006:
Worst Album Of The Year Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
No contest. After several tries, I remain entirely confused by Yellow House's critical success. It's a boring, meandering, unremarkable turd. Even their idea (beautiful lo-fi pop) is a piece of shit, never mind the fact that they failed to execute it. Since when did Beach Boys harmonies become the indie scene's top priority? This band sucks.
Put it this way. Car trouble caused them to miss a gig here in DC. opening for TVOTR, back in October. Their absence on that night ranks as one of the luckiest things that happened to me all year.
Ouch. Gotta love the Beach Boys slam, which seems particularly prescient prior to the preponderance of Pet Sounds preoccupation amongst pundits pertaining to Panda Bear's putrid, pallid personal project, Person Pitch. But yeah, Yellow House sucks harder than a thousand pounds of barnacles. It's as unlistenable as my alliteration is unreadable.
The impending release of Veckatimest set all my early alarms off. The reception of Merriweather Post Pavilion gave me an idea of what was to come from the blogosphere and criterati; already primed to hate Veckatimest and anyone who didn't, I planned to skip the album and the entire conversation.
Then something unexpected happened: they wrote a Wolf Parade song. That buzzing keyboard, jutting out into the main hook, would fit in nicely on Apologies To The Queen Mary. It brings a rough edge to a band that is typically soft to the point of detriment. Good thing too, because unlike every lifeless, flaccid millisecond of Yellow House, "Two Weeks" actually has some verve to it. Congratulations boys, you realized what effect music is supposed to have on people.
But even though it's fucking "Hey Jude" compared to their earlier output, it isn't nearly as effective as it could have been. It's an old chestnut of mine: when the song's natural momentum gets throttled by design, in order to draw attention to the painstaking musical design, you fucked up. Sure enough, the drum work, which is otherwise far improved, drives the energy backwards, not forwards. I feel the music being pulled back when I listen. I guess it's interesting that I can feel that so vividly, but I dunno.
I found it interesting that the premise of the video, i.e. the lugubrious facial tics, the digitally-enhanced slo-mo drag of eye blinks etc., is a digital representation of what I hear the drums doing. You are waiting impatiently for the eye to come all the way up, just like you're waiting impatiently for the song to catch up with what your brain expects.
It's just more evidence that the band's conceit, to drag music downtempo, to suck the urgency out and proceed as carefully and deliberately as possible, is what's holding "Two Weeks" back. With a more talented ear at the helm, "Two Weeks" would be a legitimate sensation, but instead it's just a likable curiosity. One need look no further than Girl Talk's amazing remix of "Knife" from a couple years back to hear how brilliant GB's songs can be when taken out of their boring-ass hands. In someone else's hands, you could be looking at seriously classic shit.
Instead, as fits GB's raison d'etre, the song has been soaked in milk. That slower pace to the vocals; their trademark, gimmicky church harmonies; the almost clunky interplay between drums (livelier than anywhere else in GB's recent work) and piano/keyboard... it's all part of the playbook. "Knife" is their mission statement; the suffocation of "Two Weeks" is just a reminder.
This is why I have the degree of bile I have for this band: it's frustrating enough for their addictive hooks to be straight-up bungled, but they are actually given MORE credit for doing it wrong than anyone else gets for doing it right! It's just amazing.
Odd that after 700 words I've spent this much time bitching about a song I ultimately like. Reminds me of my take on "My Girls," which I also enjoy freely. I think so little of AC that I've graded "My Girls" on a curve, thus crediting them for making a half-decent song more than they deserve, all while hating their guts. Likewise, the fact that "Two Weeks" is merely listenable had me sprinting to my Blogger dashboard to spill out all this internal conflict. I can't just like/dislike their music at face value, because in the end I want much more from them than this. Whatever that all means.
But ultimately, I have to hand it to them. It's a goddamn ear worm. I can't stop thinking about it, or humming along to it. They did exactly what they needed to do to win me over: something different from that thing that made me wish sterility and cancer upon them. Something that actually speaks to what I like about music. It's a legitimate pop tune. Well done.
As for the other tracks on Veckatimest... I haven't made up my mind on the entirety of it, but it's not as unpleasant an experience as Yellow House. Not by a longshot. Not only am I not bored out of my gourd, I'm actually leaning positive on it. I know one thing for certain: I won't be putting them in the "Worst Of The Year" category this year. Upset of the new century, by a country mile.
Now, of course, I have a new problem: who is left for me to bestow that dishonor upon? To destroy Freddie Mercury's sentiment... can anybody find me somebody to loathe? I never thought I'd say THESE words, either, but I sure hope Deerhoof or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah puts out new music soon...
Accentuate the positive, that's what I always say...
Phoenix - "1901"
New song from a band I completely missed the boat on last time around. 2006's It's Never Been Like That is a great album. How I screwed up so royally, I don't know. In sports terms, me letting Phoenix past me in 2006 is like Carlos Beltran letting strike three go past him against the Cardinals in the NLCS. Inexcusable.
Anyway, what I've heard of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has sounded just as good. It's exactly what MGMT does, but they've been doing it longer and they have all the kinks worked out.
As a remedial Phoenix-is-awesome lesson, here's the audio to "Napoleon Says":
Metric - "Gimme Sympathy"
Seems like Canada hasn't been mined for all its sunny pop yet. This is the catchiest song I've heard in ages. I seriously can't stop hearing it. I'm hearing Cylon activation messages. IT'S IN THE FRAKKIN SHIP!!!!! It's incredible how jacked up I get about one teeny, tiny alteration in the synth riff, where it goes way up high towards the end of the chorus. Totally eating that one part up.
I feel like I say this a lot about a lot of bands... but why aren't chick-driven bands like Stars and Metric HUGE bands? Why isn't Gimme Sympathy all over the radio and prime-time chick shows?
Here's why: their kickass alt-rock sound is very late-90s. It only furthers my theory that Canada is just like America, but 12 years ago. Metric should be the Letters to Cleo of this era; Emily Haines should be its Kay Hanley.
Röyksopp - "Happy Up Here"
The song is pretty simple and fun. The video is fucking awesome. That's all I got to say on that.
Tweet of the week goes to famous blogger Jason Kottke, who taught his infant son to perform the inimitable apparently imitable after all Gob Bluth chicken dance.
Kottke provides linkage but just in case you forgot a single occurrence of the chicken dance:
My favorite It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia sequence of late has been Charlie's official job title as the group's "wildcard," after three seasons of doing it pro bono. Hilarity, as it always does, ensues.
The other 12 seconds of this ep that I didn't show here are also very funny. Solid episode all around. And it really makes you think...
Discovered for myself, anyway. While randomly watching the video for one of my all-time desert island songs, "The Laws Have Changed" by my beloved New Pornographers, I found a not-really-famous face from Battlestar Galactica posing as the video's faux singer. I think you can see her in the preview still right now:
You can tell this was filmed somewhere around the miniseries/first season because she's not a shrewish, unfaithful, drug-addicted, post-pregnancy nutjob. Kidding! (UPDATE: I'm not kidding.)
Five years after "Take Me Out" burst into the mainstream on the strength of its rough, post-punk guitars and high-hat disco beats, becoming perhaps the biggest indie-to-mainstream rock hit of the current century, it's evident that very few indie bands nowadays really, really rock. Certain explosions in popularity stand in stark contrast to the raw, in-your-face rock of Franz Ferdinand, the last true rockers to break out of the indie ghetto.
They've been chomping at the bit to expand their palette since "Take Me Out" made it big. You Could Have It So Much Better is littered with a desire to change the band's direction, although the results when they did were thoroughly lousy. ("Eleanor Put Your Boots On" is irredeemably awful.) There was much to love, but those departures really, really didn't work.
So I was understandably saddened by the rumors, two years ago, that Franz Ferdinand would be going heavy on the synthesizers for their follow-up. Goddammit... MORE changes. One of the few bands that really understand how guitars work, and who had as of that moment done no wrong, had announced their intention to ditch what worked for them. My response at the time was that it was "not good news until proven otherwise."
Tonight is otherwise.
Turns out that Franz Ferdinand's signature sound works as well on keyboards as on guitars. Just as Dear Science proved that TV On The Radio's identity can be felt across lots of different sonic landscapes, Tonight proves as much for Franz Ferdinand.
Though their intention to abandon the guitar was a bit jarring, but their changeover from funky guitar to disco synths really isn't. In practice, it's more that they've made an entire album of tracks based on You Could Have It So Much Better standout "Outsiders." It's laced with colorful funky, disco-ish flourishes, but it's still rock.
The track ordering shrewdly integrates their departures into what we hear as the album progresses, avoiding any feeling of what could have been jarring changes. Early tracks "Ulysses" and "No You Girls" are more heavily dependent on guitar stomps. "Twilight Omens" and "Bite Hard" are the first synth-driven songs we hear, and we've been prepared by the time they arrive. By the time full-blown disco tracks "Live Alone" and "Lucid Dreams" come around, you barely notice or care. That gradual progression helps sell us on the expansion of what works for them, letting us come around slowly if need be.
This change isn't always a good thing, though. Pre-release track "Lucid Dreams" as presented here late last year is a rollicking, classically Franz track. The track as found on Tonight has been transformed and digested into a techno epic that lacks the sheer awesomeness of the leak, despite its charms. The differences evident in this one song are a microcosm of the entire changeover... you yearn wistfully for the old thing when they're mostly just doing the new thing.
But in the end, this is still an excellent, excellent pop album. After being somewhat randomly associated with The Killers for so long simply because their arrivals came at the same time, Franz Ferdinand has made the Killers album we've all been waiting for since Hot Fuss.
I give Tonight: Franz Ferdinand a rating of four assassinated archdukes out of five. Well done.
Let's have a change of pace: happy thoughts! We gotta stay positive...
Frightened Rabbit January 18, 2009 Great Scott, Allston, MA
After three songs of solid singing and whoo-ing along to Frightened Rabbit, lead singer Scott Hutchison looked at the mic and said "tonight's gonna be a good one." He was right.
They apparently didn't see many packed houses on this tour; in fact, their heavily front-loaded set list seemed to expect an audience to become distracted if they didn't keep them hooked from the get-go. That wasn't the case last month at the sold-out Great Scott.
And it's not going to be the case again if they keep this up. Seeing these guys up close and personal, on a stage that had no private entry or protection, was a treat unlikely to be repeated. If they continue to pop up on network pap like Chuck and Grey's Anatomy, it'll take a lot more work to see them from the front row again.
Given the crowd, and their popularity even as a fledgling outfit, that train might have already sailed. Hundreds of true believers braved a crippling winter storm to show up and rock out. The crowd was a lot more die-hard than I expected; their energy and sing-along skills drove the performance to surprising heights. It's hard to have much of a stage presentation in such a tiny setting, but they managed to show serious presence anyway. By covering each of The Midnight Organ Fight's eleven proper songs, and clearly, clearly busting their asses in the process, I don't think they would have let anyone leave disappointed. They really gave it their all.
While their music is nothing particularly special in structure, the amount of heart that Hutchison (and his brother, Grant, on the drum kit) pours into the music makes it special. In my Best Of 2008 post, I drew a comparison between them and Neutral Milk Hotel based on those very qualities. So it was no surprise when Frightened Rabbit busted out a cover of "Song Against Sex," from On Avery Island, during their encore. The only less surprising covers would have been "The King Of Carrot Flowers" and "Holland, 1945." Anyway, as a big NMH fan I was glad to see someone playing their music. (I've got a post on NMH in my draft folder; sit tight.)
Anyway, I left the show completely satisfied. Thanks to the storm, it took me two hours to traverse what is normally a 30-minute trip. Exhausted as I was, it was worth it.
Set List
The Modern Leper Fast Blood Old Old Fashioned I Feel Better Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms The Twist Backwards Walk Head Rolls Off Floating In The Forth The Greys Square 9
Poke (acoustic) Song Against Sex (NMH cover) Keep Yourself Warm
Opening Acts
Not much to report. Pants Yell! was okay, not too shabby for a local band. David Karsten Daniels, on the other hand, seemed preoccupied with his elaborate foot-switch setup when he should have been connecting with the crowd. When the material doesn't line up with the crowd or the other two acts, but you still need to keep someone else's crowd amused, you really can't be taking minutes between songs to draw attention to your bells and whistles like that. He lost me after two songs.
subtitle: "And Why Their New Album Sucks As Much As Anything Else They've Done"
Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if I was Robert Christgau. Universally respected, receiving dozens of promotional CDs every week, holding the taste of American music nerds beneath my thumb, saving my audience from devolving into musical ignorami. Whenever the blogosphere echo-chambers itself into an insulated consensus on something that is plainly, clearly crap, this desire dominates my thoughts.
That has been my state of mind since the release (actually, since the online leak) of Animal Collective's new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion. I personally believe Animal Collective is the worst popular band on the planet. This includes the likes of Katy Perry, The Fray, and such. Those acts are treated as what they are. Animal Collective is very much not; they are praised to high heaven for things that they very plainly are not doing.
Of late, it has been impossible to read a music blog without encountering some sort of moronic embellishment of AC's place in American culture. (Actual importance: zero.) And after two solid months of this, I'm on my very last nerve.
I have taken a lot of time to think this through. My dislike for AC is very much a rational, cold-blooded loathe. I do not like them, Sam I Am. There are things they've done that I like, but these are very clearly an exception. They stand for everything I despise in music. I simply wish they did not exist. I wish they'd never met each other. I wish at the very least that they each had the goddamn common sense to listen to the "music" they make together and never lift a microphone again.
But more than the music itself, their place in conversation irritates me to no end. I'm flatly shocked that anyone who knows a single fucking thing about music would be ignorant enough to consider them anything more than a curiosity. They are built to appeal to a minority of weirdos, to be taken with an entire shaker of salt. You don't see people clamoring for mainstream acceptance of Aphex Twin, or Squarepusher, or other freak electronic acts.
And yet that is the tenor of any discussion when it comes to AC. They are extremely popular within an insular circle of highly abnormal people, located far from reality, that apparently has taken it upon themselves to speak for the rest of us. Any website worth my attention has batted around this ridiculous Colbertian meme: "Merriweather Post Pavilion. Great album, or greatest album?" It is a discussion for lunatics who need to leave their homes before presenting their final answers. Who died and made Animal Collective king?
To make clear, my objections are not based on taste. I roll my eyes when someone raves about a piece of shit band like Grizzly Bear or No Age, but poor taste in music is not the issue. Loathing aside, I will grant that there is an audience for this kind of music. This is very much the most ridiculous critical response to music I have ever witnessed.
The problem, to me, is one of defining the basic terms of the discussion. Love or hate, music has certain qualities that cannot be argued. Happy, dreary, energetic, angular, poppy... there are grey areas for sure, but for the most part these are qualities that are is-or-isn't propositions.
Animal Collective's supporters, to a person, are using alternate definitions of terms that no rational listener could possibly use. They are describing something completely different than what you will hear. And as the last 20-30 years of politics have proven, if you refuse to define your terms the way everyone else does, you cannot have a dialogue.
Let's break down exactly where the problems lie:
"Something accessible and complete" - Pitchfork album review
Um, no. It is exactly as inaccessible as anything they've ever done. I have a very tolerant and patient ear now, and I cannot fucking bear to sit around and wait six minutes for Animal Collective to get to the point of their song (if they ever do). I will grant them credit for a veritable cornucopia of bits and pieces of ideas. But they are satisfied just with that, with taking one idea and repeating it ad nauseum for 7-8 minutes. Complete, yes. A complete fucking waste of time.
"Danceable and insanely catchy" - Pitchfork track review of "My Girls"
Well, maybe not. If I learned anything from my time with MPP, it's that "My Girls" is actually a pretty good song. It has glaring weaknesses, but I do see why it would have some appeal. It's the closest they come to a real song, though it still lacks anything besides its main musical idea. It's harmless.
That said... the whole song is Panda Bear wailing away over a chord progression (another rarity for them) that doesn't go anywhere. And this is what passes for "insanely catchy" these days? Really? Really??? "My Girls" should be treated as what it is: a step forward, but still very Animal Collective. But because "My Girls" sounds like fucking "Hey Jude" compared to everything else AC has done, they are giving it that much credit. A guy uses echo effects on his voice, ONE technique Brian Wilson used with the Beach Boys, and suddenly they ARE the Beach Boys.
To me, it's like the Chris Rock routine where he talks about people being proud of themselves for things they're supposed to do. "I take care of MY kids," "I ain't never been to jail," and so forth, with Rock's reaction being "of COURSE you supposed to take care of your kids!" This apparently is how everyone thinks Animal Collective just reinvented music because they employed a chord change. If you expect me to give them a pat on the fucking back for that, you are barking up the wrong asshole. Their next accessible and complete musical idea will be their first.
"Gorgeous," "Animal Collective's music is for everyone's world" - PopMatters, author of which is named for what I think AC's music is most accurately described as
"Gorgeous" isn't a universal word, so my objections to that are beyond the topic. It's a word that gets most critics into a hole in my book. They will pick up some faux-choral piece of shit like Grizzly Bear or Joanna Newsom and praise it for its beauty. Earth to critic: it is a fucking lo-fi indie rock record that cost $4000 to record, so no, it's not fucking beautiful. It exposes the author as someone who has never heard a symphony, or isn't caught up on his Miles Davis. In this context, it just makes you look stupid.
As to the suggestions of universality, I laugh in your idiotic fucking face. No, Animal Collective is not music for the world of your average black kid in Roxbury, now is it? Or an 85-year-old Southern socialite? Or a Tokyo schoolgirl? If the author thought for just one fucking second before typing that sentence, he would have removed it. Hackery at its finest.
Seriously. What is with the superlatives? I thought the job of the critic was to put something in perspective, not to hide the perspective up one's ass while typing away.
"Orgasmic rush of danceable rock" - Paste, in a truly embarrassing non-review
No, no, no. This guy compared Animal Collective to Girl Talk. That is so fucking obviously inappropriate that this dipshit should be barred from music criticism for the rest of his life. He moves on to suggest that MPP is a rave record by ending his review with "hand me that glow stick." Jesus Tapdancing Fucking Christ. He hit so many wrong buttons that I'm surprised he didn't use the P word.
Look, I have done my due diligence. I have studied MPP relentlessly, thinking that America cannot possibly be as stupid as I'd assumed. I was wrong. Hoping against hope that I had somehow missed some kind of revelatory advance in their music, I found that I had not. MPP is exactly the same droning, meandering, path to nowhere that their other work provides. "My Girls" is probably their best work, but it doesn't give anyone the ability to use the words that were used. None of the above quotes have any foundation in truth whatsoever.
The music being described by those quotes is The Hold Steady. LCD Soundsystem. Cut Copy. Hot Chip, maybe. Those are poppy, accessible acts. They share absolutely nothing with Animal Collective.
Here's our experiment. Below is a high-def embed of the aforementioned "danceable" song, "My Girls." So get on up and shake that thang!
Come on, let's see you dance to it. Go right ahead. It's danceable, right? If it doesn't look like the Elaine Benes dance, I'll be shocked. I want to see a wedding reception go bananas to this song. Because it's danceable, so naturally a group of regular people will dance to it, right?
See, that's what kills me. Use a better word, and I have no objection whatsoever. But if we can't agree on basic vocabulary, then we can't have a discussion. They've used a word that does not apply, but that they WISHED would apply... so it was used it anyway.
There is a baseline, control sense of these words that you have to consider before using them to describe this weirdo, hipster shit. Ignore the general sense, and you either look like a fucking idiot, or you look like you're lying. If the average person were to hear from a litany of national food critics that the bowl of corn-riddled turds he's eating is in fact a hazelnut creme brulee with a raspberry amaretto reduction, apparently he'll eventually believe it. But not me. I'm not eating one kernel of Merriweather Post Pavilion. It's shit. It's a big bowl of shit.
Here's the deal. The method for connecting to Animal Collective's super-cerebral electronica is similar to that of the more inaccessible "free jazz" artists that emerged in the early 1960s. Ornette Coleman is considered an important artist; in my opinion, his entire career is a pile of nihilistic, anti-musical shit. Cecil Taylor, whose output is far more worthy of praise, was noted in the famous Jazz miniseries to have encouraged his fans to "study" for his appearances; I agree 100% with Wynton Marsalis's contention that music should not require homework. In each sense, Animal Collective's blueprint for appreciation is identical to Taylor's and Coleman's. Understanding them requires a non-musical approach, an emphasis on craft over the end product, with repeat listens a concrete requirement. You put in your homework and you get something out of it. No homework, no benefit.
I personally don't care for that, but that's what it is. It's not pop, accessible, danceable, or anything even remotely fucking close to that. It's homework. It's OBVIOUSLY homework.
So obvious, in fact, that I don't think the above quotes are simply wrong or misguided. They do not simply exhibit poor taste. The language used to describe MPP is so woefully inaccurate that I can't see it as anything other than reflexive opinions that could be used to describe any indie band making a leap.
But there's no leap. They WANT the band to have made the leap, so they make it for them. The cart has been placed before the horse.
In other words, the reaction is intentionally dishonest and misleading. The music has been set aside, leaving the context and growth to be considered apart from their actual achievements. A nation of buffoonish critics wants to elevate a pet band of theirs to prominence without merit, to flex its muscles just to show that it can do so regardless of whether there is justification. It's widespread, willful ignorance. And it makes all of us look stupid.
After all this venting, the question remains: what makes this such a special case? Why single them out? What harm are they doing?
It's very simple. Animal Collective is the Evangelical Christianity of indie rock. Harmless in theory, abusive and dangerous in practice.
* Their fans are more prone to proselytizing than any other band I'm aware of. They just cannot shut their fucking yaps about how awesome Animal Collective is, how they're so poppy and how everyone else needs to love them. Just like the average born-again. They can't tolerate anyone who thinks otherwise, can't understand why anyone would. The rest of us, those of us in the silent majority who do, can only roll our eyes at how hopeless, how detached from reality, one must be to feel that way.
* Just as evangelical wingnuts are allowed to control political discourse in America, Animal Collective wingnuts are allowed to dictate the future of music. The fundamental (so to speak) flaws in their belief is never addressed, because it's a matter of not looking like you don't get it. Just like political figures would never take a bat to the evangelicals like they deserve.
* It's not the band's fault, just like the evangelicals aren't God's fault. AC, much to my chagrin, are just doing their thing. I don't like it, but in a vacuum, they are free to do it. The off-the-mark reception and analysis of their music is the problem. Remember, God's a cool guy. His followers are the retards, not him.
* The holy-rolling clowns who praise Jesus and act on his behalf... the guys telling me to eschew condoms, to hate Muslims, to let the FCC parent my children... do not understand the fucking Bible one bit. But they follow Jesus anyway, to make sure everyone else knows they love Jesus more than you. Likewise, those who praise Animal Collective don't understand the music's flaws one bit, but they want so desperately to get Animal Collective that this is what their praise sounds like.
That last item is the killer. It's a group of people trying to will their nutbag idea of reality into the mainstream, without merit, just because a lot of people on the internet say so. If internet discussion has taught us anything, it's that the silent majority cannot be won over. Just because two hundred dopes on the internet say something, it doesn't mean that anyone else gives half a shit about it.
In my heart of hearts, the release of Merriweather Post Pavilion is an apocalyptic event in the world of music. It has exposed all of the very worst things about the internet revolution. It gives wingnuts a voice, much like the Bush administration did. But wingnuts they are. And nobody has stood up to call a spade a spade.
So here I am. Just like those who feel the need to walk up and down the sidewalk wearing only a pair of socks and a signboard, I'm here to warn you. The end is nigh.
UPDATE: I should reference this, just for clarity's sake. Having re-read Carles's post for the first time in a few weeks, the evangelism idea very clearly comes from his original observation. I'm not that clever.
I thought they were a one-hit wonder with "Maps," but that right there is friggin awesome.
Demetri Martin - These Are Jokes
"If I ever saw an amputee being hanged, I would just yell out letters." ROOOOOOFL
The Dismemberment Plan - Change and Emergency & I
The other shoe finally dropped. I get D-Plan now. They're all over the place and messy, which usually pisses me off... which is what bothered me before... but in this case the mess is a good thing! In the right hands, it works, and these are the right hands. What was I thinking?
