Despite the fact that I started laughing upon seeing an entire day of Beatles reviews, I don't really mind the fact that Pitchfork is doing that: it's certainly easier for them to pay one of their writers a few bucks to review some albums than it is to field a million emails asking why in god's name they didn't review the Beatles reissues, I mean the Beatles come on you have to right? And... well, you do.
In the interest of revealing my biases: from the age of birth to about ten or eleven, the Beatles albums from 1967 and before are practically all I listened to, so I'm quite familiar with them even though I haven't listened to them in quite a while. I'm also a bit biased right now because a guy just walked in to the room where I'm typing this wearing a Beatles shirt in pink type and too-long jean shorts and sat directly behind me.
I wasn't expecting to write this before looking at the reviews, but they're... overly straightforward, without going into much depth on cultural impact or influence or engaging in hyperbolic flourishes. Each review of the early albums takes a couple paragraphs to talk about the circumstances surrounding the recording, the overall sound of the record, and other such matters. The meat of the reviews, though, is what you'd expect to find more of in a longer Amazon review than on Pitchfork: track-by-track analysis that mostly boils down to "this is a good song" and "this song is not as good." This might be because the earlier Beatles albums were so much more straightforward and song-oriented, just randomly-assembled lists of the songs they had recorded recently. This might be a case of the grass always being greener, since I definitely didn't want an overly fawning "I'd never seen a shooting star before" review and definitely not one that namedrops Vampire Weekend, but the reviews are so hung up on the technical aspects (in the review of the remasters, especially their utterly ridiculous images of the waveforms off songs in stereo and mono just to prove it wasn't mastered too hot) and whether individual songs are good or not (in the individual review) that it doesn't take the time to discuss what should be most important: are The Beatles still culturally relevant? Should they be?
It's certainly honorable to discuss the albums just on their merits, but anyone can download these and say, well golly, A Hard Day's Night is a good pop song, or Devil In Her Heart is really forgettable. The reviewer's job shouldn't be to tell us what we can so easily find out for ourselves (or, in my case, what was driven into my head in my developing years). This might be more acceptable if it was a review of a record that people wouldn't know about or hear without the review- that is, more obscure acts. Then, you might be persuaded to get the album by it. With this, people know right off the bat whether they're interested in these albums before hearing the remasters. They're part of a shared culture, so talk about that. They have a unique position: they have entered a critical consensus as the unobjectionable; even the critics that don't lionize them only discuss their flaws in a larger discussion of how great they were. It is assumed that anyone with a best albums list will include at least one, if it's not genre-specific and the list is long enough. No band in history has ever been simultaneously the subject of so much music criticism, yet above it. Mainstream white culture assumes that everyone enjoys them or is somehow not normal. They've even transcended generations: the boomers simultaneously claim them and attempt to share them with later generations, unlike how they think of Woodstock as specifically "theirs."
What I'm interested in more than their music, at this point, is whether any artist will ever replace them, or whether the favorite band of the majority of teenagers twenty years from now will still be The Beatles. I'm a bit worried that this generation will still be playing them for their kids; that our music critics, after seeing the band all over the Rolling Stone lists, will place them just as highly. In a way, it impedes cultural development.
It's also really silly that the most popular band of all time has a bad pun as their name.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Review Roundup: The xx
"Their list of influences is potent but imperfect: Young Marble Giants (too shaggy and heavy-lidded); Japan (too robust and theatric); Glass Candy (too quick and glammy). Without one gimmick song they'll never be able to reproduce, without an alternate agenda, without a set-in-stone hip influence, the xx start to sound like a real actual band, even if, after dozens of listens, it's nearly incomprehensible to think that a group so fresh-faced produced xx."
-pitchfork, 8.7/10
"Though their cover art depicts only the starkness of white on black, xx is not an album of strict dichotomies. The xx deign (of course there’s a tinge of haughtiness involved) instead to operate dialectically: their debut is about an involution of opposition, the interplay of contradictions, about young Londoners proposing that between the ideas herein lies communication, not friction—yes, there’s a sinewy, nearly palpable tension in the delivery, but then reconciliation in full was never really their destination anyway. Its conversational nature distends beyond the aesthetic and thematic into that obscure realm of the contextual, where reception—felicitously divisive—quickly becomes the inevitable fracas between sensation and backlash." -cokemachineglow, 86/100
"There’s a singular bleakness to their debut album, which sounds like it’s been made by moonlight by a grim team of introverts, half-drunk and lonely. Listening to it with the level of attention it demands gives you a sickly jealous feeling at the intimacy, like reading other people’s love letters. It’s a waste of time looking for big hooks or moments of release, but absorbed properly this becomes quietly transcendent. Somehow, its songs are welcoming despite their insularity." -drowned in sound, 9/10
"From the first notes, xx has the feel of something special. The self-explanatory Intro sets the stall out with producer/drum programmer Jamie Smith fashioning a Timbaland-esque beat that creeps in unannounced below an off-kilter riff." -musicOMH, 4.5/5
"The XX, four kids from the dubstep heartland of south London, have quietly set up an emotional squat in those spaces, with bedsit-delicate love songs. It’s strange that such a traditional set-up (drums, bass, keys, guitars, voices) has resulted in one of 2009’s most unique debuts. The praise can be laid at the door of the band themselves: synths-and-beats man Jamie Smith produced the album himself and they draw together eclectic materials from avant-garde hip-hop to R&B to pure pop." -NME, 8/10
"this has nothing to do with r&b, these are outtakes from seventeen seconds. you morons are coughing up press release chest-thumping as if they were facts. r&b has beats and melodies and people that can sing. you know that part in dreamgirls when it shows the white people singing the soul record turned into sunshine pop? that's the xx except instead of normal white people it's incredibly impossibly unbelievably pale people." -me, zzz/xx
btw i listened to the first half of it
-pitchfork, 8.7/10
"Though their cover art depicts only the starkness of white on black, xx is not an album of strict dichotomies. The xx deign (of course there’s a tinge of haughtiness involved) instead to operate dialectically: their debut is about an involution of opposition, the interplay of contradictions, about young Londoners proposing that between the ideas herein lies communication, not friction—yes, there’s a sinewy, nearly palpable tension in the delivery, but then reconciliation in full was never really their destination anyway. Its conversational nature distends beyond the aesthetic and thematic into that obscure realm of the contextual, where reception—felicitously divisive—quickly becomes the inevitable fracas between sensation and backlash." -cokemachineglow, 86/100
"There’s a singular bleakness to their debut album, which sounds like it’s been made by moonlight by a grim team of introverts, half-drunk and lonely. Listening to it with the level of attention it demands gives you a sickly jealous feeling at the intimacy, like reading other people’s love letters. It’s a waste of time looking for big hooks or moments of release, but absorbed properly this becomes quietly transcendent. Somehow, its songs are welcoming despite their insularity." -drowned in sound, 9/10
"From the first notes, xx has the feel of something special. The self-explanatory Intro sets the stall out with producer/drum programmer Jamie Smith fashioning a Timbaland-esque beat that creeps in unannounced below an off-kilter riff." -musicOMH, 4.5/5
"The XX, four kids from the dubstep heartland of south London, have quietly set up an emotional squat in those spaces, with bedsit-delicate love songs. It’s strange that such a traditional set-up (drums, bass, keys, guitars, voices) has resulted in one of 2009’s most unique debuts. The praise can be laid at the door of the band themselves: synths-and-beats man Jamie Smith produced the album himself and they draw together eclectic materials from avant-garde hip-hop to R&B to pure pop." -NME, 8/10
"this has nothing to do with r&b, these are outtakes from seventeen seconds. you morons are coughing up press release chest-thumping as if they were facts. r&b has beats and melodies and people that can sing. you know that part in dreamgirls when it shows the white people singing the soul record turned into sunshine pop? that's the xx except instead of normal white people it's incredibly impossibly unbelievably pale people." -me, zzz/xx
btw i listened to the first half of it
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Stereogum
Hello, hip young music listener! Do you remember that band you thought was cool a couple weeks ago after Pitchfork gave them a 7.2? Do you want to be alerted whenever one of them sneezes or is recorded sneezing in slow-motion for their very arty music video? Do you want to sigh wistfully when you find out that this band has "made it big" and is going to be playing on The Tonight Letterman Hour? Well, you're in luck, because Stereogum is right on top of that mediocre act that you're sort-of-following and is ready to tell you the latest hot scoop! Stereogum is even more worthless than the usual review site that, even if you disagree with, you can at least say, "well, at least it provoked some discussion." Stereogum will, at best, provoke a half-hearted "oh, so that's what they're up to these days." Unlike sites with some sort of integrity, they don't even bother telling you about a new cool band more than once a week... oh wait, nevermind, they've done all of one of those since February. I wish I could critique all of the ballsy opinions that Stereogum gives on new music, but there aren't any. They used to have a handy though wordless feature of albums they had been listening to lately, but I guess that seemed too objectionable for a demographic that just wants to nod at a band name they've heard when they're mentioned on NPR.
You might think I'm being a little harsh on a harmless music news site... but I'm getting thrown off my usual game by the latest news story. It's about the fucking Beatles. In Two Thousand Fucking Nine. This might be excusable if it was just, say, a little tidbit that the remasters your dad is going to spend another $200 on have all leaked, but oh no! That would be journalism, since it's talking about a thing. Instead, Stereogum pops in to inform us that Entertainment Weekly, the must-read of the music savvy, has determined their Top Fifty Best and Ten Worst Beatles Songs. Maybe I'm overusing the initial caps, but Beatles Lists In Two Fucking Thousand Fucking Nine Fucking are way too important for anything less. Have some balls, Stereogum. Tell us in a terse story that people need to stop talking about, thinking about, and above all caring about The Beatles. Did I mention the year yet? Better yet, surprise us with a little bulletin that Ringo just died. Would anyone even notice, or would they get too distracted by the fascinating story that Ted Leo is, get this, working on another album?If you're going to go through all the effort of saying, well golly, a band has an album that they are working on/set to release/making videos for, at least have the common decency to come back and inform us whether you were wasting our time updating us on an album that no one should have paid any attention to at all. It's like giving someone a menu to a restaurant, then not telling them whether or not the food is any good or just a mound of MSG on a plate, like Bright Eyes.
I was about to see if the one obscure band they've covered since February of this year was any good, but he looks like this:
and there is absolutely no way I am going to subject myself to the sounds of anyone that looks that incredibly wacky. Oh wait, my bad, there was another one, but it's a singer-songwriter using their real name with a self-titled album so no way in hell on that either.
Discodust
Discodust is an electronic music blog that specializes in the sort of music that ignorant people think of when they think of electronic music ("techno"): repetitive, one pleasant vocal line repeated over and over, and a style that sounds like Daft Punk except… actually, there is literally no discernible difference between any song posted on Discodust and a Daft Punk track from the mid-90s. For those of you that don’t follow house, over the last couple years, people have mostly woken up from a Justice hangover and tried to make house- sorry, electro house- that’s more accessible and melodic, because if there’s anything that sounds great attached to a four-to-the-floor beat it’s an Ashlee Simpson melody.
Discodust distinguishes itself from literally thousands of similar blogs (such as the one it’s often confused with and vastly superior, though with a far less colorful layout, Discobelle) by simultaneously posting songs by any random producer with a pirated copy of Reason and also posting the same song thousands of times. I don’t know when people will read this, but just look at the first blog posting: is there a producer in an obviously posed picture with aviator sunglasses looking somewhere other than the camera with an expression of complete indifference? If there isn’t, you might have accidentally gone somewhere on the internet with interesting content. The dark secret to the genre of really boring house is that most of the producers are either fresh out of high school, or are recovering from a former life of playing drum and bass when it was popular and wearing camouflage in urban areas, just in case someone who knew them when they liked Pearl Jam recognized them on the street and they had to hide.
As of this writing, the latest track is by "gasaida," and since they look like the Gallagher brothers I'm going to assume this is a top-secret Oasis side-project and that Noel leaving the band was an elaborate ruse. Anyway, this new Oasis song has a two-note disco loop played really softly with an accompanying re-sampled vocal, to let you know the only three words you'll be hearing for the next seven minutes. After that, it has the standard kick-snare-kick-snare pattern and a sample that resembles C3PO falling apart. It's not really necessary to listen to the song to see if you agree or disagree; since every song on the blog has the same drum pattern (which is fine) and the exact same feel of a classic disco song that you can only hear through iPod earbuds set a couple feet away (which is not), you can choose one at random and form your own opinions. I'm a bit confused why this song was made so long: any DJ desperate enough to use it in a set could give people an idea of the song with just a minute and a half of it; since everything in it repeats without any elements entering or leaving it (the point of the extended dance mix), if you desperately wanted to play that much, just set it on an 8-bar loop and do some coke off your Macbook.
It’s pretty difficult to keep up with what’s posted on Discodust, since they usually post about two new entries a day (though it seems they went on hiatus recently). What this really does is reinforce the fact that the music they’re posting is supposed to be ephemeral: you’re not really supposed to enjoy it for longer than three minutes out of a five minute song. Instead, you’re supposed to download it twenty minutes before your opening set at a sleazy nightclub and play it to people who aren’t quiiiiite sure if they’ve heard THIS generic track before. Then, after playing it once, you leave it on your computer for a while until you forget what it sounds like and delete it. Quality and innovation is almost never the objective, it just has to fit in with the sound that people currently enjoy.
Rather than go back and soak up influences from a few years back, it just looks at those tracks and makes them over and over. Most genres, once they're established, have their own feel and aesthetic. The songs on Discodust, on the other hand, completely avoided this and just took the entire idea and feel of 90s filter disco and try to pass it off as a new thing. Discodust will never post anything of worth, because it’s fundamentally opposed to worthwhile music.
Pitchfork
The most difficult part of writing a review of Pitchfork is the fact that it means that I need to read one of their reviews to get some background knowledge. Unfortunately, after the first sentence of most of them, I instinctively attempt to read what's on the ceiling above me. If you can make it through an opening paragraph with gems like:
"Used to be, people would sit down and listen to that lengthy piece of music from front to back in one sitting, resisting the urge to jump to their favorite parts or skip over the instrumental interlude that served as grout between two fuller compositions. These antiques were called CDs. Here's a story about the last of its kind."
without wanting to smack the author in the face with a Pink Floyd box set, then this blog post probably isn't for you, since you'll be a bit busy at your day job of being the most non-aggressive person on the planet. It's become a cliche at this point to say that Pitchfork takes themselves too seriously, because it's such an obvious fact that it's seeped deep into our DNA. When the Commies finally let loose their nukes and only a few people on some South Pacific islands will still be alive, their children's children will know for a fact that, whatever something called Pitchfork is, they're a bunch of assholes.
It's almost too easy to copy and paste a quote from a review of a Radiohead album, since I'm pretty sure that even the editors that work in what has to be the most exclusive office building in Chicago have quoted lines from the original Kid A review to each other and snickered. (If you're one of the few that hasn't seen it, go read it. It really is that entertaining.) This obvious fact is counterbalanced by the other fact that they re-reviewed a few Radiohead albums last week and still had the same slobbering prose that usually comes from a Magic the Gathering player who just saw a Batman movie. Partially aside from their devotion to incredibly boring bands such as the aforementioned, everything they write, whether it's a piece of news about the latest Jay-Z album or a review of a compilation of Nigerian funk, is from the perspective of Radiohead fans. For example, the first line of the first review from the most recent day (Taken By Trees - East of Eden):
"Feels so unnatural-- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, too. The late qawwali legend has earned the admiration of singers as different as Jeff Buckley, Eddie Vedder, and Devendra Banhart. On 1989's The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack, he also worked with Peter Gabriel, who ended up releasing six of Khan's albums on his own Real World label. With so much indie culture these past few years stuck in the 1980s, Gabe fave raves Vampire Weekend are simply the most collegiate of recent bands returning to Toto's "Africa" for inspiration. Khan's native Pakistan has been comparatively overlooked."
The statements in this that I can actually comprehend (about half), along with Wikipedia, lead me to believe that the woman who made this album travelled to Pakistan to record some songs that were influenced by the absolutely adorable people there. Oh look, and they make music, too! Pitchfork doesn't really give a shit about any kind of music unless it directly influences, interacts with, or is otherwise intersecting with indie rock. To be fair, the album in question actually does have a cover of an Animal Collective song, with vocals by Panda Bear... wait, why the hell does that make this better? It just reinforces the fact that, for all their pretensions about being an all-inclusive music site with their biweekly review of an electronic dance music compilation and weekly hip hop review (7.2 and 6.4, respectively), they care about indie rock and that's it. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with being a site that specializes in one genre, but at least acknowledge it. It's especially important since, like it or not (I do not), they are by far the most influential voice in music criticism at the moment, despite the fact that this criticism is unreadable.
For those of you who don't read it obsessively like I do, a little background knowledge: instead of a sensible system of categorizing music, such as "this is good" and "this is not good," it's on a one to ten point scale to the first decimal place, because there's such a huge difference between a 5.3 album and a 5.7. In practice, though, they think anything under a seven is awful; thus, the vast majority get somewhere in the range of a seven, with a huge spike around 7.5 through 7.9. At some arbitrary point of "good" between 8.1 and 8.5, an album will be given "best new music" and quadruple its sales. If an album got an 8.4 but not best new music, well, sucks for your label because you can't move those with a UHaul.
They even make up trends, then talk about the death of that trend. There was no trend of lo-fi distorted rock over the past couple years, idiots, it's always been there. It's been there for a decade. You just started to pay more attention to it recently. In the review of the last Vivian Girls record, they talk about how it's faded away. The hell are you talking about, pitchfork? Just because every song you're reviewing is a semi-electronic summery song that sounds like you can take it home to your grandma, garage rock is still being made. Seriously! Go look! It's not a trend if you just decide you'd rather review a different style of music. Since the site is so influential, it's also pretty likely that if, say, they reviewed a polkacore album and gave it their maximum score for non-Radiohead albums (8.7), the genre would pick up steam among the thousands of music blogs that no one reads, thus calling more attention to other artists in the genre. Voila, trend.
And that leads to the newer part of the site: individual track reviews. They invented a new, innovative scale for these: instead of an album that can get rated 8.2 (if it's a band's debut), 7.4 (the follow-up) or 5.7 (the solo project after the band breaks up), individual songs can get rated anywhere from a 6 to an 8 using only whole numbers. Wow! It even has the added bonus of using a music streaming service that makes you register after you've listened to three songs. Fantastic.
As far as the only thing on the site that anyone actually reads, the lists: they used "ebullient" to describe Hey Ya!. I have no idea what that word means, and neither do you. Despite the fact that their end-of-year lists are a randomly-selected assortment of pop, r&b and mainstream hip hop singles sprinkled in at exactly a 2.5/10 ratio to indie rock (with none of them ever making the best albums list unless it's truly mediocre enough to appeal to them, like Lil Wayne), their taste is, often, pretty good: if you look at one of their "best of the decade" lists and criticize a large part of it (unless it's something like including too many rock albums), there's a good chance you're just really ignorant. Furthermore, they've popularized a good number of legitimately good bands. However, that really doesn't make up for horrible prose, a biased outlook and a complete lack of perspective.
"Used to be, people would sit down and listen to that lengthy piece of music from front to back in one sitting, resisting the urge to jump to their favorite parts or skip over the instrumental interlude that served as grout between two fuller compositions. These antiques were called CDs. Here's a story about the last of its kind."
without wanting to smack the author in the face with a Pink Floyd box set, then this blog post probably isn't for you, since you'll be a bit busy at your day job of being the most non-aggressive person on the planet. It's become a cliche at this point to say that Pitchfork takes themselves too seriously, because it's such an obvious fact that it's seeped deep into our DNA. When the Commies finally let loose their nukes and only a few people on some South Pacific islands will still be alive, their children's children will know for a fact that, whatever something called Pitchfork is, they're a bunch of assholes.
It's almost too easy to copy and paste a quote from a review of a Radiohead album, since I'm pretty sure that even the editors that work in what has to be the most exclusive office building in Chicago have quoted lines from the original Kid A review to each other and snickered. (If you're one of the few that hasn't seen it, go read it. It really is that entertaining.) This obvious fact is counterbalanced by the other fact that they re-reviewed a few Radiohead albums last week and still had the same slobbering prose that usually comes from a Magic the Gathering player who just saw a Batman movie. Partially aside from their devotion to incredibly boring bands such as the aforementioned, everything they write, whether it's a piece of news about the latest Jay-Z album or a review of a compilation of Nigerian funk, is from the perspective of Radiohead fans. For example, the first line of the first review from the most recent day (Taken By Trees - East of Eden):
"Feels so unnatural-- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, too. The late qawwali legend has earned the admiration of singers as different as Jeff Buckley, Eddie Vedder, and Devendra Banhart. On 1989's The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack, he also worked with Peter Gabriel, who ended up releasing six of Khan's albums on his own Real World label. With so much indie culture these past few years stuck in the 1980s, Gabe fave raves Vampire Weekend are simply the most collegiate of recent bands returning to Toto's "Africa" for inspiration. Khan's native Pakistan has been comparatively overlooked."
The statements in this that I can actually comprehend (about half), along with Wikipedia, lead me to believe that the woman who made this album travelled to Pakistan to record some songs that were influenced by the absolutely adorable people there. Oh look, and they make music, too! Pitchfork doesn't really give a shit about any kind of music unless it directly influences, interacts with, or is otherwise intersecting with indie rock. To be fair, the album in question actually does have a cover of an Animal Collective song, with vocals by Panda Bear... wait, why the hell does that make this better? It just reinforces the fact that, for all their pretensions about being an all-inclusive music site with their biweekly review of an electronic dance music compilation and weekly hip hop review (7.2 and 6.4, respectively), they care about indie rock and that's it. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with being a site that specializes in one genre, but at least acknowledge it. It's especially important since, like it or not (I do not), they are by far the most influential voice in music criticism at the moment, despite the fact that this criticism is unreadable.
For those of you who don't read it obsessively like I do, a little background knowledge: instead of a sensible system of categorizing music, such as "this is good" and "this is not good," it's on a one to ten point scale to the first decimal place, because there's such a huge difference between a 5.3 album and a 5.7. In practice, though, they think anything under a seven is awful; thus, the vast majority get somewhere in the range of a seven, with a huge spike around 7.5 through 7.9. At some arbitrary point of "good" between 8.1 and 8.5, an album will be given "best new music" and quadruple its sales. If an album got an 8.4 but not best new music, well, sucks for your label because you can't move those with a UHaul.
They even make up trends, then talk about the death of that trend. There was no trend of lo-fi distorted rock over the past couple years, idiots, it's always been there. It's been there for a decade. You just started to pay more attention to it recently. In the review of the last Vivian Girls record, they talk about how it's faded away. The hell are you talking about, pitchfork? Just because every song you're reviewing is a semi-electronic summery song that sounds like you can take it home to your grandma, garage rock is still being made. Seriously! Go look! It's not a trend if you just decide you'd rather review a different style of music. Since the site is so influential, it's also pretty likely that if, say, they reviewed a polkacore album and gave it their maximum score for non-Radiohead albums (8.7), the genre would pick up steam among the thousands of music blogs that no one reads, thus calling more attention to other artists in the genre. Voila, trend.
And that leads to the newer part of the site: individual track reviews. They invented a new, innovative scale for these: instead of an album that can get rated 8.2 (if it's a band's debut), 7.4 (the follow-up) or 5.7 (the solo project after the band breaks up), individual songs can get rated anywhere from a 6 to an 8 using only whole numbers. Wow! It even has the added bonus of using a music streaming service that makes you register after you've listened to three songs. Fantastic.
As far as the only thing on the site that anyone actually reads, the lists: they used "ebullient" to describe Hey Ya!. I have no idea what that word means, and neither do you. Despite the fact that their end-of-year lists are a randomly-selected assortment of pop, r&b and mainstream hip hop singles sprinkled in at exactly a 2.5/10 ratio to indie rock (with none of them ever making the best albums list unless it's truly mediocre enough to appeal to them, like Lil Wayne), their taste is, often, pretty good: if you look at one of their "best of the decade" lists and criticize a large part of it (unless it's something like including too many rock albums), there's a good chance you're just really ignorant. Furthermore, they've popularized a good number of legitimately good bands. However, that really doesn't make up for horrible prose, a biased outlook and a complete lack of perspective.
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