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unregistered33
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How did we get to this point where indie music fans generally take the side of a main-est of mainstream rapper’s soundcheck over the actual set of a hugely influential rock band? A band that paved the way for all of the other Seattle bands that you either still like now, liked then, pretended to like then, pretend not to like now and/or will like later? What the hell happened?
This is a good list. However, if you are going to count Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson’s earliest teenage/pre-teen work, it’s worth pointing out that Bjork recorded an album when she was about 11 years old, thus qualifying her entire solo career for this list, including, of course, Post. Also, as cited above, Animals and The Wall qualify and are pretty damn good.
Anyone who doubts Pink Floyd is a great band should either stop judging them based on hearing two-minute snippets of ‘Money’ and/or ‘Young Lust’ while flipping through radio station presets or they should go see an audiologist.
Green Day, post-Dookie, is a terrible, terrible band. All of their biggest songs are blatant ripoffs of better songs by The Beatles, Oasis, Bryan Adams, etc. and that whiny voice is more auto-tuned than Ke$ha’s. In short, they are the worst band to ever attain their level of popularity.
I gotta say, that album cover is both tacky and kind of awesome simultaneously.
I am pretty sure Opeth’s Heritage blows the doors off of anything on this list (don’t take Brandon Stusoy’s word for eveything on the heavier end of the spectrum). Ditto The King of Limbs. Folks were just dying to hate a Radiohead album and finally saw an opening when they released something that wasn’t quite epic in scope.
Yeah, it’s amazing how all these lists are so similar when there are literally tens of thousands of releases in a year at this point. Who exactly listened to all of them just to make sure that none of them are better than Bon Iver? And if you need the imprint of a label to take something seriously, then you are really not any different from someone who needs to hear something on terrestrial radio in order to take it seriously.
I meant that the cheesy yacht-rock-esque sounds are being used ironically, not that the songwriting or lyrics are necessarily ironic. I am not a big Steely Dan fan, but, yes, their lyrics are as ironic as it gets at times.
I barely see loud music anywhere on this list or anywhere on a lot of the other lists. I don’t think soft sounds are transgressive at all. Maybe they were in 1995, but certainly not now. My problem with this bumper crop of soft rock is that the songs are boring, the chords are boring and much of it is done ironically (not Bon Iver but a lot of it). It sounds like film or TV score trying to evoke early-eighties music, rather than sounding like actual early-eighties music. Maybe because it is easier to ignore that that is the point of it. Well-written songs tend to be conspicuous and maybe background music is all anyone is after anymore.
I really don’t think Liturgy is any more musical than most of the black metal out there at this point. Their sophistication is over-hyped, or, perhaps, more accurately, black metal’s musicality in general is underestimated. Krallice, Wolves in the Throne Room, Agalloch, etc. are all musical. Even, say, Xasthur seems to have a method to his madness. And going back towards the beginning of the genre, Emperor, a cornerstone of Norwegian black metal was highly musical, full of Wagnerian/Gesualdo-esque chord progressions and plenty of dynamics.
I cannot, for the life of me, fathom why that PJ Harvey album has gotten so much praise, especially when compared to her peers’ ‘The King of Limbs’ getting roundly dismissed. ‘Let England Shake’ is unlistenable dreck; the kind of turgid, self-important ’cause’ album that Sinead O’Connor might have made 21 or so years ago and Rolling Stone/Spin would have dutifully chronicled until things like, well, PJ Harvey came along and blew its doors off. (And I am not one of those ‘PJ Harvey hasn’t done anything worthwhile since Rid of Me’-types; in fact, ‘White Chalk’ might be my favorite album of hers). TKOL, understated as it may be, successfully melds the new sounds in the aether with good, old-fashioned musical know how and Radiohead stakes out new territory in a way it hasn’t since ‘Kid A.’
The thing is none of these soft-rock revivalists would ever have the audacity to actually make a cheesy, memorable song like ‘Africa’ or ‘Roseanna’, nor do they have the jazz chops to do anything even remotely as sophisticated as just about anything Steely Dan has ever done. It’s all pastiche crippled by irony and either a lack of musical ability or suppression of such ability in order not to appear too muso (or is now, in the parlance of our time, Muse-o).
The only things that makes Liturgy stand out (not that they are bad) is the lead singer’s blogging and that they come from Bard College instead of somewhere more Arctic Circle-adjacent.
I think it is time we’ve faced facts: Pitchfork is in middle age and needs some serious testosterone replacement therapy.
Seconded. Brandon seems to think it’s implicit. To my ears, Achtung has aged much better than Nevermind.
Kanye’s only genius is in fooling you into believing he is a genius.