What music are you listening to lately?

[landho]

Originally Posted by Brian278

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...-1990s/page_10

Off the top of my head, I probably agree with six of their picks. (The offending members are Bee Season, I See a Darkness, and The Soft Bulletin. Entroducing..... presents a whole host of problems because I tend to think of hip-hop and general pop music separately, much the way I do jazz or classical music.)

I'd have to think about what I would round out my top-ten list with, but I think Odelay! has to make it....

 

[Brian278]

Originally Posted by landho

Off the top of my head, I probably agree with six of their picks. (The offending members are Bee Season, I See a Darkness, and The Soft Bulletin. Entroducing..... presents a whole host of problems because I tend to think of hip-hop and general pop music separately, much the way I do jazz or classical music.)

I'd have to think about what I would round out my top-ten list with, but I think Odelay! has to make it....

Well it did clock in at #19. Admittedly I've only heard maybe 35% of the top 30, but I think Homogenic got robbed by about 12 spots.

Anyway, certainly none of the top 30 are going to be bad albums, so I consider it a good starting point to expose myself to some things that were a bit before I started listening to this kind of stuff.

 

[Dedalus]

Originally Posted by landho

I think it's a misconception that you have to be constantly breaking new ground to be next level. Brian Eno, one of pop music's greatest innovators, said that the most innovative pop music was 94 percent derivative.

Odd, I always thought of next level as breaking new ground by definition. Does it mean something different to you?

I don't mean that music cannot be great if it is not groundbreaking. Artistic creation has to be derivative. But I think that remaining 6% is really important in a discussion of what is groundbreaking.

The music on S + E basically laid out the blueprint for every indie album that's come out since.

I strongly disagree with this, unless you are defining indie by Pavement's sound. What about Marquee Moon, Surfer Rosa, Laughing Stock, Spiderland, Loud and Horrible, etc.? Indie is just way too broad to attribute the sound to a single band, even generally speaking. The Fall accused Pavement of ripping them off, in any case.

Loveless's shadow is long, but its reach is short.

I don't agree with this either, although this one is harder for me to argue against. They were just so innovative that following bands could only be influenced by them in less than obvious ways. I'm going to take a cheap route and defer to Wikipedia:

Robert Smith of The Cure discovered Loveless after a period of almost exclusively listening to "disco, or Irish bands like the Dubliners" as a means of avoiding his contemporaries, and said, "[My Bloody Valentine] was the first band I heard who quite clearly pissed all over us, and their album Loveless is certainly one of my all-time three favourite records. It's the sound of someone [Shields] who is so driven that they're demented. And the fact that they spent so much time and money on it is so excellent."[67]

Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins told Spin, "It's rare in guitar-based music that somebody does something new [. . .] At the time, everybody was like, 'How the **** are they doing this?' And, of course, it's way simpler than anybody would imagine."[24] Corgan later recruited Alan Moulder to co-produce the Pumpkins' album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995).

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who praised the album's musical diversity and production,[68] also worked with Moulder on the third Nine Inch Nails studio album, The Fragile.[69]
...
Robert Pollard of indie rock band Guided by Voices acknowledged the album as a source of inspiration, noting, "Sometimes when I want to write lyrics, I'll listen to Loveless. Because of the way the vocals are buried, you can almost listen to the songs as if they're instrumental pieces."[34]

Loveless has also been said to have made a considerable influence on the career of British band Radiohead,[28] particularly influencing the band's textured guitar sound.[70] Instrumental band Japancakes covered the album in its entirety on Loveless (2007), replacing vocals with steel guitar and distortion with a clean sound.

 

[landho]

Originally Posted by Dedalus

Odd, I always thought of next level as breaking new ground by definition. Does it mean something different to you?

I don't mean that music cannot be great if it is not groundbreaking. Artistic creation has to be derivative. But I think that remaining 6% is really important in a discussion of what is groundbreaking.

I don't think that there's much new under the sun in the world of pop music. Oasis is an example of a band that was next level without being very innovative. They followed the path of The Beatles and The Stone Roses and wrote great songs and along the way influenced the course of pop music.

I strongly disagree with this, unless you are defining indie by Pavement's sound. What about Marquee Moon, Surfer Rosa, Laughing Stock, Spiderland, Loud and Horrible, etc.? Indie is just way too broad to attribute the sound to a single band, even generally speaking. The Fall accused Pavement of ripping them off, in any case.

On S + E, Stephen Malkmus said that when the band was at a creative roadblock, they just ripped off a Fall song. I thought this was hilarious as well as very revealing about the state of modern pop music.

Nothing comes from a vacuum. Pavement is the amalgam of many bands that came before them, but they synthesized those influences in a way that had never been really been done before. (And to me that's what pop-music innovation is these days: the synthesis of old ideas, casting them in a new light.) To say that Pavement doesn't cast a long shadow over modern indie music is either to be in denial or to be not listening hard enough. Pitchfork, the most influential indie music Web site out there now, lists two of Pavement's albums in its top-ten albums list of the 90s. They are the only band with this distinction. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the best pop-music critic of our generation, said

Pavement were one of the most influential and distinctive bands to emerge from the American underground in the '90s....[T]he group's aesthetics--a combination of elliptic, cryptic underground American rock, unrepentant Anglophilia, a fondness for white noise, off-kilter arrangements and winding melodies, songs that frequently had shifting titles, and literate, clever lyrics--were imitated by underground bands through America and Britain....one of the most popular--and the most influential--American indie rock bands of the '90s.​

I don't like Led Zeppelin much, either, but for me to say that they have not had a huge influence in the world of hard rock would be disingenuous or ignorant.

I don't agree with this either, although this one is harder for me to argue against. They were just so innovative that following bands could only be influenced by them in less than obvious ways. I'm going to take a cheap route and defer to Wikipedia:

Can you name one good album that is a direct descendant of Loveless? I can't, and I love that album. I have listened to it hundreds of times and have never found anything really approximating it. Here is an analogy: Ulysses is a work of singular genius that, like Loveless, was lauded by all of its creator's peers. Joyce was considered the greatest genius among a great pool of geniuses in 1920s Paris (including, among others, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, two of the twentieth century's best writers). But Ulysses more than anything else stands as a monument to Joyce's own genius. Everyone knows it, but nothing is directly born from it. If it acts as a creative touchstone for other works, then it does so obliquely--much as Loveless does.

(Also, I will note that hiring Alan Moulder doesn't necessarily mean that a band is trying to infuse their sound with MBV's; he's just a producer/mixing guy/engineer. He's really good at what he does, but in recent years he's worked with my friend's band and also The Killers, neither of which released albums that approximate Loveless.)

 

[Dedalus]

I'm not so sure I agree with you in opinion, but that refutation is too well-written to respond to.

 

[landho]

Originally Posted by Dedalus

I'm not so sure I agree with you in opinion, but that refutation is too well-written to respond to.

I'll buy you a bowl of pho if we ever cross paths in Delaware (assuming that Delaware has anything remotely close to decent pho!).

 

[Dedalus]

Originally Posted by landho

I'll buy you a bowl of pho if we ever cross paths in Delaware (assuming that Delaware has anything remotely close to decent pho!).

Haha, not that I know of, but I'm sure we'd find something.

 

[denimdestroyedmylife]

landho: i find your remark about loveless' influence to be odd. so many bands based their career around aping the MBV sound. flying saucer attack's entire catalog comes to mind. the lilys in the presence of nothing. slowdive's first few records. lush's first few. loveless spawned the shoegaze genre (that is somehow still kicking today). maybe i am misunderstanding you.

 

[landho]

Originally Posted by denimdestroyedmylife

landho: i find your remark about loveless' influence to be odd. so many bands based their career around aping the MBV sound. flying saucer attack's entire catalog comes to mind. the lilys in the presence of nothing. slowdive's first few records. lush's first few. loveless spawned the shoegaze genre (that is somehow still kicking today). maybe i am misunderstanding you.

I will admit that I am relatively unfamiliar with modern shoegazing; I always thought that shoegazing began with The Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain in the 80s and then MBV took it to its creative apex with Loveless. I genuinely believe in my heart of hearts that Kevin Shields was unable to follow up Loveless because it was a creative dead end. When I listen to Slowdive or Ride, I find myself wanting to listen to Loveless instead. I am probably being unfair, but I see shoegaze artists navigating very narrow straits, most of which were already mapped out by MBV. I feel the same way when I listen to Justice, however; I get a little antsy and find myself wishing that I were listening to Daft Punk instead.

That said, I think that just because a lot of artists follow in the footsteps of a certain artist or creative work doesn't necessarily mean that that artist/work has far-reaching, direct influence. My statements reads paradoxically, but what I mean is that the works of those influences have to be creatively vital as well and also to influence other artists also--that is, you can't just have others imitate or approximate your work; they have to use your work as a creative touchstone in their own artistic explorations as well. An example would be Richard Wagner, whose shadow over late-Romantic music was titanic and seismic. Those who followed him included Mahler, Debussy, and Bruckner--basically a who's who of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century classical music.

Of course, my perspective could be tainted by the fact that I've only dabbled in shoegazing music; as I understand it, MBV has had tremendous indirect influence on the world of pop music in general but directly has spawned a niche genre.

 

[Dedalus]

Amplive - Rainydayz Remixes http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/ Free music is good music.

 

[xchen]

 

[tvontheradio]

ehh minus the bear , there good i just hate how the singer sounds. Right i got in constant rotation would be :

Foals, The Walkmen, Tv on the radio, RJd2 , Vampire Weekend, Quantic!!!

 

[LabelKing]

Italian lounge lizard music from the '60s and '70s.

 

[xchen]

Originally Posted by tvontheradio

ehh minus the bear , there good i just hate how the singer sounds. Right i got in constant rotation would be :

Foals, The Walkmen, Tv on the radio, RJd2 , Vampire Weekend, Quantic!!!

I didn't really like them at first about 2 years ago but about 1.5 I started listening to the earlier stuff which sort of cemented them as one of my favorite rock bands. His voice is better at some times than others, and live he has the potential to be kind of bad.

I think this afternoon I am going to start listening to Feist heavily until Friday in anticipation of the show.

 

[shoreman1782]

The Smiths--Sheila Take a Bow
Tortoise--TNT
Ted Leo/Rx--You Could Die (or This Might End)
My Morning Jacket--I Will Sing You Songs
Iggy and the Stooges--Search and Destroy
Hot Chip--Sexual Healing
QOTSA--Go With the Flow
The Long Winters--Teaspoon
The Weakerthans--Left and Leaving
Spiritualized--Cop Shoot Cop