SF Music Club - The Albums

Originally Posted by milosz

Click to expand...

But since her blog had nada to do with Pitchfork...
Yeah, I already said that I mistakenly thought you were tying the two together between your consecutive posts.

Erm... no. She's discussing the dominant mode of indie for the last, say, six or seven years. (I blame Conor Oberst.) Obviously Brownstein doesn't think all of it has been **** - and she even compliments some of the blander acts - and points out the areas of non-mainstream music that have been wild and experimental. 'Indie' has certain pornographic connotations these days - we know it when we see it. Times New Viking, The Antlers and the Drive-By Truckers are all theoretically "indie-rock" - but if you were to ask a somewhat musically knowledgable individual (or a PFork reader) their genres, you probably wouldn't get indie as an answer to the first and third.

Click to expand...

I guess this is where we disagree. Nevermind that the easy listening side of indie goes back further than the last several years (twee?), I don't think that this easy listening indie is really the dominant mode of indie, but that she is just projecting her listening history onto this non-genre of indie rock.

But it's just so pathetic. Not only that your idea of contemporary music (presumably good contemporary music) is received from external sources, but that you think one particular source suffices as a source.

Click to expand...

I think you have my view on music backwards. I really don't buy into good and bad music, as long as it's not overly trite, only what I can and can't relate to. I'm aware that that is a cliche claim, but I really do make every effort to understand an artist's work on its own terms. And if nothing else, I'll listen to music for the sake of listening to it, like a glutton eats food. But as for Pitchfork, I see it its relation to current popular music what a sore throat is to a cold. It may not define the disease, but it's a major symptom. Enough so that I can confidently claim that of all people who would make a top 10 list of albums of last year, that a good majority of those albums would be on Pitchfork's list. Pitchfork is very in tune with what's going on in current music, regardless of whether you like their articles or their readership, and I really don't know how you would deny this.

I wonder how much of Pitchfork's readership is Asiatic.

Most Asiatic young people seem to have utterly uninteresting musical tastes.

I did not enjoy this album.

Originally Posted by Dedalus

Click to expand...

I guess this is where we disagree. Nevermind that the easy listening side of indie goes back further than the last several years (twee?), I don't think that this easy listening indie is really the dominant mode of indie, but that she is just projecting her listening history onto this non-genre of indie rock.
I'd say there's a semantic distinction between "indie" and "indie rock" (and between Brit "indie" and American "indie," for that matter) that needs to be made. Indie-rock belongs to an earlier time ('80s through the mid-90s) and was defined heavily by label size, and by the bands not falling easily into other categories (the Pixies weren't punk and they weren't pop and they weren't traditional rock...). Today, indie has little to do with label size and more to do with sound.

Twee, in both American and British forms (K Recs, C86, etc.), wasn't easy-listening indie. It was very much kin to early punk and rather lo-fi and noisy. "Easy-listening indie" (I do like that term) occasionally sounds similar (via Belle & Sebastian, IMO), but they don't sound much alike. This is a movement that birthed Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, after all.

I think you have my view on music backwards. I really don't buy into good and bad music, as long as it's not overly trite, only what I can and can't relate to. I'm aware that that is a cliche claim, but I really do make every effort to understand an artist's work on its own terms.

Click to expand...

Yeah, yeah, yeah "it's all about art being successful on its own terms, man."
I don't disagree - confronting art on its terms is important, it's how you can find the value in Godard and Bring It On.

But when we want to become critical theorists to the point we can no longer render value judgement, art gets boring.

Pitchfork is very in tune with what's going on in current music, regardless of whether you like their articles or their readership, and I really don't know how you would deny this.

Click to expand...

Pitchfork is in tune with a certain demographic, and there seems to be a feedback loop between the two - the e-hipsters like what PFork tells them to like, and PFork rarely strays outside of their comfort zone.

Originally Posted by milosz

Click to expand...

Pitchfork is in tune with a certain demographic, and there seems to be a feedback loop between the two - the e-hipsters like what PFork tells them to like, and PFork rarely strays outside of their comfort zone.
So says the guy who wrote that he hasn't read Pitchfork in seven years. I am too lazy to respond to the rest of your ridiculousness, it's pretty sad how people are trumpeting about how much they hate pretentious hipsters yet you are so indignant, stuck up and insistent on why you hate this whole "movement" or genre or "indie" thing or however you want to parse it. It is unbelievable how much hate is in this topic, do you guys have to battle through throngs of spouting pretentious hipsters everyday or something? I go to a small private liberal arts college and most of the kids around me don't even know about a lot of this ****.

Originally Posted by AndrewRyanWallace

Click to expand...

So says the guy who wrote that he hasn't read Pitchfork in seven years.
I am aware of it, and encounter it via other parties in music discussions, and I have a broad idea of what they review and how it's treated. Kinda like how I don't watch Fox News 24/7, but I've got a good idea where they'll come in on any given issue.

I am too lazy to respond to the rest of your ridiculousness, it's pretty sad how people are trumpeting about how much they hate pretentious hipsters yet you are so indignant, stuck up and insistent on why you hate this whole "movement" or genre or "indie" thing or however you want to parse it.

Click to expand...

But I didn't do any of that. I don't hate 'indie,' I like some of it, and generally I wish it were better.

It is unbelievable how much hate is in this topic,

Click to expand...

Defensive much?

The out of touch line does strike a chord, though. I am out of touch with what we might call the indie zeitgeist (or alternative, if you prefer) - I don't read the magazines or go to the indie movies or listen to the music as much anymore. But it's not because I lost interest in the new, tastes changed - as we got more of the 'easy-listening indie' and American indie film got more toothless, it got harder for me to keep up with the things I do like. They got more obscure, labels I knew changed or disappeared.

The combination of not having an easy clearinghouse for my tastes (if only I could just look to PFork or whomever) and having less time to work at it (lol adulthood, other interests and hobbies) means I couldn't give you a top 10 for last year, much less a top 25 or something. When I get to explore 'new' music, it could be from a scattering of years - going through the Holy Mountain catalogue to see what's good, rather than following what's new from week to week or month to month.

Originally Posted by milosz

Click to expand...

I am aware of it, and encounter it via other parties in music discussions, and I have a broad idea of what they review and how it's treated. Kinda like how I don't watch Fox News 24/7, but I've got a good idea where they'll come in on any given issue. But I didn't do any of that. I don't hate 'indie,' I like some of it, and generally I wish it were better. Defensive much?
Please. Indie doesn't mean anything anymore dude. We might say it generally means "underground" in a sense that it's music people who just listen to the radio and watch MTV will probably never hear of, but even that is pretty misleading given how big the biggest bands of the "indie scene" are. You might call me or see me as defensive but honestly, I don't really identify much with hipster culture ("hipsters" usually dress like **** and are kind of weird and smelly) though I figure a lot of the old timers would mistake me for a hipster. I do think Pitchfork does a pretty good job with contemporary music, I do think contemporary music is ******* awesome, and I do think that a number of people who have posted in this thread are either a) out of touch or b) hating for reasons that appear to me as strange and superficial. I guess I expect too much of SF sometimes? There are a number of posters who have said they didn't like the album and gave good justification and I can't argue with that. It's not one of my favorite albums but I do think it's good. Not everyone has to agree. I don't get the people who go ranting about damn indie music and how music is no good anymore cause of them damn hipster granola kids. Where the **** do you live? Not saying this is necessarily you milosz.

Originally Posted by milosz

Click to expand...

The out of touch line does strike a chord, though. I am out of touch with what we might call the indie zeitgeist (or alternative, if you prefer) - I don't read the magazines or go to the indie movies or listen to the music as much anymore. But it's not because I lost interest in the new, tastes changed - as we got more of the 'easy-listening indie' and American indie film got more toothless, it got harder for me to keep up with the things I do like. They got more obscure, labels I knew changed or disappeared. The combination of not having an easy clearinghouse for my tastes (if only I could just look to PFork or whomever) and having less time to work at it (lol adulthood, other interests and hobbies) means I couldn't give you a top 10 for last year, much less a top 25 or something. When I get to explore 'new' music, it could be from a scattering of years - going through the Holy Mountain catalogue to see what's good, rather than following what's new from week to week or month to month.
Jeeze. No big deal, just go to pitchfork.com and read some stuff dude. I don't think the Fox news analogy is quite appropriate because even though we know Fox news is full of ****, we still see it now and again and this confirms what we already know. Your friends may tell you Pitchfork sucks and panders to ehipsters or whatever but you should really take a peak and make an informed opinion before you totally write it off. In the time it's taken us to go back and forth here, you probably could have read a couple of reviews and listened to a few songs of artists you've never heard of before. Whether you like it or not, Pitchfork is more or less the bar for contemporary music right now. On the other hand, there are plenty of contemporary music blogs that can easily be found through google.

Originally Posted by AndrewRyanWallace

Click to expand...

Please. Indie doesn't mean anything anymore dude. We might say it generally means "underground" in a sense that it's music people who just listen to the radio and watch MTV will probably never hear of, but even that is pretty misleading given how big the biggest bands of the "indie scene" are.
That's less true now than ever before. Indie has more specificity today than it did 20 years ago, when presence on an independent label was pretty much it. Indie has wider exposure today, via PFork and Gossip Girl and satellite radio and MP3 blogs and so on than it had when people were photocopying zines and getting 120 Minutes once a week.

You might call me or see me as defensive but honestly, I don't really identify much with hipster culture though I figure a lot of the old timers would mistake me for a hipster.

Click to expand...

I get mistaken for one, too, even though I looked like a Neil Young roadie circa 1972 until I cut off my hair.

I say defensive because I'd say there's an overreaction to the 'hatred' of indie here. It's an easy target, sure, so people take shots. And some are doing so jokingly.

Jeeze. No big deal, just go to pitchfork.com and read some stuff dude. I don't think the Fox news analogy is quite appropriate because even though we know Fox news is full of ****, we still see it now and again and this confirms what we already know. Your friends may tell you Pitchfork sucks and panders to ehipsters or whatever but you should really take a peak and make an informed opinion before you totally write it off. In the time it's taken us to go back and forth here, you probably could have read a couple of reviews and listened to a few songs of artists you've never heard of before. Whether you like it or not, Pitchfork is more or less the bar for contemporary music right now. On the other hand, there are plenty of contemporary music blogs that can easily be found through google.

Click to expand...

I'm not saying Pitchfork sucks or that people are telling me so - I just pick up references to it in discussions at I Love Music (where I used to be fairly active, there are a lot of music writers posting there). I'm saying that when last I read PF on a semi-regular basis, they were covering music I didn't care about. And they still are, from the PFork approved bands I've heard (they review things I enjoy as well, but that's not the primary focus of their coverage).

The Pitchfork thing is a derail, really - I only talked about them because a few people were chalking up the anti-Antlers sentiment to Pitchfork-indie backlash. I was saying that, for my part, I don't read Pitchfork positively or negatively and that wasn't driving my reaction.

Originally Posted by milosz

Click to expand...

That's less true now than ever before. Indie has more specificity today than it did 20 years ago, when presence on an independent label was pretty much it. Indie has wider exposure today, via PFork and Gossip Girl and satellite radio and MP3 blogs and so on than it had when people were photocopying zines and getting 120 Minutes once a week.
.

You're right, but this is also sort of my point. Except that it has no specificity anymore today, it's an empty word concept like how everyone talks about "calories" and "anti-oxidants", mostly people don't know what the **** either of those things actually are, they just talk about them because they're buzzwords. Indie is a buzzword but on top of that it's actual referents at this point have become so pulled in different directions that I think the word just causes more confusion than anything.

As for everything else you said, that's all good dude.

I never hated on "indie" music or "hipsters" and I don't read PF because I don't listen to much PF music, and I don't care about PF opinions. I just don't like this album. Still.

Seems like some people around here are really defensive about other people not falling in line and being music commies with them. Sorry brah.

blah blah blah discussion of very subjective taste on the internet blah blah blah.

I just listen to hella Chris Isaak. I am a chrispster (tm).

Originally Posted by Magician

Click to expand...

I just listen to hella Chris Isaak.

I'm cool with that.

By the way, what the hell is "Gossip Girls"? Is it a tv show?

Chris Isaak just records the same song over and over. But it's an awesome song, so I'm okay with that.