Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Stay Tuned

I'm trying to put some cool shit up for you guys, but having some trouble, so in the meantime I'll hit you with one of the best (and thankfully, least talked about) entries in last year's nĂ¼-emo phenomenon 'Chillwave', a genre that will probably cease to exist this year due to hipsters' extreme fear of seeming trendy.


While you're groovin to that, and in honor of Arcade Fire's new, soon-to-be-celebrated turd of an album, you can read these wise words by Jon Savage (the guy behind stuff like this):

"Is there anything going on today in music that's interesting you?

It's difficult. It's definitely an age thing. Most modern rock I just cannot listen to; I think it sucks. People like Arcade Fire... suck. What are all these men doing with these old-guys' beards, and they're in their late-twenties, and they've got these horrible brown beards that are a different color from their hairdos? What is that all about? It's retarded. It's boys trying to be men. One huge major suckathon, I'm sorry. It just doesn't rock. Rock music has got to have that primal urge in it. It's gotta make you want to drive your car 130 miles per hour, take class-A drugs, have bad sex, and just be irresponsible and vile.

Pop music has become a victim of its own success. When I was a kid it was definitely marginal, it was for the weirdos and the freaks and the mutants and the people who wanted to be different. And now it's just the same as everything else. So I tend to listen to a lot of electronic music. Because it sounds modern. You know, like it was made in 2010."

See, motherfuckers? I'm not so 'out there'. Hell, we could take that as the TNRR manifesto. Vindication is sweet when it comes from guys like Savage and Green Gartside (of Scritti Politti, who writes nuanced and subtle music that most people can't understand - see below):

"People who enjoy this album [Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible"] may think I'm cloth-eared and unperceptive, and I accept it's the result of my personal shortcomings, but what I hear in Arcade Fire is an agglomeration of mannerisms, cliches and devices. I find it solidly unattractive, texturally nasty, a bit harmonically and melodically dull, bombastic and melodramatic, and the rhythms are pedestrian. It's monotonous in its textures and in the old-fashioned, nasty, clunky 80s rhythms and eighth-note basslines. It isn't, as people are suggesting, richly rewarding and inventive. The melodies stick too closely to the chord changes. Win Butler's voice uses certain stylistic devices - it goes wobbly and shouty, then whispery - and I guess people like wobbly and shouty going to whispery, they think it signifies real feeling. It's some people's idea of unmediated emotion. I can imagine Jeremy Clarkson liking it; it's for people in cars. It's rather flat and unlovely. The album and the response to it represent a bunch of beliefs about expression and truth that I don't share. The battle against unreconstructed rock music continues."
He gets it. Do you?
Scritti Politti - The Word Girl (Flesh & Blood)

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