The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have a new album coming out. According to this, apparently it’s all about synthesizers and dancing. I haven’t even tried to listen to their leaked tracks — I have absolutely no interest.
I used to like this band. Turns out I was duped.
I said it before and I’ll say it again — any music that encourages dancing is music that I never want to listen to.
Here are a few points that I feel I need to declare before I start.
1. I love Grandaddy, and The Software Slump in particular.
2. I generally hate Pitchfork.
I was looking up this album on Wikipedia, hoping that there was something new and interesting about this album that I could learn. There wasn’t. But I did click on the link to the Pitchfork review. What a mistake that was.
It’s been almost 10 years since this album was released. When evaluating a work of art, knowing when it was made helps you determine the context. But, and this is apparently very important, the album was released sometime in early 1999. So much of the review is spent talking about how this might be an early contender for “album of the year.”
I don’t understand why critics fixate on these arbitrary year-to-year distinctions. Especially in a review. And especially in a review that is available on the internet 10 years after it was first written.
People talk an awful lot lately about how online journalism (blogging) is killing print journalism. Every time I read something on Pitchfork, it makes me sad because even smelly old Rolling Stone is better than this garbage. And it’s never the albums they choose to review or their ratings or anything like that — it’s entirely their tone that bothers me. See this old post.
Still, I guess 8.5/10 ain’t half bad. I give this review, however, a 1.475 out of 10.
I recently found out that Robert Quine, nephew to W.V.O. Quine (one of my favorite philosophers) was in The Voidoids. What next, do I find out that Kurt Cobain is Adrian Frutiger’s great grandson?
None of this matters in any significant way, but it makes me feel all tingly inside.
UPDATE: He also played guitar on Girlfriend. Jim DeRogatis once said that the guitar solo on Serve The Servants sounds like Robert Quine.
This is why I hate pitchfork.
Their editorial style is about two (tiny) steps above myspace.
I think it goes without saying that I think a real editorial style is a good thing.
I can Just imagine the creation process for this ad. “Should we make it ‘WTF!!!!!!!!111111′ or just ‘WTF!!!!!!!!’?”
At this point I read the damn site just because I don’t want to miss the (some) of the news they report. I have to sift through their cutesy bullshit and indie-posturing crap all because I don’t want to miss bands playing near me. I mustn’t forget to mention, in this ad, how they are downplaying their influence. “OMG! RADIOHEAD IS PLAYING FOR OUR LITTLE STUPID WEBSITE THAT NOBODY READS!” Fuck you, and also, fuck you. How did you get so important? How did this happen? I would love you if you didn’t have such an insufferable attitude about everything.
Also, I think that hipsters, as we know them in the 00s, wouldn’t exist without Pitchfork. I can’t really back that up, but I would love to be able to prove it some day.
I bet they have meetings where they tell writers to submit less professional writing. I just know it’s true. It has to be, or my fragile little world would collapse.
Stop sharing your rips of cds with scratches on them. You almost make me want to pay for shit. Christ.
Bob Mould, you must have some sort of strange ear disease that makes you think your albums are mixed/mastered well. They aren’t. I love you anyway.
I hate electronic music.
This is not entirely true. But it is, for the most part.
Here is a handy list of some of the qualities of electronic music that I find unfavorable.
1. It is often amelodic
2. It is usually programmed, instead of performed
3. When it is made to sound like live instruments often it does not
4. Much of it is entrenched in genre (club music)
5. Tends not to have vocals
6. Much of it sounds alike
7. The fans tend toward douchebag
Many of these things could be said about other genres of music. 1, 4, 6, 7 apply to Phish/Greatful Dead style jam bands — Classical gets 4, 5, 6, 7, and so on.
I don’t want it to seem like I’m only hating on electronic music. Really, this is about all bad music — I just use electronic music as an example.
I like some. Ladytron, I believe, is all performed on synthesizers. But it has vocals, and it is quite melodic, so I like it. I appreciate Aphex Twin/Squarepusher type music, but I don’t listen to it all the time. I appreciate their experimental qualities.
For some reason I like Daft Punk. I think it’s because the music often has a pop structure, but it is undeniably electronic music and has much of that connotation — it is definitely of that world and I shouldn’t like it.
Prefuse 73 is pretty cool.
I hate LCD soundsystem and all the other DFA records crap.
It sickens me that Death From Above 1979 died and its only musical successor (so far) is MSTRKRFT.
Anyway. This is all very clearly defined — in my head. What does this say about how I view music in general?
1. I like guitar.
2. I like vocals.
3. I like melody.
4. I prefer music to be performed on instruments, rather than “triggered.”
5. I like it when the lyrics “say something.”
Notice how this list also eliminates most hip-hop.
Update: I have read Stephen Fry’s latest and this has shed some new light on the subject.
Music for dancing vs. music for listening — I, in general, prefer music for listening. I also prefer medium– to fast-paced music, so there’s a lot of overlap there with the dancing and the not dancing. Nirvana is often fast– or mid-tempo, but you can’t dance to it. I wouldn’t. But I love it. I would tap my foot to it, or fake-drum to it, but never dance. It can inspire me to move, yes, but dance, no.
I do not detest dancing as much as he does. I do not like it as much as the rest of the world, however. I dance, perhaps, about two times every three years. But I listen to a lot of music that makes me want to move. This seems contradictory.
The answer is cultural. I don’t want the music to be presented to me as dance music. Music should be music. It should be listened to. Music expressly created for dance does not hold up well when you listen to it. It is intended to be felt rather than heard. It is intended to facilitate interaction with other people (dancing), not as pure art. It has other purposes.
Music “as pure art” also has social implications. I talk to friends about it. I go to shows. I share mp3s with friends. But, at the root, the experience of it is only me and my brain. I don’t feel that I have truly listened to a song until I am at home, with headphones, concentrating, listening. It is happening only in my brain, without the distractions of glitter-encrusted halter tops and cheap vodka.
So, although the music I listen to has roots in dance (the same could be said of all music, most likely) I have come to appreciate it on a much deeper level - with my brain rather than with my feet. My solipsism is showing again.
Much electronic music is dance music. So I hate it, because it’s not really intended to be listened to.
My apologies. This really needs to be edited.