Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
Martin, your life really is flashing in front of your eyes.
Soon you will be the man in the high castle.
Soon you will be the man in the high castle.
Diggedy Derek
Stray Dog
I think it's very hard to dislike Franz Ferdinand- almost every track on their album could be a single, and although there's nothing there that couldn't have been done in 1980, it's never been delivered with quite this easy-sipping smoothness.
The Libertines are fairly rubbish, but a lot better than Athlete, Snow Patrol, Keane and that lot, all of whom should be physically restrained from entering a recording studio again.
To get all these indie bands out of the way in one post, The Futureheads are much better live than on their fairly disappointing debut album. That Hounds Of Love cover makes me shrug, too.
The Libertines are fairly rubbish, but a lot better than Athlete, Snow Patrol, Keane and that lot, all of whom should be physically restrained from entering a recording studio again.
To get all these indie bands out of the way in one post, The Futureheads are much better live than on their fairly disappointing debut album. That Hounds Of Love cover makes me shrug, too.
S
simon silverdollar
Guest
henrymiller said:
Last edited by a moderator:
redcrescent
Well-known member
The point is, he wasn't, AFAIK.
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Diggedy Derek said:
Not for me it isn't.
Believe me, I don't find it difficult to recoil in depressed horror from that dry as brickdust, stiff as arthritic joints guitar sound.Because for me THERE IS NO GOOD INDIE. Indie, guitar rock, whatever you want to call it, is a priori bad: it was defined reactively from its very inception, it will never not be reactive, it can't be.
Listen to the sold dreams, the lowered expectations, the thousand different ways of coming to some accomodation with the so-called reality principle that subtend all defences of shillyshambling. 'It's new to the kids': i.e. exactly the same argument we exoriated ten years ago in 'Pomophobia'.
Does anyone really think that, yeh, much better to have Doherty and fucking Elbow rather than the Kinks and Joy Division? In which case, why defend them? Making it TOO EASY for indie windies to have their delusions of competence and relevance ludicrously confirmed is a major part of the syndrome.
stop listening with your head.
'up the bracket' is irrepressible in terms of energy and emotion. of course it sounds like old music but it doesn't matter how old the music is if it makes you feel, and music that makes you feel is rare. that's why they're celebrated. listen to it again without the preconceptions you brought to it first time. don't expect to hear something new and then you will hear something new.
do not let the poor/stylised production prevent you from hearing the energy and the songs.
'the libertines' is jaded and worse in the same way that many 2nd albums are cf 'de la soul is dead'.
sadly although i have seen them twice they were missing pete on both occasions so i did not get the same sense of emotional energy and connection.
on the other hand franz ferdinand is all surface in the same way that girls aloud is. no emotional connection involved. but very good melodic and lyrical sense - which sells - despite it being empty. i think people may carry on buying franz ferdinand but they will never be passionate about them like the (smaller number of) people that buy the libertines stuff.
yes we are still waiting for something truly new. but it's coming. it will be punk in the sense that it will be totally DIY and controlled by the creators, in the same sense that grime is punk. but it will involve guitars and music software being used in different homemade and non-audiophile ways.
'up the bracket' is irrepressible in terms of energy and emotion. of course it sounds like old music but it doesn't matter how old the music is if it makes you feel, and music that makes you feel is rare. that's why they're celebrated. listen to it again without the preconceptions you brought to it first time. don't expect to hear something new and then you will hear something new.
do not let the poor/stylised production prevent you from hearing the energy and the songs.
'the libertines' is jaded and worse in the same way that many 2nd albums are cf 'de la soul is dead'.
sadly although i have seen them twice they were missing pete on both occasions so i did not get the same sense of emotional energy and connection.
on the other hand franz ferdinand is all surface in the same way that girls aloud is. no emotional connection involved. but very good melodic and lyrical sense - which sells - despite it being empty. i think people may carry on buying franz ferdinand but they will never be passionate about them like the (smaller number of) people that buy the libertines stuff.
yes we are still waiting for something truly new. but it's coming. it will be punk in the sense that it will be totally DIY and controlled by the creators, in the same sense that grime is punk. but it will involve guitars and music software being used in different homemade and non-audiophile ways.
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Girls Aloud versus guitar pop? Do me a favour, no contest. Surely it's obvious to anyone that while Trad Jazz like Franz Ferdinand and the Libertines will be so forgotten that they won't even be an embarrassment, the few sparks of real - that is to say, thoroughly artificialized - pop are to be found in GA, Britney, Rachel Stevens? They are the real parallels to The Beatles, Kinks and Motown - as everyone knows, they were similarly derided in their own period as frothy and unserious by comparison with 'real' 'serious' music like Trad.
And it's precisely because the Libertines trade in cheap emotional stim that I detest them. Those maudlin hormonal hymns to the eternal values of huMANity... stop them, i've heard it so many times before....
You can't 'listen to things without preconceptions'. It's up to the pop to overcome those preconceptions. And the Libertines and FF and all those other indie windy wispy r and r waifs seem to be bending over backwards to confirm mine.
And it's precisely because the Libertines trade in cheap emotional stim that I detest them. Those maudlin hormonal hymns to the eternal values of huMANity... stop them, i've heard it so many times before....
You can't 'listen to things without preconceptions'. It's up to the pop to overcome those preconceptions. And the Libertines and FF and all those other indie windy wispy r and r waifs seem to be bending over backwards to confirm mine.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
2stepfan said:You're winding us up! Old farts indeed
But the Libertines are just SO empty...
Disagree, I like a good 6 or 7 tracks and I like the fact he hasn't lied, apart from the "too much press" I'd like to see them live and have a beer with them.
... I'm actually beginning to quite like Franz Ferdinand though. All their songs are flawed but the good bits of say take me out are, well, good. Best of all they can actually say something in interviews -- they rocked on radio four
Seen them a few times, nice dancing but it's like watching 3xBruce Foxton, alreet but they are so square, they probably knit at their after parties!
Ness Rowlah
Norwegian Wood
So the fact that FF is/try to be "clever" means that their music cannot be judged as pop music?
Compare Rachel Stevens last single with almost any FF tune. Where FF bounce, Rachel limp.
I like FF as pop, not as "post post-punk" or art. I had exactly the same problem with The Bravery
when I first saw them (on Jools), too cool to be true. But "An Honest Mistake" is just too good.
I've struggled with shitloads of these bands (from Elastica to Interpol);
but I like FF - not for reaching the depths and heights of the great postpunk bands, but just for
being good pop music. It might try to be pop music with smoke and mirrors, pop music
with a raised eyebrow and not pop-instamatic like Britney. But it's still good pop music -
even if the bands themselves might come across as poseurs (then again -
most NY bands from Velvet Underground onwards had this).
As for who will be remembered or not - Duran Duran and Bob Geldof have both
recently been honoured for their "contributions to music".
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Martin Dust said:
Well they must be utterly sublime, then, if people want to 'have a beer with them'.
As for Franz Ferdinand trying to be clever - sorry, what is clever about producing thin photocopies of Postcard bands from 25 years ago? They aren't clever at all, they are 'clever' - canny enough to sell words that are in reality babble but whose very obscurity and meaninglessness can be sold to the witless and undemanding (i.e. rock fans) as 'intelligent'.
Ness Rowlah
Norwegian Wood
k-punk said:
Ehh - K, that's why I used "clever" (surrounded by Scandinavian-style doublequotes).
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
k-punk said:
Getting fucked with him would probably end in my death, so beer will do for now, easy...I'd make my mind up when I've met him until then, I'll go with what I feel.
Holy Bejesus, have a word! Clever enough to make a living from something they love.
michael said:Pretty much this entire thread is premised on the fiction that music progresses over time.
Perhaps "idea" sounds less like a dismissal than "fiction", but I just mean not fact.
This has been another "so what?" post.
it certainly changes though, reacts and reflects things socially, perhaps it predicts the future sometimes whether or not it progresses, and all this rock stuff could'a been made 20 years ago or anytime within so why is such importance leveled at at, that's not a so what post.
B
be.jazz
Guest
I said I enjoyed the song. More or less in the same way that I enjoy "Toxic," "Some Girls," "Lose My Breath" and so on. I don't base this enjoyment on whether or not something is classified as indie guitar music or whatever.k-punk said:
Yeah, totally fair enough.
I think the easiest answer is that novelty (new-ness, not gimmicks) doesn't come into the equation that a lot of journalists and listeners use to assess the music.
Well, more specifically I think absolutely truck loads of people still love the tenets of rock 'n' roll. They want spectacle, they want something they can jump around to in their bedrooms, they want something they can jump around to with other people, they want lyrics they can sing along to about big fun, they want it to be tough and staunch and maybe a bit heroic, and definitely not faggy. Oh, not to mention played on real instruments by real musicians.
Things that might denote something being more contemporary might even get in the way of at least one of the above.
Why these contemporary bands get off lightly in comparison to the Kinks etc. is because
Lyrically, you do get plenty of indie bands who sing about contemporary "issues".
I don't know why you then get yr Coldplays and so on as the "step above" for sensitive young souls, but I'm thinking about stuff more like the Libertines.
Oops, gotta go.
mms said:
I think the easiest answer is that novelty (new-ness, not gimmicks) doesn't come into the equation that a lot of journalists and listeners use to assess the music.
Well, more specifically I think absolutely truck loads of people still love the tenets of rock 'n' roll. They want spectacle, they want something they can jump around to in their bedrooms, they want something they can jump around to with other people, they want lyrics they can sing along to about big fun, they want it to be tough and staunch and maybe a bit heroic, and definitely not faggy. Oh, not to mention played on real instruments by real musicians.
Things that might denote something being more contemporary might even get in the way of at least one of the above.
Why these contemporary bands get off lightly in comparison to the Kinks etc. is because
Lyrically, you do get plenty of indie bands who sing about contemporary "issues".
I don't know why you then get yr Coldplays and so on as the "step above" for sensitive young souls, but I'm thinking about stuff more like the Libertines.
Oops, gotta go.