can't believe how bad the Libertines are

[Grievous Angel]

Martin, your life really is flashing in front of your eyes.

Soon you will be the man in the high castle.

 

[Diggedy Derek]

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.

 

[simon silverdollar]

and i refuse to believe that ANYONE really likes stuff like athlete or snow patrol. people who think they like them don't really know what liking a band means.[/QUOTE

this second sentence is as rockist as can be: of course people like this music. obv people over a certain age don't because they've heard go4, and they know all about john lydon's ground-breaking new musik capital radio appearance 'can 68 suicide 74 i was there' yada-blah ain't lcd grand. but people who are, say, 17-18, or younger, don't know this stuff, and they connect with the music. sure the nme is telling them to, a bit, but that was true of the penmaniacs and morleyites and their fave bands 20 years ago. ver kidz aren't any more or less gullible now than then (though there are fewer of them, perhaps). you can argue the toss over modernism and be proved 'right' but you can't argue that the fans don't like what they like.

i was pointing out that the people i know who listen to athlete and snow patrol [and i know quite a few of them, in the late teens age group as i'm only a few years older than that myself] don't really seem to have any of the passion and enthusiasm for that music that is a large part of what i'd say being into music is all about.

this isn't a 'rockist' position at all, i think: i went to a happy hardcore rave on saturday night and there were hundreds of teenagers going crazy over the music they loved. being truly enthusiastic about music is surely a neutral position as regards 'rockism'? and i certainly wasn't condoning any lcd style 'you have to go right back to the beginning of the scene to know what yr talking about' stance. i hate all that stuff. i've never heard can or gang of four, and i don't feel that that makes me unqualified to comment on, or listen to, post-rock or post-punk.

in my experience, most people who like athlete, snow patrol, keane, 'use' this music in a different way from, for example, the happy hardcore kids- as a background to writing their essays, or something to listen to while doing the washing up, or whatever. that's fine, and i listen to music in similar ways quite often, but what worries me is that for many people of my age this is THE ONLY place music has in their lives. may be it's the NME's fault, may it isn't. i just find it sad, because i think there is music out there that for just about anyone to really love, and we're at the stage now where that kind of experience is lacking in a lot of people's lives. i don't know why: it could be that the media is 'failing' people by not giving them info on bands they can connect with, but i'm not sure.

of course some teenage indie fans love the music and it means a lot to them. but many don't. the time of large scale teenage cultures in pop music seems to have disappeared. for many people my age, music doesn't seem to matter all that much- a music scene sweeping the country like punk or rave or rock n roll did is hard to imagine now.




oh, and i actually do quite like some libertines songs, by the way.

 

[redcrescent]

'can 68 suicide 74 i was there' yada-blah ain't lcd grand

The point is, he wasn't, AFAIK.

 

[k-punk]

I think it's very hard to dislike Franz Ferdinand.

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.

 

[egg]

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.

 

[Flyboy]

It's the fact that people who think Girls Aloud are shallow also think Franz Ferdinand are shallow that make me put FF in a different, less damned category from most of the 'indie' discussed in this thread. That, and the tunes are better than Keane etc, of course...

 

[Flyboy]

I mean, if you don't think GA produce an emotional reaction then you haven't read some of the write-ups from G-A-Y on Saturday night...

 

[egg]

flyboy as in 'you want some, flyboy'?

 

[k-punk]

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.

 

[Martin Dust]

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]

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?

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]

I'd like to see them live and have a beer with them.

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]

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'.

Ehh - K, that's why I used "clever" (surrounded by Scandinavian-style doublequotes).

 

[mms]

cramp them!

 

[Martin Dust]

Well they must be utterly sublime, then, if people want to 'have a beer with them'. .

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.

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'.

Holy Bejesus, have a word! Clever enough to make a living from something they love.

 

[michael]

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.

 

[mms]

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.

 

[be.jazz]

Which bit of that couldn't have been produced in 1964?

Or, to put it another way: what is there in it that COULD ONLY have been produced in 2004?

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.

 

[michael]

Yeah, totally fair enough.

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.

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.