Random Music Talk XXIII: Give Me Butt Meat or Give Me Death

[Jive Turkey]

You guys dont like to watch other dudes talk on their cellphones for half an hour???

 

[BoMac]

So I've got a $30 gift card... what season 1 American TV comedy should I get? Parks & Rec? Curb? Entourage? Or go completely left-field and get Community though I've never seen an ep?

Modern Family

 

[Jive Turkey]

I'd post this in the Beady Eye thread, but no one would see it.
Liam on Oasis getting back together (in response to Alan McGee saying they would):

"(McGee is) wrong isn't he? And a couple of little cunts moaning on the fucking internet going, 'Oh it isn't fucking Oasis,' aren't going to bother me. They're going to make themselves fucking sick if they don't get over it.

"It's like wanting your girlfriend back after she's fucked you off. You'll end up getting yourself ill. They're not going to get me knocking on someone's door saying, 'Come on let's get back together'. It's done, mate. We had a great time. Beady Eye is where we are now... Get rid of all the Oasis songs and just bathe ourselves in Beady Eye."

Don't take the news to hard, you moaning cunts

 

[LemonMelon]

So one of our bubblegum pop stations just played a dance remix of Use Somebody, with a Casio'd techno beat, vocal effects and everything. It truly is one of the worst things that could ever be done to your ears, although Lance's mom might know better. On the plus side, at least I now know what shit sounds like, if the question ever arises on a game show or something.

 

[iron yuppie]

It is testament to Ms. Khan's talent that she is able to make the song listenable, pleasant even:

YouTube - Bat For Lashes - Use Somebody (Kings Of Leon Cover)

This version shows that there is a decent chord progression at the heart of the song; the bombastic vocals and super-earnestness of the original are what destroy it, I think.

 

[powerhour24]

So I've got a $30 gift card... what season 1 American TV comedy should I get? Parks & Rec? Curb? Entourage? Or go completely left-field and get Community though I've never seen an ep?

Community, seriously you will not regret it. Parks and Rec is OK but the first season stunk, Entourage is obnoxious. Community is the funniest new show since 30 Rock.

 

[powerhour24]

Speaking of Community and music:

YouTube - Community: Gettin' Rid of Britta by Some Worries

 

[powerhour24]

And this of course

YouTube - Community - "La Biblioteca" - Abed and Troy Rap

 

[LemonMelon]

Buffalo Springfield was a fucking great band. Crosby, Stills and Nash blows, but Buffalo Springfield was totally worthy of Neil Young's talents.

YouTube - Buffalo Springfield - Expecting to Fly

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Two more great Community music moments. Best show on TV.

YouTube - The Way It Is Greendales Theme

Although it was even better during the actual episode.

YouTube - Annie's Song by Vaughn - Community 1.15

I like your nose.

His songs are dumber than he is.

 

[Imperor]

Now I need to find the scene where Pierce plays Annie off.

 

[powerhour24]

I want to put up Senor Chang's rap but I can't find a clip where it doesn't get cut off.

 

[powerhour24]

Oh, how could I forget Shirley's most brilliant secular holiday song:

YouTube - Sensitive Night - Yvette Nicole Brown

 

[iron yuppie]

Apparently Arcade Fire and Portishead are going to co-headline a tour in the near future. That should be quite the spectacle.

 

[Jive Turkey]

This is my favourite thing Senor Chang has been in

YouTube - What's It Gonna Be?

 

[cobl04]

Well I bought it and just watched the pilot. Promising stuff... Jeff doesn't seem like an endearing character but I'm betting he goes on a trail of discovery as he gets to know these other people better. Laughed a few times.

 

[martha]

Buffalo Springfield was a fucking great band. Crosby, Stills and Nash blows, but Buffalo Springfield was totally worthy of Neil Young's talents.

I like the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Greatest Hits record, So Far.

 

[PhilsFan]

The pilot is probably the weakest episode of the series, if I recall it correctly.

 

[powerhour24]

Good prediction Cobbly, and I'm glad you made an excellent choice, I'm actually watching it right now.

 

[cobl04]

The pilot is probably the weakest episode of the series, if I recall it correctly.

I had a feeling that would probably be the case, it usually is with most shows, so looking forward to it. The DVD is packed with extras too so well worth the $25.

Britta is hot.

 

[mobvok]

I was listening to Zoo TV Sydney again after having wandered away from U2 for awhile and was struck by, for lack of a better word, how sound it is. I know I know, there's probably some swanky Lovetown bootleg where the band's even better, but as far as song selection and performance it's a really fine document.

I approve of Community discussion! Hope to see you in the Community thread soon.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

I think Jeff's hot. And that's all the more I'll say .

Glad you went with that show, cobl, I hope you like the rest of the season the further you go on. There's some classic moments in there. And thanks to all who've shared the musical bits from that show as well . Nice choices, everyone.

I think that the best-of package Shaking the Tree does a nice job of encapsulating his early solo career. I would start there.

In terms of albums, III, IV (also known as Security), and So are all excellent. I also love Passion, which is probably the strongest soundtrack that I have ever heard. It's a Middle-Eastern style, largely instrumental album. I would stay away from I and II initially, as both are unfocused and uneven. I am also not terribly fond of Us, although some rank it highly.

Oh, I'd actually been referring to his Genesis work, but hey, given that I said before I don't own any of his solo albums (though I think I've heard nearly every single song off of So at some point in my life), this certainly helps, too . Judging from what I recall being on all those various albums, I'd imagine the order you suggested there sounds about right, so I'll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks for the recommendations!

It is testament to Ms. Khan's talent that she is able to make the song listenable, pleasant even:

YouTube - Bat For Lashes - Use Somebody (Kings Of Leon Cover)

This version shows that there is a decent chord progression at the heart of the song; the bombastic vocals and super-earnestness of the original are what destroy it, I think.

Oooh. That was good, I liked that a lot.

The biggest reason I'm not into that song in its original form is that it got played TO DEATH and I'm just really kind of sick of it. But that's more the fault of radio/TV than anything else. Otherwise the song (and Kings of Leon in general) are more or less just there for me *Shrugs*.

But her version was fantastic . Thanks for sharing that.

I've no doubt the dance remix of that song would suck. I'm generally not a big fan of dance remixes of songs in general-either they're used on songs that aren't meant to be dance-oriented to begin with ("My Heart Will Go On" dance remix, anyone? Remember that?), or they're used on songs that are already danceable enough in their original form and it just seems sort of...redundant.

I may totally be missing the point of dance remixes, though, so feel free to correct me, anyone, if I've got it all wrong.

Angela

 

[cobl04]

There's a "dance" remix of October lying around. It's hilarious.

Geez I create good discussion sometimes

 

[iron yuppie]

Oh, I'd actually been referring to his Genesis work, but hey, given that I said before I don't own any of his solo albums (though I think I've heard nearly every single song off of So at some point in my life), this certainly helps, too .

Oh...sorry for the confusion. As for Gabriel-era Genesis, I would begin with Selling England by the Pound. It is a nice distillation of the whole "forest fantasy" type of sound and much more manageable in terms of length and content than Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

 

[bono_212]

DAFT PUNK LYRICS - Around The World

 

[Imperor]

Britta is hot.

Cool understatement, bro.

 

[PhilsFan]

And she's not even the hottest one on that show.

 

[Imperor]

Well yeah. Having the hottest woman on the planet there too isn't exactly fair to Gillian Jacobs.

 

[powerhour24]

It took until she steps out in that red dress at the Valentine's Day dance for her to go from good-looking but too old-looking for me, to holy fuck she's hot. But Allison Brie was adorable from ep. 1.

 

[BoMac]

This article terrifies me because I sort of see music moving in this direction. It also scares me because it sort of mirrors what Boner has been saying about NLOTH and the band's desire to get on the radio again. I fear for how their next album might sound.

Anyway, what do you guys think of what the writer is saying?

Want a Hit? Keep It Simple
By JON PARELES

LATELY I’ve been having a recurring sinking sensation. A hit on the radio gets my attention and doesn’t repay it; it adds up to little more than a dull thumping Eurodisco beat and a robo-tuned voice repeating an inane hook, something like the “Ay-oh, gotta let go,” in Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” or Justin Bieber piping, “Baby, baby, baby, oh” or the Black Eyed Peas chanting “Imma Be” more than 100 times (though at least that song goes through some rhythm changes).

O.K., I shrug, that’s just pop radio. Predictable catchiness is all that matters, nobody’s looking for much content, and current audience research tells radio stations that robo-voices and simple beats are the bubble gum du jour. No big deal.

So I head for an alternative: indie-rock, realm of the self-conscious, self-guided maverick. Standing at some club alongside earnest music fans awaiting blog-anointed artistes, what do I hear but a beat straight out of an old girl-group record, some familiar doo-wop chords and songs like Best Coast’s rudimentary (but enjoyable) “I Want To,” which repeatedly declares, without fear of ambiguity, “I want you so much.”

Hey, wait a minute. this is starting to sound like bubble gum too. And I start to wonder: Is everybody dumbing down?

Well, strictly speaking, not everyone. The grand album-length statement and the rhapsodic, convoluted song lived on in 2010 releases by the Arcade Fire, Titus Andronicus, Joanna Newsom, Erykah Badu, Ne-Yo and, dopey as some of his lyrics can be, Kanye West. But musicians like those come across now as holdouts and outright contrarians against the dominance of three-minute, two-idea tracks — of the pop song as little more than a sound effect and a sound bite.

The pressures on musicians to keep things simple are obvious. What have become all-too-familiar 21st-century refrains — too much information, too little time and the diminished attention spans that result from trying to cope — have only grown more insistent through the decade.

The recording technology of loops and samples encourages unimaginative producers to repeat something merely adequate for the length of a song rather than developing or enriching it. Playback from MP3s through cheap earbuds rewards the brittle and tinny, not the lush and subtle. And as sales of recorded music dwindle, the incentives only increase to write songs around nuggets and generic sentiments that can be repurposed as ad jingles, ring tones and soundtrack backgrounds.

Brevity and digestibility make a song more functional, at least in the short run. And if you grow completely sick of a tune or performer after a while — Katy Perry’s album “Teenage Dream,” despite the popularity of its title track, and “The Beginning,” Black Eyed Peas’ successor to their ubiquitous, hit-packed 2009 album, “The E.N.D.,” both made sales chart debuts below expectations last year — there’s always another act with another gimmick and slogan, the next novelty offering instant gratification and a short shelf life.

On a larger scale these are rough economic times. Consciously or not, pop has been reverting to precedents from past downturns. Depression-era swing and 1970s disco responded to listeners’ yearning for a danceable beat and an uncomplicated, upbeat message to propel them through hard times.

Yet we’re not getting a 21st-century Duke Ellington out of this recessionary phase; instead we’re getting warmed-over Giorgio Moroder electronics and voice processing, although it’s now more digital than analog. It’s an austerity program, demonstrating how to get by while scrimping.

Concision, admittedly, is the essence of pop: its discipline, its challenge, its genius. To tell a story or sum up an attitude in a handful of sung verses or a salvo of hip-hop rhymes, and to unite them with music that lodges those words in memory — and, at best, also summons the feeling behind them — is a songwriter’s job description. And it doesn’t have to mean sacrificing ambition.

A brief time frame can hold a lot: all the chordal transformations of Tin Pan Alley or 1970s R&B, all the vocal fireworks of Aretha Franklin, all the rhythmic intensity of James Brown, all the electroacoustic metamorphoses of Radiohead, all the colliding samples of Public Enemy, all the internal rhymes, comedy and psychodrama of Eminem in his prime.

Yet musical or verbal complexity can easily add clutter rather than depth, not to mention idle pretension. That’s why popular music regularly goes through back-to-basics purges like punk (both the 1970s and 1990s editions), electro (with iterations in every decade since the 1970s) and for that matter rock ’n’ roll itself.

Minimalism can be a corrective and a clarification, a reminder of primal pleasures and impulses, a knowing rejuvenation. The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica sees that spirit in the approach of Best Coast and kindred stripped-down bands that are due for albums this year, a strategy he has labeled the New Simplicity. And it’s true that if that style doesn’t generate its own orthodoxy, it could turn out to be endearing. Someone just might write the new “Wild Thing” or the new “Hey Ya!” Too often, however, less is merely less.

In a twisted throwback to the 1950s and 1960s pop songwriting has been partly returned to backstage hired guns: producers (and teams) like Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Stargate, Polow Da Don and David Guetta. They’re not concentrated geographically in places like Tin Pan Alley or the Brill Building though, and they’re not the total Svengalis of the old days. Instead they send digital files that bounce around the world for tinkering, and their singers supply some portion of lyrics or personality. But all the songwriting by committee inevitably leads to homogenization, and it’s also constricting pop’s subject matter.

Romance, as always, is the main topic, but the lyrics of radio-ready pop often pretend that the only relevant zone of human interaction outside the bedroom, the only place that matters, is “the club,” and even more claustrophobic, the V.I.P. room, where the main options are drinking brand-name booze, bragging about sexual conquests and enumerating designer accessories. (Maybe it’s the modern equivalent of those 1930s musicals that were set in glamorous cabarets while people were on bread lines, though the 21st-century story lines are far less heartwarming.) Kesha, the biggest breakthrough pop act of 2010 (abetted by Dr. Luke), has devoted herself to songs about partying: seduction and rejection, hooking up, getting drunk and getting wild. They’re trashy, selfish, catchy and often hilarious — smart pop storytelling in a circumscribed realm.

In recent years indie-rock has been open to a stampede of possibilities: sculptured noise, vertiginously layered counterpoint, progressive rock, metal, African rhythms, vintage and ultramodern electronics, various generations of rediscovered funk and hip-hop, lyrics that are cryptic or hectically clever and dozens of strategies all described as psychedelic.

That’s not to mention quietly determined bands like Spoon or Tokyo Police Club that are still trying to write snappy four-minute songs that contain multitudes.

But indie-rock is second-guessing itself yet again, busily justifying dumb fun as if it’s unavailable elsewhere. Bands that used to bristle with cacophony — like Deerhunter and No Age — cut back on it last year, reflecting either a newfound serenity or a longing for accessibility (or both).

Meanwhile the revivalism that’s always part of indie-rock is surging again — not only in the 1960s echoes of Best Coast, but in the straight-faced early-1970s revivals of blog-beloved bands like Free Energy, Gayngs and Local Natives. So-called “chillwave” bands that emerged in 2009 and gained momentum in 2010, like Neon Indian and Washed Out, set their synthesizers for retro tones and repetition — musically not all that different, despite what they may be mumbling in their lyrics, from more mainstream pop and hip-hop.

Indie-rock may be lagging, as it typically does, behind the cycles of hip-hop, which reached its anti-intellectual trough in the mid-2000s when crunk was king. There are still club boasts and drug-trade chronicles, but largely thanks to Mr. West’s best-selling example, other subjects are re-emerging from the sidelines: complex thoughts on celebrity, stray political observations, personal confessions and a psychological complexity that hip-hop’s old cartoon personas would rarely allow themselves.

So with any luck a turnaround is in store for other sectors of pop as well. With so much musical and verbal content stripped away, there’s ample room for restoration without excess, a resurgence of songwriting that’s still streamlined and classic but not condescending.

The pop mainstream hasn’t ruled out craftsmanship entirely. Taylor Swift, 20 years old and now writing her own songs on albums that — rare in the 21st century — sell millions of copies, comes up with natural melodies and moments of elegance: “I am not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white-veil occasion,” she sings in “Speak Now,” as she disrupts a wedding.

The sweet-voiced Bruno Mars deftly embraces the four-minute, four-chord economies of doo-wop, Motown and reggae songwriting, and he plays the nicest of nice guys, without getting too sappy, in most of the songs on his album, “Doo-Wops & Hooligans.” In “Grenade,” his latest hit, he slings imagery like a younger Smokey Robinson. And then, tucked near the end of the album in “The Other Side,” he offers a warning: “Truth of the matter is, I’m complicated.”

That’s a promise to live up to.