looking like a rad afternoon for seff
[…]
anyway. i looked through some “replies” and “reblogs” of my rad posts earlier today, and they were pretty hilarious, like “is this guy kidding” and “wavves is for assholes” — like i even care, wavves totally jumped the shark around the time my plane landed a couple hours ago, y’all need to keep up. it’s all about boardcore bands now, i love the way they work the bassoon into that sound. someone else was like “what about so cow,” but ‘sue got me into so cow like forever ago, that album’s like a whole two months ago, let’s all move on
so i texted ‘sue
geez, yall really care about this stuff
and he texted back
For better or worse, kinda yes, people care.
and i texted back
u realize thats why ppl are gonna like the wavvvves record, cuz he acts like he doesnt
and he texted back
Yes, I believe I posted about that back when I HAD A BLOG.
which is kinda funny, how in indiebrospace being a brat and throwing a little fit like “everyone shut up and leave me alone i’m bored and hate myself NYAH NYAH NYAH” is some kind of nice change? which makes no sense, but whatever, you know? some people rock the “i don’t give a shit” vibe about being really artistic and inventive, which is cool, but you can also rock it about just being a pop brat
[…]
I started this tumblr off with vague but high hopes of it being a “minor but brilliant cultural experiment” but very clearly got upstaged and outclassed by Nitsuh Abebe’s twin brother. I can’t really stay mad at a band that provides the material for so much humour and philosophical debate. So this is gonna be all the wavves-fearing for now (it is 11 in the evening here in Dublin, too).
So Cow - ‘Commuting’ from the 7” single, b/w ‘Swords’ and ‘Greetings’, also from the album I’m Siding With My Captors (2008)
The new album, Meaningless Friendly, has more fuzz than this but still keeps up with the smart indie and fun, garagey punk-pop; basically, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think the world would be a better place with more people listening to it than to King of the Beach. Pitchfork gave his previous self-titled LP (a compilation of two small-release albums) a 7.7, but didn’t review his latest, which is as least as good if not better. I feel so much better listening to this, or Green Day, than Wavves - even though they often seem to be cut from the same broad cloth - this is just so much nicer and warmer. Like, there’s biting irony and dark despair scattered around the place, but in a human, relatable way. And the music has a comfortable groove - most of them time, apart from all the experimental wig-outs - but it’s not that sort of repetitive assault on the senses that characterises Wavves’ utterly carefree mash-up of 1999 and 2009.
So, listen to whatever you want - I’m listening to this.
Really it was the Strokes who started this whole beach lo-fi thing
“In the sun having fun / it’s in my blood,” etc.
or *shudder* The Thrills (not the lo-fi part). Well, I suppose they were mostly inoffensive in their musical appropriation of Californiay, but apologies from south Dublin to anyone who may have been offended.
pgwp:
Nitsuh wins this week. Wavves debate officially over, and I lose. Read his whole post. (via mattlemay)
plus like of all the thing to hog for yourself, like “hey, i listened to weezer or the beatnik filmstars or black tambourine or kleenex girl wonder when i was 19 so you kids now have to listen to something SO MUCH BETTER or else just spend the rest of your life hearing about how random crappy fuzzy pop bands hardly anyone liked were so much cooler way back when”
i mean WTF, right? why are we worried about this? maybe living someplace that smells like pee makes you all nervous-nelly cuz you could get peed on at ANY MOMENT
not a killer blow, exactly. I don’t believe in fetishizing the past, or doing anything much with it without the proper critical framework in place, but quality bands are quality bands and we can’t just say “oh, this is what people are listening to now/today/whenever, no further thought necessary”. or, as Rawkblog says:
“This is all well and good and there is a certain value in listening to new music being made now, today, by bands that are touring and I can see this summer, and share that experience with my friends and be a part of my generational moment. That’s great. I appreciate that. Just because an older band did the same thing better isn’t necessarily a reason to toss out the new guys, too.
The break in the argument is that the Wavves record is sometimes great but mostly bad, mean-spirited music, made by an asshole for assholes, and if you want to listen to catchy, noisy garage-pop there are literally dozens of better bands across the spectrum of lo-fi to hi-fi and punk to pop making a near-infinite well of superior jams. The advantage of living in 2010 is we can make choices: new bands, old bands. Good bands, Wavves. Have fun with yours.
That said, is Nitsuh going HRO and making fun of us right now? I have no idea.”
Wavves don’t exist in a vacuum (empirical fact) and they’re not better at all, in my mind, than Green Day were or how So Cow are. The former comparison is made on the basis of their earlier albums, not the American Idiot and later balladic diversion (echoes of which I hear in ‘Green Eyes’), the latter is a young(-ish) artist with a couple of solid albums under his belt, only the west coast he lives close to is in Ireland, not California.
i mean if King of the Beach had gotten a 9.6 today and pitchfork called it a monumental generational statement, maybe it WOULD have gone down in history as our Nevermind you know?
I think the technical term for this is “ass-backwards logic”.
Okay, so it’s true that - within limits - scoring or otherwise praising something highly will encourage people - some people, anyway - to spend more time appreciating it. But it will also turn people off who see it as overrated, rather than just a higher opinion than they would have given of it. That’s something a bit more than ‘image politics’, it’s people politics.
Plus, maybe they don’t think it’s quite as good as you think it is. The review argues strongly for the album, has quite a lot of praise for it, and concludes that it is “fantastic” in a way that allows little room for argument - but it’s short on hyperbolic claims about it being the next Nirvana, except where discussing Nathan William’s own ‘boast’. Maybe it’s because of our collective disbelieving of Williams - not that there are many other artists who could seriously make the same claim - that we shy away from calling it a “monumental generational statement”; like he sank his own PR boat (again).
WAVVES gets an 8.4 + BNM from Pitchfork. Does it ‘deserve that shit’? →
Link: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14415-king-of-the-beach/
WAVVES is a popular buzzband from California who loves to smoke weed and ‘go surfing’ at the beach. He has some new album…
REBLOG IF YOU’RE STREAMING THE NEW WAVVES ALBUM
(and if you arent you should be!) (via rlvnt)
dude is using the same theme as me, except noisier.
ALL 8._’s AND NO 9._’s MAKE PITCHFORK A DULL WEBSITE morning roundup
[…]
yeah so sometimes the number isn’t just an assessment of the record, it’s a stance on the politics of the record. in this case, pitchfork seems to not want to be aligned with Wavves that strongly. so today i’m gonna put the No Score Disputing policy on hold because i woke up and looked at yet another noncomittal low 8._ and texted my friend, “PITCHFORK WENT LOW ON WAVVES fuck them” — honestly i expected a big number for this outstanding record. 8.4 is bullshit, big claims like 9._’s and 2._’s make pitchfork interesting!!! don’t you guys get it! everything gets a fucking 8.2/3/4/5 and eventually you’re damning all your best new musics with faint praise!!! aaaarggghhhhh
the review is actually pretty good though. it’s not really so much about the sound or the songs as it is about all the extramusical shit but at this point we’re pretty familiar with Wavves so i’m glad the review isn’t for n00bs and like “so much jagged pop punk guitar work on this record”. yeah so it’s good EXCEPT THE PART WHERE HE SAYS “the album’s title may be something of an ego-fueled joke on indie’s ongoing infatuation with seaside fantasy” which is wrong, the record’s title is a dead serious assertion of primacy and intent
[…]
hey, that 8._ is maybe a cause for celebration then? not that I’m into schadenfreude or anything, in fact it makes it slightly easier to INDIFFERENCE WAVVES. “pitchfork seems to not want to be aligned with Wavves that strongly” would make a great sticker, probably, if people still buy CDs.
“the record’s title is a dead serious assertion of primacy and intent” - for real? Is this another part of Wavves’ anti-irony crusade against nuance and thought? You omit the caveat “but Williams is still very much a part of the world he pokes fun at”, which to me makes him seem contradictory or empty-worded, given that as satire it’s not that great either.
Ramones - ‘I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You’ from Ramones (1976)
