Sunday, May 27, 2012

sometimes i can be trundling along happily as a listener, sticking within the relatively narrow sphere of my habitual interests, and i'll start to thinking, "well things ain't so bad...  after all, that new Laurel Halo record, it's pretty weird,  untaggable, real close to an honest to goodness New Sound" or "hey this footwork album is futuristic"....  so yeah, i'll be cruising along as this fairly contented and catered-for consumer,  but  then something or other will jolt me outside those regular reliable channels and back into the larger world, where  I'll be rudely reawakened to the actual state of things, just how dire and retrograde they really are

viz



the NME cover story on them of a few week ago said they takes cues from Bowie, Reed, Otis, JB, or My Morning Jacket or Kings of Leon

Alabama Shakes say their dream collaboration would be with Jack White and Jim James (of MM Jacket)


 the writer of the piece argues that

"for all their retro elements, it's not just nostalgia that makes Alabama Shakes the hottest thing since self-immolation. It's the honesty, pain, and redemption that gushes from----"

i cannot finish transcribing this sentence

the piece is laced with boxed endorsements from Bon Iver, Vaccines, Alex Turner, their hero Jack White

Shakes singer Brittany Howard: "A lot of people are like, 'I want to be different, I want to be original, I want to be an electronic band that mixes this and this', instead of just writing songs together as people and being sincere about it." 


 
meanwhile Jeremy Gilbert, with exasperated incredulity, directed me towards The Cribs and their "Glitters Like Gold"

which i thought was not far off Teenage Fanclub Revivalism if such a thing could exist




so far this year (see also Best Coast, Beach House, Blunderbuss etc etc) is not doing much to disprove Retromania
at

3 comments:

  1. The McFersonsMay 28, 2012 at 6:34 PM

    It's funny to hear the guitar player from The Cribs talk about this new tuning where he tunes down to C and thus the song was born, but then he's playing the tune with a capo on the 2nd fret. So how is this different than just tuning down to D?

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  2. Stewart SmithMay 31, 2012 at 2:35 AM

    Don't hear any Teenage Fanclub in the Cribs, just bad post-Strokes indie landfill

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  3. Phil RamsdenMay 31, 2012 at 3:35 AM

    On that Cribs thing, "Glitters Like Gold", anyone else think the first few bars of the intro are quite interesting, and suggest they might be getting a bit adventurous? And then the riff cuts in and, no, it's just more of the fucking Cribs.

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