RTP-area local music and culture

["DJ Golf" <djgolf AT mindspring.com>]

For a while there I thought I might be the only person who thinks Win
Butler sounds a lot like Ian McCulloch circa "Porcupine" on some of
"Neon Bible".  Several folks told me he sounded like David Byrne on
"Funeral", but I never really got that.

"Neon Bible" isn't as good as "Funeral", but not many albums released
in the last decade are.  It's kind of like 25 years ago when everybody
was saying that REM's "Reckoning" isn't as good as "Murmur."  And I
figured the inevitable anti-Arcade Fire backlash would be here pretty
soon.  Now's as good a time as any, I suppose.

"Funeral" for me was one of those rare albums that has the intangible
"something" that you can tell is there, but doesn't necessarily reveal
itself all at once.  Kind of like when I heard Joy Division or Mission
of Burma or Gang of Four for the first time.  I could tell it was
good, I just wasn't sure why yet and was compelled to keep listening.
(Music that doesn't really sound like anything else immediately
identifiable is like that sometimes.)  Then all at once, on about the
fourth or fifth playing, there's some aspect that comes out through
the whole of everything else and I go "Okay, now I get it."  I think
on "Funeral" it was the one-finger piano on "Rebellion (Lies.)"  On
Gang of Four's "Entertainment" it was the tom-toms and hi-hat on
"Natural's Not In It."  On Mission of Burma's "Vs." it's the loud-
quiet-loud part in the middle of "Mica."  But I digress.

Not to completely change gears here, but I was just reading the new
Wire this weekend and one of their critics completely blasts the new
Stooges album.  Granted, I could understand it not being that great
(the snippets I heard on NPR the other day were kind of like a really
raw version of the last couple Iggy albums) but this guy just had a
huge hard-on for Steve Albini (in the bad way) for some reason and
couldn't get beyond the whole "I am white and full of testosterone and
hate bass" idea that he was, fairly or not, projecting onto it.
Reviews like that annoy me, even if the record in question isn't any
good.

And speaking of testosterone, the Grinderman album (Nick Cave with
Warren Ellis and a couple of Bad Seeds) is really really good.  Only
out as an import now - domestic release in a couple of weeks.  It's
drunk and horny and sweaty and snarling and profane, and Nick plays
guitar (which he apparently took up 6 months ago.  Think of Blixa
Bargeld's six-string work on the early Bad Seeds, with the amp on 11.
Fun.)

Thank you, that is all.


On Mar 18, 1:07 pm, g... AT ibiblio.org (grady) wrote:
> If your favorite CD review site couldn't be bothered to at least attempt
> to understand the very real appeal that the band has, then they're doing
> you a disservice. It's easy to take pot-shots at bands, and much moreso
> if they're popular, but for a band like the Arcade Fire, who are on a
> tiny label with a similarly tiny promo budget, to get as huge as they
> did based on their debut album and their live shows, there's clearly
> *something* at work there, and any critic who expects to be taken
> seriously should at least make an attempt to suss that out.
>
> (Though I do find it amusing to see a "critic" who apparently expects to
> be taken deadly seriously while simultaneously dismissing a band as an
> "overhyped critics' fave" . . .)
>
> I'm not suggesting (not at all) that they have to *agree* with the
> furor, or even fully comprehend its roots, but to just dismiss it
> out-of-hand just makes them look silly. A band can sell a certain # of
> records based on critical acclaim alone (and I'd wager that number is in
> the low thousands). A band can sell a whole lot more records based on a
> massive wall of expensive promo-machine hype, but in the case of
> _Funeral_, they certainly didn't have that going for them. If you can
> figure out how to factor out Pitchfork (and I dunno if anybody really
> knows the actual impact of a good Pitchfork review), I think _Funeral_
> fits the classic definition of an old fashioned word-of-mouth success
> story. It's the kind of record that somebody plays for you, and you go
> out the next day & buy it.
>
> Chris Rossi is definitely correct: _Funeral_ is where the furor began,
> and it's definitely a much more immediately compelling/polarizing album.
> I think it would fit your Radiohead test-case, in other words. (It's
> also certainly a much better record than the damn Clap Your Hands Say
> Yeah album, which comes much closer to maybe being a hype-related
> flash-in-the-pan.)
>
> I found _The Neon Bible_ pleasant enough, though once this phrase popped
> into my head, it was hard to shake it back out: "Bruce Springsteen & the
> Bunnymen." I think the arrangements, recording, and performances are all
> less interesting than those on _Funeral_; I haven't listened to it
> enough to be able to address the songwriting. I will definitely
> sympathize with you, and all the other people, I guess, who never heard
> _Funeral_ and picked up this one expecting to be blown away. But then I
> guess you didn't actually buy either album, so no harm done, right?
>
> Ross
>
> p.s. try going here & listening to "Wake Up" and "Laika," which will
> give you a pretty good idea of what's got people so hot-and-bothered.
> The videos are pretty fun, 
> too:http://www.mergerecords.com/band.php?media=true&band_id=98
>
>
>
>
>
> Baby Messy wrote:
> > I watched them on SNL the other week and thought..."this is it?...why
> > all the hype?" and I really thought I was missing something in my old
> > age. I mean, as soon as you heard Radiohead you KNEW, love it or hate
> > it, that there was something special there. So maybe I needed to dig
> > deeper, and through the magic of Youtube, etc. I tried. Lord I tried.
>
> > My fave CD review cite, warr.org, reviewed them thusly:
>
> > Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (2007)
> > I wanted to get this warning out as quickly as possible: this Montreal
> > indie septet is possibly the worst, most overhyped critics' fave band
> > I've ever heard. I mean, at least the guy from TV On The Radio can sing.
> > Lead "singer" Win Butler has no range or projection - he sounds like Lou
> > Reed without the accent - and he's probably the best thing about the
> > group. Pretension factor is through the roof with turgidly deep lyrics
> > (title track) and pompous orchestrations (the pseudo-Springsteen "Black
> > Wave, Bad Vibrations"). Meanwhile, musicianship is beneath the
> > floorboards, with rote chord progressions ("Keep The Car Running";
> > "Antichrist Television Blues") and plodding tempos ("Intervention"; "My
> > Body Is A Cage") - the band members play a zillion different
> > instruments, but find nothing interesting on any of them. The two
> > passable tunes are the typically overblown "No Cars Go" and the uptempo
> > Franz Ferdinand-style rocker "The Well & The Lighthouse": they're still
> > worthless melodically but at least have some energy. (DBW)
>
> > So whew. I'm not insane. Drinks on me!!!!
> > -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> >http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
>
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill 
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