Seasonal Greetings, Readers! Thank you for joining us in our peek back
at 2013, which is neither Top Stuff Listicle nor Chronological Recapathon, but
is a jumble-y assemblage of wistful remembrances of thoughts that happened
in our brains or events that happened to our persons that for
one reason or another were tied to music. Witness below a written conversation
that we hope will keep you entertained for a few minutes, and possibly
encourage you to have a spoken or written or other kind of conversation with a
loved one, stranger, or pet.
KYLE: So it's the end of the year, which
means we're supposed to reflect on... things. Things that happened this year.
Where, oh were should we start? It was a strange year for me personally.
Getting married took up a bunch of my attention away from other things (like
record shopping), but it was a great year for musicians I love putting out new
stuff. I mean, Eluvium, My Bloody Valentine(!!), Tim Hecker, Fuck Buttons, Four
Tet, Oneohtrix Point Never, Boards of Canada, Mogwai, The National,
Deerhunter, and so on and so forth.
Plus, there was the unexpected but welcome
(to me at least) rebirth of emocore, the all consuming release of Random Access
Memories, crossover metal catching on in 'mainstream indie' circles, the whole
fox thing, and YOU SIR releasing your own fine collection of songs. Personally,
and I think this goes for both of us, I'll also remember this as the year that
I stopped caring about Arcade Fire. it was a little bittersweet to realize that
I'm just not that into them anymore right as they cement their position as the
'biggest indie band in the world'. Is it Death Cab for Cutie all over again?
IAN: You know, I was in DCFC's camp since
mail ordering the cassette of You Can Play These Songs with Chords,
and then thought they lost it with Transatlanticism, while the
general consensus decided it was their best album. (Subsequently, I think there
were some great songs on the two albums that followed, though I can't think of
one from their last album.) Similarly, this past ten years has not
been the decade I expected to have with Arcade Fire. Like pretty much every
other one of our peers, Funeral was the sound of
the fall and winter of 2004. Given that I was simultaneously catching up with
Broken Social Scene's 2002/2003 breakthrough You Forgot it in People (which,
of course, you put in my hands) after coming back from
spending half of the year in London, it seemed at the time that 2004 was something
like The Year Canuck Broke. The timing was such that Arcade Fire also seemed to
naturally fill the empty space left by Godspeed You! Black Emperor going on
hiatus in 2003: a Montreal band with a lot of members making
dramatic-yet-uplifting BIG music with a predilection for occasionally playing
shows in churches.
When Neon Bible came out,
the reviews seemed to fault it mostly for sounding too big, or
at least for trying to sound too big, which felt like the first schism between
what I heard when I listened to Arcade Fire and what most everyone else did.
The only song that really sounded "huge" to me was the one they
carried over from their debut EP. That said, shouting the "whoa-oh"
verse in "Keep the Car Running" along with 25,000 other people at
their Randall's Island show later that October (what a line-up that was, eh?:
LCD Soundsystem, Les Savy Fav, Blonde Redhead...) was one of the more ecstatic
communal experiences I've ever had at a concert -- along with doing an encore
of the "whoo-ooh"s from "Headlights Look Like Diamonds"
with dozens, if not hundreds, of most-likely-also-drunk people while walking
across the bridge back to Harlem after the show.
When it was finally time for The
Suburbs, I was bummed to realize how little I had listened to Arcade Fire
in the interim. Where Neon Bible had felt to me a little
oddly stunted (I still don't quite get what they were trying to do with
"Black Wave/Bad Vibrations"), The Suburbs, like TV on the
Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain and the Stills' With
Feathers, started with two different songs that sounded definitively
like "opening" tracks, giving the momentum a feeling of being
immediately rebooted. It also had five songs too many. Beyond that, clearly
gone was the interest in a sense of intimacy with the listener like the one
they had once established with more gentle, intricate songs like "Une
annee sans lumiere." Everything was now spacious chords and choruses. It
was clear the follow-up to Funeral I had always wanted was not
likely to ever materialize. Reflektor is now their second
overstuffed album in a row. It seems I'm not hearing the same record as the
folks who are giving it rave reviews are. I don't think it's bad, I don't think
it's great, I'm just...indifferent, which, thinking back on Funeral,
is not a feeling I expected I would ever have about their music.
What is it for you?
KYLE: Indifferent was exactly my reaction
to both The Suburbs and (especially) Reflektor.
The thing is, I think I always expected my relationship with Arcade Fire to end
up that way, given how different (i.e. earnest and emotive) Funeral was
from anything I was listening to at the time. Maybe it was a bit of a self
fulfilling prophecy, but regardless the end result was that I was much more
attached to Funeral than I was to Arcade Fire the recording
group, making Neon Bible easier to swallow, and the resulting
slow drift apart much easier to accept.
I should note, just to be clear, that I
make the 'recording group' clarification because I'm sure they continue to put
on an amazing live show, albeit one that I am unlikely to see again on my own
dime given my distaste for paying NFL suite prices for rock shows... but that's
a whole other conversation.
Speaking of sporting events and segues and
things that happened this year, I'm eager to get your full report on the
Rangers (hockey version) game you attended a few weeks back. You mentioned that
the house music in the arena was... of questionable merit. It's often a bit
awkward when sports stadiums and music collide, but from what you mentioned it
sounded like the trouble went well beyond simple bad taste?
IAN: Okay, so first off: enter
Twitter contests. For reals. We got the tickets to the Rangers vs. Canucks
game because our friend won them from some watch company via a Twitter contest,
and they were the most amazing seats I've ever had to anything, no joke. They
were technically fourth row, right behind one of those corner circles
where they do face offs. Because of the way it was set up, there was no one in
front of us, barring the people who get to sit in folding chairs right behind
the boards below us. I could hear the puck hit the goalie's leg pads, and see
the players' facial expressions. They tickets would have been, I think,
maybe $300 each, and our friend won four of them. From
a freaking watch company, via a freaking Twitter contest. Who
freaking knew?
But, yes, here's the thing. From 1992 to
1994, I was a rabid hockey fan and went to dozens of Seattle Thunderbirds
games, back in that old no-frills '50s era arena at the Seattle Center,
now gone, where I also later saw Oasis and The Verve, and where my high school
graduation ceremony took place. (The only thing I remember about that ceremony,
by the way, was that my friend Samson Kwong quoted that "hope you had
the time of your life" song by Green Day in his valedictorian
speech. At length. I probably would have quoted Iggy Pop
if I had been invited to speak, but to each his own.) During those years,
Metallica's "Enter Sandman" was the Thunderbirds' "take to the
ice" music, they played Gary Glitter's "Rock'n'Roll Part 2"
every time they scored a goal, and for some reason the sound guy couldn't
get enough of blasting that opening low note of Rush' "Tom
Sawyer." To this day, when I hear that song, I get visions
of minor league hockey players skating around the ice in that arena.
Granted, that was Seattle in the early
'90s, and the Rangers play in the New York of the '10s, but the commercial pop
music they kept blaring over the PA at the game we went to was
shameful. Does Lady Gaga really get a hockey crowd going in 2013? Mainstream
rock has been a garbage dump since Limp Bizkit was allowed to happen,
and it wouldn't be any more manly to play some of
Imagine Dragons' awful Coldplay-ripping Butt Rock or whatnot...but
all the same, I felt embarassed for everyone there who wasn't a child or
disinterested wife/girlfriend. In fact, the only two times they played a rock
song were when fights broke out. After the first fight, they even played a
snatch of "Master of Puppets," which I thought I
was hallucinating at first. The game is the same, but the music done
changed.
Speaking of dark times, maybe now it is
time to explore my favorite album-cover-related hypothesis of 2013? That
is: your album-cover-related hypothesis of 2013.
KYLE: You must be referring to the great
colorless album cover conspiracy! Well you see, it all started when I picked
up Cupid's Head, the latest full length from The Field, and noted
that the 'white text on black background' album cover was quite a departure
from his usual 'color-y words on off-white background' theme. Departure is a
definitely a relative term in this case. For an artist who works exclusively in
the '10 minute long microhouse tracks built out of slowly shifting loops'
genre, any sudden jump feels bigger than it would
otherwise.
At any rate, around the same time
Tim Hecker's excellent Virgins was
released, and right away I thought it was interesting that his music
had taken a dark turn from his recent work and the album cover, while it does
feature a color photograph predominantly on a black background, reads overall
as black to me.
Not long after that is when I noticed that
Fuck Buttons had made it a trifecta* with Slow Focus. I think
I joked to you that all the ambient experimental guys must have gotten together
and made a black album cover pact. In fact, just looking at album cover, 2013
seems like the year of 'thingy on black background' albums, with bands from
Deerhunter to Daft Punk using the technique.
*I so want to include Oneohtrix Point
Never in this group , but R Plus Seven has too many damn colors on
it. Still, musically it takes a subtly darker turn.
However, maybe there's more going on here
than that? In the experimental world at least, the change in color palate
seemed to apply to the music as much as the art. Could there be some external
forces at work here pushing things this direction? I'd be inclined to think it
was the growing influence of metal if it weren't for the fact that the great
crossover metal record of the year, Deafheaven's Sunbather,
features a pink cover. Also, it is called Sunbather.
I'll toss the ball back over you you at
this point. Do you think we are seeing the product of a long wartime recession,
a purely musical trend, complete coincidence, or something I'm not thinking of?
 |
| The full four-fecta |
IAN: Oh, it is a four-fecta when you add
in Baths' Obsidian, and that Darkside record can go in the
"electronic album with thing-on-black-background cover" category.
Those Burial EP's count, too, yes? You definitely weren't just seeing things,
this was an unspoken 2013 visual art trend. As for why the music itself would
take a dark turn...probably different reasons? In the case of Baths
specifically, it was documented that Will Wiesenfeld was understandably
influenced by recent issues with his health. Maybe all of these artists went
through trying times, and these are the creative results? Personally, I think
it would be fun to speculate that the world of electronic music was also at
least partially reacting to whatever is left of populist guitar-based music,
which has somehow made a tired cliche out of white people shouting
"hey!" en masse in the middle of rousing anthems about hero trials to
listen to on Apple products while driving hybrids. Or maybe all of these guys
randomly got into the Cure's goth trilogy together last year.
If they have now got it all out of their
system, do you think more artists will be following in Deafheaven's footsteps,
releasing brightly colored albums in 2014? Are there there any trends that you
suspect are coming, or would like to see? My partial 2014 Music Wish List would
be for:
A) Dr. Luke & Co. to retire, so every
song they play at my gym would stop sounding 100% exactly the same. That kind
of commerce approach to "song" writing is bad for the body and mind,
like eating McDonald's every day.
B) Actually, if I could get "A,"
that would be more than enough. But a new Lotus Plaza album wouldn't hurt
either, if that's even a possibility.
KYLE: It'd be interesting to see what the
most common colors are in album art over time. You could take the average color
of each album, group them by year, etc. I'm curious to see if there's much
difference, and if there's any sort of trend... but man that'd take FOREVER so
perhaps one of our fine readers will take up the challenge?
I'm kicking myself for forgetting about Obsidian
by the way... ah well. As far as 2014 trends to go, I think that's
something to keep an eye on. Are we in for more blackness, or was 2013 just
an anomaly?
In terms of predictions, I'd say we should
be on the look-out for genre zombies. As with emocore this year, in 2014 I'm
going to guess that we'll see more of the same, with young bands
showing renewed interest in every single remaining '90s sub-genre we loved
and/or hated. This trend will accelerate through 2015 and beyond, until all
music is a nostalgic nod to the music of the previous month.
As for a wish list, I'd like to see:
A) Some new material from James Murphy. A
west coast tour to support it wouldn't be so bad either... probably not in the
cards, but a girl can dream.
B) More realistically, can we say goodbye
to some of these talent competition shows? I have accepted that reality TV is
here to stay, but enough of the competitive singing already. It's bad enough
that they're constantly on the 3 times a week I try to watch live television,
but these shows are DESIGNED to give gigantic recording contracts to singers
who appeal primarily to, I don't know, 12 year old girls? Soon, pre-teens
will be curating the very world the rest of us have to live in, at least
until the adults revolt resulting in the demographic wars of 2020-2023.
Anyway!
I think that's my last rant of 2013 unless the Seahawks manage to lose this
weekend, and so with that, I think it's time to say goodbye. Say goodbye Ian.
IAN:
IAN:
