07 May 2007
I STRONGLY ENDORSE COCOROSIE FOR THE POSITION OF META-REACTIONARY BLOG POST TREASURER
Get Him Eat Him
Bowery Ballroom
May 4
Download: "2x2"
The opening song was "2x2", which I had happened to hear way more than six months ago as an instrumental, when Matt played it for me through broken Grados at that place on First and 10th. I forget where we were before, where we were walking from, but Matt had been talking a bunch on the way about how he was trying to hold back a little with the songwriting, trust his instincts and not rush to the "difficult" decision or the crazy chord that throws everything off or the sudden rhythm change up--how after his debut album he was learning how to let his songs breathe. It's the counter-intuitive instinct at the moment at least in indie rock, which is in both its breakneck rapidriff phase (Fiery Furnaces, Deerhoof, Architecture in Helsinki, Of Montreal, etc.) and its grandiose, super-dramatic indie U2 one too (Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Annuals, etc.), which bands are (mostly for the worse) hyper *cough* aware of.
So I put the broken headphone cups on my ears. The song hasn't started yet. I try to take a fork of this berry tart thing we're splitting and I end up taking a much larger bite, you've been there, a transgression on the basic premise of splitting. I'm looking at Matt, a person I love and respect and admire for a billion reasons and for what's increasingly seeming like a billion years, and he's queuing up a song that, for him, signifies his maturation as a songwriter and in general that critical moment when you stop worrying about what's cool, what's now, what'll be reviewed well, whether the threads of influence are too bare, and just write the songs you want to hear. I'm supposed to listen to this song and more/less corroborate that yes this is everything you say it is, and I'm liking it lots. So anxiety on both sides of the table--especially since our friendship began and thrives on yet another basic premise, that we both enjoy the same kind of music, that our tastes are remarkably in line so much so that we'd go into business together--plus it was hot out.
Obviously I loved the song. Started with this multicolor swell of vocal and instrumental harmonies and vocoder, not unlike LeMay fave the New Pornographers, then eases back, then went right back up to 10 again with this sugary horn passage courtesy the Beirut guys. What struck me was how much rhythm was tucked into otherwise straightforward parts--the track was detailed but wasn't claustrophobic--which frankly was really kept me from really really liking Geography Cones, and yes does constitute this "maturation as a songwriter" thing Matt was pretty sure happened.
So they played this Friday night and it occurred to me that if somebody heard that song you'd think Get Him Eat Him were very Now--huge sincere sound but with lots of quick changeups, lots of different song sections fitting together, building off one another, etc. An album of ADHD "2x2"-type songs and you'd probably see their whole album leaked ten times over blogs by now.
Nice time as any to bring up the fact that Matt and Band really love indie rock--not Peter Bjorn and John / Fujiya & Miyagi girls in tanktops indie rock but the really nerdy sometimes corny often-borderline-emo 90s indie guitar rock stuff Pitchfork got behind before feeling the need to diversify. 12 Rods, Walt Mink, the Wrens, Cap N Jazz, Chavez, Mercury Rev, Polvo, Jawbox, Circulatory System, Bedhead, Skeleton Key, those first couple Trail of Dead albums, Olivia Tremor Control, Built to Spill, Dismemberment Plan, etc.--I mean my guess is 90% of the people who went to the Peter Bjorn and John concerts last week haven't heard a single D-Plan song.
All these bands that everybody's forgotten since indie rock's become so fucking cool... I don't know what to say except that Get Him Eat Him didn't forget them, and they still love that stuff, most of which is very not Now. The rest of Arms Down plays like a glorious homage to these "Pitchfork bands" actually, many of which Matt himself wrote about and escaped in as he was younger, many of which just don't exist anymore or just aren't allowed to because most people there are really worried about getting things "right" and/or worse, have intense preoccupations with their critical reputations. Something that Ryan and Matt and Brent and all the early writers just didn't seem to have...
Basically I highly doubt anybody over there has the balls to write the review Arms Down really wants, i.e. a walk down Pitchfork's memory lane. It'd be solipsistic and irresponsible or "fake Brent D" or whatever, plus the whole ridiculous conflict of interest thing, plus the latent tension between musicians and critics and the taboo of "crossing the line," which remains the most unfortunate legacy of awkward music reviewers who've convinced themselves their reviews count for cultural criticism. I'm not saying this album is by any means a crucial moment in the history of indie rock or online music criticism, but it's very interesting to me to hear a 2007 record that sounds like a Pitchfork 8.9 circa 1999--maybe even better, since Matt can actually sing, and the mixing is as mentioned above extremely smart, dense but not claustrophobic, and the band knows how to write breakdowns really well--and realize that FUCK, the site that practically made this record could very well turn its back on it because none of the lyrics reference Denis Cooper. Etc.
85 RIFFS
Labels: indie
// posted by NBS @ 9:00 AM 
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My experience of Those Times (just before I joined the site) is colored differently. The first time I heard Emergency & I, I was on (your typically inconsequential post-collegiate East Coast mini-) tour with a band. I heard it very hungover/still drunk in someone's childhood bedroom, a Wonder Years set complete with the fat kid - Doug - who tagged along all night and would probably have done the Marichal/Tiant for McCovey trade.
I hadn't really written anything substantial about pop music at that point, save an idiot's guide to Spacemen 3 and something about how...writing is arrogant, that whole college-age confidence wall you have to climb over where you still start sentences with "I believe that" and "It's my contention" and it takes a professor to go "No shit you're writing it dicknuts" and you're like "I am such a pussy..." and you throw away all your bullshit philosophy stroke books. Etc.
So hearing E&I was retroactively a very defining moment for me. It was probably the last "cool new" record I experienced in a non-critical frame of mind. I had heard their previous work as a college radio MD and thought it was pretty miserable - not as bad as Chisel or the Van Pelt, rather like...lame Allston hangover brunch music? Too clever to be in the backpacks of the kids in the corners sweating whether the kids talking loudly were talking about Their Bands because that would mean they weren't Their Bands anymore and they'd have to existentially hide out with Erase Errata singles, sinking into contra-social closet-case bullshit. I felt the worst for those wallflowers.
E&I was a major shift. It was Not Jawbox. It was coy and sexually extroverted and Not Weezer, though it could have been and they knew it and you can hear them fighting it. In spirit it really does remind me of the uptempo numbers on Joy Division's Closer: it's the ascension record, the comprehension of your gifts, and that confidence channeled into things like keyboards and weird guitar tones and hearing everything more clearly. Sheen is ignored for the frequencies you want to stress, the shapes you want to make, and if things get muddy or the guitar's too clean for the track and gain-clips a little, so be it: the constraints of the technology you have access to are ignored. You're chasing the lights.
It's not a bad record, even today. But at the time it was a boundary test. It was the American equivalent of Ride's Going Blank Again, taking huge risks that worked while still projecting the same emotional character, still being Your Band. It has aged comparably, which is to say not spectacularly, but you will never sell either of these records and they will always remind you of very specific, very important moments, even if you didn't recognize them as they were sliding by.
We guffawed over "What Do You Want Me to Say?" - "Dude holy shit dude this is AC/DC, oh my God this could totally be on the radio" - and then after the sly "Spider in the Snow" (still by far this band's best moment) ended up going for a walk through a huge quarry/forest sort of thing to clear our heads. I kept thinking about how you can't call your shots, how you're in the studio and you look over at the Moog or the Crumar Orchestrator or whatever old beast they have lying around, and you think, "We can use that. We can make that our own," and you open yourself and your band up to bigger things. The sad part is that the Dismemberment Plan retreated from the ledge E&I looks out over, and I wonder if, for the band, it doesn't represent Something You Were Afraid to Do When You Were a Kid and You Never Got Over It. The wince every time you remember, the jolt in the back-right of the brain that never lets you forget you ran scared from the field, face in your sleeve.
I hadn't really written anything substantial about pop music at that point, save an idiot's guide to Spacemen 3 and something about how...writing is arrogant, that whole college-age confidence wall you have to climb over where you still start sentences with "I believe that" and "It's my contention" and it takes a professor to go "No shit you're writing it dicknuts" and you're like "I am such a pussy..." and you throw away all your bullshit philosophy stroke books. Etc.
So hearing E&I was retroactively a very defining moment for me. It was probably the last "cool new" record I experienced in a non-critical frame of mind. I had heard their previous work as a college radio MD and thought it was pretty miserable - not as bad as Chisel or the Van Pelt, rather like...lame Allston hangover brunch music? Too clever to be in the backpacks of the kids in the corners sweating whether the kids talking loudly were talking about Their Bands because that would mean they weren't Their Bands anymore and they'd have to existentially hide out with Erase Errata singles, sinking into contra-social closet-case bullshit. I felt the worst for those wallflowers.
E&I was a major shift. It was Not Jawbox. It was coy and sexually extroverted and Not Weezer, though it could have been and they knew it and you can hear them fighting it. In spirit it really does remind me of the uptempo numbers on Joy Division's Closer: it's the ascension record, the comprehension of your gifts, and that confidence channeled into things like keyboards and weird guitar tones and hearing everything more clearly. Sheen is ignored for the frequencies you want to stress, the shapes you want to make, and if things get muddy or the guitar's too clean for the track and gain-clips a little, so be it: the constraints of the technology you have access to are ignored. You're chasing the lights.
It's not a bad record, even today. But at the time it was a boundary test. It was the American equivalent of Ride's Going Blank Again, taking huge risks that worked while still projecting the same emotional character, still being Your Band. It has aged comparably, which is to say not spectacularly, but you will never sell either of these records and they will always remind you of very specific, very important moments, even if you didn't recognize them as they were sliding by.
We guffawed over "What Do You Want Me to Say?" - "Dude holy shit dude this is AC/DC, oh my God this could totally be on the radio" - and then after the sly "Spider in the Snow" (still by far this band's best moment) ended up going for a walk through a huge quarry/forest sort of thing to clear our heads. I kept thinking about how you can't call your shots, how you're in the studio and you look over at the Moog or the Crumar Orchestrator or whatever old beast they have lying around, and you think, "We can use that. We can make that our own," and you open yourself and your band up to bigger things. The sad part is that the Dismemberment Plan retreated from the ledge E&I looks out over, and I wonder if, for the band, it doesn't represent Something You Were Afraid to Do When You Were a Kid and You Never Got Over It. The wince every time you remember, the jolt in the back-right of the brain that never lets you forget you ran scared from the field, face in your sleeve.
"but the really nerdy sometimes corny often-borderline-emo 90s indie guitar rock stuff Pitchfork got behind before feeling the need to diversify."
so you think this need to diversify was done on purpose at pfork? I dont know how it works over there since i don't work for them, but i am curious. i would hate to think that they would purposefully overlooked records of a particular sound, especially one that use do define them. i just don't think there are many bands like the Dplan, the Wrens, Jawbox etc. anymore. i' like to think that they would give due credit to Arms Down if it is in fact as good as you say it is. Any chance of you writing the review for Stylus?
so you think this need to diversify was done on purpose at pfork? I dont know how it works over there since i don't work for them, but i am curious. i would hate to think that they would purposefully overlooked records of a particular sound, especially one that use do define them. i just don't think there are many bands like the Dplan, the Wrens, Jawbox etc. anymore. i' like to think that they would give due credit to Arms Down if it is in fact as good as you say it is. Any chance of you writing the review for Stylus?
See and I feel Matt's pain this morning - not because I like his band or this record (I don't) or even his writing, but because the review is so offensive, some little 22 year-old who needs to lay out that he's not threatened by reviewing another reviewer, that he's confident of his place in this pecking order ... Hey This is Going to Be on Pitchfork, Pitchfork is a Bigger Deal Than Your Band, even though we all know - everyone that's ever written a review - that it is innately cooler and more important to be producing music than talking about it. Unless we're talking about Sissy Boy Slap Party laaaalz I think I still have that CD DO U LIKE 2 BANG THINGS RYAN I LIKE 2 BANG THINGS 2.
I finished the music for my new album, but ran out of time to finish the vocals, which I'll have to do this summer. I'm not even sure I want to release it (on whatever label) because I honestly have no interest in anyone's reaction to it. I'm at the last second of Giving a Shit about music, unfortunately; I'll keep up, I'll bomb the FTPs every so often, but I can't name ... I should try this, 50 albums released in the last 10 years that mean anything to me. Starting from OKC, which, WHERE IS MY 10TH ANNIVERSARY 3CD+DVD SET talk about disappointed people clinging on to bottles. Leaving NYC is a liberation, natch, but I was faded before I left. You age, the perceived timeline of a pop act shrinks to zero. I once asked this kid in Boston why he thought being in a band gave him the right to dress extravagantly - he hemmed and hawed "Dude, whatever, etc." and I was just like...you'll be broken up in three months, how can you be dumb enough not to know that. Every band will be broken up in x months, including Get Him Eat Him. Yet everyone toils in denial of it, and bothers to Think Critically or at least attempt it, when the cycle for even major, PR-repped artists is just six months. HOW'S THAT ARCADE FIRE ALBUM DOING. Interpol's new album Cold Phonin It In really pumps my nads too. Whatever, they'll move to Europe and milk their teutonic looks for another five years, bilk the continent and festival circuits for six figure annums, then become like...Bowie's backup band for the Ziggy 2010 gala (as I always say, book it).
So what's your excuse, Today's Writer? You know you don't have time to form natural, true, real opinions about anything anymore. How are you deluding yourself to the extent that you continue to talk about music/art/etc faster than you can valuably process it? You have to embrace that sensation and come to terms with it, to slow down. Art requires at least perception before reaction, and defensible criticism rumination before that. If you're not even equipped to have an internal dialog about a record's place in the present - because there's too much out there for any valuable connections between bands to be made, or because you don't have time to be aware of enough music/music news (and who does) - why are you bothering? If you've a wellspring of life experience as a listener and/or critic, ok, maybe you can help us sort through some non-obvious things, or help an artist with some sage career advice, change their mindset. But when being first counts for more than being right, nobody wins. Matt walks away wanting to beat the shit out of some kid for putting on some imaginary Music Critic hat he's not fit to wear, and his record is totally obliterated by being The Work of a Pitchfork Writer. I don't know that he'll flip out about it, but he wants to. It's just a double-damnation, because his band would've broken up anyway. This way, the dream is debased: he never got out from under Pitchfork - and I don't mean as a writer, I mean as a person/ality, and a band. A lot of work needed to be done, and it wasn't, so partially it's Matt's own fault. But if AKosh thought they could *trade* on Pitchfork...OWNED YOU WROTE FOR US.
I finished the music for my new album, but ran out of time to finish the vocals, which I'll have to do this summer. I'm not even sure I want to release it (on whatever label) because I honestly have no interest in anyone's reaction to it. I'm at the last second of Giving a Shit about music, unfortunately; I'll keep up, I'll bomb the FTPs every so often, but I can't name ... I should try this, 50 albums released in the last 10 years that mean anything to me. Starting from OKC, which, WHERE IS MY 10TH ANNIVERSARY 3CD+DVD SET talk about disappointed people clinging on to bottles. Leaving NYC is a liberation, natch, but I was faded before I left. You age, the perceived timeline of a pop act shrinks to zero. I once asked this kid in Boston why he thought being in a band gave him the right to dress extravagantly - he hemmed and hawed "Dude, whatever, etc." and I was just like...you'll be broken up in three months, how can you be dumb enough not to know that. Every band will be broken up in x months, including Get Him Eat Him. Yet everyone toils in denial of it, and bothers to Think Critically or at least attempt it, when the cycle for even major, PR-repped artists is just six months. HOW'S THAT ARCADE FIRE ALBUM DOING. Interpol's new album Cold Phonin It In really pumps my nads too. Whatever, they'll move to Europe and milk their teutonic looks for another five years, bilk the continent and festival circuits for six figure annums, then become like...Bowie's backup band for the Ziggy 2010 gala (as I always say, book it).
So what's your excuse, Today's Writer? You know you don't have time to form natural, true, real opinions about anything anymore. How are you deluding yourself to the extent that you continue to talk about music/art/etc faster than you can valuably process it? You have to embrace that sensation and come to terms with it, to slow down. Art requires at least perception before reaction, and defensible criticism rumination before that. If you're not even equipped to have an internal dialog about a record's place in the present - because there's too much out there for any valuable connections between bands to be made, or because you don't have time to be aware of enough music/music news (and who does) - why are you bothering? If you've a wellspring of life experience as a listener and/or critic, ok, maybe you can help us sort through some non-obvious things, or help an artist with some sage career advice, change their mindset. But when being first counts for more than being right, nobody wins. Matt walks away wanting to beat the shit out of some kid for putting on some imaginary Music Critic hat he's not fit to wear, and his record is totally obliterated by being The Work of a Pitchfork Writer. I don't know that he'll flip out about it, but he wants to. It's just a double-damnation, because his band would've broken up anyway. This way, the dream is debased: he never got out from under Pitchfork - and I don't mean as a writer, I mean as a person/ality, and a band. A lot of work needed to be done, and it wasn't, so partially it's Matt's own fault. But if AKosh thought they could *trade* on Pitchfork...OWNED YOU WROTE FOR US.
http://www.eyeweekly.com/eye/issue/issue_03.18.04/plus/myapt.php
32, worse than I feared.
http://www.thenewviolence.com/thetwokoreas.htm
I like your forehead capes, Stu. You guys are going to Make It.
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32, worse than I feared.
http://www.thenewviolence.com/thetwokoreas.htm
I like your forehead capes, Stu. You guys are going to Make It.
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