America wrote:
This thread was basically waiting for CH and he finally showed up only to give us....Interpol.
I was trying to go from memory and my memory failed me.
The Ditty Bops were two lesbians who did strummy little vaudeville-tinged tunes. I thought they were a neat little novelty but when I bring them up, no one remembers them. They probably had a song in
Grey's Anatomy; everyone did.
I don't think the Polyphonic Spree have enjoyed too many moments in the 2010s; they were a giant choir who dressed like a cult and had that "Hold Me Now" song that was kinda good. Either the 2010s had too much irony for the Polyphonic Spree to thrive or so little irony that their earnestness got lost in the crowd.
Celebration was a side project of TV on the Radio (are they a forgotten 2000s indie band themselves? I feel like they're walking the line, the hype machine certainly wasn't what it was in 2006) that had two good songs but was otherwise just kind of loud and noisy, like TV on the Radio was, and after some initial p4k buzz, I think Sitek went back to TVotR full-time and that was that. I still break out "Evergreen" and "Heartbreak" now and then, though, and you should too.
A Sunny Day in Glasgow captured my heart when I was obsessed with
Loveless by putting out some 21st-c shoegaze that was perfect for lonely trudges through the snow but I don't think much became of them after
Scribble Mural Comic Journal. I have the follow-up but it never resonated. Then it turned out they weren't even from Glasgow.
Nellie McKay and Regina Spektor were battling for smart-girl-anti-folk supremacy in the mid-2000s, which Regina Spektor won by selling out then unselling out and selling back out a few times, but while I liked both, I was always more impressed by Nellie McKay. Sure, ONE COULD ARGUE that she was just doing the old Ben Folds trick of writing Brill Building chord changes and then saying "fuck" in the lyrics, but I thought her talent went beyond that and she was as close as we were going to get to a feminist Frank Zappa. She certainly was in the way that she would dump out double albums that were right-skewed bell curves of genius and crap, annoy her way out of record deals, and have to self-publish. But she sort of burned herself out with those two double albums. Her third album was really good but almost so short as to be an EP, and then after a Doris Day cover album she was basically out of ideas. She made another album in 2010 but it's terrible and I think she's more or less done with music and committed to Broadway where maybe she belonged all along. My high school crush, probably as close to a soulmate as I'm ever gonna get, got me into both, and never quite agreed with my girl-Zappa analysis, but in 2015 she did a cover album and what should appear on it but "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" off the
Freak Out! album. So I'm vindicated, Katie, wherever you are.
Is Yeasayer still around? They were Animal Collective for people who couldn't handle Animal Collective (in other words, me).
The Postmarks were a band from Miami, of all places, that went after sort of a Bacharach sound, except for the penultimate track on their debut, which for some reason sounded like Johnny Marr arranged that and only that track. The singer had a perfect Manic Pixie Dream Girl voice, the kind that probably wouldn't fly in 2017 like it did in 2007. The second album was a concept album of covers numbered 1-12, with the most interesting part being the cover of "7-11" that created in earnest the Phil Spector sound that the Ramones were riffing on. Then for the third album they tried to do a concept album around British spy drama music but I think they broke up shortly after. But I still love the Postmarks.
I have an album in my library by a band called Menomena. All I remember about it is that Menomena was some sort of punchline to there being too much indie music to collect or something and that no one really cared about Menomena. I can't remember a note of this album and I'm already listening to that first Postmarks album so I'm not gonna put it on, but know that Menomena existed.
ZephMarshack wrote:
Remember when Pitchfork tried to make The Rapture a Thing?
No, but I remember them doing this with Menomena. And Black Kids, which we've gone over.
I remember that my 2007 album of the year, because I was a pretentious ass, was by the self-titled album by Blind Cave Salamander. It was a concept album about the blind cave salamander, which lives in Slovenia and I guess is its national animal. For some reason, I was
blown the fuck away by the bold creative decision to make electronic music about a blind cave salamander. The album itself is electronic burbling with some strings and drum beats, it basically sounds like a collaboration between Boards of Canada and Tortoise. I don't remember who was in this collective, but I don't think they've made any music since, about blind cave salamanders or about anything else.
_________________
Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
