bands/acts with significant fanbases who seem to be from a parallel universe

i remember when i heard that a friend of a friend was a huge fan of a band called Alt J and I was like who? Apparently they are huge!

last night i worked a sold out show (1 of 2) by a singer songwriter whose career began in 2006 and apparently had garnered him a huge loyal fanbase. Andy Schauf? Literally never heard that name in my life.

when i was younger i used to assume if an artist had a huge loyal fanbase and i had never heard of them, they must be Christian -- this does not seem to be the case anymore.

i have never felt so siloed in my own interests. this is a thread for those moments.

This is how I feel about so many young artists who I only first hear of after they've already got 40 million monthly streams or whatever. But I'm young too so why this rock I'm always under, etc.

i've liked some of andy schauf's music. he seems to consistently get good coverage on pitchfork so that's probably boosted his audience.

I had no idea who Jeff Rosenstock was until late last year

No doubt I would have seen his name before but I clearly just glazed over it

Bump this thread when you come across somebody hugely popular you didn’t know about

this is just part of getting older. however, i do think there is a tendency to frame this negatively (ie i'm so out of touch) when really it comes from knowing yourself and your interests and tastes better. in my early 20s i made more of an effort to listen to a wider array of music and that taught me what i enjoy and what i don't enjoy and now i get to enjoy the fruits of that labor, not having to waste time trying to force myself to like stuff i'm not interested.

oh whoops
well i guess i will post there then

i don't think it's entirely about age though -- and i don't frame it negatively or feel bad about my lack of knowledge. it's more that i am disoriented by the landscape. maybe that is age but i don't see it that way.

With me it's definitely aging, and also not really knowing what counts as popular. Right now there are a bunch of artists in RYM's 2024 top 40 that I've never heard--Sierra Ferrell, Friko, Tapir!, Willi Carlisle, Rosali, Julianna Gattas. I have no idea if these acts are popular or just some online ephemera.

Quickly looking into I see that Sierra Ferrell has a duet with Zach Bryan that made it to #37 on the Billboard 100. So that means she's popular--I guess?

I think I know 4 of the artists in the RYM Top 40 this year, don't feel bad

I think with Andy Schauf it was shocking to me that he had been around for 18 years and I had never even heard of him to my recollection. I do not believe I was out of touch 18 years ago or in the interim. The fans were not all young, though many were.

Same with Alt J -- that happened about 11 years ago and I didn't feel out of touch then either. I really feel like there is some parallel reality I haven't been privy to.

Not through malice or intentional exclusion, I just don't happen to live in that silo

I think Shauf started getting hyped when The Party came out in 2016. That's around the time I first heard of him.

lol:

President Barack Obama featured the title track, Neon Skyline, on his 2020 summer playlist.[12] Commenting on this honor, Shauf stated, "It’s cool to think that Obama, or the Obamas together, have listened to my music. It’s a really nice feeling to think my music has gone that far."

I wonder how much of this would be illuminated if we gave ourselves up to the big Spotify pop playlists and algorithms, or if younger people are just as siloed based on what tv series these songs are in etc.

I learned yesterday that several of my siblings are big Noah Kahan fans. I'd never heard of him in my life.

I work with a small team of 20-somethings, I'm going to run the 'how many acts do you recognize on schedule for the 2500 cap venue in town?' experiment this week.

Noah Kahan- Call Your Mom

Noah Kahan- Dial Drunk

Noah Kahan- She Calls Me Back

I asked a youngish co-worker a while back if he'd heard of Black Country, New Road, because I had a hard time believing they were really famous and not just some RYM thing. but indeed they are huge.

RYM's 2024 top 40: I count six artists I have heard of. Yet I suspect the majority of these acts might be older than me.

I knew 8 of the 40

lol 12 for me, that will also be a good resource for my young person experiments.

Actually seven for me, I missed Adrianne Lenker right at the start

I work with a lot of young people at both jobs and it is always interesting to see what they're into.

I also remembered an early time this happened to me and it was circa 2000 or so, when I was certifiably young.

I was working as music editor/writer at a weekly and I interviewed a musician who was coming to play in town -- John Vanderslice. I had enjoyed what I heard of his album he was promoting, so I went to the show and introduced myself. I can't remember exactly how the question came up, but we were talking about bands we were obsessed with and he said Mountain Goats, who he described as having an ardent and sizeable fanbase. I had literally never heard of the Mountain Goats. Then he told me it was really one guy and I was like oh ok.

(Side note: Millions of years later, I saw JD at my current workplace when he played there to a sold out and super ardent crowd and thought of that time all those years ago. Also just looked up Vanderslice and he is still at it! And actually older than me?!?! Wow)

I can't help but think that the thing I am talking about with the parallel universe feeling is more a feature of siloing than age -- I get recommended all kinds of unfamiliar stuff on spotify due to playlists for various things like camp playlists or playlists for songs my students analyze in class. Hence, somehow, I know who Melanie Martinez is.

Looking through the upcoming indie shows in Philly--the ones that are already sold out are:

Ray Bull
Owen
Spraynard
Orchid

more a feature of siloing than age

absolutely agree, this all goes along with the fragmenting/balkanization of music scenes/fanbases in general

We're Ray Bull, the indie pop duo from Brooklyn. Along with being an emerging indie band, we are content creators and influencers.

cool, bruh.

Can you guys feature my hydration drink at your merch table?

this was my feeling re: Lorna Shore. like...I didn't even hear that name until 2022. the band Aborted was an opening act at a show and dad was in respite care so I had a free night to do something and I went to go get a ticket and it said sold out, and I was like what, and I said who the fuck is the headliner that sold THIS venue out, and I look, and it's Lorna Shore, and I'm like Lorna who?

only to find I have several friends into them talking about OMG LIKE I WOULDN'T BE GOING TO THIS SHOW OF THE YEAR, BEEN WAITING A LIFETIME FOR THIS type posts. and after that, I couldn't stop hearing about them from any friend who was into deathcore, seeing memes about them on social media, having friends go to see them and sharing videos, even having a stranger at a bar tell me "OH YR INTO METAL? I JUST SAW LORNA SHORE". and they weren't a new band, had been around since 2009.

I know they're not big like the other examples itt but was pointing out that even though I'm not into deathCORE, it's adjacent to the music I listen to the most and even though I hate most deathcore, I'm very aware of the biggest players in the genre, and yet one of the biggest of them all completely slipped by me even while I was actively paying attention. like they were retroactively invented and everybody knew but me.

also they suck.

i think it's definitely siloing, to echo the posts upthread

right, I mean I don't think I've ever really been aware of what was popular. closest I came was probably in like 2007 when LCD Soundsystem suddenly became one of the biggest bands in the country.

like I feel like the phenomenon is less "big successful act that I somehow hadn't heard of" and more "act that seemed like something I would have encountered prior to now if they truly are as big as people say, to where I think this is some Twilight Zone trick where like they actually didn't exist before 5 minutes ago and suddenly poof they've always been here and only I didn't know"

What I’m more fascinated by is how so many of these people use their utterly unremarkable names instead of some cool stage name.

Just remembered Jeff “Guitar” Elliot from that classic “Name Bands at an Open Mic Night“ thread

(xp) Where are the Engelbert Humperdincks of today?

still love that Michael Bolton's real name is Michael Bolotin

He goes Country: Michael Bolotie

For me this is Fink. A few years ago I noticed that he was playing mid-size venues all over Europe and I had never heard of him. I started a thread about him but it got no replies at all.

Is that the Ninja Tune guy?

when LCD Soundsystem suddenly became one of the biggest bands in the country

Did this even really happen? I always got the impression that LCD Soundsystem were arena-sized in NYC, because that's where all the music critics and middle-aged tastemakers lived, but in the rest of America they were a 1000-1500 cap room act at best.

they were in between those two categories, i think. LCD played the 5,000-seat Aragon Ballroom when they were in chicago in 2010

had an album that peaked at #10 on the charts that year--not exactly a big arena act but good mid-sized fanbase

their fans are lowest common denominator imo

rym test: heard of 18, heard 12 (still need to press play on that adrienne lenker record!)

re: lcd soundsystem you can argue that their stint as one of the biggest bands in the world came 10 years after their supposed heyday, when they headlined a summer's worth of festivals, including coachella

my latest radio station chart just came out, here are the acts in the top ten I have never heard of:

Jalen Ngonda
Arlo Parks
Crumb
Alison Goldfrapp
Willow Avalon

Wasn't Alison Goldfrapp in a popular electronic group? I can't remember their name.

haha I was not sure if there was any relation there

Arlo Parks is one of those British singers who wins Mercury prizes

I feel like part of this phenom is a mundane test of whether you remember names of musicians and bands you've never actually heard. Like I recognize the artist names for 14 of the RYM albums but have only actually listened to the Freitas so far (sorry, Judas Priest!), whereas I assume most other people don't retain that kind of info, it being mostly useless

but more thread relevant, there are definitely silos I'm aware of and don't bother entering. e.g., I have essentially zero interest in any shoegaze revival stuff having been infatuated with that sound as a teen

You haven't heard any Priest? These guys would like a word with you:

https://jaredmobarak.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/heavymetalparkinglot01.jpg

https://jaredmobarak.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/heavymetalparkinglot01.jpg

I was gonna clarify that I meant I haven't heard *that* JP album, but tbh I don't recall ever willingly listening to them, and nor have I ever gotten around to seeing HMP!

Feel like in addition to their standard rep, Odesza has a kind of secondary rep for eliciting this response in people - to the extent that Stereogum did some junior anthropology on the subject:
https://www.stereogum.com/2224663/its-odesza-szn-who-are-odesza/columns/sounding-board/

this has always been the case for me living in salt lake city. everyone here seems to live in an alternate universe especially wrt electronic and dance music. i still don't understand how it all works but burning man, electric daisy carnival, edm and dubstep, etc, are influential. there's this pretty electronic downtempo group i forget the name of, not bonobo, someone else - they're huge here. mention critic favorite acts to anyone here and you get a blank stare. i think hype works differently in red states, it's outside the usual media outlets maybe. though there does seem to be more crossover lately just scanning the names on some of the festivals, and like i notice that resident advisor is a thing among the "cool dance music" crowd when no one cared about it 15 years ago. i used to be ashamed by that but now, idk, i like that network effects are heterogeneous enough that there are still mysteries all the time. just because something is outside of my bubble doesn't mean it's a gaping void you know? and the older i get the more i feel that there's a lot inside that bubble that is a gaping void.

na was saying something about how being out of touch means that you're just more efficient about what you like - something to that effect. i do have my tastes and my 'holy acts' and so forth but i also find it really rewarding to check out this kind of stuff that's outside of any of my network channels because it says something about young people making music and art today, what that looks like, what the values are, how they're the same or different than what they used to be. i like to visit that stuff, even if ultimately i don't find something really valuable to me, because it makes me feel less alienated. and occasionally i turn up something new that really does speak to me, and that's kind of exhilarating.

Me too, that’s the joy of musical discovery. Interesting about red/blue states — I haven’t lived in a red state in 20+ years and I guess it shows lol.
The closest thing to what I’m talking about is that Odesza post above. I think of those bands as festival circuit bands and I rarely know any of them.

But they obviously have tons of fans and are v successful in their parallel universe that briefly intersects w mine.

I did have a hilarious convo w two coworkers, aged 18 and 26, wherein I sincerely thought they were telling me about a musical artist named Taymin Pollack who they claimed EVERYBODY knew but you can guess what they were talking about, who I had heard of but was not a fan of. Love it when worlds collide and weird shit happens.

lol that took me a sec

...yeah, me too

xp lol odesza! that is who i was thinking of

literally the post above mine sheesh

and oh my god if i see the word 'szn' again i'm going to claw my eyes out, an innocuous thing that makes me irrationally angry for sure

Smz rznbl 2 me

despite usually finding out artists that fall into this category are either: bad idm, bad metal (hello sleep token), bad singer songwriters or jam bands (bad) - i still love this - because it's yet more evidence that there is no consensus, no more monoculture. bands can be hugely successful to people who love them without any obvious media attention. and if it does anything to speed up people finally letting go of the idea that there is any value in, or need to, "be in the know", all the better.

one UK version of this is always someone from manchester or similar, and always sounds like oasis/paul weller, and has a basic as fuck name... this guy your perfect example

https://thesoundofvinyl.com/cdn/shop/products/JW_LP_BLACK.png

(now i've looked it up and prepared for people to tell me he's from liverpool and that it not similar to manchester AT ALL)

Is he doing "nothing up my sleeves" or "please don't shoot, I'm surrendering"?

He’s holding up 10 fingers. For the people.

i just checked and i am familiar with 11 of the top 40 2024 albums on RYM

however, one of the bands i only know because they played a sold out show at my workplace (Friko)

Odesza is a band i keep getting ads for on Facebook, something about their Last Goodbye Finale tour, which i thought was a farewell tour but i guess The Last Goodbye was the name of an album they released in 2022 and the "finale" part is they're playing shows supporting that album ONE LAST TIME despite another album having been released since. kind of sad to see that era end but the greats have to move on.

I was working as music editor/writer at a weekly and I interviewed a musician who was coming to play in town -- John Vanderslice. I had enjoyed what I heard of his album he was promoting, so I went to the show and introduced myself. I can't remember exactly how the question came up, but we were talking about bands we were obsessed with and he said Mountain Goats, who he described as having an ardent and sizeable fanbase. I had literally never heard of the Mountain Goats. Then he told me it was really one guy and I was like oh ok.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Monday, April 8, 2024 11:49 AM

For the longest time, I thought John Vanderslice was the guy from Mountain Goats. To this day, I still have to do this one-second pause-n-think, where I go, no, it's the other guy named John.

It’s weird to me that there’s this whole world of Emo angst and Weezery pop punk that brushes up against underground punk but for all my travels through hardcore and garage and crust etc etc I never intersect with it. I just listened to a Spotify playlist and many of the songs sounded familiar and so did most of the names, but I still can’t match name to sound.

An emo guy joined my workplace 15 years ago and I recall a coworker saying “you guys will get along great, you both are into punk”. And we did get along great but quickly established that we had no listening in common and never really brought it up again.

Odesza is a band i keep getting ads for on Facebook, something about their Last Goodbye Finale tour, which i thought was a farewell tour but

I keep getting ads for this concert IRL, and enjoyed being minorly annoyed by your explanation that this is not in fact a farewell show

Khruangbin: a friend in Tokyo said they sold out multiple nights at a 5k capacity venue almost instantly.

...unless they are the new Mr. Big?

I can see Khruangbin being huge all over the world because like 90% of their stuff is groovy instrumentals, so no language barrier.

what's better than Odeszra

Khruangbin are definitely very popular, I see local bars playing their videos all the time. record store guy says he sells a lot of them too. its more than the groovy instrumentals I think, their image is also pretty cool

Yeah, they're playing two nights at Anthem in DC, which has a 6,000 capacity. First night is sold out.

Topical!

"How Khruangbin’s Sound Became the New Mood Music"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/magazine/khruangbin-mood-music.html

Maybe everyone is confusing Odeszra with Ozempic (which is even more popular).

It's not quite alternate universe, but when Unwound reunited I was shocked at all the sold out shows (two nights here). The night I went to was full of relatively young people, and I thought to myself, who are all these young Unwound fans?

This thread reminds me of the last few years of parsing the Lollapalooza poster, and wondering who everyone is. I once had someone walk me through it, and she was like: Tik Tok act, Tik Tok act, Tik Tok act, TV commercial song, Tik Tok act, actor, Tik Tok act, actor ...

I sincerely thought they were telling me about a musical artist named Taymin Pollack who they claimed EVERYBODY knew but you can guess what they were talking about

no idea sorry. tbf I haven't heard of lots of these so that's not too surprising

Tame Impala lol

One of my coworkers (age 19) is a young Unwound fan

This is definitely a function of siloing. A couple of guys from my neighborhood invited me to a Louis Cole show. He was in Knower, a band I vaguely knew from the internet. His partner from Knower opened. It seemed like they had a fan base who was just deeply, deeply invested in their very specific thing, had followed their careers, knew all their material etc.

Khruangbin has been huge for a while though. While it’s slightly surprising that a mostly instrumental band is as big as they are, they are just ridiculously stylish and cool and Laura Lee has star power.

yea I think her look is a big part of it

they are just ridiculously stylish and cool and Laura Lee has star power.

have you seen them out of their wigs/costumes, they look pretty normcore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvvNVolS9q8

They've got a good sound, this easy summer breeziness that works well w the festival circuit. and maybe some crossover demographic appeal with the jam band crowd? I feel like they cover a few bases.

It's funny to me that "Festival bands" are now neo-psych groups and jam bands, when I still think of a festival as a place you see twenty thousand people head banging in unison to Iron Maiden.

I heard about Odesza like a decade ago, and even then I was confused how they seemed to be instantly popular. It felt like a version of Low End Theory beat scene stuff that managed to connect to the nascent EDM thing (but was maybe more subtle and poppy and less brash compared to other groups occupying that space, like idk the Glitch Mob?). But really I've only heard a track or two and that was a long time ago.

It's the look of seeing all three of them playing together, so much sound from a trio, so much virtuosity without overplaying. Khruangbin records don't do a lot for me, but I'm always mesmerized by their videos. And yeah, the are fit well against a lot of demographics -- the festival crowds and stoners, but also Sublime Frequencies diggers and upscale r'n'b/smooth jazz folks.

About 2 years ago my daughter was telling me about a band The Backseat Lovers she was obsessed with as were some of her friends. I hadn't heard of them, which wasn't unusual, but when I checked they had a gajillion streams on Spotify and when I tried to buy a copy of their album for her birthday it was catching crazy prices on Discogs or anywhere. She saw them play a packed if not sold out show here (2500 capacity) as was seemingly most of their tour, and then I think they played Lollapalooza as well later in the summer. Their top song has 300M+ streams, and I believe this is the first mention of them on ILM.

"We are here to give you backseat love."

https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/ar0/b118367bd67f7be1fad68aeddcf94348.jpg

lol their big hit is that song that goes "She's nineteen/Fake I.D. and a nose ring."

I think we have a Cigarettes After Sex thread, but the first time I'd ever heard of them was via this Matty Perps tweet:

Cigarettes After Sex are a slowcore/dream pop band on an indie label and they have crazy high streaming numbers - it feels like a lot of people don't notice they're this big? their top song is no one's idea of commercial but it's closing in on a billion streams on Spotify pic.twitter.com/Oa4vSpcUai

— Matthew Perpetua (@perpetua) July 13, 2023

xpost I guess that's the silo-ing thing. Like where do these "alt rock" bands that even Pitchfork ignores get popular?

I think we've established that it's through tv syncs, TikTok, and streaming algorithms?

Khruangbin also has the full force of Tiny Desk/NPR on their side, I have friends who are huge fans that wouldn't have heard of them through any other avenue.

xps: Yeah, I went through the same thing last year with my daughter. Some of the groups that she listens to have WAY more streams on Spotify than some of my favorite bands from the last decade or two. Compare Tally Hall's play counts to LCD Soundsystem's, for example. Tally Hall is a two-album band that has been pretty much defunct for over a decade.

cigarettes after sex are kinda awesome from the few songs I’ve heard?… really great weightless sound.. great cover of Radiohead’s “motion picture soundtrack”

Also being on Spotify playlists seems to make a huge difference in visibility

Cigarettes After Sex is a truly disgusting band name tho

Disgusting and just dumb and cliche… lol young people I guess

xxxxpost There seems to be some tradition music biz behind the success of the Backseat Lovers, by which I mean radio airplay:

The latter song received radio airplay on stations like KKDO in Sacramento and the Sirius XM radio channel, Alt Nation.[2] It peaked at number 39 on the Billboard Rock & Alternative Airplay chart in 2021.

xpost Oh interesting - I had assumed it was all Instagram and Spotify or something. When I first read about them and saw they were from Utah, I assumed similar to La Lechera's original thought that they must be Mormon/Christian but it seems like that's not the case.

I'm checking out Backseat Lovers now... kind of a Jeff Buckley vibe

Cigarettes after sex has shown up in multiple Spotify algorithms for me, which based on how anonymous they are makes sense in a way. Inoffensively mediocre, faceless stuff. And really huge.

Yeah, Spotify algorithmic playlists really send play counts through the roof, which is why it's hard to glean real-world popularity from play counts. Just from personal experience as a small-time independent artist - I have one random track (which I don't even like that much, and which hasn't done anything on any other platform digitally or irl) that got put on their algo playlists for some reason, and that's at 80k plays. By contrast my 'biggest' tracks that had a bit of a life in clubs and on independent radio top out at around 10k. I assume the same holds true for bigger artists, just multiply the numbers by a lot.

xp

This band Cannons seems pretty big, don't know anything about them or why they are big.

I had never head of Wallows but they have a song with 800 million Spotify streams.

Cigarettes After Sex have been blowing up. Two years ago, they played DC at the 9:30 club (1,200 capacity). Last year, they upgraded to Anthem (6,000 capacity). This summer they're headlining at Merriweather Post Pavilion! I know I have heard them before, but nothing has ever really stuck out.

Also being on Spotify playlists seems to make a huge difference in visibility

Cigarettes After Sex is a truly disgusting band name tho

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, 10 April 2024 15:36 (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Disgusting and just dumb and cliche… lol young people I guess

― brimstead, Wednesday, 10 April 2024 15:40 (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I saw some ads for this group and my main reaction was "gen z smokes cigs?"

Vaping After Sex

#PostVRFapJuul

Surf Curse has a track over 1 billion streams
Dominic Fike has one at 950 million
Vacations- 566 million
Young the Giant has 6 songs with over 100 million
GROUPLOVE- 887 million
Briston Maroney- 215 million
Del Water Gap- 102 million

a lot of theee bands are weird and unpleasant like Hapsburgian AI rather than pleasant xerox of a xerox

lol, I heard a promo for "Cigarettes After Sex" on the radio and I immediately found the name completely revolting, but not even in a punk rock sort of way.

Yes — it’s both gross AND basic

Some of my Gen z coworkers smoke including the Unwound fan, coincidentally

cigarettes after sex are the worst band in the world

the music itself is both gross and wretched, there's nothing to it except a trite suggestion of downbeat elegance set to absurdly lazy songwriting. it is absolutely empty and the frontman is truly odious, just the sleaziest oiliest fuck in music history, he might be worse than kiedis

this is what gets the normies going though apparently. we live in dance monkey world

not sure the stuff you like is any better than this, tbqh

why are you being weird and personal and wrong

So, why the name ‘Cigarettes After Sex’?

What I like about the name now is everything about the band has been so autobiographical, I mean there are songs that deal with fantasy and some that are memoirs too, all those things go together, but the name is in the same sense. Basically, the name came from a moment I had with this girl that was like a friends with privileges type relationship, and she was the first girl I was with who would smoke after we were intimate, and I just found that after we would smoke together there was just this mood that was really special that I haven’t really had before. It was really peaceful and just one time during one of those moments I just thought ‘hmm Cigarettes After Sex, that sounds like a good name’ and here we are.

Really, just a question that should never have been asked

Does Girl In Red fit into this?

this is when I prefer artists who just make up blatant bullshit to answer questions like that, the truth is often so much worse

lol yes

i see cigarettes after sex's name a lot (youtube recs, that sort of thing) but never hear/see anyone discuss them. hate the name, music seems a snooze.

it’s sort of Muzak-y, def could snooze to

if muzak was trying to tell you every thirty seconds how much sex it likes to have, while also trying to sound incredibly profound about it

oh yeah, I forgot Taylor Swift included one their songs on her "Songs Taylor Loves" playlist.

Tobacco industry plant

not sure why khruangin gets a pass when we're criticizing bands for being muzak-y and boring

It’s what the kids like

i think they're good, nothing particularly groundbreaking but i was inspired to give them a listen this morning while making breakfast and it was a decent start to the day.

lol imago (also sorry, was not trying to insult u before just rmde a bit and being flippant)

> Does Girl In Red fit into this?

Never heard of her until one of my kids wanted help figuring out the chords to a song, upon which I saw the streaming numbers. Said kid is flying to Philly to see a show this month, my first experience with the modern ticket buying labyrinth. That was a lot of hoops to jump through to get into the general admission floor.

That act has been heavily promoted by T. Swift

Girl In Red (Taylor's Promotion)

next up: Girl in 1989, Girl in Reputation...

lol all good

i can't stand khruangbin's music either but at least they seem like decent folks having fun, and the music at least involves a bit of yknow music

my first actual contribution to this thread is that when i learnt of the existence, music and fanbase of the script it was a truly humbling moment

but they're old news now. new news? have you heard of AJR

Taylor Swift and Taymin Pollack should collab

i agree khruangbin is not actively bad, but they feel like giving up on engaged listening and just putting something pleasant on in the background, vaguely "funky" vaguely "world music" NPR core. which has its place (as muzak) but i can't imagine considering oneself a "fan of khruangbin"

lol my friend I mentioned above just texted me 'There's an article in the nytimes today about the K band'

He's a big fan (mostly as a soundtrack to self-guided psilocybin therapy I think)

Will ilx pre-cover Taymin Pollack's next album?

I recently came across this band called Goose that's headlining our local ampitheater this summer and clearly has a pretty significant following. They're a jam band, duh, that seems to be the best way to get yourself a big audience without making much of a dent in the popular consciousness. Honestly though, I kinda dig 'em, just endless fusion grooves and seemingly way less dorky than something like Phish. I've only checked out bits of their newest album, which is a live joint that's predictably 9 tracks and over 2 and a half hours long.

Playing a Goose song now, the usual Balaeric shite but funnily enough they cop the Front 242 rhythm, must be coincidence surely

there's also a band called Geese which had a pretty big album last year

Goose feels like jam band music for Young Life kids…I have a soft spot for probably too many jam bands but Mr Goose’s vocals are absolutely horrible in that striving to be soulful way that’s gotta be a part of the Dave Matthews or John Mayer lineage.

had to google Young Life

When did Goose start? Because I was pretty cognizant of jam-band shit about 15 years ago as a consequence of sharing office space with Relix magazine, and their name never came up back then, it was all Phish and Widespread Panic and the Disco Biscuits and whatnot. But in the last year or so they've been inescapable.

The band garnered praise for their performance at the 2019 edition of The Peach Music Festival, which gained them popularity in the jam band scene

Goose is currently probably in their mid-30s and followed the Billy Strings trajectory in that when they came to town two times ago they were at a ~1k capacity venue, when they were here last they played at a 2500 capacity venue, and when they’ll be here this summer they’re booked at an 8k capacity spot.

jam band adjacent but all modern reggae rock, i.e. Rebelution, Iration, Stick Figure.

It’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard for me. I got free tickets to their show last summer and I was completely shocked by the level of devotion of their fan base. A fairly high percentage of the audience had seen every show of the US tour.

I was friends with the opening band and some of the crowd even sang along with their lyrics. Though a lot of the crowd also seemed to openly despise the opening act and hated having to see them every night.

I saw Hayden James at Osheaga last year and I had no idea who he was so I looked him up and he has like a half billion streams. Very mediocre.

i agree khruangbin is not actively bad, but they feel like giving up on engaged listening and just putting something pleasant on in the background, vaguely "funky" vaguely "world music" NPR core. which has its place (as muzak) but i can't imagine considering oneself a "fan of khruangbin"

I guess I don't feel strongly enough about Khruangbin to identify as a "fan of Khruangbin," but the distinction between "engaged listening" and "something pleasant in the background" bugs me. A lot of my favorite music is pleasant background music, and the way I listen to Khruangbin isn't that different from the way I listen to lots of other stuff. If "engaged listening" means you're only paying attention to the music and not doing anything else, then I almost never do any engaged listening.

Lo-Fi Study Funk

^^Best Bruno Mars bop

Was going to say, Khruangbin is kind of the high end of Lo-Fi Beats -- I've heard them in two separate coffee shops in the past 24 hours. Totally makes sense that people in the COVID/Trump era want music that works like edibles. And it doesn't feel like they took the easy NPR route: they've stuck to what they do, while "Texas Sun" could work as a single by working with Leon Bridges and adding vocals on that one.

I think things have been moving in the pleasant background music direction for quite some time. That's how I imagine people consume Beach House and a lot of nu-gaze and electronic music--while they're on their phones or playing video games.

i'm mostly just talking trash for fun, i understand the purpose of background/mood music. it's been a while since i got spicy on ilx. but would you go see khruangbin live? that's how they first came up in this thread, as a live phenomenon.

i'm not sure what rockism is but there seems to be an element of rockism to their fandom, like yes it's basically lo-fi beats but they play their own instruments man

Khruangbin could definitely be good live. Shit, I saw Sigur Ros live and they were great!

they seem like a stoner band

I'm not sure it's quite rockism to be into a band as a band, and/or not considering their music functionally interchangable w/lo-fi beats...

Maybe now that everyone’s a stoner, stoner bands that are somewhat boring/not challenging have more appeal. No getting overstimulated, good vibes only

I was sitting in a bar a while ago that was playing some cool music which I didn't recognise and nor did Shazam, so I went and asked the bartender who said something I couldn't hear properly. So he fetched me the sleeve, which I couldn't read as I didn't have my glasses; looked a bit like an ECM cover. I smiled and thanked him and sat down again feeling like a hopeless middle-aged man. Later I described it on another music forum and someone identified it straightaway as Khruangbin. They don't sound as good as they did in that bar that afternoon.

"You got it from what bin?"

I did used to listen to one of the Khruangbin albums when I was working from home during the pandemic. It was inoffensive to the other people in the house.

Might depend on the venue, but sure, I'd see Khruangbin live.

they seemed so awesome when i first saw a live concert clip on youtube and i was totally with it for the first song and then they keep going and going...and it all seems kinda samey. but the first impression is great.

I've compared them to Portishead as far as ubiquity (especially in coffee shops, stores, and bars) and also having a sound that's immediately recognizable.

This is from five years ago but a good sample of them live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xKvHANqjk

if you were on drugs i can imagine it being amazing too. if you went and saw them live. kinda like acid mothers temple. or kitaro. or someone else that keeps doing the same thing forever.

speaking of sigur ros, i was at this show. it was fucking amazing. they filmed it for HBO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15hs67SGwzo

do Clutch and Cake still have their diehard cult followings after all these years?

Cake does for sure

Does Girl In Red fit into this?

― paisley got boring (Eazy)

i swear to god i thought girl in red were, like, contemporaries of the indigo girls that i never heard of because suddenly there were all these memes about lesbians being into girl in red

i heard one of their songs once, it was ok

weezer being popular is one of those things where all of a sudden everybody loved bob ross and thought he was the goat. i just... i don't get why gen z is all about weezer. maybe it is a siloing thing to some extent but for me, it's all about age. i just kinda stopped listening to music around 2020. everything since then, i just nod and say "sounds cool".

re: that rym list, i think it's also worth taking into account the number of ratings. eunuchs, for instance, have about 200 ratings. the kids haven't suddenly gone wild for avant-prog and zeuhl, they're not pulling out their cell phones at stadium concerts whenever eunuchs break into their 17-minute epic "heroin king".

i tried listening to them for a couple minutes and i got bored. i skipped ahead and the guy was yelling angrily over some dissonant stuff. idk. i think if i was 20 years younger i might like it.

khruangbin are great

i would go see khruangbin live and enjoy the music while also being super uncomfortable at how crowded the venue is

They were headlining some kind of summer festival in Omaha, alongside Japanese Breakfast, Thundercat, Drive-By Truckers, and Shovels & Rope, and I thought all of that sounded much better for a summer night than that year's Lolla and Pitchfork lineups in my own city.

I've been putting together a weekly entertainment calendar here for the past year or so, and it has been illuminating to see how many people I've never heard of come to play mid-to-large-sized venues. And then I look them up and they have like 6 or 7 albums and clearly a decent fanbase because they're playing 700-2,000 seat venues in a mid-sized city. A certain amount of it is country, which isn't surprising because we're just down the road from Nashville. But a lot of rock bands too, some indie-ish, some what seems to me deeply unfashionable guitar-led rawk, but they're out there doin' it. When I go to listen to them so I can write a semi-informed blurb, I very rarely find anything that makes me want to listen more. But I respect the hustle.

I really liked Con todo el mundo and the album they did with Vieux Farka Toure, but every other album of theirs I've heard is an absolute snore.

Case in point, a 19-year-old named Jessie Murph (zero ilx search results) has sold out a 1,000-capacity venue here this month. I guess she comes from TikTok.

I do really like Khruangbin. They have a way of making what seems like it shouldn't be enough to carry a song carry a song. Kind of in the same way that their stage performance is carried by wigs and good outfits and a vibe and very slight movements. It shouldn't be enough to be mesmerizing, but it is. They're like some kind of secret weapon developed by the Joker in an Adam West Batman episode, designed to entrance and trap Robin.

I agree that they can get a bit samey but that vibe for me is so pleasant that I don't mind it. Kind of the same way so much dub techno is interchangeable in a lot of ways, I don't care, just keep it coming imo.

Weezer's popularity kind of mystifies me, but they're a bit of a bacon band.

The world might heal a bit if people* stopped their everlasting memeing wrt Weezer or Cuomo. Then again the band have had 'fun' encouraging it.

*those under 40 at least. Do fans the age of the band care?

I tried to listen to Weezer’s emo-classic Pinkerton once but it turned out it was a Weezer album.

I think the Khruangbin thing is their self-assurance; they’ve offered a very specific thing from the get-go, if you want to appreciate that’s cool, but they don’t feel the need to change or seek an audience. It’s pretty charismatic.

'pretty charismatic' is some of the most high-quality damning with faint praise I've read of late, kudos

'pretty charismatic' is some of the most high-quality damning with faint praise I've read of late, kudos

― imago

you sure do love you some prog rock

i love a lot of the ambient, new age, and balearic vibes music that imago hates, but i agree with him that khruangbin sucks. i don't need things to happen in music, but they do the same sort of demographic-crossing blandness that cigarettes after sex does, only for when people want to feel that "life is good" rather than "i am cool and sexy"

He's been mentioned on ilm before and I've been aware of him for some time so perhaps not totally in the spirit of the thread, but I continue to be shocked by the size of Billy Strings fanbase. I did not predict a jam-adjacent bluegrass kid to reach such huge heights - he's playing two nights at Allstate Arena, around 18,500 capacity, later this year and I see he's got sold out two night engagements at a lot of other arenas and big outdoor sheds.

Love Billy Strings, not at all surprised by the huge leap in popularity. Deadheads were already well-primed by other jamgrass bands (Greensky, Yonder Mountain) but Billy's group and shows are next level

i saw him on tv at pithfork festival and i was surprisingly impressed! i had never heard him before. he really knows how to get a crowd going. and his blend of country/rock is one that i kinda always wished was more of a thing. not truck commercial rock welded onto country. bluegrass rock with power and good playing. i'm all for that guy. you go, billy!

Oh yeah, no shade at Billy. He's a talented dude that deserves all the success. I just never would have imagined he'd hit back-to-back sold out nights in basketball arenas big.

i can't say that i listen to him on my own or anything. but for that one moment in time i was a big fan! same thing happened when i saw japanese breakfast at that fest. so much fun! just a really good time. but not my thing really. but you can see why people like it so much.
i think its cool when genuinely talented people playing upbeat music get big. its kinda nice. there is a lot of dreck out there.

it WAS probably a bit of my old rockist side coming out. it does occasionally for sure. "hey, these kids can play. now this is REAL music..."

but they did just seem to being enjoying themselves and enjoying the fact that they were rocking a crowd. i couldn't be a grump about that.

This isn't really a parallel universe thing, but I'm always surprised at just how big Mitski is. It makes sense to me that her music is critically acclaimed and that she gets the amount of media coverage she does, but I don't get how that translates to the sheer number of Spotify plays her songs have -- "My Love Mine All Mine" has 833 million, and she has 11 other songs with more than 100 million. Basically, I don't know why an "indie" musician who isn't played on the radio (AFAIK) has ended up with so many teenage fans.

Yeah, Mitski was even on the Billboard 100. I guess people really love Teenage Dirtbag.

that's like, one of her less impressive songs too. i get the feeling that she encapsulates a sort of gnomic downer glam vibe that has accidentally connected with whatever it is tiktok is doing. and it's this vibe above all that's being celebrated, more than the songwriting

My students LOVE Mitski — she writes about difficult stuff they can relate to and also it sounds palatable.

She's about 3 times as popular as Phoebe Bridgers on Spotify

what the kids, who are wrong, not me, don't understand is that be the cowboy is peak

I don't get how that translates to the sheer number of Spotify plays her songs have

She's about 3 times as popular as Phoebe Bridgers on Spotify

Four out of five of her Spotify listener locations are in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Like, if Wikipedia population #s are right, somewhere between ~1 out of every 10 or 35 people in Jakarta listen to her.

There's an article about Khruangbin in the New York Times this week. (Gift link.)

This Jacob Collier person keeps showing up in guitar trash youtube shows I watch. I have no idea who he is, but popularity is implied.

Cigarettes After Sex have been blowing up. Two years ago, they played DC at the 9:30 club (1,200 capacity). Last year, they upgraded to Anthem (6,000 capacity).

I knew this band had a sizeable fanbase, but I was shocked to see the listing for their upcoming show at Rogers Arena in Vancouver (19,000; other upcoming shows there include Olivia Rodrigo, Pearl Jam, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg...)

Was also kind of surprised when The 1975 were at the same venue last fall.

I feel like ILM voting Real Lies AOTY and them having zero coverage anywhere else is our own microcosm of this phenomenon

feeling this way about Chappell Roan who seems to be everywhere right now, and I still have no idea who she is. my stepkid listens to some band called The Neighbourhood who also seems to have a weirdly massive fanbase.

then there's former youtubers like Conan Gray who I've been aware of for years but have never knowingly heard a note of their music, and it's mostly because he always seems to be hanging in the background around other bigger popstars.

Roan got a big popularity boost for opening the first half of the Olivia Rodrigo tour, but I knew about her because she already had an ILX thread!

This Jacob Collier person keeps showing up in guitar trash youtube shows I watch. I have no idea who he is, but popularity is implied.

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 12 April 2024 05:18 (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nor did I until a few years ago when a few close friends had already, passionately, settled on him as the absolute worst. So much so that it drove me to hear his latest album at the time (Djesse Vol 3). I didn't think it was up to much but nor did I quite hear why it/he angered my friends so. But he gets nominated for Grammys a lot right?

I don't hate or even dislike him. Maybe I don't know him well enough. But he dresses like Pauly Shore and pulls out multiple name guitars which were custom made for him, yet I have no idea who he is. The stuff he plays while noodling around on said trash guitar youtubes is pretty, and he seems to know what he's up to.

He's a favored disciple of Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock because of his grasp of harmony and virtuosity (and probably because he made himself a youtube star through being conventionally virtuosic), made a bunch of videos playing all the instruments, and makes fucking terrible music. Sort of the apotheosis of the Youtube-era virtuoso musician who has been able to absorb a huge amount of musical information, but without the unique aesthetic of a Louis Cole or Domi & JD Beck, or respect for minimalism and funk of a Vulfpeck.

For me it's when I think I've discovered some deeply obscure or underground act only to find they're bloody huge, verging on mainstream. Happens a lot with Afrobeats stuff especially.

xp ok, guitar youtubes make sense theb. To clarify, he dresses like Pauly Shore would dress in colder weather. If there's a movie where Pauly lands an internship in the Big City or must face mountain nature.

so many hip hop people i've never heard of with 50 zillion views. but they can also come and go pretty fast.

can't believe nobody's mentioned ICP yet

never heard of them

haha I think most ppl have accepted ICP as part of the consensus reality universe

people cutting Jacob Collier a break now? ILX really is losing its touch

Shakey Jake Collier

that's a roundabout way of admitting you like Pauly's style

Why has no one mentioned Juggalos?

I learned yesterday that several of my siblings are big Noah Kahan fans. I'd never heard of him in my life.

This guy's headlining two (2) nights at the Hollywood Bowl this summer... I had also never heard of him, tho he and Olivia Rodrigo are releasing a split single (for RSD) covering each other's songs.

(thread fave Khruangbin are also headlining two nights at the Bowl)

its a new world order.

What we are looking at is good and evil, right and wrong

You guys are thinking of Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga Concert Experience, a two-night extravaganza at the end of August (You may think you’ve seen these stories before, but never like this. Join the Los Angeles Philharmonic as we embark together on a live concert and cinematic journey through the Marvel Infinity Saga – beginning with the Tesseract being hidden on Earth by the Asgardians all the way to Tony’s ultimate sacrifice – from an all-new perspective.)

It’s a Ring Cycle for the 21st Centiry!

Tony's Ultimate Sacrifice is the name of my No Doubt tribute band, btw

i don't know that fans of the extremely popular marvel movie franchise count as being from a parallel universe

Earth 619

the bad earth

Billy Strings has gotten pretty popular but he is playing two nights at Rupp arena in Lexington in June, which I found surprising.

(Thought Khruangbin's Coachella set was fantastic on the livestream, but I won't try converting the unconvertible.)