Are today's Iron & Wine fans yesterday's Pavement fans?

Konzert-Bericht

Don't Call It A Comeback

Stephen Malkmus

Köln, Prime Club
06.02.2001
Vielleicht hat sich Stephen Malkmus an den
erschreckend langweiligen Auftritt Pavements vor
knapp zwei Jahren im Kölner Gloria erinnert und
meinte etwas gutmachen zu müssen, vielleicht ist
er jetzt einfach auch entspannter. Wie dem auch
sei, Steve und seine exzellente neue Band lieferten
im Prime Club im Jahre 1 nach Pavement eine
großartige Show ab.
Auch wenn er mit Bassistin Joanna Bolme, Drummer John
Moen und Multi-Instrumentalist Mike Clarke (der Mann
spielte alles von Steel-Drums über Gitarre bis hin zum
Keyboard) gerade einmal vier Auftritte absolviert hatte -
von ein paar Endings abgesehen - schien bereits blindes
Verständnis bzw. Vertrauen auf der Bühne zu herrschen.
Die entspannte Stimmung der Show passte ausgezeichnet
zu dem lockeren Feeling der neuen Platte, die natürlich
einen Großteil des Programms ausmachte und mit "Jenny
And The Ess-Dog" auch einen potentiellen Single-Knüller
enthält. Dazu hatte Steve im Interview bereits eine Reihe
Coverversionen versprochen, und die hätten obskurer
kaum sein können. Stücke von Mellow Candle, JK & Co
oder Fairport Convention haben die Jicks derzeit im Programm und dennoch
zeigten sie in Köln auch, dass sie trotz der unrockigen Platte gerne mal die
Verstärker auf "11" drehen. Dazu durften dann "Alien Boy" von den Wipers und
das als letzte Nummer heruntergerotzte "That's What Mama Said" von Coloured
Balls herhalten.

i've never heard iron and wine. i loved pavement in 94. i'm listening to about the same ratio of intense abrasive music and mellow downtempo music as i did back then.

Part of what's going on here is that I'm in the demographic I'm talking about. Maybe everybody overestimates the importance of their own niche. But I do feel like if I walk down the street in, say, Park Slope, half the people I see will be Iron & Wine fans who used to listen to Pavement. Perhaps I'm projecting?

It's true that the past few years of Drag City releases haven't interested me as much as the stuff they used to put out, but I don't know if other '90s people are "growing along with the scene" in a way that I'm not, or if labels like DC are just appealing to a new group of "mellower" kids.

But this is a good question: Who is the new Pavement? In the sense of: Who is the band that defines what an indie-rock band is in 2004, with critical love and a somewhat large fanbase? My first inclination is Death Cab for Cutie.

it's always kinda been one, and that's fine.

Iron & Wine are terrible, imo.

http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~kacollin/cockfight.jpg

Iron and Wine fans:

http://www.cem.va.gov/images/cwsoldr1.jpg

somewhat different, one group filled with happiness and joy, the other one grimly marching towards oblivion.

Have other cohorts aged? Or have most previous ones just stopped buying music in large numbers?

Pavement was a pop band, and a pretty joyous one at that, most of the time. There could never be a substantial similarity between Pavement and ANY borecore emo group because those kind of bands are totally un-pop and anti-fun.

The Fiery Furnaces. No question about it.

Jaymc, to paraphrase a friend of mine, it's amazing how fast 'borecore' has become the most scathing thing that I could say about anything. As far as I'm concerned, the primary conflict in art right now is one of borecore vs. joycore, and in the indie world, the borecore people are winning.

Yeah, Beam is tuneful, sure, but Derek, you've got to admit, it's the difference between singing along while jumping on a bed versus singing along while drinking whiskey by yourself on a porch swing.

I like this idea. I've seen you use "joycore" on Fluxblog, but I wasn't aware it had a mortal enemy! But actually, it's something I've been noticing, too, especially among friends of mine as we get older.

I think there have been some great "joycore" releases lately, if we're talking in the indie world as it usually is defined. (All this talk about Belle and Sebastian lately makes me realize how I used to regard them as borecore, but "DCW" made me do a complete 180 on them)

Gear! not OTM re: Postal Service being boring.

I don't really think of borecore as being like a genre or anything - it's just a way of thinking or an aesthetic which informs all kinds of art and writing. Most emo strikes me as being inherantly borecore, because it revels in depression and impotence, and its fanbase seems to actively distrust fun and happiness and deny pleasure. Whenever I talk about joycore these days, it's almost always defined in my mind as being "not borecore."

THIS IS MADNESS.

Also Matthew, I'm sorry, but your joycore vs. boycore is a false dichotomy of Momusian proportions. Many of the bands you used to champion back in the day (but now only mention on your blog in order to parody) could be considered serious borecore by your own defnitions, possibly even progenitors of it (I'm looking at you, PEARL JAM and SMASHING PUMPKINS), and they weren't even significantly on indies! And if "borecore is winning," as you say, how do you explain the popularity of your blog?

The Animal Collective is more like the new Sun City Girls, maybe.

and no, I think gygax!'s Pavement comparison is more apt. The SCG seek to deconstruct pop (or maybe recontextualize it in a non-Western setting) in a way that AC don't, to my knowledge (admittedly I haven't heard their pop songs).

the latter is why I don't like Postal Service, btw...

And of course, he did write that rap for Open City.

Well, not pop in how they are produced, but in terms of melody and songwriting, they totally are. S+E is a record of pop songs. "Box Elder" and "Debris Slide" are pop songs. "Angel Carver Blues" and "From Now On" are pop songs.

Yeah, it is a bit of false dichotomy in that lots of wonderful things exist in a grey area, but that's not really the point. For me, it's about rejecting one extreme that I have come to loathe, and the other in which I find a lot of value. I'm not asking you or anyone to take this deadly seriously, but I do think it is valuable to be able to call something out on being borecore.

How popular is my blog, really? It does well, but if you think of it terms of how many people read Pitchfork, which I consider to be a publication which is synonmous with borecore impulses, their readership is well over a hundred times the size of my own.

The new Pavement are probably like Franz Ferdinand or !!! or something.

I'll certainly grant you this on some of the later stuff: Easily Fooled, Blue Hawaiin, Harness Your Hopes.

I can't claim I'm unbiased, I have to hear that shit every other day at my apartment.

xpost

DUDE YOU WERE ON NPR YOU TOLD US ALL ABOUT IT.

I'm sorry to be a jerk but you plug it at every opportunity so I must assume it's doing well *altho yeah I brought it up but it's your major platform for this borecore vs. joycore nonsense*

And c'mon man, you like Radiohead too. They embody a lot of your borecore qualities. Maybe your problem with "borecore" is that you just aren't able to find the joy in music you don't like.

I think Animal Collective are deconstructing pop, too, with their Beach Boys harmonies and '70s songwriter strum and their alluding to and ultimate willful rejection of verse/chorus/verse and the like. In a much much different way than SCG, I might add.

yeah, I think you're right, that's why I put in that parentheses about SCG recontextualizing, I think that distinguishes them from AC (and Pavement) quite a bit.

I'm claiming all those as influence. Also, Ashberry/Beats ain't really a combo, imo.

I can see how the Animal Collective are a little like Pavement during their Westing period, but they've been stuck in that run for a long time now and are still a long ways away from making anything nearly as solid as Slanted And Enchanted.

Meanwhile, the Fiery Furnaces have made records roughly analogous to S+E and Wowee Zowee.

I'm not sure if I'd really count Radiohead as a borecore band. They certainly aren't joycore, that's for sure. I think a lot of art in this world falls into a grey area between the two extremes of joycore and borecore, and Radiohead would fall in that area. I don't think that sad music is evil or anything. It's not like that at all. Also, there's a bunch of Radiohead songs which feel genuinely uplifting.

I know that I'm hardly being clear in this thread (mostly because this is entirely off the cuff), but I'm not sure if you totally get what I mean by all of this, hstencil. It's probably not your fault at all! I'm not trying to put you down or be condescending about this.

I suppose I'm reacting to the whole "best album ever omg" stuff that has accompanied Such Great Heights as well, along with the bad connotations I have. I would like to shake these people I know by the shoulders and tell them that there are other, much better bands out there doing the same thing without the whole "sad I am living in this fancy apartment" crap.

Yeah, but that doesn't automatically make me some kind of megastar or something. I'm just being realistic and honest about how many people actually read the thing - I get about 2000 hits on the average weekday now, plus however many other people are reading it in syndication. (Last time I checked, there were nearly 70 people subscribed to it on Livejournal, who knows about the other stuff.) Factoring in people who check irregularly, I would guess that I've got about 3000 readers, give or take. That's a lot of people, and certainly more than most music blogs, but it's a far cry from the number of people who read Pitchfork or any of the huge megablogs (Wonkette, Gawker, Instapundit, Boing Boing, etc). It's nice to have some acknowledgement, but it's still a pretty small operation in the big scheme of things.

I thought you were for a sec.

Ice, baby.
I've seen your girlfriend...etc. etc.

Perpetua, you have an odd view of Pavement. Mythic or something. They weren't a pop band in 1992, that's for sure. Unless by pop you're meaning "had melodies" or something vague like that.

That's not specific to a single genre, though. Also, a lot of process music or aleatory/chance music or even some (early) minimalism could be said to be "passionless and joyless and has no energy," and conveying that is kinda the point, and kinda joyous and fun in its own way.

a lot of the energy in Radiohead's music exudes more tension than joy, imo. Even if it was instrumental (aka no Yorke-bleating over the top) I'd still listen to them for the cold, prickly, this-is-our-present-state THX-1138-ness of it.

what is this obsession with "winning" about, anyway? It's not a ballgame, it's music. And I would say that there's far more Christgaus/Eddys/Matoses/Wolks/Harvells (to name but a few) out there these days writing about joyousness in and from music, way more than there were a few years ago. And that's (generally) a good thing.

borecore = Death Cab For Cutie, Ryan Adams, Strokes, Walkmen, Jay Farrar, MC Paul Barman

that's just me, it's completely arbitrary, the former is music that makes me happy, the latter is music that is dangerous to listen to while driving or operating heavy machinery.

also I see your point hstencil and I agree.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Iron & Wine (as well as folks like Bright Eyes and Songs Ohia) specialize in this really bland, dreary blandness that seems to stuck halfway between "I just learned how to play" amateurishness and a total lack of spirit and spark. It's this weird aesthetic based around drabness.

Perpetua, you have an odd view of Pavement. Mythic or something. They weren't a pop band in 1992, that's for sure. Unless by pop you're meaning "had melodies" or something vague like that.

Well, Pavement is my favorite band ever. So yeah, mythic is probably the right word. But yeah, I do mean that they are pop songs because they are melodic and catchy and perfect. In terms of this essay by Mike Barthel, Pavement would be POP-II. You seem to be stuck on thinking about pop as being strictly what he would refer to as POP-I.

Jaymc, I would say that rockism is an inherantly borecore position. You're right on about this: I get the impression that what's frustrating about this notion of "borecore winning" is that "serious" artistic statements are seeming to trump the idea of fun for its own sake.

Hstencil: That's not specific to a single genre, though. Yeah, duh. That's why I've been so emphatic about saying that borecore is not a genre, but a descriptive epithet. A wide range of art and philosophy can be labeled borecore. Individual people can be described as borecore. I know that the core suffix is misleading, though. It's just a word that I'm kinda stuck with! For me, the joycore/borecore thing is something which started as a little joke, but has become a bit more useful to me over time.

How dare you. Blaspheme.

I'm not really into Dylan, Jaymc. There's some songs that I like okay, but a lot of it doesn't really interest me. In my experience, a lot of the post mid-60s Dylan that I've heard seems kinda colorless to me. His early records and the Basement Tapes stuff is lively and has a lot of great imagery, but at some point he seems to just get dull. Someday I might put some time in getting to know his work a little better, but I really feel no desire to do so anytime soon. It's just so far off from what I want to hear these days.

That, and the nu-goth fashion of it bugs me to no end.

well excuuuuuuse me but every time you bring up borecore it's in relation to indie, dude. Describe a pop band/artist or a hip-hop artist or a dance/techno artist as borecore and I'll believe you.

I don't even know if I can respond to this.

ad nauseam

Hstencil, I can't think of any dance/techno artists who I'd consider to be particularly borecore (the genre seems to exist in opposition to borecore, since it's mostly designed for the purpose of dancing and parties), but Tiefschwarz could come close - I tend to find their music and remixes really oppressive and cold, which turns me off.

A lot of undie hip hop is pretty borecore in its fixation on hating mainstream pop and chart hip hop. A great deal of hip hop can be considered borecore when the lyrics fixate on misery, nihilism, and emptiness. At his worst, Tupac could be just as selfindulgently gloomy as the most ridiculous goth.

"Intelligent Dance Music" comes to mind. Hell, a lot of Kompakt comes to mind as well!

I'm starting to feel like Ronald Thomas Clontle.

also, would you host an mp3 of it on your blog?

electronic music IS techno! It comes directly from dance music. Warp, way way way back, was a dance label much as some people would like to deny it. Same goes for some of the biggies of the genre (Aphex, Autechre, etc.). And yes, some IDM is danceable, at least I've seen people dance to it (I wonder if anyone will dance to the couple of Warp and Rephlex track I've got picked out for tonight, though).

Gygax, I don't have an mp3 of that! I don't even think I still have a tape of it, come to think of it.

see also: nardcore (and god bless the three people who will get this joke)

Other times, though, acts like Songs:Ohia do pull out this overwhelmingly joyous kind of thing, this rich fullness and swelling of spirit that even when it's unhappy seems to bloom out of the speakers and fill me with life.

So yes; subjective.

It's lame when indie snobs say "all pop music i don't like is boring," and ditto when people pile onto songs:ohia + ilk, saying "all folky stuff i don't like is boring." "borecore" seems like an inherently oppositional (and pigeonholing) term, which doesn't do well for a relativist "love what you love" view of music.

1. I think this has been an interesting thread.

2. Matthew has been a remarkably good sport.

is this a quote from that Hornby editorial?

Alright. Let's end this thread and put me in a straightjacket.

In other words, it seems the big indie acts are getting folksier, and is that because the cohort that used to buy Pavement records (or Dino Jr. or whatever: that generation) has mellowed?

I suspect that perhaps it's something to do with an idea that when you get older, you should make 'older' sounding music. I think that it's likely that a lot of folks from that generation are just following a career trajectory that they've seen played out before, and embracing that. It's easy to look 'dignified' (or 'authentic'?) being an old guy with an acoustic guitar playing sad or mellow music. I think that there's some vanity at play here - a lot of these folks want to be taken seriously, and not be seen as people past their prime in a young man's game. So inevitably, you get a lot of people who essentially say "well, now that my famous band is over, I'm going to make strummy/noodle-y music that you don't have to care about, but you'll still respect me for doing it."

I think it's more exciting when someone makes bolder decisions as they get older - Bob Mould's recent electronic music is a good example. I'm not too into his stuff, but I think it's really cool that he put his reputation on the line to try something totally different from what he had been doing for twenty years or so.

Crazy theory: It's become rare for very sad music to become big hits in the past decade. The popularity of slow, dirgey sad music in the indie world could be a somewhat reactionary move against a mainstream which avoids melancholy music due to corporate mandate.

x-post

Wild guesses: A lot of people are drawn to depresso folk because it has that whole 'authenticity' vibe, both in terms of history and that it ian't part of the mainstream these days. Acoustic guitars are pretty accessable instruments. Kids today seem to be more depressed, selfabsorbed, and fucked up than ever before, so they are a perfect audience for People Singing About Their Pain. Some folks go for aggressive, physical metal, some folks go for nihilistic hip hop, the indie kids of today prefer open mic night style pain ballads.

antifolk/jewelled antler cdrs vs dipset/dsouth mixtapes... whatev

Most of the new folk stuff coming out these days is not depressing at all (with maybe the exception of Iron & Wine, but maybe it just depressed me because it was so bad). Listening to Six Organs or PG Six or any number of great folk bands (new being relative since both of those dudes have been doing things for a while now) doesn't conjure up depression in me as a listener at all.

And thus the assimilation of Thee New Folk America began...

i can't believe i read this entire fucking thread.

iron & wine are playing the khyber in philly tonight. the show is sold out. on the second floor of the khyber, the dj lounge, is a night devoted to spinning nothing but built to spill, beat happening and dub narcotic sound system. it is insanely packed.

make of this as you may....

in college, I listened to the palace brothers cd's all the time, and found special joy in lou barlow home recordings, too. both of which could be considered, I don't know, maybe somewhat borecore? but not "adult" like iron & wine. the absurd is an important ingredient.

You initial question was asking if today's I&W fans are yesterday's Pavement fans. Perhaps not directly, that does imply one band is an older trend and the other is the newer one.

It's not surprising to see people interpret it as such, especially in a society where things need to be hypercommercialized to make them appear desirable. "The new ____" has always been an intrinisic part of rock and youth culture.

But i'm going to put aside the semantics argument for a moment to refocus on your question and try to remark on a couple of interesting comments from this thread.

Paraphrasing Mark, he stated "Many I&W fans were not around at the time of Pavement," meaning that this is a whole new generational thing. I slightly disagree. I might be basing my own opinion on what I see in Philadelphia, but many people in the crowd at last nights aforementioned I&W show were between the ages of 25 - 35. These are people who could have [and did] see Pavement when they were still around. And if they didnt, they were keenly aware of the group.

They are also, bigger fans of I&W than any 19 year old i've met. [i work for a university and my workstudy kids are all pretty "with it" when it comes to music.] Actually, my kids have only "kinda heard about Pavement," so there's the generational gap. The only college kids I know who are familiar with both bands, work in college radio or harbor that same unhealthy obession with music that I did when I was their age.

Perhaps its more that quest for something "new" or "different" from whatever's being hyped in music circles -- a reaction to the post-punk blitz thats been crammed down fan's throats the last couple years than it is as a reaction to canonized indie rock bands like Pavement, Built to Spill, etc.

Not really...if you can prove that today's Iron & Wine fans did not grow up with Pavement then you can answer the question without knowing what happened to the Pavement fans.

And it gets labeled "New" because it's (nearly) all been done before in one form or another.

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"Maria's comment about the DJ spinning C. Johnson/D. Martsch is interesting to me because I actually sense a greater affinity between Iron & Wine and Built to Spill than I do I&W and Pavement."

but really it's all just indie-rock. the names of the fans and the bands may change, but the song remains the same.

what, like we're better dressers than him?

have you looked in the mirror recently? [collectively speaking, of course]

when i went to the radio station today i looked horrible. if i was 16 again, my parents would definately not let me out of the house [and i grew up in a very strict household]: ripped, repatched and cuffed jeans; a bright blue "baltimore" t-shirt that i "borrowed" from an old boyfriend years ago; old and gross converse low-tops and a big white belt. if i was standing in a rock club, i probably would have looked pretty fucking cool but this was lily-pulitzer-white princeton nj.

i dont want to turn this into I Love Fashion but part of the indie rock aesthetic is looking like a homeless person. do i need to sit you down and force you to listen to "ex-con" by smog on infinite repeat until you get the point?

i played it once today, i can play it again, young man. :)

i played it once today, i can play it again, young man. :)

Hey, that was a little jibe out of love for Doug....I'm a huge Built to Spill fan, and I find his apparent total lack of vanity endearing!

I dress okay, I think. (haha I think key words here)

but still, SWEATPANTS, that's a whole new level...

Anyway, I don't see any necessary correlation between yesterday's Pavement and today's Iron and Wine fans. I know plenty of Pavement fans who don't like I&W and some who do as well. Not to mention I know people who have always had pretty dull taste in music but seem to see Iron & Wine as something to listen to as their taste "matures."