teh killers vs. teh bravery

"And because of the Killers' success, they've not only become popular lawsuit targets, but they've also kicked off an industry-wide signing binge not seen since the glory days of grunge."

Wha?

i heart the bravery even more for knowing they can play ANYTHING THE KIDS LIKE.

I like the phrasing of this.

xpost Miccio I haven't heard the ballads though. Are they awful? Surely you don't mean "Mr Brightside"???

As opposed to straightforwardly? *flees, yelling "Death to 'Mr. Brightside' over his shoulder*

Strokes = Husker Du
Killers = Nirvana
Franz Ferdinand = Soundgarden
Bloc Party = Mudhoney
Louis XIV = Pearl Jam
Bravery = STP (because I said this in webprint, even if they're probably the Pearl Jam) (and Louis XIV is the Alice In Chains) (or maybe the Kaiser Chiefs) (are the Louis XIV) (boing)
me = super jaded fuck wearing holey Slip It In t-shirt twirling my ear hair while Xeroxing my zine @ Kinko's railing on this crap while secretly hating myself for liking most of this stuff (& also eagerly awaiting the Veruca Salt of this movement) (k-rowr)

Least true thing = me hating myself. Bring on the dancing horses, fuckers!

"Mr. Brightside" is one of my favorite singles of the year so far. I'm overstating the case there, I just mean I'm not looking forward to groups that make me miss the Bravery (whose new single has a decent beat but the singer is a drag). I'm worried the next crop are going to be even MORE devoid of personality (though Pearl Jam brought me Local H and Everclear who I like more so hey).

x-post David I take a giant shit on your analogy.

unless you switch these two!

I don't like that Maximo Park single much BTW.

Miccio the Ada version *is* better though I agree the logic is flawed (Ada's version has nothing to do with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs though and everything to do with being an Orbital "Attached"/"Style" mash-up!)

Whichever version they play on the radio sounds like compressed fuzzy noise and sounds nothing like the Cure.

also, 2nd verse = same as the 1st = NO.

All the choruses you reference do indeed kick ass and I am with you 100% in that regard.

Which, I agree, is far superior, but that's everything to do with Lu Cont. Fuck the original band, hang 'em out to dry! He needs to do more Aphex-styled complete makeovers with acts I hate.

"This Fire" is pretty sharp, I have to say. Like it more than "Take Me Out" despite having only heard the former...what, once? Something like that, when I was buying some shoes.

Karen O's voice *is* a yawn, when I finally heard the original "Maps" I was bored shitless with how dull it turned out to be all around; classic case of being oversold. I think Tim's onto something with Ada's cover not being like the original. ;-)

if Ned had said something that doesn't require up to be down

*arched eyebrow* The insistence on 'logic' from my likes and dislikes -- and god love Tim, he's pulling the same thing a bit with the Cure mention -- is ridiculous. I don't expect anyone else to always fit into an exact pattern in turn -- that's the whole POINT of individual taste. Would you like being boxed up constantly?

Ha! So do I! Maybe you missed the part where I announced that it's CRAP ANALOGY TIME!

"also, 2nd verse = same as the 1st = NO. "

This is a rather stentorian rule; such things need to be judged on a case by case basis and here I say YES.

The JLC mix of "Mr Brightside" is like The Cure's "Inbetween Days" but BETTER.

Ned I wasn't saying that yr wrong and that you actually love "Mr Brightside", just that I am surprised. Why the hate exactly? I haven't heard the original so maybe it really is awful.

""This Fire" is pretty sharp, I have to say. Like it more than "Take Me Out" despite having only heard the former...what, once? Something like that, when I was buying some shoes."

Felix Da Housecat played this awesome remix of it; he'd cut out the second "Burn this city" so that the entire crowd at this massive venue could chant it insanely instead. I suddenly realised the potential value of following sports.

The original IS on dramamine. There's a difference between going 'whatever' and blissfully floating.

x-post THE DEVIL YOU SAY, TIM! I like it more than the last one.

Sorry, what are we referring to now?

Part of it is repeated exposure at places where I'm trying to relax, like my favorite bar -- if I have to hear the album on random shuffle again while waiting for my friends to DJ I'll be seriously annoyed, I felt the same way last year when someone thought that fucking Darkness album was a good idea to treat the same way -- but if it had to be summed up, it's a case where otherwise good elements/source material recombine in ways that just makes me roll my eyes on some gut emotional level.

Probably, though, it has a lot to do with that feeb of a singer. Think of a band like Marion -- who I gather a lot of UK folk thought the Killers sounded like when they first surfaced, and whose lead singer was an overwrought idiot but who the band still handled pretty well -- as being at the center of a fulcrum where Placebo is at one end of the quality stick and the Killers are at the other, providing tremulous nonsense where Placebo for me provide tremulous sense. (And, indeed, great cheesy commercial choruses. ;-))

Anthony, you seem more bitter about discourse than I am about music!

Ned, don't act like Calum.

Would you kindly care to unpack that one? That's the second time you've drawn that comparison and I am goddamn annoyed by it.

I can sort of see this. I think though that my appreciation of all this "nu-wave" stuff on a case by case basis is tied up in my inability to take any of these bands seriously as bands (ie. an artistic force I can invest in emotionally). "Mr Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me" and etc. are the rock equivalent of commercial chart-house or chart-trance (eg. Fragma's "Miracle" or Shapeshifters' "Lola's Theme") in that they're simultaneously overwraught and calculated, and as such you can either dismiss them or submit to them and I 'm not sure if there's much in-between possible.

Using Marion as a comparison point strikes me as kinda iffy only insofar as Marion rarely tried for catchy pop songs and instead focused on perfecting new wave signifiers in the same way as Bloc Party perfect post-punk signifiers. Whereas The Killers strike me as being what Puressence would have done if they'd taken the singles from their second album and then gone even more commercial.

(x-post)

"Girls, girls, you're BOTH totally fake, now stop fighting" and be done with it.

Personally, I must confess that I haven't heard a single SECOND of either band. These pot calling kettle black shenanigans are perhaps more entertaining when you're in the dark and utterly ignorant.

Al this is unfair - I think the question "what is this band doing that is so awful that all these other bands don't do? Or what doesn't it do that it should be doing to live up to the standards set by these other bands?" is a totally legitimate question, and it was with that question implied that I compared The Killers to The Cure. Ned can choose to answer or not (as it turned out, he did, and quite well) but I don't think that asking the question is in any way offensive, inappropriate or tiresome (unless I insisted upon my comparison point in the face of any answer he might give).

Ned implies above that taste doesn't follow logic but I think this is untrue. There is a logic at work, even if no-one involved including the listener can understand or follow it. Saying "this is just my subjective opinion so don't question me" is legitimate but also kind of thread-killing in the context of a music board which (correct me if I'm wrong) appears to be at least partially about debating the relative quality of different bands/artists. And it's not like you or Ned shy away from making pronouncements on that score.

x-posts re. Drew's comment

Which is interesting in that I'm certainly not feeling much of a connection to many new bands of this decade at all in a similar way (I won't say 'all' but I'm actually now wondering who if anyone would leap to mind here). Quite possibly this is a function of time and perspective, as well as Having Other Things On My Mind, but who knows? The 'reality' -- or 'seriousness' if you like, it's a good word -- of these bands as bands is something that barely if ever crosses my mind.

The Puressence comparison is a good one, and it should also be noted -- I don't know whether this explains something or not, but it crosses my mind now -- that I'm reminded of a comment Dan made elsewhere, pro-Killers, that he was quite surprised and pleased that something that sounded the way they did was succeeding on the charts, where I'm so used to a different continuum of sound-qua-sound away from the charts that they weren't that distinct or unique to me as a result. Context, often, is all.

I'd say, Tim, that I think you're drawing a not-entirely-workable division between searchers-of-signifiers and brass-ring-grabbers. I grant that you're not treating it as hard and fast yourself, but to my mind your distinction seems to be less one rising from the sounds the respective sources create as to how you choose to categorize them -- which is more than far, it's just less universal than I think you might intend.

Ned implies above that taste doesn't follow logic but I think this is untrue. There is a logic at work, even if no-one involved including the listener can understand or follow it.

Hmm...something about this doesn't quite follow, for all that I see what you're driving at. What, I can't put my finger on quite this second, but let me think on it.

Yeah this is probably true. But it doesn't sound like The Killers invest much time in sounding authentic - "Somebody Told Me" in many ways fails to be entirely retro (as opposed to being a deliberate retro-modern fusion as such). Bloc Party mostly sound incredibly considered to me. NB. "considered" isn't automatically a bad thing, but in this case it puts me off them a bit. They could also do quite well on the charts, but I don't see them doing this at the cost of their specific historical affectations (though "So Here We Are" is kinda unusual for them and unsurprisingly my favourite song of theirs).

One point of distinction that I've been making a lot lately is between revivalists who are good at taking a specific sound and reproducing it fairly faithfully (Bloc Party, Marion, Metro Area, Systematic Records) and revivalists who can't quite remove the traces of everything that's happened between the then and the now (The Killers, Puressence, Tiefschwarz, Daft Punk). The vocalist for The Killers sounds like he's taking his cues from practically every moment in british rock history from the early eighties onwards, and likewise the music feels like an amalgam of so many different periods in a manner that is both efficient and possibly unconscious.

I'm not trying to say that good revivalists are bad (that's why I put both Metro Area and Systematic Records, all of which i like, in the first group), just that I do see a distinction.

Ned implies above that taste doesn't follow logic but I think this is untrue. There is a logic at work, even if no-one involved including the listener can understand or follow it. Saying "this is just my subjective opinion so don't question me" is legitimate but also kind of thread-killing in the context of a music board which (correct me if I'm wrong) appears to be at least partially about debating the relative quality of different bands/artists. And it's not like you or Ned shy away from making pronouncements on that score.

my comment was in response to Ned's response to your question, but it wasn't really meant as a direct challenge to what you were saying (which is a reasonable impression for you to have gotten, probably my fault for not clarifying).

anyway, since you wanna bust open the whole taste-as-logic can of worms, this is the pet theory I've been toying with lately: I will passionate argue the how's and why's of what I like and love for days, but I've kind of come to the conclusion that it's near impossible to argue why you dislike something without coming off like a douche. you (and when I say "you" here, I mean "Me" in my personal experiences) tend to try to back up these dislikes with principles and rules to justify what are essentially gut level negative reactions to the music, and usually it's all too easy for an opponent to poke holes in or find contraditions in these rules. you could say the same is just as true when trying to back up why you love something, but in my experience, it really isn't, no, not so much.

so I've kind of stopped really bothering with those kind of arguments. I won't hold my tongue, obviously, when I have something negative to say, but I'm not going to have a billion reasons for it if when it comes down to it the music just simply rubs me the wrong way. and when I see, say, Ned get challenged on grounds that come off like "but Ned! you like the Cure! and they're kinda sorta like the Cure!" I get my back up. not only is that faulty logic, but it implicitly demands that Ned come up with his own set of (possibly also faulty) logic to respond to it.

I thought he was just singing like the guy from the Rapture.

I'm a little leery of jumping in between Ned and Tim, but Bloc Party doesn't sound to me like they are reproducing a specific sound. They appeal to me because they combine at least 3 sounds: the Go4 thing, the pounding, bass-melodic Joy Division or even Cure thing, and the U2 through Radiohead chimey guitar thing in a way I've never heard. Especially the soaring + angular guitar.

You're right that The Killers don't really end up sounding perfectly retro either - because they, too, combine a couple sounds - but they also sound just as considered as you say Bloc Party does.

In the end, for me, it comes down to a couple of really hamhanded tunes on the Killers' part, such as "Glamorous Indie Rock 'n' Roll" or whatever it is, and zero subtlety.

And then The Bravery are not even as good as the Killers.

I feel like I'm being drawn into a "who's on first"-style routine now.

The question of revivalism as general concept in modern pop music given the ability to capture and codify sound is an interesting one and I think far more deeply ingrained in pop's public discourse than many of us realize (not all, I'm sure plenty here do!). The band that came to mind the most when I read your post, Tim, was Manhattan Transfer (let me know if you need a quick precis but I'm sure there's a thread or two).

'Consideration' as demerit is understandable for we theoretically always want to see someone fuck things up a bit, or around. (Thus Placebo, to mention them again, in that I see them as being incredibly aggressive borrowers of sound and style from a variety of points, familiar and non, in order to weld it to particular templates that they have evolved -- Placebo inspiration Marc Bolan was equally of that bent though he couldn't quite work out the balance he wanted to his commercial satisfaction, etc. etc.) Who or what is simply rehashing and who takes it 'further' is I think more negotiable than other qualities, partially because there is another layer where it's the most brash -- for lack of a better term -- efforts that get the focus where something quieter might not. Trace removal -- and trace persistence -- can happen in not-immediately noticeable ways sometimes (for my part, I think the Bloc Party dude intrigues me because he doesn't sound so much like a singer then than a singer 'now').

ah ok, if what you're saying is you WILL hold your tongue when you know its pure unthought-out gut then I understand

The more I think about it the more we have to be careful -- and I've been doing this, I realize -- at exactly equating 'consideration' with a certain 'neatness' to the sound, or a prissyness or whatever. One can be extremely considered and sound like a complete chaotic mess, one can be pristine and preicse while being radically impulsive.

(x-post to Ned: I haven't said anything about what I do, I'm just asking for clarity re: Al's take)

However, I'd disagree with you insofar as I don't think there is a fundamental difference between our reasons for liking stuff and our reasons for disliking stuff. A lot of what people write in defence of their likes is pretty spurious too (if only b/c one side always implies the other; defining what we like always partly defines what we dislike and vice versa). It's more that our minds are rusty tools when it comes to talking about this stuff, and we give up in disgust because it doesn't come to us as easily. That's why I enjoy prodding people and also enjoy being prodded in relation to dislikes - the best debates Ned and I have had over the last year or so have all been in relation to a band or artist we totally disagree over (although interestingly our arguments over Justin Timberlake annoy me more than him I think!). This is why I think Ned in particular should avoid using subjectivity as a defence - not because it's wrong, but because he's one of the absolute best ilxors in this area.

there's some x-post issues now.

Yeah, yeah, I know that these aren't all top 100 bands, and Stellastarr has probably sold 17 records, but you get my drift . . .

It might just be a means of assertaining more specific information about why someone dislikes a particular artist. In that sense, it's relevant to a discussion.

(xp, your last post is a good counterpoint)

They do? Odd!

It's more that our minds are rusty tools when it comes to talking about this stuff, and we give up in disgust because it doesn't come to us as easily.

Well, also a lot of it -- positive *and* negative -- comes out of sheer tiredness. Talk and think about it all day -- on a blog, in person, in discussion, whatever -- and at a certain point you are in the spot where everyone finds themselves at one way or another -- no matter what the subject -- where someone's all hyped up to talk about whatever and someone else wants to be social but at the same time is feeling very 'I have nothing much to say but this right now.' Anthony, I think not unreasonably, is arguing that if you have something to say then be prepared to talk about it to the full, but we don't all use ILX the same way and are not required to respond/post/whatever in the same fashion -- which is where I think a lot of disagreements arise.

Subjectivity a defense? Personally I always thought it a core explanation! The defense would be an extrapolation of that instead.

well yeah, I kinda do that too. since usually the bands I don't get a good vibe from I don't bother to investigate beyond the singles and really don't have much to go on.

Hm, the word here that leaps out at me is 'yet,' in that I could never in good conscience say this as a response -- there are bands I've changed my mind on and there are bands I've *never* changed my mind on, so implicitly promising someone I will eventually seems a stretch.

xpost -- well I can see where Al is coming from with that response -- still, though, it's a bit strange. And in other contexts (with weightier issues -- if one wants to look at it that way) just wouldn't work much at all! "I haven't gotten into religious fundamentalism yet..." ;-)

Re Consideration - I was very much trying to avoid it being considered (ha ha) automatically worthy of a demerit.

The difficulty with very precise and carefully considered revivalist-moves is that they make the reception of the music more heavily dependent on any perceived surplus or deficit of the signifiers being utilised in the market. When Metro Area revived italo-disco the very act of revival was greeted with great enthusiasm in many circles because this music had essentially disappeared from public consciousness.

A surplus/deficit exist on two levels - one, in the market generally, and this will usually partly determine the commercial and critical success of any project. The second level is in the mind of the individual listener, whose sense of surplus/deficit will be grounded in their tastes and listening history. Reviving post-punk will always be fraught for me personally because I only got into most of it about eight years ago, so where for listeners who lived through post-punk the first time around or for those who've never heard it revival-bands may appear either a well-timed revival or something apparently totally new, for me it can appear at once monumentally tardy and something I'm not yet ready for.

"Trace removal -- and trace persistence -- can happen in not-immediately noticeable ways sometimes (for my part, I think the Bloc Party dude intrigues me because he doesn't sound so much like a singer then than a singer 'now')."

I haven't given the album a good enough listen to rule this out. This sort of thing is part of why I prefer to say "failed revivalism" than "taking things further" - it allows for more ambiguities in regards to what can be considered "fresh" or "new" within a given piece of music.

this is an interesting point. and through this lens, I think I come out more on Anthony's side. I'd rather people be willing to hash out and continually clarify and reshape their opinion than just make their one snarky statement and leave it at that. and I have to say it usually leaves a bad taste in my mouth when someone here (for instance you or Dan on the subject of Timberlake) pops up in a thread just to reiterate their dislike of an artist that everyone already knows how they feel about without bothering to say anything new or respond substantially to anything else. if all you're going to do is say "nay" for the 400th time, then yeah, maybe there is no point in even speaking up.

xpost -- well I can see where Al is coming from with that response -- still, though, it's a bit strange. And in other contexts (with weightier issues -- if one wants to look at it that way) just wouldn't work much at all! "I haven't gotten into religious fundamentalism yet..." ;-)

I didn't really take much notice of the word "yet" when I backed up that notion. I feel like this is starting to resemble that scene in High Fidelity where the word "yet" was over-analyzed, I think it might have been a red herring here. if anything, Anthony (or at least I) meant it in the way that when you're politely brushing off someone's questions about a band you're not interested in, you just kind of vaguely pretend like you want to check out their album when you know you never will.

The larger point re quick snarkiness, though, is well made and has been well made (Ally and Spencer come to mind) -- if you'd like an example of how NOT to get the point across to me, check out the bizarro clusterfuck Stormy Davis made on the Seventeen Seconds thread.

That said, I sometimes wonder at how jumpy people *can* get regarding when some says something even slightly bad about a band they like. It's kinda weird, given that an unstated part of the ILM ethos is that we're supposed to be beyond that (though this is more a private rumination than an assertion of truth).

xpost -- ah, see, I don't think I could do that approach! I'd rather be politely firm rather than politely 'here, friend, some warm fuzzies for you.'

Not all of us live on eucalyptus-infused coffee and kangaroo blood like you, ya maniac! ;-)

Actually I think they can be both astoundingly precise and imprecise as such -- and quite often at the same time! More on that, however, for something I'm cooking up slowly but surely.

The difficulty with very precise and carefully considered revivalist-moves is that they make the reception of the music more heavily dependent on any perceived surplus or deficit of the signifiers being utilised in the market. When Metro Area revived italo-disco the very act of revival was greeted with great enthusiasm in many circles because this music had essentially disappeared from public consciousness.

That's an interesting observation because, generally speaking, the 'market' is not a factor in my vision -- and that's not to say it shouldn't be, but neither to say that it's required either. Rather I treat it as something that seems like this strange amorphous zone where eighty million things happen continually and everything could be at play in its own shadowy corners. Illumination of a corner is certainly fun to see happen, though.

Reviving post-punk will always be fraught for me personally because I only got into most of it about eight years ago

Well for me it's been a continuing process, so that could lend another perspective as well -- at any point from, say, 1989 to now (but if you want to track back to the various bubblings that eventually did seep up at the time on pop radio, then I was interested back in 1982) you could say I was interested in 'post-punk' as a very broad concept, with different specific reference points each step of the way, and probably at all stages (definitely from 1989 on) I'd have welcomed the Reynolds book as intensely as I'm waiting for it right now. And in all cases I've found things in fits and starts, clung to icons and rejected those that didn't work for me. So what's happening now is less a conscious revival in my head and more of a continuation for me. Some stuff stays, others get junked.

So the lead singer of teh braivery apparently did an answer interview on the radio and it is fucking magnificently bitchy. Stereogum has an mp3:

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/001352.html

Excerpt:

DJ: ..It’s so weird, there are so many bands out there that people say is a retro/new wave…to take all the credit for it is weird actually.

Bravery: It’s funny. Personally we don’t think we sound like anything like them. They kinda dogged us a bunch of times honestly. We were supposed to go on tour with them when we first started out. It would have helped us out a lot as a new band and they kicked us off at the last minute. Then we were supposed to open the NME Tour which they headlined and they kicked us off at the last minute.

DJ: Wow!

Bravery: So if you’ve seen them live you know why. They’re incredibly boring. They look like wax figures on stage. It’s like watching a community theatre production of what a band would look like.

And suddenly tehh brayvurry are my favorite band of all time.

rapture = pixies
everyone after them, collectively = candlebox

I've heard rumors about [members of] that band being in a different kind of band, and how do you defend that? If you say, 'My heart really belongs to what I'm doing now,' but you used to be in a ska band.