tUnE-yArDs

Rob Harvilla talks to Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) over at the Village Voice about, among other things, Vampire Weekend and African music.

Fwiw, I still haven't listened to her record -- I think I may have heard clips, but I did see her live opening for Dirty Projects last fall, and having known nothing of her beforehand, I left really impressed. The whole crowd seemed impressed.

Apparently this is a typical reaction. From the VV interview:

I first saw you at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, opening for the Dirty Projectors. The crowd was sort of aloof and indifferent when you started, and then totally rapt and in love with you by the time you were done. Do you have a sense onstage of winning over a crowd like that? Can you feel that bond intensifying in real-time?

Yeah, definitely. I went to school for theater at Smith College—I definitely honed the ability to demand attention. I guess I've become less comfortable with waiting for it. When I first started doing music, I was doing open mics, which were a similar kind of thing, like, "Get people's attention or die": Get people's attention in the first five minutes—or 30 seconds—or be ignored and not get any tips. And also street performance, which I did in the subways in Montreal. It's a survival technique for sure, and now I feel like I've come to make that part of the thing. It doesn't always happen, but it happens 90 percent of the time these days, and I have a feeling that's because I do demand that of audiences. I say, "If you're here, then be here. If you're here, then be part of this thing, or walk out of this room, which is also fine."

*Dirty Projectors, obv

i had the opposite reaction when i saw TuNeYaRdZ: i was totally impressed from the very first song but got pretty bored about halfway through

i think there's a lot of potential but at the moment the songs seem too formulaic and samey

i took a shot at it
she's amazing live.

Holy shit that first video.

http://stereogum.com/638092/tune-yards-bizzness/mp3s/

Well?

sounds great, digging the step up in production

love this track, have not heard produced version hitting play now thank you for this owen!

okay i prefer the rawer screamy version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcmJnNYAkFI
though this is nice and dense and the horns really help and it gains on second listen. they're different animals?
very psyched for new album

sounds great, digging the step up in production

courtesy of the great eli crews and new, improved in oakland!

this makes me feel uncomfortable don't know if i want to listen to it again. like crazy person music

I have a feeling that I'll miss the dictaphone styles of the first record
But then I realized I could just re-record the album onto a dictaphone
If I ended up missing it that much

or getting shitty headphones

Bizness is fantastic, keep coming back to it.

I like this one

http://youtu.be/e31dpx-XGfI

Streaming here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/apr/11/tune-yards-whokill-album-stream

Really loving it.'gangsta', 'powa', 'bidness' and 'my country' all A+. Seems front loaded to my ears or perhaps the second half will take longer to get into.

sinking my teeth into this right now

HOLY FUCK the finished version of Gangsta is AWESOME

ooo

album is heavily zappa-d out, much more than birdbrains

This just got an A from Robert Christgau and is streaming on NPR. It's cool. Bizness is an obvious song of the year contender.

Pareles reviewed in the NYT and he gave it a qualified rave; only major complaint was the lyrics and I don't blame him there.

They're all over the place and often clever but sometimes just __shrug__

basically this and the quik are pretty much my fave albums this year so far.

freelancer Patrick Foster for the Washington Post loves it:

“Whokill” is one of this year’s boldest, freshest creations: A pulsating quick-step that feels utterly contemporary, careening down a city street while the detritus of consumed influence trails from the car windows.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/quick-spins-tune-yards-ralph-stanley-dj-quik/2011/04/19/AFjYmE6D_blog.html

That kinda makes want to hate it, but I will give it a shot.

It's definitely real good. Not what I expected at all.

the detritus of consumed influence

oh rlly

anyway I hated the first one and this one's more difficult but I like it a lot more!

I heard this (and Tune-Yards) for the first time today, it's definitely a good album but I'll need more time to process it. One similarity/influence I hear is dEUS circa The Ideal Crash, but maybe that's just the Zappa feel percolating down again.

This is a major record, people. Don't let the unconventional punctuation put you off. I'm telling you, this little lady is dy-no-mite!!!!!

ugh

i've come to really love this with repeated listens, it's leaps and bounds better than the first one (her ideas are too interesting to be mired in low fidelity). i've had the chance to play it out loud for some people over the past few weeks and have enjoyed the (mostly positive) reactions

I can't believe how little attention it's getting around here. It's such an ILM friendly record.

not for everyone i guess.

mental note: add this band to that thread about 'bands you'll never listen to because of their stupid name'

i.e. basically all of them?

She said the weird spelling was to increase her MySpace visibility.

i heard the single today ("bizness"?) and her voice kinda scared me off. maybe i will give the full album a shot later.

coming late to tune-yards - heard a few tracks off the new album last week and was v impressed, then went back to the debut. sometimes hard to believe it's a woman singing, due to the timbre of merrill's voice, but only occasionally. striking. a strong & distinctive vocals, memorable songs, forward-thinking arrangements & production, and a dazzling procession of reference points (which is to say i get where that washington post guy is coming from with his "detritus of consumed influence"). exactly the sort of record i'd like to be listening to this summer.

since i can't make sense of the dirty projectors comparisons i keep reading (a product of my own ignorance), i'll say that the music reminds me v slightly of animal collective, back when i thought i liked animal collective, circa sung tongs - you know, popping their panda tare heads up among the african, doo-wop, blues, hip-hop and gospel influences. probably a lazy reference point, but i'm hardly up to date on yr contemporary indie styles. cocorosie?

neneh cherry imo

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

Songs from the first album didn't make much of an impression on me -- I don't even remember whether I heard the whole thing or not. This one took a little while to sink in, but I'm pretty into it now. And I definitely hear the Dirty Projectors comparisons -- see, e.g., the guitar solo on "You Yes You" (about a minute in).

yeah, 'killa' esp. has a neneh vibe

it's a fair comparison. She's got a LOT of influences going on though; references the babenzele pygmies as a touchstone.

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Monday, 2 May 2011 19:40 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes!

big lol to those on another thread dissing her supposedly tokenistic/trendy/not-'authorized' appropriation of african music (weirdly patronizing suggestions to "do her homework") when she in fact spent time in africa playing with african musicians there

also surprised to find that she is 32. from her videos i thought she was like 24

anyways like a lot of AC or dirty projectors i *get* why it is praised but don't find myself reaching for it that often

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmleSfx9hn8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Here, she makes a mockery of other so-called "live loopers". I can't even deal with this it's too good.

http://vimeo.com/22883825

i think i mentioned it upthread, but it becomes kinda a chore when she has to build up the loops at the beginning of every song

mad looping skillz tho

xp that's the nature of looping though?

also, the music aside, the looping she's doing there seems pretty standard? just technically i've been impressed with how jamie woon does it, in terms of dubbing out different elements of the loop etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cys2hJM0gaE

is that how woon plays when he's live? because if so i'm a little sad i didn't go see him

i dunno, what woon does is cool in that he's varying the textures and stuff. but the breakdowns in the tuneyards clip / the little vocal bonus bit at the end, those just made me go HUH CHOPS

possibly this is bcz i have such little rhythm that it would take me until i was 32 to be able to do that if i did nothing else in the interim

whereas to do what woon is doing i would merely need to be blessed with decent voice and two hands, like what he has

I love this album by the way. Top five.

I'm having similar issues with what I've heard off of this that I have with Sleater-Kinney; there is something going on in the vocals, something slightly on the reedy side of things, that sets my teeth on edge.

in the tune-yards clip she's just stopping the entire loop and turning it back on, no big deal. woon is doing similar things but in a much more subtle way - he's not playing a live instrument besides singing, so he does a lot more with bringing in and out the different layers of the loop, adding effects etc. that takes a lot more mental independence imo.

(btw that comparison only came up because SK was playing on THE CURRENT radio stream and I was all "wow I am not enjoying this in exactly the same way that I do not enjoy tUnE-yArDs")

in the tune-yards clip she's just stopping the entire loop and turning it back on, no big deal. woon is doing similar things but in a much more subtle way - he's not playing a live instrument besides singing, so he does a lot more with bringing in and out the different layers of the loop, adding effects etc. that takes a lot more mental independence imo.

Oh, I disagree with you there. Hands-free is much more difficult. Jamie is using pre-fab drum loops, a Kaoss pad for post-effects. His songwriting is limited to repeating a mantra over and over again. It's good, yeah! But it doesn't have Merrill's "chops fabulous" appeal, imo.

i guess i see so many guitar players around here doing (beatbox/percussion/bass/guitar) looping that it seems like old hat, and she's not doing anything different (not that it's easy). what woon's doing there feels fresher to me, and i like that the songwriting is loop-based (no chord changes). on the other videos i've seen he's not using any pre-recorded sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNnngd0oLgk

This is sort of off-topic, so apologies, but Merrill Garbus does some backing vocals on my friend's new record. Maybe you will like it? It's not very Tune-Yards-y but it's still good:

http://mwahaha.bandcamp.com/album/mwahaha

Specifically she helps with harmonies on "Love".

I dunno, Jordan, that Jamie Woon stuff doesn't distinguish itself for me, stylistically.

What I mean is this: when you get someone like Merrill doing the looping without post-effects or stuff, one is forced to adjust one's songwriting to transcend the technology... or at least, transcend the fact that one doesn't have a finger on a fader and another on a Kaoss pad.

Many people in Canada miss Merrill's old band, btw. (Don't watch the vidjo just give a listen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7EhxAUprUY

sure, but that's what 95% of live loopers do. at least in this song, it just seems like she's doing very standard shit?

xp

i mean, looping chops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3CGWOw9LHI

I love this album by the way. Top five.

― ginny thomas and tonic (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, May 18, 2011 9:30 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i'm into it, but reserving superlatives ftm. "bizness" just towers over the rest.

"bizness" just towers over the rest.

No way! My Country and Gangsta are both just as good if not better.

i like the whole album a lot but gangsta and bizness are high points.

i think i mentioned it upthread, but it becomes kinda a chore when she has to build up the loops at the beginning of every song

― ｐｒｉｎｔｆ (diamonddave85), Wednesday, May 18, 2011 8:37 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

haven't seen tune yards, but this can be one of the best parts of loop-based live performance. saw Geneviève Castrée (Ô Paon) last year, and loved the process aspects.

and "Powa," "Wooly Wooly Gong" too.

i like the whole album a lot but gangsta and bizness are high points.

gangsta's a very respectable second

Ô Paon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgCqq9ZzXq4

not cuz the loopsmanship is so incredible, just love this song

@ Jordan Dosh a different thing again. He uses Ableton, and with it, pre-programmed tracks, quantized loops. There's no mystery there.

I think, Jordan, you're looking at the 'technology used' and appreciating that, rather than considering that Merrill is using ten-year-old looping pedals, not in new ways, but in ways so effortless and compositionally interesting that it makes people like Dosh or Jamie Woon or myself look like suckers for new toys.

Also the best song on the record is "You Yes You" and you'll all feel similarly one day

whoa.

Sure, recognise the compositional brilliance of her loop use and all that but I just can *not* get with her voice. I'm sorry, I tried. I'm with Dan on this one.

really, dosh uses ableton? i didn't see a laptop onstage the last time i saw him, but maybe he's sneaky with controllers?

but in ways so effortless and compositionally interesting that it makes people like Dosh or Jamie Woon or myself look like suckers for new toys.

am i missing something in that tune-yards video - is she looping anything besides the beat and the vocal thing at the end? anyway, i'll stop being harry hater. i wasn't going to mention it but your looping is definitely more interesting/artful to me than tune-yards (and i've caught both live).

kinda agree with owen, the "I was BORN to do it" part gets me every time.

"don't need a living room ah diamonds YEAHHHH a chicken shack will do do do do"

do we see how the first loop is set in that video? seems like it's always the first one that's hardest to get right. once you've got that one you're not worried so much about setting the loop. sounds cool either way but if the first one was done at home or something it's a little easier. not sure if you can do that with the equipment she's using.

Also the best song on the record is "You Yes You" and you'll all feel similarly one day

This is my gf's favorite. I'm coming around, too.

yeah, it's up there

You know, I've liked this in fits and starts but I think think I like it more than I like it. I want to give it several more shots, though, since it doesn't deserve my unwarranted snap reaction that it's a more assured and interesting Coco Rosie.

I've seen a lot of "dude, gear, and loops" shows and IMO she is miles beyond anyone doing this sort of thing (never seen Owen P tho). You feel like you are experiencing music as it's being made in the moment rather than a bunch of triggered elements and processed electronics. And the fact that she builds the loops at the start of each song gives the evening an appealing and unusual rhythm.

i'm into it, but reserving superlatives ftm.

no longer reserving anything. in the running for album of the year. and yes, "you yes you".

ve seen a lot of "dude, gear, and loops" shows

are we differentiating between laptop/sampler/etc shows and people who use loopers specifically? 'cause this:

You feel like you are experiencing music as it's being made in the moment rather than a bunch of triggered elements and processed electronics. And the fact that she builds the loops at the start of each song gives the evening an appealing and unusual rhythm.

describes pretty much every looper i see. again, nothing wrong with tune-yards, i just don't see why people are freaking about what she's doing specifically.

i cant get into this. rather annoying i find.

Having finally heard some of this -- kinda in the middle here. I could totally see her and White Rainbow touring if they haven't already.

One of my favourites so far this year for sure. I do understand people taking issue with her voice, it's quite marmitey. (First time I heard a tUnE-YarDs song I went, "wait, I thought the singer was a woman?") She reminds me a lot of Antony, not so much in expression but in general fierce-individualist-with-gender-defying-voice mood.

Really, it's the way she sings lead that I take issue with. The sound-effecty stuff she does on "The Bizness" is actually very pretty but the braying shout she employs on the main melody is not really my bag.

jordan i dig this person a lot but what i like about the record is nothing to do with her use of looping -- which, i mean, i hadn't thought about to what degree that was a compositional tool for her before owen started posting about it in this thread

Saw her live earlier this week. I love how she basically builds the backbone for each song right in front of you. Impressive. I haven't heard the record but wouldn't be surprised if the live sound doesn't translate well to record.

Usually this kind of "difficult" project bores me less than a third of the way through – I still can't stand the first album – but I hear a lot of unexpected beauty in the squawks and squalls. Nothing I've written about this album matches nabisco's review.

Are there pictures of her without her mouth wide open? I know thats a live shot with that review, but even all of her staged promo shots seems to picture her preparing to bite into a Dagwood sandwich.

I refuse to believe all these soulless nu-indie bands are actual irl bands.

The Dirty Projectors, for example, don't actually exist. I am convinced of it.

great bisco piece, really well thought out

love her voice. more female singers should be brave enough to be unpretty.

(also, my guitarist bf does some very creative stuff with live looping and he loves both tune-yards records.)

"Brave enough to be unpretty" is a weird concept.

vocally unpretty, i mean. i think female singers are taught from basically the time their mouths open that they have to sound pretty and girlish.

Ah, okay. That makes more sense to me.

Although I find her singing style very composed and melodic, even when she's at her most growly.

men can sing abrasively but when women do it people take a step back.

I was going to say, I want to see a picture of her normal face because I kinda find her cuet!

she's totally cuet.

I feel like there are plenty of female singers out there with unpretty voices or aren't afraid to employ unpretty singing (some of whom are massively successful; hi dere Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Adele, Britney, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, etc etc etc)

(I include Taylor because, even though she was clearly told that she needed to sound as pretty and girlish as possible, she has a fucking horrible instrument and sounds like a farting flute)

all those voices are processed within an inch of their lives though. even if they don't have good instruments, the producers make them sound accessible/acceptable *enough*.

would say that ke$sha, katy perry, taylor swift and britney rely a great deal more on prettiness of sound (and pretty-girlyness of pop identity) a whole lot more than MG. not that that's a bad thing...

oh, and nabisco OTM

plus, their voices aren't what sell the records and concert tickets. it's the image, sex appeal, songs that sound radio-ready, etc.

unrelatedly, this record is awesome and stuff

i like the first record a little better cuz the songwriting seems more thought-out and the fact that it's just her makes it feel more personal. but the second one is great fun.

whoever's playing bass i like it a lot, what that person is doing: it grounds a lot of the chaos

tho the chaos of it is also totally great and fun and awesome in its own right

love this record

xposts but whatever

I would say the women I listed rely more on pop music than MG. The biggest gulf between them in terms of vocal production, based on the songs I've heard, is that ty songs use more vocal effects in the backing music.

Hearing Ke$ha and Katy Perry sing during live performances reveals that the weird, offputting-to-some things going on in their voices are not a result of vocal processing or autotuning; it's how their voices work. Also, no one really wants to hear Ke$ha singing outside of her niche, which is pop dance screamfests. Britney didn't actually have the ability to sing ballads until recently, which makes it kind of funny that all of her recent singles rely heavily on turning her into a sound effect (where her weird duck quack is more effective, anyway).

I am not denying that there isn't a shit-ton going on in ty songs, because there clearly is. The voice singing lead, particularly the voice bellowing out "The Bizness", is not nearly as far removed from our current crop of pop singers as the backing music would lead you to believe. Hell, nowadays Bjork isn't far removed from our current crop of pop singers; she probably could have a top ten hit if she threw some more sound effects into "Big Time Sensuality" and rereleased it as a single.

I mean you all are acting like she's Diamanda Galas or something

(as a related aside: someone posted a picture of merrill from a meredith monk concert the other night. i was happy to see those two worlds collide.)

I get that "girls singing pretty" is kind of the standard MO but there are um quite a LOT of women who don't do this and she's hardly unique in that respect.

I dunno how I feel about this, it's alternately irritating and interesting, usually with equal measure. I have worked with her engineer/studio tho and they are great so I'm glad they're getting some high profile (well, relatively) exposure.

Joanna Newsome, Kim Gordon (or any number of riot grrrl bands for that matter), Diamanda, Bjork, etc

I never listened to more than a few clips from the first record - I think I was scared off by the lo-fi-ness of it - but this new album connected with me right away. A reference point which hasn't been mentioned yet is the work of Jewlia Eisenberg and Charming Hostess - you've got the experimental vocal loops, fake "world music", and playing with gender expectations - also the Oakland connection.

whoever's playing bass i like it a lot, what that person is doing: it grounds a lot of the chaos

bass player nate brenner gets cowriting credit on many of the strongest songs (gangsta, bizness, you yes you, killa)

btw, I am listening to "You Yes You" right now and I think it is much better than "The Bizness", largely because she's not bellowing the entire time, which makes the moments where she moves into that mode mean something.

I get that "girls singing pretty" is kind of the standard MO but there are um quite a LOT of women who don't do this and she's hardly unique in that respect.

yeah, of course. i just meant that musically speaking and relative to the likes of katy perry and taylor swift, i don't hear much attempt to sound pretty or to cultivate a pretty girl's pop image in this. doesn't make MG unique, but given the extremes to which it's taken, i'd say that there's a bravery in it. that joy-in-fearlessness is infectious, and it's one of the things i like best about this album.

i don't hear much attempt to sound pretty

I am listening to "Wooly Wolly Gong" right now and it (and much of "You Yes You") is making a total liar out of you.

(PS: after a massive negative reaction to "The Bizness" I am warming up to what I am listening to on Youtube)

"Doorstep" also

well okay. i'm talking about her use of voice and persona cultivation overall. she covers so much ground, though, that, yeah, she's got a ton of lovely moments along the way.

comma

"Killa" too

So poking around 5 songs on this album, 4 of them prominently feature pretty singing, but because she brays on the single everyone is focusing on how ugly she can make her voice; why is this?

(I have a theory but it's not the most charitable one in the world)

"My Country" has more support for the harsher-edged vocals than "The Bizness", or maybe I'm just used to them now

but yeah, not in the pretty singing bucket, except for the backing vocal loop bits, but the music is fucking great

oh but she backs off and goes up into head voice before the sax bits, that's lovely

(itt DJP liveblogs a slow 180 on a snap judgment)

"Doorstep" is the one I fell in love.

also: wtf Dan -- still with the Swift hate after Speak Now?

she has always and will always suck

if she wants me to like her, she should stop singing and let someone else do her material

don't wanna derail thread but listen to "Mean" and tell me if what she's doing isn't appropriate to the song she's singing.

djp your thoughts on what is technically going on in records are always grebt and worthwhile, and more of that on this album would be awesome

of the ones you haven't mentioned 'gangsta' has some shrillness, and one of the others - i don't have the titles fixed in my head yet - has an out-of-time bit with the most outright yelling on the record (the one where she goes THERE IS A FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAAAAAND)

whoever's playing bass i like it a lot, what that person is doing: it grounds a lot of the chaos

Nate Brenner - he's Merrill's bf

btw, I am listening to "You Yes You" right now and I think it is much better than "The Bizness", largely because she's not bellowing the entire time, which makes the moments where she moves into that mode mean something.

totally cosign: and from what i've gathered about the meaning or themes or whatever of this record, what she's doing musically maps pretty directly onto what's going with that -- buttt even though i usually listen to stuff in a pretty logocentric way this record has been making me go WHAT THE HELL THIS IS AWESOME

AWESOME

the whole time that i've been listening to it, and as such i'm further from having some idea of what it's all About than i would normally to something i've been listening to a lot

xpost - thanks sarahel (& contenderizer); that is sweet and makes me happy for them

he's a good guy. He's played in a lot of jazz groups.

"Gangsta" is a groove and a half, and again she's switching back and forth between chest and head voice with a lot of mix between light and heavy in the vocal interjections in the background. Also, the vocal pyrotechnics and studio tricks really work well as wordpainting for the lyrics.

One of the things I am really digging is her usage of accidentals in the melody lines; there are points where she has lines that end on diminished or augmented notes that really spice up proceedings.

(the one where she goes THERE IS A FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAAAAAND)

this is "Riotriot", which is also chock-full of extremely tender singing

i don't disagree with that, or with the idea that there's a lot of tender singing on the record: that just came to mind as one of the most pointedly not tender moments. (although the bit of music which immediately follows THERE IS A FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE is actually a pretty tight and controlled dynamic shift, not a woah loose and noisy one. which i like about it, but, i mean, i like everything about this record.)

I just feel like, in comparison, the bellowing she does on "The Bizness" is almost wholly out of step with what I'm hearing on the other songs aside from "Gangsta", which is constructed in a manner where the bellowing makes sense to me. Within context, the loud bit in "Riotriot" makes sense and isn't nearly as egregious as "The Bizness", which basically makes me feel like she's yelling at me for something someone else did.

obv I am overstating the yelling on "The Bizness" because it happens on every held note in the song, and that is what makes it overbearing and wearying

responses to "the bizness" are funny, cuz it was one of the tracks i liked best first off the bat, but not my immediate favorite. only became my favorite after a bunch of spins, and has since been supplanted (owne OTM). everyone else i've played the song/album for (bunches!) has immediately either loved or hated that song, no middle ground.

as an aside, re: "pretty"

even at it's most tender & gentle, there's an enthusiastic roughness in merrill's singing that prevents me from reading it as an attempt to project a pretty self (prettiness as something superficial and distinct from beauty, which admits pain, anger, ugliness - basically every human thing and feeling).

she seems, musically, to revel in her own rawness, "realness", funky warts-and-all earthiness. kind of a hippie thing?

you know that "pretty" has multiple definitions, one of which is "pleasing by delicacy or grace", right

yeah, basically - connotatively, that delicacy and grace being a surface maintained for social purposes.

Um, no. That is not the connotation, or rather not the only connotation.

There's more than a little bit of "indie pity party" going on here that I think is a total disservice to the actual music.

like, if you can't handle the idea that Katy Perry hollers just as much if not more than Merrill Garbus, you should probably spend less time watching videos and more time listening to what people are actually doing

to take it a bit farther, prettiness is a pose, a craft, a defined space, and typically a safe one. beauty is less circumscribed, much less circumspect, not at all safe.

if it isn't obvious, i'm using these words as they suit me

maybe you should try using them how everyone else who speaks English uses them, then people would spend less time in these discussions yelling at you and questioning your intelligence

if you can't handle the idea that Katy Perry hollers just as much if not more than Merrill Garbus, you should probably spend less time watching videos and more time listening to what people are actually doing

that's presumptive, snide and beneath you. i can "handle" the idea that katy perry hollers. i think she hollers differently, to different effect, for different aesthetic reasons. moreover, she positions her hollering in her music differently.

But... she doesn't! That is my entire point!

wtf happened here?

maybe you should try using them how everyone else who speaks English uses them, then people would spend less time in these discussions yelling at you and questioning your intelligence

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:52 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark

and you could be a bit more intellectually generous and curious, rather than simply jumping to combative conclusions

But... she doesn't! That is my entire point!

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:53 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

i get that we view this differently, but that's no reason to turn this into a flame war

There's more than a little bit of "indie pity party" going on here that I think is a total disservice to the actual music.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 1:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

conflict aside, i'm curious about this. what does "indie pity party" mean here?

The aesthetic difference is in the way the songs are built, not in the way the singers are singing them. You could swap their material and get very credible cover versions from both of them because their voices work in very similar ways; there is a lighter, prettier head voice and a bigger, meatier growly chest voice with a decent amount of rasp.

xp: It means people are casting Merrill as the put-upon plain girl bursting out of her shell in a wall of fury, something a pretty princess like Katy Perry could never understand. It is a wholly adversarial, reactionary position meant to delineate the music as extra-special and intrinsically worthier than the pop counterparts of similar voice to her.

and you could be a bit more intellectually generous and curious, rather than simply jumping to combative conclusions

It would be easier to not be combative if you would stop using "I am going to redefine your words to suit my argument" as a rhetorical style and would just say what you mean.

Just wrapped up my first full listen and, yep, feeling pretty ashamed for my offhand dismissal of her based on the painted face promo pics and beyond stupid bandname. This is a pretty fun record.

there is a lighter, prettier head voice and a bigger, meatier growly chest voice with a decent amount of rasp.

that describes a lot of female vocalists though!

people are casting Merrill as the put-upon plain girl bursting out of her shell in a wall of fury, something a pretty princess like Katy Perry could never understand. It is a wholly adversarial, reactionary position meant to delineate the music as extra-special and intrinsically worthier than the pop counterparts of similar voice to her.

you're projecting a great deal of that, and i think the projection is distorting this conversation. i'm talking to some extent about how voices are used technically, but also about how that technical use relates to artistic aesthetics and persona. subject matter, production and arrangement are inseparable from this. that said, i don't think that katy ever allows her recorded voice to sound as raw, gritty and shrill as merrill's. that's not to fault KP in any way. i like her music and i like pop. if i'm wrong here, show me how. in any event, please don't angrily berate me for what you only imagine i'm saying.

It would be easier to not be combative if you would stop using "I am going to redefine your words to suit my argument" as a rhetorical style and would just say what you mean.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 2:02 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, they weren't really your words, to be fair. get bent brought up the "brave enough to be unpretty" argument, which i see some merit in, but comes close to the sort of indie privileging you object to.

i'd like to think i don't redefine words to suit my arguments. i'd like to think that words are a lot more complex and interesting than we often give them credit for. i spend a lot of time thinking about words, and sometimes use them in personal ways without thinking about how well my meaning is going to come across. i'm also a bit slow to process, to understand the semantic tangles that cause confusion. but if you work with me, i think you'll find i'm more cooperative than competitive in these sorts of discussions.

xp to sarahel: I know, that is part of my wider point! Specifically between Katy Perry and Merrill Garbus, while I don't think they have the exact same voice, there are strong similarities; Merrill's is "bluesier" than Katy's but not to a degree where I think it would be that off for either of them to try singing the others' songs. Another parallel would be Adele but I don't think she has the lightness of touch to pull off the quieter ty material, whereas Merrill could basically stomp all up and down all over anything Adele's recorded.

Having said all that, I am more than certain Merrill has more control over her voice than Katy; a cursory search of live performances will bear that out. However, that same cursory search will show quite a lot of grittiness, shrillness, and just flat-out weirdness in the way Katy Perry sings, not all of which makes it onto record but can certainly be heard (for example) in the vocal mood shifts on "Teenage Dream" or the about-to-bust-a-chord yelling on the chorus of "Firework" or even the transition from shouty shouty to held head voice on the bridge to "I Kissed a Girl". I'm not arguing that it is as extreme or that it is a carbon copy; I'm arguing that it is there in the first place. Merrill is very very good at what she is doing, but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

true. And that's not even unique - as others have mentioned upthread. The rawness, un-prettiness (if you will), is pretty common in avant-folk music, it's a signifier of authenticity and sincerity, etc. But it's difficult for me to separate Katy Perry's voice from the insipid cheerleader anthems she sings.

I think that, if you do, you will marvel and boggle at how a voice like that became one of the most successful pop stars of the past few years because it is a very STRANGE instrument, even in a world where Britney Spears can quack her way into millions of dollars.

she's on the cover of Vanity Fair in a low cut gown ...

Merrill is very very good at what she is doing, but it isn't the way she's using her voice as a lead instrument that makes her unique; it's the way she's using it as overdubbed backing instruments that makes her unique.

OTM. wasn't trying to attribute any great uniqueness to MP's lead singing, just describing it. i think i hear the chorus to "firework" as a good deal less shrill & jarring than you do (or else you hear "the bizness" as less so than i), but accept the general similarities.

like my first exposure to Katy Perry's singing was while staying with a friend in Brooklyn, and he watched a youtube of hers because he'd seen pictures of her and figured it would at least be a visually appealing experience.

i'm still kind of baffled, honestly, by the turn this thread took

well, when you party with uh-us ...

I got combative when you redefined pretty to inherently mean shallow, which effectively was putting words in my mouth, and then used that as a springboard to argue against a strawman position ("I think there is a lot of shallow, vacuous singing on here that has all of the hallmarks of these pop singers I listed earlier") that was nothing like what I actually said ("I think people are overselling the strangeness of Merrill's voice, particularly in an era when a bunch of weird-sounding women are multi-platinum pop stars AND when she doesn't nearly as much on the other songs on the album as she does on the lead single")

the word "bellow" is missing from that post, feel free to insert it where you think it is appropriate

djp, i'm gonna be above quoting you telling me how you were hella wrong about tuneyards
but not above pointing it out
btw she is v v pretty in person.

for a second i thought merrill was on the cover of Vanity Fair in a low cut gown and i was gonna go get a subscription and then

I got combative when you redefined pretty to inherently mean shallow, which effectively was putting words in my mouth, and then used that as a springboard to argue against a strawman position ("I think there is a lot of shallow, vacuous singing on here that has all of the hallmarks of these pop singers I listed earlier") that was nothing like what I actually said

okay, i get where you're coming from. clarifications and apologies, then. i never meant to suggest that pretty must = shallow, only that (in my mind), it does connotatively tend in that direction, you know, sometimes. i certainly didn't mean to suggest that the prettier portions of this album are necessarily shallower and therefore more appropriately comparable to presumably shallow pretty-pop. apologize sincerely for any such (unintentional) insinuation and can see as how it might have irked.

personally, i don't see merrill's voice as "strange" per se. i see it as strong, arguably a lot stronger and more versatile than that of many multi-platinum pop stars, but that's beside the point. i see merrill's use of her voice as not strange, exactly, but deliberately eccentric and at times challenging in a way that has more in common with the aesthetics of jazz, freak-folk and art rock than with the more anthemic strains of contemporary chart & teen pop. that isn't to damn the latter in favor of the former...

the prettiness debate is odd. how do we determine whether or not a voice intends to seem pretty ("nice," etc.), and in what way? and how do we determine what the use of a voice says about the values and aesthetics of the person using it? i don't know how to answer these questions, exactly, and they're especially difficult to isolate in a pop environment that makes image and celebrity persona so immediately evident and thus inseparable from song and sound. i would still say that katy perry, for instance, strives to present her voice and self in the prettiest possible fashion, the basic strangeness of her instrument notwithstanding, and that merrill seems to take the opposite tack, making a deliberate virtue of exposing her rawer and harsher reaches. hope that's not too inflammatory...

I would say that is a reasonable statement with regards to the amount of discernible pitch correction used on their respective material, but I also think you have to consider that basic differences between the types of songs they are singing and how the same (or similarly classed) voice(s) can come across very differently depending on the material sung. One reason Merrill sounds more suited to freak folk is because she is singing music more similar to that than the current pop trends. Put her on a song like "Hot and Cold" or "Rolling in the Deep" and I guarantee you will not read her as intentionally being a weird singer.

(IOW part of why they cone across that way, IMO a big part, is difference in genre)

Interesting thread!
_Don't_ be put off by the alleged lo-finess of the first record.
There's an intimacy on that record that is gone (but not forgotten) on the new one.

Put her on a song like "Hot and Cold" or "Rolling in the Deep" and I guarantee you will not read her as intentionally being a weird singer.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Friday, May 20, 2011 3:23 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

perhaps that's true, but MG seems very much in control of her art, so i suspect that if she'd decided to cover songs like these on the album, she'd have adapted them to the deliberately eccentric pop style she's currently cultivating. which becomes a chicken v egg thing, i suppose...

Also, there's a modus operandi at work here in MG's music
You can hear it on the first record, how she limits herself to a digital recorder and home-recording
In her live show, how she uses non-computer based looping
Switching from drum to drum with a Vocal Mic, Held In Hand
You can see it in her physical self, her embracing of the manliness of her body and voice
I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

I am late and typing too fast

You can see it in her physical self, her embracing of the manliness of her body and voice
I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

OTM, that's part of what i was getting at. i think it extends to her use of her own voice.

or, i'd agree, rather...

I don't disagree necessarily, what I am saying is that Merrill as pop singer is going to be very different from Merrill as self-made indie artist.

_Don't_ be put off by the alleged lo-finess of the first record.
There's an intimacy on that record that is gone (but not forgotten) on the new one.

Totally - it's nothing anybody who listened to Shrimper cassettes, say, would ever think of as all that lo-fi in the first place. The vocals tend to be less histrionic - which is a totally valid criticism of the new one imo! - even though I don't think she'd quite figured out, lyrically, what she wanted her band to be about at that point. And since she's forced to work within the limitations of her recording technology a lot more, when things peak or clip too much, the results can be really striking. That bass drop at the end of "Little Tiger" is still probably my favorite moment in any of her songs.

http://www.marriagerecs.com/shop2/744/tune-yards

Vinyl nerds should check out the LP, which has some of my favorite DIY vinyl packaging ever, and which was very key to me in shaping the aesthetic.

I feel that the entire project embodies a sort of acceptance of "one's own body", one's situation
Allowing these so-called limitations to themselves create the limits of her artistic expression.
I can't express it any more specifically than to say that it feels like a well-wrought feminist statement

cosign on that, i think. still trying to get at the root of what i find compelling about this.

we have this idea that music which is to do with er female anger is bound up with inchoate expression, with yelling and banging on things; i find this record compelling because of how merrill's vocal chops let her switch from sweetness to bellowing on a dime maybe undercut this

i mean, a part of the project of the record is dealing with violence and gender in ways which quietly muck around with our usual terms of reference: so in the bit i quoted above it sort of signifies that the musical analogue to the FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE she just DOESN'T UNDERSTAAAAND is actually a very tight piece of playing; or that she uses the sweetest of all possible coos for the 'policeman shot my baby' bit; or "your powa inside, wrecks me like a lullaby"

OK, I confess I've been avoiding this because of the name, but, uh. This is great. This is great! How could I have been so petty for so long?

Exactly. THis is the album of the year. Don't let the odd capitalization put you off.

For what it's worth, here's what I thought:

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/tune-yards-whokill-round-7toms-choice/

This song is incredible. And I can most immediately hear in it the African - High Life - Fela Kuti - Zaire - 70s Afro Pop big band style. I believe that we all influence one another, its just a matter of who gets access to the widest disemmination regime. Paul Simon had his Graceland, hipsters dance on Soul Nights with few black people around. I cant wait for the Zimbabwean band that is inspired by Morrissey that sells out Chinese stadiums and is managed by R. Kelly, we will all sing praises.
twentyeighter 2 days ago 2

I can't wait for that either

Been hearing a lot of hype about this band, but I just. can't. get into it. Her voice gives me the same physical sensation as someone running their fingernails down a chalk board.

Clearly others don't feel this way, so maybe it hits some weird spot in my brain.

I think it's the vocals that make it for me. I like how raw and loose and emotionally expressive they sound against the music. The live vocal and string playing angainst the electronic music reminds me of the first two Le Tigre albums, in spirit. There are places where I was reminded by the Minutemen, as well. I'm not crazy in love, but I do like it.

I also don't quite like her vocals and the lyrics -- there's something about it that reminds me of the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university.

She's a lot more fun though. Ordinarily I'd agree with you about This Kind of Voice.

the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university.

I stayed away from this for awhile because she seemed like an Ani DiFranco-style identity politics type of act. But holy mackerel was i ever wrong. It's the album of the year. And she's not dabbling in African music. She sounds like she knows it backwards and forwards.

The music itself I like, but her voice reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs

I always read this band's name as fUcK-tArDs

lol feminist undergrad rock music is basically something i can never ever hate on

there's something about it that reminds me of the staff of the womens college newspaper at my university

haha this is like ... this is an opinion, not just that you have, but you are willing to share, & go on record as having? ok then

dick

lol

This album did not test well with the eight-month pregnant women in my household demographic, its been banned from being played around her lest it enduces early labor.

same effect as women's college newspapers iirc

lol

It's hard for me to put my finger on why I like Dirty Projectors more than this. One reason might be that I heard Dirty Projectors first so this sounded a little derivative whether it really is or not. But the other is that it doesn't seem to have the same humor and strangeness that Longstreth has, like here underneath all the ostensible weirdness here is something that just feels too self-serious and statement-making. The womens-college-newspaper thing is an undercurrent. I mean if the staff of the womens' college newspaper had actually been listening to this and not the Indigo Girls on repeat it would have been an improvement, believe me. I still think the music is good, like if I wound up seeing her live I'd probably pay attention and enjoy it.

Perhaps the highlight of Pitchfork Festival, tbh.

DPs are in a totally different league imo. but then with them (unlike tune-yards) i get the impression that the music is the whole thing, with the lyrics being kind of an afterthought or placeholders.

On Fallon tonight fyi

she was knockout good live last night

whokill definitely among the most played albums of the year for me along with quik and deathgrips

this is pure shit

pUrE-sHiT

lol, u mad

its the kind of thing people will wince at later. like going through an old box and finding a 10,000 maniacs peace train cassingle.

Nah, I winced first, but now I <3 the new album.

When people talk shit about how hipsters are just groupthink followers who will accept anything no matter how obviously fucking terrible it is as long as it's approved by some consensus reality/tastemakers they are talking specifically about tune-yards. People should be ashamed to listen to this.

MFB SB

all your post is missing is a "sheeple" somewhere

Like I get the hate for this stuff, I used to have a kneejerk hatred for it too, but I always hate when people's reaction comes down to "YOU ONLY LIKE THIS TERRIBLE THING BECAUSE HIPSTERS DO". Uh, no. Try again, I'm sure you can come up with valid reasons to explain why you dislike her.

tbh on current evidence i doubt that

lol true

idk im p sure women's studies rock is like the best music that exists

i thought her first album was legit terrible but i only heard it after hearing clips of her doing songs off it live where it was way better even if she does that annoying thing with loop pedals i actually enjoy it when she does

i'm always amused when people pick ANYTHING and act like everyone is just totally fronting or missing the point entirely. you're welcome to dislike anything you like but it's just ludicrous for you to tell me how I don't really like it.

anyways, she's great live except for a kinda embarrassing stab at attempting hoomei at the beginning of the set but that was forgivable as "trying this shit out"

i was getting this label confused w the Art Yard label and i was all like hey these ppl have put out some sweet sun ra discs but as you were

i have no problem believing that people like tuneyards. people like all kinds of horrible stuff. there is no law against it. yet...

This crap has as many posts as the Rolling African Music thread. Fuck this industry.

rmde

really shocked that the most sensitive soul on ILX likes the tamest, lamest, crappiest music.

whiney g weingarten posts on Rolling African Music 2011 Thread : 4
whiney g weingarten posts on tUnE-yArDs : 4

If you like her, you like her I am just saying every person I've met with one exception who is a big tune-yards enthusiastic is your typical trend-watching late to the game pitchfork type person who attends like ~6 concerts a year and illegally downloads all their music. I like a lot of shit music too, and I suppose I like to think it doesn't impugn my character but it probably does sort of.

I have seen her live and it was one of the most atrocious spectacles I've ever witnessed.

Also this:

She said the weird spelling was to increase her MySpace visibility.

The success of people like tun-yards makes me really cynical about the "current music scene" and I don't like to feel cynical about music.

dude, I'm pretty sure if you paid any attention to my ilm posts our music tastes would overlap a lot more than you think, but I don't want to screw up that little neat narrative running through your precious little head

also, lol @ the dude who blows up on the regular calling me "sensitive"

(xpost)

dude, I'm pretty sure if you paid any attention to my ilm posts

not gonna happen

well, fair enough, you don't pay attention to anyone else's whenever you explode into your tirades, so why should I be different?

y'all are pretty funny but okay whatever

I just hate to see the hipster puppies guy always so angry.

Also I don't care about her copping African rhythms or w/e that's a story as old as music itself it's just that the music she makes from all these elements is completely horrible. Some of the lyrical missives she throws down are unreal.

There is a freedom in violence that I don't understand
And like I've never felt before

MAKE SURE TO HIT MY MYSPACE Y'ALL

SMITH COLLEGE THEATER CLASS OF 200?

Come to think of bad college theater is exactly what I would describe her sound/live show as.

MAKE SURE TO HIT MY MYSPACE Y'ALL

SMITH COLLEGE THEATER CLASS OF 200?

These lyrics must come from a b-side.

tbf if she is actually throwing around letters then yes

xpost

I'm immune to blog-indie hype and love this album after hating the first.

haters hating the music = ok with me
haters hating the musician and projecting all kind of erroneous shit = stupid as fuck

music sucks

I hate her music, lyrics, face paint, college, live sow, how she spells her band name, her ugly face, and her album art. Fair enough?

yuck dude

what could you possibly find objectionable about that post

She has a female pig at her live shows? Cool.

Sorry for having a strong/visceral reaction against a musician on a music discussion place.

i know, right?

if you hate this album you hate women and pigs imo

Yeah feeling p. clowned by my sub-par showing in the tune-yards thread.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry for having a strong/visceral reaction against a musician on a music discussion place.

Your strong/visceral reaction wasn't the problem. It was the part where you specifically expressed your hatred for her "ugly face". This is never a good look dude.

if only jimi hendrix had been prettier

If you like her, you like her I am just saying every person I've met with one exception who is a big tune-yards enthusiastic is your typical trend-watching late to the game pitchfork type person who attends like ~6 concerts a year and illegally downloads all their music. I like a lot of shit music too, and I suppose I like to think it doesn't impugn my character but it probably does sort of.

do you meet very many people? it kinda sounds like you should make more friends.

Tune-Yards rulez!!!!!! Whomever doesn't like their muzik suxxx!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

eXcUsE-mE, bUt I bElIeVe-yOu MeAn 'tUnE-yArDs'

heh

wow -- I bet that killed a few dendrites!

dEnDrItes

oh shoot forgot to capitalize the last E because i was distracted by eating a fAjItA

sUgGeSt BaN

oh shoot forgot to capitalize the last E because i was distracted by eating a fAjItA

You squarez don't understand us kidz and r nonTrAdItIoNal punctuation.

why'd they put all the "difficult" songs at the top of the album? is she trying to scare people off?

bizness through killa is quality listening tho. this is an album that deserves it's own playlist, with the songs i dislike conspicuously absent. the stuff i *do* like is a-list, top quality stuff. i'd probably dig the weird stuff live, too.

The album could use a bit of editing, like most indie. There are a couple of self-indulgent "experimental" tracks that I could do without. But the catchy stuff on here is very catchy. She can write a hook.

album never totally caught fire for me. still like it, and am looking forward to another. I would also like to see her live.

the two minute stretch between 1.00-3.00 of "my country" might be my favorite 2 minute stretch of the last 3 years.

"Wooly Wolly Gong" is the only one I skip -- that one deffo needs editing. "Powa" needs more love aswell.

My fave tUnE-yArDs songs are on the (uneven) debut: "Sunlight", "Fiya" and "Real Live Flesh" are INCREDIBLE. "Bizness" is the only one that reaches those heights for me.

powa and bizness are definitely my favorites on whokill, but really the whole album is solid. when i saw her the other day, i kept thinking "ok i'm pretty sure that's everything i loved off the album" and then another great song would come up.

feelin this

for liek three songs, gets a lil grating after a while

lIvE-bLoG^^

p tuneful overall

Parachute Club of The Future.

i like this

http://read.mtvhive.com/2011/11/10/mwahaha-love-feat-merrill-garbus-song-premiere/

she's also collaborating on something with cut chemist (who opened for her in l.a. last week).

Oh, so this is tUneohfuckit... Tune Yards.

Better than the crazy name spelling would suggest.

If new, I'd start with 'Powa' 'You Yes You' 'Bizness' and maybe 'My Country'

won p+j apparently

<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid1089.photobucket.com/albums/i359/dg11469/August 1 2011 - August 6 2011/tuneyardsfallon_Segment100-00-03-00-05-09.mp4">

d'oh

well it's not on youtube, that's weird...anyway...

when they played 'gangsta' on jimmy fallon with the roots it was pretty great!

Gave this another shot after seeing it win Pazz/Jop. No idea what it is about the sounds she uses, it makes my skin crawl.

I'm still boycotting based on the stupid capitalization. Can't get over it.

Tune Yards? More like Turd Tunes if you ask me!! Thank you thank you that was my Mark Prindle impression.

I have a nagging feeling that the Brute Heart album from this year shits all over this; I'll probably check it ou just to confirm...

This is kinda weird, because I didn't really notice any particularly big hype bandwagon surrounding this record. I noticed the name and the annoying capitalisation and wrote them off as some jobbing tweepop band.

This was my favorite from 2011.

tUNe-Yards gets the Chuck Klosterman treatment:

I'm not really in a position to argue for (or against) the merits of tUnE-yArDs, simply because I've barely listened to w h o k i l l. Had it not won the Pazz & Jop poll, I might not have listened to it at all. It's been on my iTunes since whenever it came out, I know my wife loved it, and I had no problem with it ideologically. I just never got around to playing it. Somehow, I hadn't read a single story about tUnE-yArDs, so I wasn't even sure what genre of music it was supposed to exist alongside. The only thing I knew was that the words "Tune Yards" were spelled "tUnE-yArDs," which seemed like reason enough to ignore it (not a good reason, but a reason nonetheless). But then it was voted no. 1 in this poll, which made me think, I should at least know what it is.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7490324/chuck-klosterman-tune-yards

To which Maura responds:

Most frustrating about the piece, written by one of the country's most celebrated music writers on a high-trafficked platform: It seems to have been the result of a listening session or two in a vacuum, with only Wikipedia and a couple of preconceived notions about Garbus being kind of "out there" as research assistance.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/01/tune_yards_pazz_and_jop_chuck_klosterman.php

chuck klosterman is one of the country's most celebrated music writers?

things are worse than i thought

I think that Klosterman's point is only nominally about tUnE-Yards though and mainly about the way critical acclaim functions within the tiny niche of "serious" pop music.

xxp

klosterman is a fucking idiot

that was one of the worst pieces of published writing i've ever read

I had no problem with it ideologically.

what on earth does this even mean

The album w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs was just named record of the year by voters in the 2011 Pazz & Jop poll.

I'm guessing this doesn't mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article's opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece.

Took him at his word, stopped there. Seemed like an okay article to me.

Is he paid by the adverb?

he's paid in Trident Layers

tuneyards will have to keep making records in the next five years so people don't laugh about her in 10? did i read that right

I think so. She has to stay relevant for a while or risk being remembered as the punch-line to a "what were we thinking?" joke in 10 years time.

the same advice Talking Heads got after Little Creatures topped the poll, right?

Well, Talking Heads had already established their brand pretty well by that time. Klosterman cites Arrested Development, Fischerspooner and Cornershop (whom he professes to still like) as cautionary examples.

that was one of the worst pieces of published writing i've ever read

obviously you don't read Grantland often

I think so. She has to stay relevant for a while or risk being remembered as the punch-line to a "what were we thinking?" joke in 10 years time.

i don't really get this. i still like all the music i liked 10 years ago; i'm not embarrassed by my taste at any point in my life. the worst part of "what were we thinking" may be the "we" -- thanks for including me in your own self-consciousness, dipshit.

frogbs don't hurt em

(not calling o.nate a dipshit, just to make that clear)

full disclosure tuneyards don't really do anything for me

but klosterman doesn't really bring any content here. i wrote out his argument in one sentence and it really doesn't hang together that way either

full disclosure i think he's a dunce

lurking unexamined under his whole style is a lot of nixonoid worry about 'the direction of the culture'

i wrote out his argument in one sentence and it really doesn't hang together that way either

Pretty much true of all the grand theories that Klosterman advances in his pieces. He's a poor man's Dave Barry not Foucault - don't over-think it.

Cornershop (whom he professes to still like)

i wonder if the album these guys came out with this year is better than w h o k i l l

it's a really bizarre piece of writing--he goes in doing a sort of faux-naive i'm going to listen to this without context thing and proceeds to.....consider her career in a larger context!

merrill should call her next album "n a t u r e a b h o r s a v a c u u m"

When you read a critical assessment of a CD, movie, book, if the writer has done his or her job, at the end of the review, you will say to yourself, "I should listen to that CD" or "I should see that movie" (if it's a positive write-up). When one reads Chuck Klosterman, one doesn't think, "I really ought to see this movie." One thinks: "Gee, I sure would like to hit that fucking douche bag Chuck Klosterman in the head with a crowbar."

haha who said that

theres a pretty great (and unnecessarily cruel) article on Klostermann up somewhere, which I didn't find, but I found this:

http://dmbysc.blogspot.com/2006/09/klosterfuck-or-if-this-is-voice-of-my.html

here's the thing about Klosterman, he actually wrote in a book that Rush were "tree huggers" and possibly a Christian band because they wrote the song "The Trees," which either proves he never ever paid attention to the lyrics or even heard the song, which is such an obvious Ayn Rand polemic it's not even funny

i wonder if the album Cornershop came out with this year is better than w h o k i l l

It's great!

also big ups 2 brute heart!

here's the thing about Klosterman, he actually wrote in a book that Rush were "tree huggers" and possibly a Christian band because they wrote the song "The Trees," which either proves he never ever paid attention to the lyrics or even heard the song, which is such an obvious Ayn Rand polemic it's not even funny

this is really Klostermann's shtick, he often readily admits that he doesn't pay much attention to the stuff he reviews or doesn't care much about it, instead choosing to talk about himself and what it all means, man

man, i wish i could care about this. alas.

on a much lighter note; imagine my surprise when i navigated to ESPN to watch NBA highlights and saw a picture of tUNEYARDs. *triple-take*

write about sports, plz.

Folks who read Klosterman deserve everything they get.

Whokill was the 2011 version of Blueberry Boat for me. Inexplicable but compelling. I wish there were more albums like this out there than nth-generation indie rock landfill.

(ignoring the T-Y spelling restrictions. It reminds me of the Sarah Jessica Parker character in LA Story. Yes I spell fIREHOSE, Firehose.)

fight the real enemy http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

nobody gives DâM-FunK shit for his capitalization. :-(

or hyphenation, even.

dave cool, what is it that you don't like about tune yards, since you're being friendly

Hey I wonder if I can listen to Blueberry Boat on Spotify...

(Sorry I didn't mean to cross post that!)

i haven't listened to that record in years. no idea what i would think of it now.

dave cool, what is it that you don't like about tune yards, since you're being friendly
--this is funny u bitter dork (forksclovetofu)

im not going to say anything bad about tune-yards. she works very hard and doesn't need people on the internet bringing her down!

That's why they call him Dave Cool.

ha, i will need to get dinner with dave cool so we can discuss this in an a LESS COOL environment

true story: i discovered ilx in 2003 by googling "chuck klosterman"

write about sports, plz.

― dronestreet, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 7:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

NO! the only good thing about klosterman writing about music is that it prevents him from writing about sports!

I had no problem with it ideologically.
...

Seriously, the guy gets paid to write that shit?

Also WTF @
here's the thing about Klosterman, he actually wrote in a book that Rush were "tree huggers" and possibly a Christian band because they wrote the song "The Trees," which either proves he never ever paid attention to the lyrics or even heard the song, which is such an obvious Ayn Rand polemic it's not even funny

Without even thinking, I can name five explicitly atheist Rush songs. It's one of their core lyrical themes! (And the singer's family background is Jewish on top of that.)

how can someone be a know-it-all and a know-nothing all at once?

i really liked the one klosterman piece in grantland about a crazy basketball game he saw at a ND junior college tournament. but it conspicuously had like three other SI staff listed under 'additional reporting'

"tUnE-yArDs/Phish Sandwich" is a new mash-up album that blends the Oakland crooner's eclectic stylings with the beloved jam band's extended improvs.

lol omg i need to hear this

iiiiii think i'll pass

oh come on this could be the greatest musical team-up since Lulu.

google is not turning anything like this up right now though

weird

http://pitchfork.com/news/46613-tune-yards-uestlove-cover-fela-kuti-for-charity/

o_O do people not get what the lyrics to "Lady" are about?

Considering how smart both Questo and Merrill are, I'm pretty sure they both know what they're doing.

ok, maybe these two are "smart" enough to have found a way in 2012 to cover a song that castigates Europeanized African women for claiming mastery over men while celebrating African women who know their proper subservient place. I'll admit I love "Lady" with all its problematic, macho, patriarchal awfulness--it's definitely, and unfortunately, one of his best songs--but I wouldn't go anywhere near it if I was a musician. the only way to redeem it is to put it in the context of Fela's anti-colonial sentiments, which I would guess would be hard to put across in a cover.

i guess we'll see

I mean, yeah the song is problematic, but some of those very issues are some of the things Merrill has, at least tangentially, touched on with her lyrics, so I'm sure she knows what she is getting into. Whether they succeed or not, that's a different story.

so it's pretty straight up, except for the raps: http://soundcloud.com/knittingfactoryrecords/tune-yards-angelique-kidjo/

this is pretty bad-ass

yeah, like it a lot.

still a little perplexed by this--it sounds kind of like they're doing a deliberate selecting or misreading of the lyrics, but w/e that's a much better idea than just singing the whole thing. but the music is great and despite giving tuneyards first billing, not having her sing lead makes all the difference. also yay charity

I won't front like i understand the context but the track is nice

still a little perplexed by this--it sounds kind of like they're doing a deliberate selecting or misreading of the lyrics.

well yeah. they subvert the song by singing only the lyrics that seem to assert female power. where fela's original harshly criticized that impulse, akua naru's raps in this version bolster it.

The artist's task when attempting problematic material isn't always to put a redeeming or subverting interpretation on it, right? Sometimes singing a problematic song can be analogous to playing a problematic character in a drama, where the point is to present the thing as lucidly as possible.

yeah, part of my confusion about this cover is that it's for an AIDS charity and Fela died of AIDS-related complications. So if you take the subversion route, you're subverting a song written by a guy who famously died from the disease you're trying to raise money to fight. But anyway, sort of like forks said, I can't possibly know what Angelique Kidjo's relationship with this song is like. My initial (over)reaction to the news was rooted in my expectation that a white american woman would be singing the lyrics. Idk, it's pretty interesting though, iirc from Michael Veal's Fela book, this song has often been misinterpreted as a feminist anthem--I'm not sure what I think about deliberately refashioning it as such.

very astute discussion. i won't front like i know enough about the original or paid enough attention to their lyrics to contribute something intelligent. but i would absolutely listen to a whole album of similarly styled Fela covers from this same group of collaborators. hot shit. that ?uest knows how to hit that snare just right.

i'm a huge fan of the first red hot + riot record

for real tho

http://www.okayafrica.com/2012/06/04/okayafrica-tv-the-making-of-lady-w-questlove-tune-yards/

The artist's task when attempting problematic material isn't always to put a redeeming or subverting interpretation on it, right? Sometimes singing a problematic song can be analogous to playing a problematic character in a drama, where the point is to present the thing as lucidly as possible.

― Träumerei, Friday, June 1, 2012 9:28 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, either way, right? it's up to the interpreter. and i don't think there's anything wrong with respectfully questioning or subverting a celebrated artist's work, even in this context.

its the kind of thing people will wince at later. like going through an old box and finding a 10,000 maniacs peace train cassingle.

― scott seward, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:42 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brutal truthbomb. Icky music.

she seems, musically, to revel in her own rawness, "realness", funky warts-and-all earthiness. kind of a hippie thing?

― contenderizer, Friday, May 20, 2011 4:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ This gets at it, too... I HATE this sort of thing.

This is good! The drumming is fantastic, the tune-yards style tonal cluster background vocals work really well. Better than anything on the tune-yards record, never got into that after the first single.

For Fela covers, nothing matches MAW Expensive (with Wunmi singing Upside Down):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efLcPbJd7QY

Clarke, have you ever heard Rusted Root?

its the kind of thing people will wince at later. like going through an old box and finding a 10,000 maniacs peace train cassingle.
― scott seward, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:42 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brutal truthbomb. Icky music.
― Clarke B., Monday, June 4, 2012

not... at all?

yeah, no. i can see how people who hate merrill's music might want to make that sort of sneering comparison, but it's lazy and cheap, imo. the two don't share much in common besides the hippie/boho vibe (which they generate in very different ways) and the fact that there's a woman on the mic. tune yards come on a good deal stranger, sharper and more challenging that 10,000 maniacs ever were.

It's not that they share much in common, but there's a very specific kind of "wow, I was listening to THAT?" feeling Scott perfectly nailed... I read it as less a direct comparison of the two groups and more a capturing of that feeling. I just don't connect to Merrill's voice or her way of singing, and that hippie/boho vibe you mention is generally a real turn-off for me. But more specific to Merrill, I'm with flopson way upthread in that her way of singing makes me uncomfortable somehow, sort of squirmy and embarrassed.

see, what i got from that is your suggestion that this will age poorly. And thus far at least that's not true at all. Only two years yes, but Tune Yards sounds as good to me now as when i first heard it.

I kinda think more time has to pass and more people have to let Tune-Yards fade from their immediate listening habits in order to determine how well they've aged... That feeling Scott describes is, for me, one of a bygone minor cultural consensus that leaves people scratching their collective head down the road.

I have basically settled down as mostly agnostic on the question of the merits of tune-yards but it seems very, very strange to claim as counter-argument to a prediction that something will not age well to say "well it still sounds fresh to me two years later!" Two years is nothing. "Love The Way You Lie" is almost two years old and it doesn't sound dated or so far removed from the context of current pop music that no one can figure out why so many people fell all over it. No one's going to be able to answer this question until the tune-yards albums are as old as the 10,000 Maniacs albums.

dan otm

but I do see some stylistic/cultural signifier similarities between TY and past-pop-crit obsessions

like, say, Arrested Development, Annie DiFranco, lol even Alannis a little bit

coco rosie?

i guess that was one word

i'm less interested in what makes people pick up stuff like this than it what makes them (sooner or later) put it down

Fiery Furnaces

okay, five of the six mentioned so far are female-fronted...

i just find the whole idea of "man are you gonna hate this in a few years" spurious on the face of it.

I want a Shackleton remix of Bizness.

In between the gorgeous singing on other parts of the album I get a CocoRosie vibe. Maybe a little Indigo Girls. Do not have opinion, still want remix.

Oh yeah Graceland with a loop pedal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as91OCbbEsc

New album Nikki Nack in May 2014. Clips sound badass.

happy to hear about this

I have a friend who hates tune-yards more than anything. His name is Nicky. He is very angry right now.

But my name's not Nicky.

Ok yeah this sounds pretty badass

i also hate tune-yards more than anything. i click this thread out of a perverse fascination with my hatred.

yeah that mix above sounds great

excited

"Water Fountain" http://youtu.be/j-KulvW2TUQ

Great stuff.

yep

this has everything that would make me think I'd like it, and yet somehow I don't like it

something about it reminds me of summer camp mess hall

Great stuff. Especially the last part where everything happens at once.

I like this song a whole helluva lot!

fun song. i hate the way she capitalizes odd letters in her name.

sToP cApItAlIziInG eVeRy oThEr lEtTeR iN yOuR nAmE tUnE yArDs

looks like a hostage-taker's ransom note.

It sounds like it'd fun to play on bass.

this album is so massively great

her songs seem bonkers, in a good way.

new album is so good http://www.npr.org/2014/04/25/306543443/first-listen-tune-yards-nikki-nack

""Real Thing," one of the most trenchant comments on modern fame in recent memory, begins with a coy, tightly clustered, Destiny's Child-style verse"

Destiny's Child-style verse from ~tUNe-yArDz~? pass

Love that the difficult punctuation exercise has been replaced with extra italics work, Nikki Nack

This is so great. It feels quite different from whokill. More intricately detailed, fewer simple distinctive song ideas, lots more restless jumbling and scattering.

"Look Around" is incredibly lovely and I feel like I haven't heard anything like it before.

I was underwhelmed on my first listen. Her vocal and instrumental tricks often seem forced. Will give it another listen or 3

It seemed v bitsy/selfconscious on first listen, maybe wrong obv

Her vocal and instrumental tricks often seem forced.

I hear that on, e.g. the chorus to "Wait For a Minute", where the "OW OW OW"s seem to have been forced onto the wrong beat and make the song sound broken. I assume that's Merrill deliberately messing with the smoothness of the track (meant to express self-doubt/stasis).

gonna need a few more spins to determine what I'm thinking, feels a little hit and miss on second pass.
water fountain prob a top ten single of the year for me tho

Sounds marvelous on third listen.

I wasn't sure I needed another Tune-Yards album in my life, but this sounds pretty good to me so far.

I kinda miss the saxophones... The many synths aren't really a good trade, it takes away some of her uniqueness and energy. But I really like her project, I love the lyrics and I love the way she explores identity. Rocking Chair is marvelous.

What type of crazy punctuation/typography thing should she do next to drive the music press crazy?

I vote having line breaks in the middle of
her al
bum tit
le
like
this

A really obvious point to make, given all the post-Haiti-trip drumming on the record, but a lot of this sounds like a lost Slits or Rip Rig & Panic album.

Second the comment above about "Look Around". "Real Thing" and that is a great 1-2 punch.

Could happily listen to Merrill singing all day.

Also really miss the saxophones.

Just watched their recent performance of Water Fountainon Fallon and it's way better than the recorded version -- seems like i recall feeling the same way when i watched the Tiny Desk Concert they did promoting the last album.

ultimately this album feels like a swing and a miss to me; too much exploration of "okay i have a style and i'm famous so now what"
I'll ride for Water Fountain (def fave track for this year so far), Wait for a Minute and Rocking Chair but not a whole lot else. It's easily her weakest LP in my eyes.
Strangely, one of my old interns is touring and doing back up for Garbus; she's in that Fallon performance.

Maybe Nikki Nack isn't as much of a breakthrough as Whokill was, but I think in some ways I like it better. It's more consistent. There are a couple of tracks that I skip on Whokill but none on Nikki Nack - although "Rocking Chair" doesn't feel very essential, it's short enough, unlike for instance "Wooly Wooly Gong" on Whokill which seems to go on forever.

That's an inversion of how I'm listening to it! Different strokes I guess.

finally had a chance to listen to the new one a few times, and I love it. It's like an instant party in a can.
Whokill had higher highs, and parts where you go, "what is this whichcraft?" Nikki Nack just has me blissfully head bopping in the fabulous far-out mix.

i think the "party" aspect is a little deceptive -- the lyrics get pretty dark, all the stuff about rape/domestic violence, identity politics, depression, gentrification.

(not to mention the cannibalism interlude, which i wish she'd left off the record b/c it just feels so out of place.)

i love the record though; it reminds me of growing up in nyc and being exposed to the hulking and ever-mutating mass of pop/synth-R&B/freestyle/electro/new jack/reggae-inflected stuff that was on the radio and coming out of every car window, as well as all the attitudinal fringe-folk weirdos at the little clubs and festivals that my folks dragged me to. i've said before that tune-yards is really evocative of "summer prospect park 1988" for me and that's even more true with nikki nack.

I like the cannibalism skit. Reminds me of the skits on De La Soul Is Dead.

(not to mention the cannibalism interlude, which i wish she'd left off the record b/c it just feels so out of place.)

this, exactly! i don't necessarily hate the interlude, it just sucks a lot of the energy and momentum out of the record at that point!

Maybe 'party' was too strong, but her singing sounds so self-assured and dynamic as apposed to the more experimental stuff. I almost expect to hear her throw in a 'come on now' every now and then.

She does throw in some "Woo Hah!"s.

I've had mixed feelings about this band before but they kicked ass at Pitchfork Fest. I was really impressed. I guess they make sense as a "festival band."

I was going to say the opposite -- love "Hatari" and all of Whokill that I've heard, just saw them play a festival set and they were good but I wished I were seeing them in a smaller room with fewer people.

I really enjoy this record - maybe even moreso than w h o k i l l - and I'm a bit surprised it doesn't seem to have the same kind of impact as its predecessor. Sure, it's a bit messy in places, and it requires a few listens to properly sink in, but that's always been the case with her, hasn't it? So many hooks, so many beautiful melodies to discover!

What's interesting to me is that she has said in interviews that she had studied 'pop composition' prior to writing the album. I vaguely remember her even mentioning a book on how to write a pop hit. It's curious, because most of the songs here tend to stray away from the typical pop structure. It's a bit more glossy, more synths and programmed beats; hooks and tunes - check, but your usual pop song structure? Not so much.

huh I thought this album was explicitly more conventional in songwriting and performance than whokill

also, it rules

Yeah, compared to w h o k i l l, sure, but in early press she made it sound like HERE COMES MY TOP 40 RECORD. Or maybe I just saw it mentioned one time too many and expected something more straightforward. But I'm glad she didn't dumb it down; and yeah, it rules.

love it

It definitely hasn't gotten a tenth of the buzz of whokill. I have a theory--the lyric "a blood soaked dollar" from the single is to blame. It comes across as a Grade Z Occupy Wall Street trope, just so obvious and clumsy. It kinda mars what is a kickass song.

i just never warmed to this album.

I admired the previous album, but rarely wanted to play it. This one I actually enjoy listening to.

Saw her live last night. What an awesome gig. It made me appreciate her songs even more, especially the Nikki Nack ones.

they sound better live, yes.

New song:

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

The album, I can feel you creep into my private life, is out in January.

I am really surprised by how hard I've turned around on her. I guess once I acclimated to the shouting, I could start enjoying what she was doing.

lol reading upthread shows I have both a great mind for inference and a terrible memory

Very cool!!

Love it. Welcome back.

Love this.

"Heart Attack". Like the way the track starts very basically, then gradually blossoms to an opulent 70s disco sound. Album's going to rule. Don't like this video much though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-7je-jsuC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xd097nWH2s

I like the video better than the song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hcG6UgTHiU

this is the best thing i've heard from them in a long time

This 1000% reignited my fandom... I love when she plays to her strengths (biggest voice out there, puppets)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy3xdHw4YTs

I mean it this performance is crazy and great, vocal performance alone even

yeah that's a fantastic performance

i feel pretty optimistic about the new album now

i kinda like the cover of Cannonball

Me too

i really like this album, her best since whokill! haven't paid enough attention to notice if there's any of the real embarrassing clunkers there were on the last one though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyXwmyjNco8

idioteque cover is cool too

oh meant to say "lyrical clunkers"

dang at that idioteque cover, nice blend of styles

now that i've paid attention to them i can say it holds up lyrically too! delightful

This album is REALLY REALY good

I agree

yes

That's quite the triple recommendation.

This is great and I can't really figure out what I want to say about it besides that