a mix between The Stone Roses and Primal Scream with the swagger of Oasis

Messiah believe the music scene is going backwards in the UK and strive to resurrect the sound of the 90’s

And from further upthread

The band describes themselves as having a very raw and original sound, it’s a sound that mimics the 1960s

I find this wilful commitment to a specific kind of contradiction strangely laudable.

Like, I'm noticing that in a lot of these bands' blurbs they keep claiming they're adding something new to their template of the usual influences... but what?

It's a Pierre Menard thing

http://www.britevents.com/img/news/razorlight-party-on-local-band-tour-bus.jpg

The contradiction is essentially "we're in thrall to the sounds of the '60s and other bands since the '60s that are in thrall to the sounds of the '60s, and we believe that music has to stay within this template and never move away from this template because if music does move away from this template, then it's moving backwards. BUT WAIT, WE'RE ACTUALLY A MODERN BAND, WE'RE RELEVANT TO THIS DECADE!!! RELEVANT, I TELL YOU!!!"

The ClockTower are creating their collective sound by combining Brit-pop and mod vibes together… Brit-pod? Well, whatever you’d like to call it, the outcome of their music will always be more than admirable. But a genre is just a genre without talented band members coming together to create some commendable noise. Lucky enough, this Wolverhampton four-piece have “Hilda”, “Krishna”, “Ringo” and “Jonny Big Back”, all great musicians who bring something to the table.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uj4X0cS99jk/UPfRn12F5-I/AAAAAAAAHbU/QWN7n3MWWQk/s1600/529389_398835926811288_1414946812_n.jpg

The band are the first to admit that they are not re-inventing the sound of the Mod revival and Britpop eras, they are merely the torch bearers for the next generation, saving our souls, and ears, from the mindless drivel that is rammed down the throat of the nation by daytime radio.

do people make fun of dudes with oasis haircuts when they see them on the street? are they bullied in school? so many questions...

lol @ "brit-pod"

i love this thread so much

i wanna eat some fish sarnies

Whats most disturbing is that Kasabian are as prominent as Oasis, Beatles in a lot of these influences

brit pod is surely the stupidest reundancy i've heard in a hot minute

also redundancy

guy squatting in the Razorlight(?) photo has a kinda cool Keiji Haino look, tho I'm sure the music is dreadful

pretty sure i have never heard kasabian, but this thread is inspiring me

 Marblehead Johnson/The Morning Glories are also Different Class, Slight Return and One 2 Another

i can't believe kasabian are still a band! i "reviewed" their first album in 2005. if my math is correct, that's 10 years ago! who knew?

i listened to the cd once. that's the last i heard of them. http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-03-01/music/funkatrons-turn-britpop-s-umpteenth-flowering-into-a-very-happy-monday/full/

Kasabian are pretty huge in the UK.

cool. i just read that the horrors have also been a band for 10 years. i had no idea they had been around that long. i've never heard their music but i never get tired of their band photos.

http://images.musictimes.com/data/images/full/6870/the-horrors.jpg

guy squatting in the Razorlight(?) photo has a kinda cool Keiji Haino look, tho I'm sure the music is dreadful

― example (crüt), Tuesday, February 10, 2015 10:57 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That is of course notable Shropshire band "Clocktower" - though they do have a notable anecdote about meeting Razorlight:

Clocktower who took to the stage on early Sunday evening told BritEvents that their highlight of the weekend was 'meeting Razorlight in the VIP (area) at OsFest, their minders walked them back to the Clocktower's tour bus for a drink and chat'.

Unfortunately one of the band members, Andy O'Brien, also told us that: '5 minutes later I fell asleep!'

Andy O'Brien, bass guitarist for Clocktower, laughed and added: 'Ryan our frontman was playing the acoustic when me and Fred entered our bus, I think no one knew who he was 'til he went and then they found out.'

I asked Andy what they talked about; he said: 'He didn't say loads at our bus as it was like an after party. We showed him one of our bands tracks on the acoustic called 'kiss ya glass' he then said 'I've got shoot off to the toilet' then went.

I think no one knew who he was 'til he went and then they found out

Here you! You in a band?

...this Wolverhampton four-piece have “Hilda”, “Krishna”, “Ringo” and “Jonny Big Back”...

Surely they are a Rutles take on this scene.

Kula Shaker, morelike

"i wanna eat some fish sarnies"

Fish butties is where it is really at, sarnies are bourgeoisie picnic hamper fillers.

Thread started out kinda LOL, criticising a very specific form of NME branded post-Oasis lad-rock.

But seems to have drifted into not just making fun of BritPop bands, but making fun of mod bands, 60s psych bands, shoegaze bands, suit bands... is this going to end up just basically policing the appearance of anyone who doesn't match an ILX-friendly nerd meets dirtbag generic man (but not too generic, because then you will be criticised for being "normcore" as a fashion statement) standard of male not-caring-about-appearance.

You know I'm never going to get behind that.

I mean, yes, having spent many years on the edges of parts of it (thread stopped being LOL right around the time people I've known started turning up on it) I have many criticisms of its essential conservatism, its sheer *bloke*-iness and rampant sexism. (But hey, funnily enough, the same things turn up in the criticism thereof!) But when people start turning up on a thread to make fun of blokes for *having* haircuts, just... no. There's a conversation to be had about the presentation of Masculinity as embodied in The Lad, the Liam, the Paul Weller, these specifically British archetypes, how it's both a reaction to, and a reinforcement of traditional masculine gender roles in British culture. But making fun of people's haircuts is not that conversation.

I might not like the music, but I *do* admire men who are committed to having and maintaining Style. (Also there's a not inconsiderable part of me that's probably in agreement with Madchen.)

“We’re Section 60 a five piece guitar band from Sheffield. That’s right guitar, I suppose we could get shot these days for saying that word but fuck it, we are what we are and we ain’t going to change for fucking trends.”

“Anyway like we said, we’re Section 60 so just listen to the songs because at the end of the day that’s all that really matters.”

I agree whole heartedly with the above sentiments but Section 60 are much more than a “five piece guitar band from Sheffield”. Section 60 create big fuck off anthemic slabs of indie rock ‘n’ roll (continues)

But seems to have drifted into not just making fun of BritPop bands, but making fun of mod bands, 60s psych bands, shoegaze bands, suit bands... is this going to end up just basically policing the appearance of anyone who doesn't match an ILX-friendly nerd meets dirtbag generic man (but not too generic, because then you will be criticised for being "normcore" as a fashion statement) standard of male not-caring-about-appearance.

for me the thread isn't about bands who dress like that, but bands who dress like that but do it very badly/awkwardly/unconvincingly. They aim for ersatz, but hit some kind of humdrum and inaccurate facsimile.

There's a conversation to be had about the presentation of Masculinity as embodied in The Lad, the Liam, the Paul Weller, these specifically British archetypes, how it's both a reaction to, and a reinforcement of traditional masculine gender roles in British culture.]There's a conversation to be had about the presentation of Masculinity as embodied in The Lad, the Liam, the Paul Weller, these specifically British archetypes, how it's both a reaction to, and a reinforcement of traditional masculine gender roles in British culture.

....ooh cool that sounds like fun

full disclosure: while lolling, kind of uneasily aware that if I were asked to stand in a short notice for a guy in one of these photo shoots, I could do so with little appearance of incongruity.

*at* short notice

But basically, important as it is to talk about feelings and issues and things, lol @ these rubes

i think if i had any intention other than to document this slice of Real England at the beginning, what amused/amuses me was the friction between the hyper-conservative working class hero cosplay and the rhetoric of danger, transgression, last gang in town nonsense

agree that this was never about hierarchical visions of (ugh) cool

so style, sure, but swagger, attitude...why always those flogged horse corpses?

That’s right guitar, I suppose we could get shot these days for saying that word

this quote plus a thousand bands disingenuously repeating it in every town in the UK basically

i think if i had any intention other than to document this slice of Real England at the beginning, what amused/amuses me was the friction between the hyper-conservative working class hero cosplay and the rhetoric of danger, transgression, last gang in town nonsense

I mean, yeah, this is what is interesting about the thread, and what continues to be interesting about it.

That whole thing of "Guitar, that's right, we said guitar, like you can't even SAY that word any more" has a definite smack of "but we can't even TALK about immigration any more" ~Real England~ to it.

Those flogged horses of 'swagger' and 'attitude' and 'cheeky' and of course that endless harping on 'Soul' from which any actual evidence of contemporary Black or African-American influence has been totally purged, because by 'Soul' they mean Paul Weller and Dexy's.

It's just a bizarre repositioning of reactionary conservatism as something dangerous or even rebellious. As you say.

Which is a shame, because I really quite love the haircuts and at least the more cavalier-mod-dandy end of the clothes. :-/

That whole thing of "Guitar, that's right, we said guitar, like you can't even SAY that word any more" has a definite smack of "but we can't even TALK about immigration any more" ~Real England~ to it.

Definitely. It's a pretense of danger within an entirely traditionalist framework, a lie, and a laughable one at that.

xp

need a thread for decontextualized/recontextualized fashion instead maybe - can the outfits be beautiful in the context of unbeautiful signifiers?

which is like, the history of the feather cut itself - dangerous signifier of possible queerness in 1971, blunt denoter of atrophied musical interests in 2015

The victory condition for all of these bands is Top Gear library music, right?

That's kinda what we were doing on the Image Band thread, NV. The transition from signifier of dangerous new concept to empty signifier of retro fashion that I ended up jokingly calling "weightless semiotics".

Another side of this rubik's cube is the whole image being a recapturing of their own youth, or the youth of their near-relative, from a time where there was some sort of 'moral panic' around.

It harkens back to the 'teddy boys' in that respect.

Obviously I'm conflicted; last thing I need at my age is some sort of "OK, you sit with all these older people in your new age bracket and sing those songs about the war", and I did note with some pleasure that one of the latest Saga adverts has it soundtracked by "Here I go again" Archie Bell and the Drells.

.. but I like/love about 50% of the music so far represented, and am bored relentlessly by the rest.

Kasabian? I don't pay them too much mind, on that level they're OK I guess.

The Horrors are supposed to be really good, might give them a listen some time.

remember this thread?

Also pathos of shameless commercial populism that isn't commercially popular: No-one is interested in these bands, but the template allows no deviation from 'gonna be the biggest band in the world' fronting.

(xp) Yeah, remember fun?

I don't know much about Kasabian but I believe they're much more of a dumbed down Lads' Primal Scream than Oasis/ Roses wannabes. Oh, and tell the Beatles to fuck off.

Also pathos of shameless commercial populism that isn't commercially popular: No-one is interested in these bands, but the template allows no deviation from 'gonna be the biggest band in the world' fronting.

^^^ this

They already did. It's not their fault so many are staring at the door they closed behind them.

xpost

I kinda want to separate out The Horrors because they're in kind of a different *genre* from the Primals-meets-Oasis gang. (The narcissism of small difference, yes, but the kind of difference that Americans don't notice.)

But they're kind of guilty of the same thing - being a pastiche of a pastiche. There's something deeply pathetic about aspiring to be a mixture of "Primal Scream and Oasis" when those two bands are known primarily for being copyists and retro-fetishists. (The Primals and the Roses, at least, unlike Oasis made at least *some* attempt to engage with contemporary culture, blah blah Andy Weatherall, blah blah Acid House etc. etc.) The Horrors are doing the same thing, copying from a copy, but with a slightly different set of signifiers that they are the third generation of. (And, it seems, with somewhat more awareness that that is what they're doing.)

The thing is most of these bands seem like local groups with no connections and no interest from the media who - despite the misguided ambition that makes leads them to shoot press photos - will probably never prosper outside of their town, if indeed they prosper there. That's definitely not the case with The Horrors, who also, imho, pull off their look with a certain compelling confidence.