Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

all true,

but at least K records was a chance for girls to wear cute dresses and bake vegan cupcakes and play scattergories, not a boys club trying to "turn the pop culture ephemera of our youth into a spiritual plane"

somehow early k records stuff is more defensible

it's like we're all disillusioned dr spock babies desperately trying to avoid our professional parents' high-achieving, emotionally distant fate so we try to get back to the space before we were aware of that by means of a regression legitimized by the false gravitas imparted by some half-baked post-modernist pastiche aesthetic. maybe.

WHAT IS k?

k: a conspiracy of gravediggers, spies, swim instructors and international pop stars. There are hangmen and there are saints. k as a label has released cassettes, phonograph records and compact discs documenting the audio works of over 150 artists. The main focus k of has been artists working in and around Olympia, Washington, where k is based, but has included comrades from across the U.S.A. and as far away as Japan, Scotland, Australia, Canada, Germany and England. Yes, k explodes the teenage underground into passionate revolt against the corporate ogre world-wide.

Colleagues in the International Pop Underground collide at the k vanishing point. The sounds cross back and forth through a number of genres, some known and some less so: punk, hip hop, atom-powered folk-pop, haunted garage, restless singer songwright, epic soul shock, noise exp., blurred-eye visionary psychedelica, roadhouse mod and the silent film soundtracks composed by Timothy Brock, as performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra.

In describing k to a friend, you might say: Hit the streets to the motorbike beat of the cranked and crush crashpop. Raise the standard and hail: a revolution come and gone behind your eyes. Blood and sand and sidewalk. Radio blast the punk pop implosion that is the new breed: a bee in your bonnet, love in a goldfish bowl, zombie rockin behind the iron curtain. Hey, love rocker, pull on your slacks and Mexican army boots, get ready for some sonic pogo action. Jazz the glass, here they come, screaming and clawing, scooters and dune buggies roaring. Bless. Can you dig it? k Collaborators. King loser and teenage underground. Screech and saw. Buzz. Cut. Spin. Slice. Crush. Squirt. Sweaty basement rock and rule. A crown of barbed wire for your hooded throne. Lose it on the ball and chain.

Hey, gravedigger: ignite.

calvin always talked a good game but damn I wish K put out better stuff than they do

yup

remember K's rap album?

the beats weren't happening, that's for sure

BOOM

we're all disillusioned dr spock babies desperately trying to avoid our professional parents' high-achieving, emotionally distant fate

OTM. its interesting to me that this is a distinctly post-Boomer generation thing. The Boomers' hated their parents and were possibly the first (last?) generation not to entertain some glassy-eyed nostalgia for the world and pop culture of 20 yrs prior... as the junk culture of America has accumulated over subsequent decades, it just seems sillier and sillier for each generation to pine for the crap of some non-existent idealized childhood (esp one as designed by some faceless corporate juggernaut and manufactured by hapless third world wage slaves)

The Boomers' hated their parents and were possibly the first (last?) generation not to entertain some glassy-eyed nostalgia for the world and pop culture of 20 yrs prior
I dunno though, as all of these Beatles polls prove, McCartney was mining some deep veins of nostalgia for his parents' era.

"turn the pop culture ephemera of our youth into a spiritual plane"

btw given how totally saturated my youth was with pop culture (and i didn't even have cable) i'm not even totally opposed to this project--it just needs some more competent dudes and chicks working on it.

the beats weren't happening, that's for sure

oh man, this took me a minute. i'm old!

http://www.amazon.com/Shinin-Directors-Cut-EP/dp/B00004SAXR

yeah i dunno im just kinda weary of the whole thing ... there was a period the 1st couple weeks of my fresh. year @ college where folks were clustered around a computer in someone's dorm like "omg i totally do remember the tmnt theme," the idea that a bunch of difft ppl thought this was a good jumping off point for an entire 'wave' of bands is kinda depressing ... lets move on shall we

a chillwave of bands

deej i totally feel you and am wary of exact shit like that myself but there is something abt it that's interesting to me and i feel like there's room for a deeper investigation. i guess someone needs to criticize it or subvert it and not just kind of treat it as something that can be glossed over or seen through a cheerful memory filter.

i guess i don't have to post one of those tired "children of the 80s" forwards circa college here, huh

i got that thing like 1,000 times!

I dunno though, as all of these Beatles polls prove, McCartney was mining some deep veins of nostalgia for his parents' era.

eh I'm talking about America. Britain a vv different place culturally. Just look at the difference in the two country's exp w/WWII

i feel like there's room for a deeper investigation. i guess someone needs to criticize it or subvert it and not just kind of treat it as something that can be glossed over or seen through a cheerful memory filter.

someone needs to start a band to subvert the memories of TMNT???

(like no duh Britishers would pine for pre-war England, the war ruined the country! But WWII made America rich, prosperous, and kings of the world, and none of us got bombed. as such, America's love affair with its own pop culture BEGINS after WWII.)

x-posts

lol pop culture saturation in general

i think in the best moments of this stuff there's a sort of resigned melancholy that acknowledges that you can't escape the passage of time no matter how hard you try and thereby uses nostalgia as a jumping off point which can be truly uplifting and self-aware as opposed to regressive and escapist.

like the birther movement the cultural and sociological underpinnings of this so-called chillwave must be addressed despite our reservations about its more gnarly phenotypic variations

to be honest the background music of tmnt (not the theme song) was pretty badass imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ-9_1J8TuM

i think in the best moments of this stuff there's a sort of resigned melancholy that acknowledges that you can't escape the passage of time no matter how hard you try and thereby uses nostalgia as a jumping off point which can be truly uplifting and self-aware as opposed to regressive and escapist.

like the birther movement the cultural and sociological underpinnings of this so-called chillwave must be addressed despite our reservations about its more gnarly phenotypic variations

― uptown churl, Monday, September 28, 2009 3:10 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

still so navel gaze-y

if only they had some pizza and a bottle of wine amirite

are they white btw

don't know anything about any of these bands someone get me up to date

ilx....

if only they had some pizza and a bottle of wine amirite

― man, motherfuck a paddington bear (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, September 28, 2009 3:23 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah for real-- lyrics that are memorable wd probably help these dudes

I was trying to imply that Girls' lyrics are pretty lolz navel gaze-y but to each his own

yeah except that imo pizza & wine are a lot more universal than the kind of supposedly shared nostalgia these dudes are peddling

TS: TMNT theme song vs. Pizza!

I think it's strange that the vagueified nostalgia that these bands are trading in is being treated as some kind of compelling art statement. (By some people I maybe read about somewhere, what the fuck am I even talking about?) I mean, I can relate to Ducktails in terms of how it's some pleasant shit to have widdling away in the background, but I don't hear anything crucial in it. The play between real and fake, allure and artificiality that Matt talks about isn't really evident. Not to me, anyway. What I do hear is a familiar tension between genuine fondness for childhood totems and ironic self-awareness, staked out in territory that hasn't been thoroughly reprocessed by this kind of indie reevaluation. Which is cool, but not giving me anything particularly new to think about. Maybe I'm just too old, and therefore my relationship to the objects invoked isn't sufficiently visceral.

...this is a distinctly post-Boomer generation thing. The Boomers' hated their parents and were possibly the first (last?) generation not to entertain some glassy-eyed nostalgia for the world and pop culture of 20 yrs prior... as the junk culture of America has accumulated over subsequent decades, it just seems sillier and sillier for each generation to pine for the crap of some non-existent idealized childhood (esp one as designed by some faceless corporate juggernaut and manufactured by hapless third world wage slaves)

-- Shakey Mo

I think that's what makes this version of ironic nostalgia seem so unsurprising. Kids in the late sixties were nostalgic about 40s/50s pop they grew up with, but also suspicious of the implicit messages and of nostalgia itself. And regardless of the defensive stances we adopt with regard to nostalgia, we're all nostalgic just the same.

I think it's strange that the vagueified nostalgia that these bands are trading in is being treated as some kind of compelling art statement

i've always seen 'vagueified nostalgia' as a sort of defining characteristic of most indie sub-genres

...and most rock, generally. But most rockers don't consciously sound as if they ape the mannerisms of youth.

most rock? def not

Guys there's a difference between people aping the bands they liked as a kid and building your entire aesthetic around how awesome it was to watch Legends Of The Hidden Temple

most rock? def not

The Beatles, Elton John, CCR, Prince, and so on would like a word with you.

trying to thing of a nostalgic CCR song

you're saying 'vaguefied nostalgia' is a defining characteristic of prince's music

"Green River"

Born on the Bayou

(I don't agree that "vaguefied nostalgia" is a defining characteristic of rock tho, dunno where Alfred's goin with that one...)

so by 'vaguefied nostalgia' being a 'defining characteristic,' you mean that these artists often talk about things that happened in the past

hmm okay so yeah, Cotton Fields is one, too, but I don't think that's what Whiney is talking about

I can think of tons of canonical rock artists who didn't truck in any kind of romanticizing of the past - VU, the Stooges, Black Sabbath, etc - this is kinda a dead end argument

i've always seen 'vagueified nostalgia' as a sort of defining characteristic of most indie sub-genres

― psychgawsple

Without getting into that, the vaguification here is very thick -- foregrounded, even. By application of reverb, of course, because that's how it's done, but also conceptually (by which I mean pictures that are blurry). Last night, I was listening to an old cassette tape of some friends jamming as teens (synth, drum machines, processed guitar) in 1980-something, and was surprised by how Ducktails-contemporary it sounded.

Guys there's a difference between people aping the bands they liked as a kid and building your entire aesthetic around how awesome it was to watch Legends Of The Hidden Temple

― Whiney

Yeah, but that's my point. The only difference is the object of nostalgia, not nostalgia or one's relationship to it. And that's considerably less interesting -- from a generalist outsider's perspective.

Yeah, I have a better idea now that I've reread these posts. You can claim "Strawberry Fields Forever" as one of the ground zeros: the spacey vocals, use of space, and general musical weirdness make it one of those songs written by an ostensible adult that consciously seeks some kind of comfort in the past ("Penny Lane" too, for that matter). But Animal Collective don't have Lennon as a singer -- or Ringo as a drummer.