quote musical comparisons that peeve you

preferably from a review you can link

can't find anything online, but iti irked me when the strokes were compared to television. in fact, an editor inserted this comparison w/o my approval into an article I wrote about Television. gahhhh!

"interpol sound like joy division" - 99% "alternative rock journalists"
makes me wanna KILL

have talked about it many times on ilm already - kate bush/tori amos

There was a stretch of time a few years ago where everyone who played an acoustic guitar was the second coming of Nick Drake.

any single time any band is described as "[other band] on [psychoactive substance]"

But the Kate Bush/Tori Amos (vocal style and phrasing, melodic sensibility) and Interpol/Joy Division (vocal timbre, postpunk/retro-postpunk musical style) comparisons do make sense to me, as someone who listens to all of those artists. It made no sense at all to compare the Strokes to a 70s band that was mostly known for intricate dual guitar interplay and Symbolist-influenced lyrics.

xp I once described Neutral Milk Hotel to a high school friend as "a marching band on acid". I think I picked up the term from some review, but there's really no excuse.

comparisons based on accurate but superficial similarities that end up acting as reductive criticism of both artists (often used to denigrate one) and that don't come close to understanding the aesthetics of either irk me way more than loopy comparisons that don't make much sense.

xp

in fairness (xpost to myself), Jimi Hendrix's description of the Beach Boys as a barbershop quartet on acid was pretty accurate, assuming he was talking about some of their (Smiley) Smile-era material.

Any comparison to Captain Beefheart is usually well wide of the mark, I can't think of anyone who's even come close to sounding like him / them.

the beatles of ____ vs. the stones of _____

Mercer stands in the lineage of rock frontman as half-carnival-barker, half-gnostic-preacher that Greil Marcus describes as the "crank prophet," from Screamin' Jay Hawkins through Arthur Lee of Love, Captain Beefheart, David Thomas of Pere Ubu, Tom Waits, and the Pixies' Frank Black.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10167-tears-of-the-valedictorian/

I have no idea who Frog Eyes are tbh

Any comparison to Captain Beefheart is usually well wide of the mark, I can't think of anyone who's even come close to sounding like him / them.

well there are precedents that Beefheart borrowed from but maybe that's not what yr talking about

as for folks who came after I think Tom Waits copped a lot from Beefheart and you can definitely hear it in the Franks Wild Years trilogy

Most comparisons, then.

gnostic preachers vs non-gnostic preachers

I reckon Waits and Beefheart are both copping from the same sources - Howlin Wolf etc - so you justify a comparison on that basis. Same with Lee Brilleaux.

Crappy space-rock indie bands being described as "prog", e.g. Spiritualized, Flaming Lips etc. Break out of 4/4 once in a while and I might buy the comparison. Probably not though.

Comparisons of pianists to Cecil Taylor are, 99% of the time, beyond lazy.

Also, all comparisons to the Who are wrong. No one sounds like the Who.

Pavement/The Fall

But the Kate Bush/Tori Amos (vocal style and phrasing, melodic sensibility) and Interpol/Joy Division (vocal timbre, postpunk/retro-postpunk musical style) comparisons do make sense to me, as someone who listens to all of those artists. It made no sense at all to compare the Strokes to a 70s band that was mostly known for intricate dual guitar interplay and Symbolist-influenced lyrics.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, January 24, 2011 3:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

thank you S*nd*r, i wasn't gonna bother to argue abt this on the Aerial thread but it is just so obvious what the similarities are w/Tori, sorry lex and Tim.

band with EMO vocals/tough shit

fuck you Titus Andronicus

this banging tim f post from 5 years ago pretty much sums up my issues w/the tori/kate comparison - kate bush "aerial"

The Darkness and Queen. I mean really it makes me think that those who make that comparison only listened to Queen songs in the 80s, and to me it's still a stretch. Not that I'm denying ANY Queen influence, but I don't think they wear the influence on their sleeves like others do, just cuz dude sings with a crappy falsetto.

^ yea going off of what Capt. Lorax has said, it enrages me when friends'll ask what made me take a turn into the emo realm when I blast Husker Du or the like. It's not even excusable.

Results 1 - 10 of about 44,600 for "sounds like cat power". (0.08 seconds)

Serious, "Moon Pix" seemed like Year Zero for people's ears when it came to girls with guitars.

Not really a comparison, I know, but pick any band with a female singer and they've had it in spades.

It's not as bad as Strokes/Television but Radiohead/Pink Floyd always seemed a bit odd to me. I get it if it's just "popular British rock band makes ambitious moody albums with state-of-the-art electronics that capture a certain zeitgeist". Otherwise, the musical similarities seem pretty slight to me. Yorke's vocals certainly don't seem to owe much to any of PF's singers. And Greenwood's guitar sound doesn't have much to do with Gilmour's lyrical blues-based solos. Pink Floyd was probably the most straightforward prog band in terms of rhythm, which is one area where Radiohead have done some fairly original and complex things. And Radiohead, or at least Greenwood, actually seem to have a deeper interest in classical, jazz, and new music. (Not to mention the obvious influences from contemporary electronic popular styles.) Maybe I hear the connection a little in "How to Disappear Completely"?

(Also, could a mod please Google-proof my name above? Thanks.)

mods can do that?!?

easy one: comparing [new white rapper] to eminem

mods can do that?!?

Oh, I thought they could? If not, don't worry about it.

Going off-topic while I have the chance: I've only been an ilxor for... a year?... now and have yet to understand the whole google-proof thing. What is it about posting ppl's names that ilx can't seem to cope w/?

Somebody said this in the comments somewhere but I can't figure out where they read it, though if true, it is an example of when people who don't know enough about a certain style of music compare something new they've heard in that genre desperately with the only other thing they know to be from or associated with said genre:

"not as bad as when GQ referred to the Dirty Projectors as 'Pavement playing on a warped record player' or some such meaningless bullshit."

Does anybody else get peeved the most by things that they are embarrassed about remembering themselves doing at one point or more "back when" they were stupider? Just wondering because I always realize this and shudder.

music critics are very famous people and do not want their multitudes of irl fans and stalkers to know where they hang out

xp

I barely understand anything here, still.

Cool, got it. Tho honestly in the plethora of mp3 blogs and obscure and strictly genre/theme-focused webzines-ish sites the first I've ever been aware of Ned Raggett is here. I can imagine AO Scott or Rog Ebert wanting to protect their identities but music criticism seems like a far bigger world, and that there is no Sundance equivalent in which only the elite get invited to... or I'm wrong about everything.

/back 2 thread

There's no Sundance but there is the EMP Pop Music Conference...

Haha how weird you appear. I don't even know where the Sundance comment came from, considering I meant Cannes (you have to have some sort of association w/ the industry in order to attend, and it's usually supposed to be a position of some prominence)... it made sense in my head but now that I read it I can't rly follow my own train of thought. I guess I'm trying to say that there are no barriers between what constitutes professionals and those simply freelance. Which, after typing, I know is bullshit b/c clearly there are people employed to write about music. And there are plenty of film blogs. It's not even really a compelling point anyway, god kill me now.

The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "Black eyed angels swam at me," Yorke sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.

Any comparison to Captain Beefheart is usually well wide of the mark, I can't think of anyone who's even come close to sounding like him / them.

― Satantango! (Matt #2), Monday, January 24, 2011 3:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i have a hard time not comparing the early soft boys to captain beefheart. it's not so much that they sound alike (they don't), but that the soft boys were so obviously borrowing lurching beefheart rhythms, and they both had a fondness for vaguely creepy sexual metaphors.

"popular British rock band makes ambitious moody albums with state-of-the-art electronics that capture a certain zeitgeist" also they, or the singer solo, covered wish you were here so kind of asking for it

From Boomkat:

Compared to the work of John Cage by The Fader, 'The Line Path' is a deftly woven urban collage of extracted HipHop, R&B, Garage, Grime and Dubstep

haha

it's not so much the comparison there as the "deftly woven urban collage."

(I've had at least one student quote random ILX posts of mine - on an exam no less.)

And I didn't know about the "Wish You Were Here" cover, actually. I suppose you got me there.

I like James Murphy when he gets all croony. It's a good changeup from the whole cultural critique, faux-Mark E Smith stuff he does on so many tracks.

― Moodles, Tuesday, 25 January 2011 16:48 (12 seconds ago)

fuck off