Can pop music get any worse than Hero & Leander?

I usually find it very easy to ignore music I don't like but for some reason this has really, really upset me. I feel like self harming because of this shit tbh. As my friend said, "It's no longer a case of 'God help us if there's a war'. It's now a case of, 'We need a war.'":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1M3fHSD-VU4
― Doran, Friday, October 25, 2013 5:22 PM (3 days ago)

holy shit that was terrible

― a dessicated quasi-tsunami of gut-busting cosmic - tech (DJP), Friday, October 25, 2013 5:26 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm genuinely very sorry but I couldn't shoulder the knowledge/experience on my own any longer.

― Doran, Friday, October 25, 2013 5:28 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you really feel like you've been bad and need to atone or pay penance, try their cover of Me, Myself & I:

(but seriously you'll fuck up your weekend if you do)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9qT6TBr9RE
― Doran, Friday, October 25, 2013 5:30 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Znoz1IJbK_k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZfegwx0ROg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2-PTP8bh80

there's a series of covers too as well as their own music.
Apparently on their website you can vote for the songs you want them to cover.

the de la soul cover is the nadir of music though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9qT6TBr9RE

on investigation I had a promo of these guys' album from some German indiepop label a while back but I don't remember a single thing about it

You dont remember getting stabby feelings?

I imagine this is how people felt when they heard that pomplamoose band

I'm pretty sure the videos are half the horror. God, they are annoying.

this seems like every other shitty band that ilx would clown, ۩

maybe i haven't paid close enough attention to them

if you want to get upset about shit bands then you can probably find some with more than 1,666 views for a video that's been up for five months

bad music is bad music whether they're well known or not. Plus I'm assuming that Doran was posting about them due to a buzz that was going around. I doubt he actively set out to hear them.

this thread is probably the most 'buzz' they have got all week

if you search you can find 37 second cameraphone videos of pets with no apparent connection to any other youtube videos and no comments and no tags and they have more views than hero and leander

what happened to the bass player?

he looked in a mirror and said "what has become of my life?"

the beardy guy? hes in that live from a balcony tv video of the new single

pop music can always get worse

That's from 4/6/13, he doesn't seem to be in the Light of my Night official video, or the No Scrubs video? Has he left the band? He still seems to be listed as a band member on http://heroandleander.org/

xp

Also their twitter biog still describes them as 'A musical band of 5 boys, 1 girl, 3 voices, 1 set of drums, 2 guitars, 1 violin, 1 piano & 1 bass'

Maybe he was too ashamed to take part in them?

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/s720x720/1375302_730841663598169_1693607944_n.jpg

bass player looks kind of like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4YimUOPCss

pop music can always get worse

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier),

you sure?

heroandleander ‏@heroandleander 2 Jun
No, I don't want no scrubs #filming #tlc #riplefteye

heroandleander ‏@heroandleander 27 Jun
@thewiremagazine no, I don't want no scrubs.... http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Znoz1IJbK_k …

http://polldaddy.com/poll/7315443/

djp they're trolling you

why do indie pop bands always have so many members

because they're all dicks.

guys just ignore this dumb band

Hero & Leander remind me a bit like Dogs Die In Hot Cars. I like Dogs Die In Hot Cars more, though.

4 star AMG review

Review by Matt Collar [-]

Hero & Leander's 2013 debut album, Tumble, is a sophisticated and accomplished work that showcases the band's baroque yet exuberant '80s post-punk and musical theater-influenced brand of pop. Centered around vocalist/violinist Emily Sills and vocalist/guitarist Gary Cansell, the band also features pianist Andrew Jones, guitarist Marc Sephton, bassist James Halls, and drummer Scot Lewis. These are literate, well-crafted songs that have much in common with the indie pop of bands like Field Music and Camera Obscura, and in all likelihood, the band will also draw favorable comparisons to the granddaddies of twee pop, Belle & Sebastian. However, while all of these juxtapositions are apt, Hero & Leander have their own distinctive sound that stands on its own. Vocalists Cansell and Sills complement each other nicely throughout the album, with Cansell's warm baritone playing off Sills' higher angelic croon. And while the band's overall sound is more bookish than rocking, they are not demure wallflowers. In fact, Hero & Leander's dual male/female leads and the band's organic mix of orchestral-sounding horns, sweeping strings, and sparkling guitar lines often bring to mind a less bombastic version of Meat Loaf's rock opera sound. To these ends, tracks like the utterly sweet "Kiss Me by the Water Cooler," the romantic "Everything Will Be," and the yearning album closer, "In Any Given Room," sound like they were culled from the soundtrack to a hit off-Broadway musical. Elsewhere, the band delivers a handful of angular, '80s post-punk-influenced songs like "Soul to Soul," "Collider," and the disco-inflected "The Infinite." While these songs certainly fit into the Broadway vibe of the rest of the album, they are also likely to get you dancing in the aisles of the theater you can't help imagining while listening to Tumble.

Was there an ilx thread where people discussed the relationship between Innocent Smoothies style 21st century twee indie and Mondeo Pop?

if not there is now

I have to listen to bad music on a daily basis (ok, strictly speaking, I choose to because I feel guilty if I don't listen to every CD I get sent) but I feel that there's something extra-specially appalling about this lot, imho.

However, in the interests of full disclosure, I should say that like DJM, I also got sent a CD by Hero And Leander and can remember throwing it across the office angrily but it was forgotten about pretty rapidly. It wasn't until a PR or mate of the band or whoever asked me to check out the YouTube ("Hey you guys!") that I really felt that some kind of higher agency was taking the piss out of me.

I mean, really when you see stuff like this, you just think, "Why do I even bother getting out of fucking bed in the morning?"

maybe that's a question worth asking?

Ok, Captain Save Hero & Leander, sorry for hating on the poor student indie band.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p480x480/1381582_738622486153420_1913495297_n.png

"I mean, really when you see stuff like this, you just think, "Why do I even bother getting out of fucking bed in the morning?"

funny, for me it's when I see people shitting on a perfectly amiable band with 1,000 YouTube hits for absolutely no reason and making it some kind of moral crusade that I wonder why I bother getting up.

That's all fair comment, except, a belligerent and sarcastic post in Rolling Worst Music and here, hardly amounts to a moral crusade.

I genuinely - no word of a lie - expected there to be consensus on how bad this band are. Now that I can see some people are getting really upset about this, I'm going to let it lie. Apologies, I didn't mean to offend anyone.

It's so milquetoast that I don't see all that much to get genuinely worked up about, they have a non-starter school band or stage school vibe which provokes a bit of remove imo.

http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/heroandleander.jpg

http://heroandleanderuk.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/young-love2.jpg?w=300&h=142

http://www.kimballstock.com/pix/DOG/03/DOG-03-RK0502-01P.JPG

such vitriol for a band whose music is the equivalent of the above

now you know how Taylor Swift fucking sounds to me :)

/pvmic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgmdgSZ67-4

this band is more tolerable than Haim tbh

what about the band my vitriol?

though Haim is pretty much just:
http://www.caninecancerremedies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/small-dog-stock.jpg

He asked whether Howard Devoto and Dick Witts were in the audience as well.

pretty sure you can always find Dick Witts at a Momus gig

better a dicky witt than a ...

I booed at the end of the film Inception and during a Kanye West video shoot/show when he was two hours late coming on stage but I kind of think it's bad form normally. I saw Magick Markers get booed so hard they just stopped playing and slunk off stage. It was pretty brutal. I mean, they weren't very good admittedly but if you're watching so-called 'out there' music you've got to take a leap of the imagination/have an open mind or whatever.

I saw this American improv jazz saxophonist guy play a gig at a small venue once, he sort of made noises with the saxophone without 'playing' it, making clackerty clackerty noise with the keys, making slurpy blowing noises with the reed etc. I was on my own and there were only six other people in audience, two older people who seemed into it, who I think knew him or worked at the venue, and four student age people who spent the whole performance trying to half heartedly suppress their laughter and increasing incredulity that this was the performance. They didn't heckle but they kind of got a fit of the giggles and gave up trying to stop laughing after a certain point.

I can't remember the saxophonist's name, I think the performance went over my head though.

Did anyone else in cinema join you in booing at the end of Inception? (I'm assuming you were watching it in a cinema and not just watching the DVD on your couch or something)

Were you seeing Inception with friends or were you alone? I usually only go to the cinema alone and I would feel awkward booing a film if I was sitting on my own.

i thought i booed at the end of Inception but it turns out i dreamt it

LOL

Soref: It was out of character for me. Even when I was drinking heavily it's not the sort of thing I'd would normally do. I think there was applause at the end of it. Now, I miss people clapping at the end of films (and when planes land successfully) - I think it's charming. But I was so incensed at how utterly terrible I perceived the film to be, in this instance the applause rubbed me up the wrong way. So I made an ineffectual protest by booing. I don't think that many people noticed. My girlfriend and her friend, thankfully thought my irritation was funny rather than the cause for angrily telling me to shut up.

"I would"

these guys seem pretty good

yikes @ that de la cover

no scrubs isnt much better

youtube keeps recommending this to me, presumably because I watched the Hero & Leander video, I would posit that this is worse than Hero & Leander

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rzPmH0cdDo

i think the key issue here is there shd probably be some sort of moratorium on cover versions. especially by indies.

I saw this American improv jazz saxophonist guy play a gig at a small venue once, he sort of made noises with the saxophone without 'playing' it, making clackerty clackerty noise with the keys, making slurpy blowing noises with the reed etc

this is pretty standard free improv. I wish you remembered who he was though.

Did you watch the video? It's not just a cover it's a MASH UP.

i've heard bastille and without viewing that i'm guessing that you're v correct.

i'm not really sure what makes hero & leander stand out from the thousands of other chirpy innocent smoothies twee bands of the last eight years or so, if someone would like to outline it in a 5,000 word post i will definitely read it.

i love how "innocent smoothies" has become an adjective to describe music!

I wish I could remember too! He was very solemn, almost mournful in his demeanor, didn't talk to the audience at all and this made the whole thing more awkward/ridiculous. The gig was in Newcastle upon Tyne and the improv guy had come from America, I assume he was playing other gigs in the UK as well, but the whole thing felt a bit grim.

Did you watch the video?

20 seconds or so more than i shd've

what would be the most platonically ideal innocent smoothies music in the current uk pop lanscape

xp - was he white? approximately how old?

hero and leander are too marginal

is lorde from new zealand innocent smoothies music?

I found a listing for the gig, this was the guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaaVn1Zj7IM

hahaha I know him!

This video seems a bit more 'musical' than what I remember of his performance?

is lorde from new zealand innocent smoothies music?

― sarahell, Wednesday, 30 October 2013 19:59 (1 minute ago)

http://wonkette.com/501972/poor-crackers-over-at-stormfront-reduced-to-lowly-pledge-drivemommyblogging-in-effort-to-keep-hate-alive/screen-shot-2013-02-19-at-10-21-26-pm

also lol @ 0uts0und new music festival

Innocent Smoothies style music:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUx-S-7oV2s7sDyC68DmMsHFoTFp3OGk6&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_content=Twitter&utm_campaign=Twitter

why is drivemommyblogging one word?

contz have you watched the vauxhall advert linked upthread

i did say it resisted abbreviation but contz is alright

works, yeah

vauxhall ad makes it seem like a terrible, terrible country

not half as bad as that ras trent video though

also thank you for suggesting i watch something that did not improve my day

dean contz

adam, what do you think of clint the pig?

43 seconds of hurt, it's not like you couldn't do yourself a lot more damage in that time than watch a vile advert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By_gUAd-r5c

if that's clint the pig, then i think nothing but good thoughts. waddle waddle.

i'm worried about the dog though. looks bitey.

do you think there is any sort of abject quality to that film?

maybe a paradisiac undercurrent, all fauna reduced to a single plane of transcendence, clints become fausts become clints, waddling in elysium never to want for a single thing?

the last few seconds suggest some sort of panic is overcoming faust? a jouissance is abundant, soon he will gave way to bestial urges and paradise ends for faust, and for clint too

Exactly what i was going to say

trying to remember what hero and leander were and what they were about

Deutschland we love you!
Posted on June 11, 2014 by heroandleanderuk

We love you as much as chimpanzees love football. So we’re coming back to see you this Saturday for the Lothringair festival, in Germany’s belly button – that’s Aachen, pub-quiz fans. I’ll be wearing the same trousers that I wore there last year, because, shit, it’s 2014, the flowers are coming, I might win the lottery one day and I really like this pair of trousers. Also on the bill are Carlson, who we love more than the moon loves the sea. Check them out here. See you on Saturday. Ours is a double gin and cider X

http://heroandleander.org/2014/06/11/deutschland-we-love-you/

this thread is on the first page of google for hero and leander band