hehe good call. i also hear a lot of pavement in this. i even recall hearing malkmus throw a line and melody from the first song, 'the classical,' into a pavement song...i cant remember where though. hell, he might have actually been covering the whole song. but man, even looking at the cover, pavement aparently really were influenced a lot by this band, and not just their mucus. i mean music.
but i digress. this album is wordy, repetitive, sloppy (to the point where it even sounds improvised at times), vocally self indulgent, musically simple, and all around messy. yet they still manage to sound cool. lyrically its hard to tell if they're actually saying something or just being random, but if i'd have to guess, i'd say the latter. i'll bet these guys used to get really loaded at shows and their shows had the potential to be absolutely incredible. their repetitiveness, backed by interesting personalities, would work much better in a live setting than it does here on this album.
i dont know if i will put this album into my usual rotation, mainly because there's just so much repetition, but i will file it away as a good, cool album. maybe it'll grow on me. i think there are two more Fall albums on this list, and i'm def curious to hear what they sound like. oh, and if i see this on vinyl for a reasonable price i will definitely pick it up.
this is the first album that I've actually listened to over and over, while waiting for schnitzel to ring in, and it really does hit me hard the effect repetition has on our experience encountering music.
By this point I'm convinced that we can be convinced, as human beings, to enjoy any music we have come to listen to over and over. It doesn't matter that we may fancy ourselves experienced enough with music to get a reasonably clear idea, on first or second listen, how are feelings towards this music would change over time. I feel like the way our brains work, we are programmed to interpret greater familiarity is something positive on a grander scale.
What I mean is, after we have heard certain music so many times that we are no longer surprised by any of it in a major sense, we perceive that familiarity is a good thing. Then, that sense of goodness gets transferred to the music.
Back when I was studying composition, my teacher related a tale he encountered over and over with his students: the student would present a piece to him, which he would summarily critique as per his expertise. The student would then protest, "but it sounds right to me", to which he would invariably reply, "of course it sounds right to you, you have been listening to it over and over!"
The way the piece satisfied the student's expectations upon each repeated listening fooled him into believing that the music was somehow internally more coherent than it actually was. in actuality, this was an illusion, an unintended artifact of our brains' tendency to ascribe rightness to anything which fulfills our expectations.
Everything you said about this music is true. I can't understand quite what he is saying either, and the songs, apart from being ridiculously repetitious, drag on really, really long. But what the repetition does is hammer the song home as though we are listening to it over and over. It's the same effect upon which minimalism capitalizes, whereby we are comforted by that which fails to surprise.
If we really strain to see past these biases which I have installed for myself unwittingly, I still think that there's something cool about this music. Hip Priest just goes on forever, and I don't seem to mind somehow. It's some kind of strangely satisfying, almost soothing conglomeration of punk, spoken word and minimalism that even Gargamel could not have worked out in the height of his alchemical powers.
this shit is bad, plain and simple. the guys seem very talented and very good at expressing myself. this must have been AWESOME at the time. like, this IS punk. but it doesn't hold up b/c it's masturbation.
Arctic Monkeys are The Fall with fewer drugs in their system, better producers in the studio and a willingness to sacrifice arrogant impulse to please the gods of catchy.
i recall hearing an apocryphal story about one of the first guys to invest in rock and roll. his buddy takes him to a restaurant and some kid puts a nickel in the jukebox and plays some rocking tune. the guy remarks about how much he hates the song.
his friend gets up, dumps a dollar's worth of nickels in the jukebox and plays the same song over and over. at first, the guy is confused. then legitimately angry. but after the fourth time hearing the song, he starts to get into it. finally, he decides that this new music is where it's at and if he can get the music played on the radio enough, he'll make millions. so he does.
rock and roll is built on repetition, whether or not that story is true...
after some more listens, i've come to some more conclusions. lyrically, the singer (mark e smith) is spewing nonsense that is intended to sound cool or be memorable. awesome in my book. i'd way rather have someone confidently spew gibberish in my face than someone spew politics that i dont agree with, or cheezy love lyrics or something. lyrics and the singer's voice can be huge turn-offs for me (ie radiohead. but thats a topic for a whole new blog, haha). to have someone not take those too seriously is usually refreshing to my ears.
i think the point of the musical repetition here is to support the lyrics and singing. and his lyrical repetition actually ends up serving many functions. it helps you think about the nonsense, as you can kind of mull over the lines because you know whats coming next. it helps these cool lines that he attempted to write not get lost in the shuffle of the rest of the song, almost to the point where you dont really know what the chorus is, there's so much repetition and so little structure. it helps him vary up his delivery - he'll say a line, then say it again with more emphasis or emphasis on a different part of the line, or he'll say it quicker or something, then he'll say the line again differently. all in all, its very 'poetry beatnik' of him (for lack of a better term haha), and i think that that, coupled with the nonsense lyrics, set against a sloppy/drunk indie-punk sound, is what makes this music so cool. plus he just sounds energetic and fresh and british. yeah man, just like the arctic monkeys, good call.
in regards to repetition and music i think yer both spot on. i just wanna add that if you grow up listening to pop music, it makes it a lot harder to get into jazz and classical. in a 3-minute pop song, you have maybe a minute of original music, repeated in various forms. in classical, its way longer with less repetition. jazz is a lot of recognizable pop songs from the early part of last century that get reused and become 'standards,' but its hard to really 'get' jazz without being able to detect subtle variations between playing styles of various soloists, again, something that takes a lot of time and effort. in addition, it can be hard for traditional jazz students to get into a-rhythmical free improvisation jazz, the least repetitive form of music that i can think of (at least theoretically). without chords, scales, and standards to latch onto, these guys are lost, not to mention any negative stigmas or insecurities they might also have to hold them back.
pitchfork's top 100 of the 70's + top 100 of the 80's, considered, scrutinized, explored, assailed, defended, appreciated and deprecated, fussed over, held up high, kicked to the curb and held back up again. education by fire and a middle finger to disdain. tea, anyone?
hey The Fall, Art Brut called, he wants his ... oh. nevermind.
ReplyDeletehehe good call. i also hear a lot of pavement in this. i even recall hearing malkmus throw a line and melody from the first song, 'the classical,' into a pavement song...i cant remember where though. hell, he might have actually been covering the whole song. but man, even looking at the cover, pavement aparently really were influenced a lot by this band, and not just their mucus. i mean music.
ReplyDeletebut i digress. this album is wordy, repetitive, sloppy (to the point where it even sounds improvised at times), vocally self indulgent, musically simple, and all around messy. yet they still manage to sound cool. lyrically its hard to tell if they're actually saying something or just being random, but if i'd have to guess, i'd say the latter. i'll bet these guys used to get really loaded at shows and their shows had the potential to be absolutely incredible. their repetitiveness, backed by interesting personalities, would work much better in a live setting than it does here on this album.
i dont know if i will put this album into my usual rotation, mainly because there's just so much repetition, but i will file it away as a good, cool album. maybe it'll grow on me. i think there are two more Fall albums on this list, and i'm def curious to hear what they sound like. oh, and if i see this on vinyl for a reasonable price i will definitely pick it up.
this is the first album that I've actually listened to over and over, while waiting for schnitzel to ring in, and it really does hit me hard the effect repetition has on our experience encountering music.
ReplyDeleteBy this point I'm convinced that we can be convinced, as human beings, to enjoy any music we have come to listen to over and over. It doesn't matter that we may fancy ourselves experienced enough with music to get a reasonably clear idea, on first or second listen, how are feelings towards this music would change over time. I feel like the way our brains work, we are programmed to interpret greater familiarity is something positive on a grander scale.
What I mean is, after we have heard certain music so many times that we are no longer surprised by any of it in a major sense, we perceive that familiarity is a good thing. Then, that sense of goodness gets transferred to the music.
Back when I was studying composition, my teacher related a tale he encountered over and over with his students: the student would present a piece to him, which he would summarily critique as per his expertise. The student would then protest, "but it sounds right to me", to which he would invariably reply, "of course it sounds right to you, you have been listening to it over and over!"
The way the piece satisfied the student's expectations upon each repeated listening fooled him into believing that the music was somehow internally more coherent than it actually was. in actuality, this was an illusion, an unintended artifact of our brains' tendency to ascribe rightness to anything which fulfills our expectations.
Everything you said about this music is true. I can't understand quite what he is saying either, and the songs, apart from being ridiculously repetitious, drag on really, really long. But what the repetition does is hammer the song home as though we are listening to it over and over. It's the same effect upon which minimalism capitalizes, whereby we are comforted by that which fails to surprise.
If we really strain to see past these biases which I have installed for myself unwittingly, I still think that there's something cool about this music. Hip Priest just goes on forever, and I don't seem to mind somehow. It's some kind of strangely satisfying, almost soothing conglomeration of punk, spoken word and minimalism that even Gargamel could not have worked out in the height of his alchemical powers.
apologies for the typos, they'll get ironed out soon enough.
ReplyDeletethis shit is bad, plain and simple. the guys seem very talented and very good at expressing myself. this must have been AWESOME at the time. like, this IS punk. but it doesn't hold up b/c it's masturbation.
ReplyDeleteArctic Monkeys are The Fall with fewer drugs in their system, better producers in the studio and a willingness to sacrifice arrogant impulse to please the gods of catchy.
RE: repetition
ReplyDeletei recall hearing an apocryphal story about one of the first guys to invest in rock and roll. his buddy takes him to a restaurant and some kid puts a nickel in the jukebox and plays some rocking tune. the guy remarks about how much he hates the song.
his friend gets up, dumps a dollar's worth of nickels in the jukebox and plays the same song over and over. at first, the guy is confused. then legitimately angry. but after the fourth time hearing the song, he starts to get into it. finally, he decides that this new music is where it's at and if he can get the music played on the radio enough, he'll make millions. so he does.
rock and roll is built on repetition, whether or not that story is true...
after some more listens, i've come to some more conclusions. lyrically, the singer (mark e smith) is spewing nonsense that is intended to sound cool or be memorable. awesome in my book. i'd way rather have someone confidently spew gibberish in my face than someone spew politics that i dont agree with, or cheezy love lyrics or something. lyrics and the singer's voice can be huge turn-offs for me (ie radiohead. but thats a topic for a whole new blog, haha). to have someone not take those too seriously is usually refreshing to my ears.
ReplyDeletei think the point of the musical repetition here is to support the lyrics and singing. and his lyrical repetition actually ends up serving many functions. it helps you think about the nonsense, as you can kind of mull over the lines because you know whats coming next. it helps these cool lines that he attempted to write not get lost in the shuffle of the rest of the song, almost to the point where you dont really know what the chorus is, there's so much repetition and so little structure. it helps him vary up his delivery - he'll say a line, then say it again with more emphasis or emphasis on a different part of the line, or he'll say it quicker or something, then he'll say the line again differently.
all in all, its very 'poetry beatnik' of him (for lack of a better term haha), and i think that that, coupled with the nonsense lyrics, set against a sloppy/drunk indie-punk sound, is what makes this music so cool. plus he just sounds energetic and fresh and british. yeah man, just like the arctic monkeys, good call.
in regards to repetition and music i think yer both spot on. i just wanna add that if you grow up listening to pop music, it makes it a lot harder to get into jazz and classical. in a 3-minute pop song, you have maybe a minute of original music, repeated in various forms. in classical, its way longer with less repetition. jazz is a lot of recognizable pop songs from the early part of last century that get reused and become 'standards,' but its hard to really 'get' jazz without being able to detect subtle variations between playing styles of various soloists, again, something that takes a lot of time and effort. in addition, it can be hard for traditional jazz students to get into a-rhythmical free improvisation jazz, the least repetitive form of music that i can think of (at least theoretically). without chords, scales, and standards to latch onto, these guys are lost, not to mention any negative stigmas or insecurities they might also have to hold them back.