A Year In Pop: 21

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This week's hitses! It is getting rly difficult to remember which I have or haven't done. Is this REALLY the first appearance for that Twang record? Everyhit seems to agree with me about this week's though.

[Poll #993229]

Last week's was a record-breaker for ticks, I hope some of the tickers will stick around.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Bit of a "kick me" on the KCs title no?

I'm off for a sandwich, I will youtube things when I get back and report on this week's chaff.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

The new They Might Be Giants single is called 'I'm Impressed'.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i am waiting for the haaate to start on Rev & The Makers. kill this madchester revival now, etc

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I am HAPPY TO HATE. Except I like the music on it quite a lot but the lyrics are so offputting.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Aren't they just too boring to bother with? 'Ooh we have a slight Arctic Monkeys connection and sound like them toned down for your dad, the trick being that he already likes the Monkeys!'

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Are they the first post-Monkeys band?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I don't get any of the above references (or the ArcticPulp one below). It sounds like Duran Duran to me (OK, maybe not the lead vocal in the verses, but everything else does). Or, for a more recent reference point, Young Love.

A marginal tick, I think.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i was thinking post-kasabian meself like...

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

btw, i like it some. it's just so retro and designed as an Oasis style singalaong

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Too fast for a singalong?

Hits and misses

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Dizzee: great video, song is ok enough for a tick but feels at least five years old if not more.
R Kelly & co: Good noises, R still has a silly face. Tick.

Kaiser Cheese: Godawful. Ruby was catchy at least, this is just dreary slop that lives up to its name.

Haven't heard the rest.

Re: Hits and misses

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Ding ding on the Dizzee video. I remember it perfectly from Steve's promozone thing (cheers!) although I can't remember the actual song at all.

Re: Hits and misses

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It sounds a bit like Jay-Z's '99 Problems'.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

First time I've ever ticked NO TICKS.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Why don't you like 'I'm A Flirt'??

Why do only EIGHT other people like 'I'm A Flirt'??????

It's GENIUS. And I am someone who is slower than most to call R Kelly - who seems to have become the token black man for many indie people - a genius. But seriously the melody on this! It goes up and down and up and down and round and round and is just so awesome. And the lyrics! GENIUS.

(too many gin and tonics in the past afternoon guh but u get my GIST)

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

BECAUSE I AM A RACIST.

And I don't like R Kelly! Except for two singles of his, frankly, I find him very boring and overrated.

ALSO RACIST.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

also, like, T-PAIN! That's why they call me TEDDY PENDER-ASS!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

AND THE PIANO! It sounds like R's a hired entertainer at a v upmarket soiree and because he's singing in such a genteel, gentlemanly fashion none of the guests quite realise what the words are (apart from the girl(s) he's winking at from behind the piano)...until TI and T-Pain stumble drunkenly, but still suavely, in. The CADS!

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I feel so bad about not ticking Kaiser Chiefs- I've liked them since ever and it's not really that bad a song in comparison to, say, The Twang but they can just do SO MUCH INCREDIBLY BETTER when they try.

Ticked Pidgeon Detectives because I have

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

...killed my web browser. Also '...had it grow on me.'

Also ticked Dizzee Rascal because although that song is just so rubbish in comparison to what he can do and sounds like he's sleepwalking it, Dizzee Rascal sleepwalking is apparently still quite good.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

People disappointed w/Dizz - please to note this is the only song like this on the FAB album.

Pigeon Street

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Is there any way this band can be any good at all?



Look at their miserable faces! Their mouths actually turn down at the corners!

Re: Pigeon Street

[koganbot]

The one second from the left doesn't have his corners turned down - but his brow is wrinkled, which amounts to the same thing.

Re: Pigeon Street

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

ah, happy FLASHBACK to the days of Melody Maker's Talk Talk Talk column there. Nice one, Kat.

GOD HELP US IF THERE'S A WAR!!!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

obv.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Geonnies: YT only has live versions of this - kind of Jam meets Jangle, but of Television in there, intriguingly yelpy singer. I'd have liked it a lot when I was 16, borderline nontick but might be a tick if I heard the proper version. Actually I think I'll tick it, where's the harm eh?

The Feeties: Got a bit bored of this a while ago, not sure I ever heard the Bow Wow one, but it's still good. R Kelly reasonably explains some of the finer points of modern etiquette. Solid tick.

The Erchies: Reeks of "will this do?". No tick.

The Rascies: Video director's a comics fan I take it! Track works better with the video but the nagging hi-hat attack makes it anyway and DR's fine on it. Solid tick.

The Wangies: It's trad Dad! Wasn't expecting the Mike Skinnerisms on the verses but I don't like them much either. Music actually quite plangent. It's the real baggy revival! No tick.

Reverend and the Makers: Kind of an Arctic Pulp thing happening - does the world really need more "poignant" pop about people giving up their dreams etc. Seems very lazy. No tick.

[koganbot]

Dizzee a cop-show mess, a cliché, still has power in it, borderline tick, only thing that prevents me from joining umlaut in the DON'T LIKE ANY party.

And the losers are:
--Pigeon: Passive-aggressively ordinary, with a touch of passive-aggressive "Most lads lead a life of quiet befuddlement" misfitness to it, which is just as ordinary. Not the worst of its type this week, actually.
--R. Kelly: Song of the year! (Or so it's been touted by many sincere types who otherwise tend to dislike what I dislike.) The guy has always sounded disengaged and blah to me, albeit in a masterful and arrogant way. Neither his least boring nor his most boring track.
--Kaiser Chiefs: "Ruby" haters take note: This is so much worse than "Ruby." Buzzcocks play Little Eva if Little Eva had a boring song and the Buzzcocks were comatose in the corner.
--Twang: See the Pidge.
--Revs: I deleted this from my computer a week ago and have forgotten what it sounds like. I am not being conscientious, am I?

But...

[koganbot]

I have gone back to week 16 and ticked "Closer" by Travis, which has grown quite lovely over the past month - owing I'm sure to its getting its beauty rest and taking long healthy walks accompanied by a freah young thing and - in general - blooming along with the spring.

(Week 16 you'll remember as the emphatic triumph of DON'T LIKE ANY, but it was certainly better than this week. Which isn't saying much.)

Better band names than The Pigeon Detectives

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The Pigeon Detectors, The Pidgin Detectives, The Pudgy Defectors, The Dodgy Perspectives, The Pigeon Directive, The Pig Detectives.

Those are the ones I thought up for Stylus anyway, but I think that naming even more better band names would be more fun than listening to almost any of these except "I'm a Flirt."

I don't hear disengaged in R. Kelly so much as someone so deeply self-obsessed -- and validated for this tendency -- that he's created a universe unto himself, where anything he can even think of can be sung to "great effect"...that is to say, the effect is great precisely because he's singing it (according to him). (So, Frank, part of what I actually like about R. Kelly is that he sounds like he doesn't NEED you to listen to him.)

Dug Julianne Shepherd's recent column on him (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/43195-column-interrobang-26)...his new album is great, too, tho "Flirt" isn't the best track by far. Try "Leave a Message," "Best Friend," and "Real Talk" (possibly a response track to Rihanna's "Breakin' Dishes." ) I might like his duet with Usher better than "Flirt," too.

Re: Better band names than The Pigeon Detectives

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Woop, "Leave Your Name," rather.

[koganbot]

Btw, the Koganbot Counterrankings are stumbling along going great guns, with surprising contenders, though beleaguered frontrunner martinskidmore may still have an ace up his sleeve.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Aw I feel sad I missed this! I am ful of ginz and tonicz now though so not all is bad.

Multiple rants further up on the GEEEENIIIIUUUUUSS of R Kelly And His Band Of Cads. Only other tick is for Dizz - the arrangement is unfortunate (reminiscent of Rage Against The Machine innit) but it's a good song beneath all the narrsty guitars, and the video is VIDEO OF THE YEAR cos it is GOOD SOCIAL COMMENTARY and also DIZZ IS REALLY HOTT IN IT INNIT

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Why don't p[eople like arrogance and self-obsession? I think those are great things in pop music. I identify wholly. Bored of all nice girls and boys like Sophie EB and Take That! Bored! I want CADZ.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

She is too nice, isn't she? I can't figure out why her album isn't sticking, despite the fact that I like just about every song, but I think it's because she doesn't provoke any reaction except, "Oh, it's SEB singing again over this nice tune. Nice tunes are nice." R. Kelly isn't a genius, exactly, just successfully created a parallel universe that paradoxically needs no one but Kells to support itself (though the guest spots are almost all great, even Kid Rock song is good) but also needs EVERYONE (buying his records, talking about him, etc.) to continue to exist, get stranger.

:O

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Of all the people to break the Khazi Chief's duck...