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.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

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

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.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

First time I've ever ticked NO TICKS.

[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

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!

[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.

[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.

:O

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

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