Stylus Singles Jukebox

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1758

A somewhat uncontroversial week, I'm disappointed to be honest that the Bananarama won it, it's adequate but not much else, very much someone wanting a "Cant Get You Out Of My Head" of their own, and it sounds a bit dated to me.

I'm quite pleased that the SSJ has recruited a real actual rockist too who will give good records zero.

(A 9 for Bonnie Prince Billy from Mr. Macpherson? Anyone would think he was indie or something!)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

So 'alternative' means 'even less popular indie' then?

[cis.livejournal.com]

mmm, kind of. Maybe 'alternative' is the wrong word, because it can honestly mean anything, but there's a definite (even if it's narcissism of small differences) genre-in-terms-of-fanbase there - stuff favoured by CTCL-as-was, maybe DrownedInSound as well. Your mathrocks and the like, that can be occasionally co-opted by more mainstream indie or indie-rock (eg biffy clyro), but they exist as their own self-contained world.

Am tempted to call it more... America-facing, or America-centric, by which I mean that not only are more of the bands from the US but also the basic set of accepted influences, the history they're working from, isn't that of british indie or even of the Big Indie Names. It *is* all the Slint and the Fugazi and the whatnot.

So, yeah, the indie of indie.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Oh right, Ricky T indie.

Actually I like that stuff far far less than the disco stuff, which at least has gawky disco potential.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Hmph. That's a bit like me describing Japanese Psych as Tom Ewing Rock. I have approx 0 clue as to what's going on in that subgenre nowadays. I occasionally pick up the odd recommended-by-Jess-H album but that's about it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

For as long as you wear the Les Savy Fav T-shirt I will contentedly assume you are 'covering' that 'beat'.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I consider myself pwned.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

You own a Les Savy Fav t-shirt?!

I have never heard a Les Savy Fav song ergo I am NOT INDIE and YOU ARE!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I do indeed. You have almost certainly seen me wearing it.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

So unfamiliar am I with the workings of this thing you cal indie that I must not have recognised it.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'd say that this 'alternative' stuff also has a lot more tendencies to co-opt grassroots genres like folk and country, too, and this is why it can be quite horrific when done badly but Actually Properly Good when done well.

in other words there's far less of the retro-rock'n'roll crap and prostation before The Q/NME Canon Of Rock which makes most (British) indie so bad.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

But isn't drawing on these "grassroots genres" another retro-genuflection, one even further back. (Deeper Magic from before the Dawn Of Pop - there's a pre-rock canon just as surely as there's a rock one).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It is, definitely, but a) it sounds nicer, b) there's a deeper well of stuff to rip off draw upon, c) the original sources are less familiar, d) possibly irrelevant but less irritating media coverage.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Also, e) "It's so good to hear actual human beings playing actual instruments, not straitjacketed by click track or submerged under a flood of studio syrup." ;)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If ever a man needed the tender touch of Jacques Lu Cont it's Will Oldham.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm currently fantasising about electrohouse remixes of Joanna Newsom at the moment!