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[Inlander]

As per conversation in this thread.

This is the thread for making any comments you wish to make about anything you read on the music blog! Don't feel you have to post in this thread just because it's here. But if you have something you really really want to say, don't be shy!

Also, I guess this thread could be used to let everyone know when a new article is put up on the music blog. For instance, I've finally got around to posting part 2 of the Dirty Three retrospective. It has pictures! The pictures distract from all the words! (Because there are a lot of words.)

So let me start "discussion" by saying: Hey, Kieffer, if you like the Lucksmiths you really owe it to yourself to check out Darren Hanlon.

[Jackie Blue]

The signal to noise ratio of that Dirty Three article is not good.

Too many words without actually saying much.

I'm not sure I properly understand the function of the music blog, though, so maybe it's perfect.

As for the actual opinions expressed in it, I disagree that Ocean Songs is anything more than a mediocre album.  "Authentic Celestial Music" is the only song on it that I ever listen to.  All their other albums are amazing, particularly Whatever You Love... and She Has No Strings Apollo for technical execution and the debut and Horse Stories for rocking the fuck out.

Why didn't you mention that the central theme and title inspiration of Horse Stories was heroin usage?

[Inlander]

To be honest I'm not entirely satisfied with the latest installment in Dirty Three piece, in part for reasons I alluded to at the end. But I've been promising it for weeks now so I felt compelled to put it up. It's the best I can do at the moment. Apart from time constraints, part of the problem is that in my opinion Horse Stories, Ocean Songs, and Whatever You Love, You Are are all incredible albums, and there's only so many ways you can say "Holy shit, this album's great!" before it gets repetitive. So I settled for the approach of a straight-up run-through of each album, highlighting particular strengths, while indicating the growth in the band's music between each album. The article will perhaps work best if read in installments, as three separate album reviews, rather than as a continuous piece.

I didn't mention the heroin thing because honestly, that's the first I've heard of it. However I don't find it to be particularly interesting: I don't really like music writing (or writing about any kind of art, for that matter) that dwells upon that kind of "insider knowledge". Utlimately, and especially for a band like the Dirty Three, the music is the thing. If I need to know some piece of arcane knowledge to fully appreciate it then it's not going to hold my attention for very long. If the band is doing a good enough job of their music-making then I as a listener won't need to know the specifics in order to appreciate the generalities (i.e., the latent emotion within the music, which shines through on Horse Stories).

The third and final part of the Dirty Three retrospective will cover She Has No Strings Apollo and Cinder (as well as a brief look at the Live at Meredith album). I think there are several of interesting things to comment on in this part of the band's career: it's a kind of post-glory and then rebuilding phase and shows the band very clearly trying to figure out the way forwards for their music. The idea of how such a high-quality band goes about following up such a stunningly good run of albums is very interesting to me, and the ways in which they occasionally fail in their attempts to do so, are very interesting to me.

[Ishotdanieljohnston]

i thought your first dirty three installment was really interesting. I think this is because it came very strongly from the perspective of discovering them in Melbourne in the 90's. For me they are such a Melbourne band- even though they have now extended themselves all over the world. As I walk through the streets of the city they are such a perfect accompianment to it's environment.

I haven't gotten all the way through the second one though I'm finding it a tad tedious, which is dissappointing because I was looking forward to it.

I understand where you're coming from though, when you are so passionate about an album or band it can be really hard to express objectively why they are great.

[Inlander]

Actually I discovered them in Canberra!

[Ishotdanieljohnston]

Oh really? Shit, sorry man, I thought you were a Melbournian.

[dalconnsuch]

i actually really liked the dirty three's work from now and from then, i think they're good at painting an audio picture in my head

of course thats me

[Inlander]

Went out to see a band, got inspired, came home, re-wrote it.

[Jackie Blue]

I'm as gay for Dirty Three as you are but really, the article is just going on and on about how awesome they sound.  It would help if you gave some context about their sound in relation to other music.  If someone had never heard the band I'm not sure they'd get a whole lot out of your descriptions of thier sound, other than that they're really cool and they have violins and sometimes they are noisy.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but when someone asks for my opinion I feel compelled to be completely honest.

[Inlander]

To be honest, I'm not trying to describe their sound and I think it would be completely pointless to do so. If somebody's never heard a band before, and they've got an internet connection, then the absolute last resource they're going to use to find out what that band's work sounds like is a blog. I'm more interested in what makes each of the band's albums different from the last, and the relative merits of those albums. Everything else in the article is "human interest" stuff to hopefully make it more interesting to read.

[Jackie Blue]

I suppose I misunderstood the point of the blog then.  It's written for people who already like Dirty Three, is that what you're saying?

I find out about plenty of bands by reading articles about them.  I think that even in the Internet Era there's still a lot of room for that.  If I hadn't read about Jane's Addiction in SPIN in 1988 it would have taken me a lot longer to get into good music, I think.  And that article wasn't just "Here's these guys, they sound cool."  It was contextual and compelling.

If I understand you correctly, what you're trying to do is sort of like fakejazz's "Cooler Than You" articles.  If so, I'd have a look at this one and try to take a cue from its style (and brevity).

http://www.fakejazz.com/fake/archives/2006/07/cooler_than_you_9.php

[2HourHiatus]

someone else knows of Video Hippos? Awesome. I saw them back in October, I was about 3 feet from the drummer. Right after the show I went out and got their album from the merch table. I'm glad to see the possibility of some recognition going their way.

[SeanBateman]

Yeah they're really cool.

[Inlander]

If I understand you correctly, what you're trying to do is sort of like fakejazz's "Cooler Than You" articles.  If so, I'd have a look at this one and try to take a cue from its style (and brevity).

http://www.fakejazz.com/fake/archives/2006/07/cooler_than_you_9.php

I find the style of that article to be little more than a tedious list of facts, with discussion of the music limited almost exclusively to "this is probably my favourite album" and "this is probably my favourite song". It's short, yes, but brevity is not in itself a merit. I found myself getting bored and the temptation to skip sentences and even paragraphs was great. Perhaps the problem is that you and I appreciate very different styles of writing? Fortunately there are three other people contributing to the music blog, each with their own style.

[Jackie Blue]

Well, I linked that article because your Dirty Three article seemed to me to be in the same style - some facts and some "this song is like this" and a bunch of "these guys are awesome".  So now I'm totally confused.

[Inlander]

Hmm. What I find dull about that article is that it simply lists the albums as they came out, with little or no attempt to examine how each album relates to and builds on the albums before it. However unsuccessfully, one of the things I tried to do in my article was point out how in that mid-to-late-nineties period, everything the Dirty Three did was a refinement of what they'd done in the immediate past. I tried to give a sense of the band growing and strengthening.

[Jackie Blue]

Have you heard Bedhead's three albums?  That article more than accurately describes the evolution of their sound, meaning, there was very little.

[Inlander]

No, I haven't, and the only information that I get from the article is that they put out an album, and then they put out another album, and then they put out another album.

[Jackie Blue]

Well, I don't get much more info than that from your Dirty Three article is my point here.

Like I said, it would help if you contextualised D3's sound with other artists contemporary to them.

In the past several replies you've said both that you have no interest in describing their sound and that you have an interest in describing how their sound evolved.

Highly illogical, Captain.

[Inlander]

I'm working from a base assumption that the people who read the article will be familiar with the essential sound of the Dirty Three. I'm assuming that people who are reading the article, when somebody says "Dirty Three", will be able to go, "Ah, they sound like this". Of course there are many people who do not know what the Dirty Three sound like, but I am not writing for them. You can't write for everybody, and if you attempt to do so you will be doomed to failure. However, I think the evolution of the Dirty Three's sound is something that is frequently overlooked - for instance, I read a review of Whatever You Love, You Are that, while glowing about the album, claimed that all of the Dirty Three's albums sounded basically the same, as if somebody had just turned off the microphones in the studio and left the band to play, and then come back a couple of years later and turned the microphones on again. This strikes me as being manifestly untrue, but it seems to be a commonly held opinion. In essence a band has two "sounds": their "general sound", the one that enables you to hear a song and immediately know who the band is, and their "specific sound", which is the way in which a band makes subtle (or unsubtle) alterations to their "general sound" over the course of their career. I am not interested in describing the Dirty Three's "general sound", and as stated above, I assume that readers will already be familiar with this. However I also assume that many of the readers who are familiar with the band's "general sound" will not have paid any heed to the "specific sound" of the individual albums. This is the sound I'm interested in examining.

[Jackie Blue]

OK.

So you're writing for people who have heard their music but haven't really thought about it?

Shrug.  OK then.  Carry on.

For me, the idea of knowing a band and not thinking about their music is incomprehensible.

[Inlander]

Or people who used to follow the band keenly, then got distracted, still know what they sound like but aren't entirely sure what they've been up to. Like me until recently.

[MusicScribbles]

This thread is turning out so well. I wonder if we'll argue about the next blog entry.

EDIT: I don't know why that second sentence turned into a question. Also, 500 posts.

[Jackie Blue]

I wasn't arguing.  I was discussing.

It's the same old Internet Message Board thing.  If you ask for an opinion, don't be secretly only asking for positive opinions.  Inlander has responded to my queries and comments well enough.  I still don't like the article, but now I have at least an idea of why he wrote it the way he did.

[Joseph]

There's definitely no need to call any disagreement an argument, and certainly this one has been more than civil.

Anyhow, on another note, between the article and the discussion here, I've been inspired to actually get around to checking out Dirty Three.  Is there a place that would be best to start from?

[Inlander]

That really depends on whether you want to start with their absolute best work, knowing that everything after that may be ever-so-slightly disappointing. If you want to do that, then get Whatever You Love, You Are. If your budget stretches to two albums, get Horse Stories too. Personally I think that it's not as good an album as Ocean Songs, but getting it in addition to Whatever You Love will give you a better idea of the range in their music. If you're feeling particularly wealthy, splash out and get all three of these albums.

[Jackie Blue]

I would actually start with the first, self-titled Dirty Three album.  In some ways "Indian Love Song" is the best thing they've ever written.

[Jackie Blue]

I could maybe see the shift between the first two and the last one, and yeah, WhatFunLifeWas is a lot louder than Beheaded, but I still don't think the sound evolved to the degree that many bands do.

Well, anecdotally, one of my ex-girlfriends always said that everything Bedhead and The New Year did sounded basically the same, though she liked it.  Some people just don't listen very hard (as Inlander points out about Dirty Three, a band I would never say "always sounds the same" even though a lot of people do say that).

[Caspian]

All I will say is:

THE BLOG NEEDS MORE DRONE DOOM.

That is all.

[Lummer]

I completely agree with Jeph about Baroness. Good god, do they kick ass!

[Ishotdanieljohnston]

Tommy, you write real good, loved the Polvo piece. You have been responsible for getting me into many of the great bands I've been listening to this year. Thank you.

[Dimmukane]

I completely agree with Jeph about Baroness. Good god, do they kick ass!

[Jackie Blue]

You spent half that Polvo article talking about Black Flag.

That's like spending half a Bright Eyes article talking about Led Zeppelin.

 

[Jackie Blue]

It's amusing to me that great music was being made on the other coast by genuinely independent bands while the press and record-buying public were convinced of the brilliance of all those shitty Seattle groups (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and their ilk). The point I was trying to get across was that Black Flag's musical legacy is that they made a bunch of shitty bands very rich. Through Greg Ginn's label they put out a lot of great records, including those undeniably influential Sonic Youth albums.

I think that is more than enough direct correlation for it to be considered relevant.

Perhaps it is because you are writing from outside America and outside the time period, but I'm not sure the apple/orange mixing your're doing here is particularly relevant (which is where my Bright Eyes/Zeppelin comment comes in).  Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and other similar bands were, at the time, entirely mainstream and not even in the discussion.  The same heyday for them was also the heyday of Matador records, when even in backwards little towns you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a Pavement fan.  Polvo were as popular as they possibly could be, so I don't see the poiint in rambling on about what was happening on the Billboard charts as a result of Black Flag as a segue to talking about Polvo.  It's just not interesting.

To expand on the Conor/Zep: It would be like if you opened an article on Bright Eyes by discussing at length that Led Zeppelin had created a rock-centric musical climate, with even the vast majority of successful indie bands being about rocking and looking cool, and only with the advent of Neutral Milk Hotel and Bright Eyes in 1998 did it really start to become "cool" to write personal, awkward, uncool music again.

Now that I think about it, that would be an interesting article.  Too bad I was never considered for the music blog.

[Jackie Blue]

I supposed I was just assuming that the average teenage QC reader never bothered to look at the music blog, or check out the bands in it.

My experience has been that such people, no matter how eloquently you wax about a pre-2000s band, generally listen to them if you absolutely press the issue, say "Eh, I guess that's okay" and then go back to Funeral.  Perhaps you are more of an optimist than I.  At this point I've given up on "enlightening" people to good old music unless they already show an interest in such.  I think a large part of it is that a lot of the new crop of younger indie people are resistant to authority and resent anybody telling them what to listen to, preferring to find out about the bands for themselves, because they have a sense of "coolness" that they cling to which derives from "finding it out on my own".  Which is frankly the complete opposite of my younger experience; I was always more than happy to find out about bands by listening to older, more knowledgeable people (usually college radio DJs).

As far as an article about how the indie world has been very slow to shift to personal music, I think it would be as relevant as any piece of rock journalism, which is to say, academic.  One wouldn't specifically have to talk only about Led Zeppelin and Bright Eyes, those were just two examples.

[Dimmukane]

My only complaint about the Music Blog thus far is that some of the material thus far has been on bands that are quite obscure.  They're excellent bands, at least the one's I've gotten ahold of records for, but maybe throw in a few more (and I hate to say it) "mainstream" reviews from time to time.  Jeph tends to do that, but you, Harry, and Sean are the main contributors.  All I'm saying is maybe review some stuff that has had a little more attention.  And perhaps more varied genres of music.  Other than that, it's excellent writing.  Your 'Hammer of the Gods' article made me want to haul out my dad's turntable.

[Jackie Blue]

Polvo and Dirty Three are "quite obscure"?

I officially am confused.

Is the average QC reader actually the kind of teenage indie kid who still thinks Death Cab For Cutie are relevant?

I don't really read the comic any more because, well, let's just leave it at that, but when I did, it seemed like most of the music references were pretty non-mainstream.

[kablaaamo]

Actually, no, the average QC reader isn't even that into music, it seems.

I have a bunch of friends who read the comic who have NEVER got any of the music references. No Spoon. No Explosions in the Sky, no Wilco...the joke about Sam Beam and his beard flew WAY over their heads...(I am basically whipping stuff off of the top of my head that I remember from the comic, there were SO MANY MORE, and probably a bunch of metal ones that I didn't get either)....so assuming that the average fan even thinks at all about Death Cab for Cutie is taking it a little far.

Which is kind of strange, but there you go. That's how it's been in my experience, anyhow.

[Dimmukane]

When I say obscure, I mean "hard to find".  There's only one local record shop within 30 minutes of me, and that's all I've got in terms of finding stuff like that.  I'm not going to be bothered to spend large quantities of money to import an album via the internet.  It's fine that they're reviewing stuff like that, I'm just saying they need to have some slightly 'less indie' reviews from time to time.  If you do one on a band that has gotten more attention, the odds that someone looking at the blog has heard of and maybe even listened to them go up.  Then they start paying more attention to the blog and put forth the effort to hunt down those records. 

I guess what I'm saying is if you review stuff like Low, Neutral Milk Hotel, Mastodon even; just some of the more recognizable names in general, more people will read the blog and be interested in expanding their music taste.  The reviews as they are right now make it sound like these bands barely get any attention outside of their home state/province/municipality. 

[Jackie Blue]

When I say obscure, I mean "hard to find".  There's only one local record shop within 30 minutes of me, and that's all I've got in terms of finding stuff like that.  I'm not going to be bothered to spend large quantities of money to import an album via the internet.

Um.  Dirty Three, Polvo, etc. are all available on Amazon for less than $8 per CD.  Nothing discussed in the blogs is anything you can't find in a big used record store.  I live in Knoxville, Tennessee for God's sake and even here there are used copies of way more obscure stuff.

I guess what I'm saying is if you review stuff like Low, Neutral Milk Hotel, Mastodon even

Low is significantly more obscure than the bands talked about in the blog.

Especially Dirty Three.  Seriously, they are one of the most recognisable post-rock bands of all time.

The reviews as they are right now make it sound like these bands barely get any attention outside of their home state/province/municipality. 

That is not even remotely true.

I don't intend to sound mean but you seriously don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[Dimmukane]

Chalk it up to me being lazy and running off of little sleep for the past several days then.  I have this odd tendency to just suck at boarding when I'm exhausted.  If you're telling the truth, which I'm pretty sure you are, then I need to go on a spree.  I'd never even heard of the Dirty Three at all until that blog post, but apparently they're more popular than Low.  I swear, I am so ass-backwards at this kind of thing.  Apologies all.  I still think there should be a little more variation in types of music reviewed, though.

[Jackie Blue]

I'm not demanding that the blog change, and I was under the apparently false impression that the people reading it were different than they are.

I don't know why you say I'll never "like" anything written in the blog, though.  Something can entertain me while still being full of information I already know.  An example of this is Freaky Trigger.  Tom writes about songs that are so universal they're part of the collective unconscious and I still find him consistently engaging, and the other writers on the site are usually just as good.  Take this as an example:

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/pop/2007/12/the-trouble-with-pop-avril-lavigne/

[amok]

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/pop/2007/12/the-trouble-with-pop-avril-lavigne/

Well that certainly was a blow by blow account of an Avril Lavigne video.

This bit was good though.

before hearing ‘My Humps’ I had no interest in Fergie or the Black Eyed Peas, I assumed they churned out mediocre R’n'B

tee hee

On a more constructive note, thanks to the blog and this thread for introducing me to Dirty Three, who I'm quite enjoying.

[Jackie Blue]

I'm not asking you to change who you're writing about.  When did I ever say that?

If criticism is unwelcome, perhaps this thread should be locked and deleted.

[Jackie Blue]

I'm not asking you to stop writing the blog.  I understand the blog's exisntance.  At this point all I am saying is that I certainly could enjoy articles about Dirty Three and Polvo, were they written in a way that entertains me.

If the purpose of the blog is, as you state, merely to expose people to new music, then I think the posts should be more factual and less editorial.  This is more in reference to Inlander's Dirty Three article than the Polvo one.

(And to use the argument "Lots of people like the blog, so it must be good" is the same logic that I was vilified for when saying "Lots of people like the Eagles, so they must be good".  Pick one and stick with it, people!  Either populist opinion matters or it doesn't.)

[Jackie Blue]

And its effectiveness is not something I'm doubting.

I think we've achieved détante.

[facism is sneaky]

Look guys, I for one am a huge fan of the ridiculously obscure indie band that only 5 people have heard of.That said, if you want a review of bands that are less indie, write it. Theres no reason to criticise othe people for presenting what they want to present, just start something new if you believe it needs to be started.

[Jackie Blue]

Lurk more.

I never once said I cared about which bands the blog covers.

[Johnny C]

I have to significantly disagree with most of what you've said, man. Everything from the notion that Polvo are not only not obscure but somehow less obscure than Low to the declaration that their writing should be a bit more factual when only three posts earlier you link to Freakytrigger who are some of the smarmiest, most subjective "poptimists" on the planet. Having spent ten months writing for Stylus Magazine along with Tom Ewing, I can assure you that however good his writing is his taste in pop music is rather dire. Dude loves T.a.T.u. with all his heart.

Honestly, if you're a reader and fan of Freakytrigger then I feel comfortable saying that the writing of nearly no-one on this forum will interest you in the slightest. The writing style and the subject matter will both be a world apart from the self-conscious cleverness and pop culture awareness of that website.

I think the blog is fine. If anything it could use a little bit more focus as the articles at the moment tend to sprawl a wee bit, and when the idea has already expanded into a serial format that makes for an awful lot of ground being covered. It gets overwhelming. However, it's nothing unreadable and it's certainly not bad. The Black Flag bit alluded to earlier is some of the funniest music writing I've read in a while.

[Jackie Blue]

I have to significantly disagree with most of what you've said, man.

What a shock.

I've known Tom Ewing for 12 years.  I enjoy his writing style and I think he has good taste in pop music.

That does not imply that I can not enjoy other writing styles or other tastes in music.

Appreciation of Public Enemy does not imply dismissal of John Prine.