dontfeartheringo wrote:SecondEdition wrote:dontfeartheringo wrote:SecondEdition wrote:I hear that The Olivia Tremor Control and Of Montreal are good bands.
You heard that, did you?
Have I been misinformed, Ringo?
Let me predicate this by saying that my taste is weird, and that I have friends in both bands.
However, based on your objections stated above, I think you may find that there is more of the same with OTC and that Of Montreal is (to me) the musical equivalent of Capri Pants on guys.
By the way, "high school horns" is a phrase that exactly captures my aversion to what is wrong with so much indie pop.
(Edit: I kind of got set off on a rant. Sorry everyone! Hope it is at least entertaining.)
Rats. Well, I'll still give both bands a listen when I find the time (given that I'm burning out on Big Star at the moment, though, that might take a while). "The musical equivalent of Capri Pants on guys"...brilliant. Effete, then?
I resolved to give In The Aeroplane Over The Sea a full, measured listen as well some time ago, though I still haven't got the courage up to subject myself to that after that first listen. Believe me, it was rough sailing...and in class too. That loathed printmaking class was one demoralizing experience. So maybe I have a lot of unfair stigma attached to Neutral Milk Hotel.
"High school horns"...well, they are. Nick, a guy I know who subbed for my guitar teacher last week and who is really into Neutral Milk Hotel, says that he has live bootlegs of them and apparently the guy who's playing them may as well be farting into his instrument about half of the time. He can't play. Nick still likes them very much, but I don't know if I could. He says he understands that it's difficult to get into. So I will give it more time than I did before.
To me, here's the thing about a good portion of successful indie bands these days: There's a line between charming, childlike, honestly emotional amateurism and posturing, rudimentary, sometimes tuneless ostentation, and a lot of these bands, like Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective and the Arcade Fire, seem to have a tenuous grasp of that line, which is worrisome and makes for quite a lot of hit-and-miss music. They fail for different reasons: Arcade Fire simply has bum riffs a good portion of the time, which are enlivened with layers of unorthodox orchestration that are interesting, but don't quite manage to conceal the fact that the riffs are stale and overly repetitive, or the fact that Win Butler's vibrato is frequently in danger of strangling his ability to stay in the same key. (The girl's voice is worse.)
From the few listens that I've given them, Neutral Milk Hotel seem to have the horns there for no real reason, like a euphonium was lying around the rehearsal space and one of their friends just started puffing and honking along. The real problem with them is Jeff Mangum: as far as I can tell - and please correct me if I am wrong, because, again, this is all first impression - Mangum is a very repressed, very awkward person, who seems to draw upon his neuroses and childlike fantasies exclusively for songwriting material. You could make a case that that is really all anyone needs - neuroses and childlike fantasies covers practically all of Syd Barrett's artistic output - but Jeff Mangum is not Syd Barrett and he never will be. His Anne Frank obsession is extremely disturbing to me: "In my dreams, you're not dead and your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet" is a beautifully written and feverishly intense line, but the fact that he's talking, decades later, about someone who died in a concentration camp is sickening. Add to that his apparent discomfort with sex and it seems like a self-diagnosis. The thing is, it doesn't even feel compelling, at least not transmuted through Mangum's horrid, is-he-trying-to-be-out-of-tune wreck of a voice. You get the idea all Jeff Mangum really needs is to get out of his womblike house, go down to the local bar and get a drink and a blowjob. (The fact that this last sentence sums up pretty much what I need as well is more than slightly disturbing to me.)
Anyway, I guess that can all be summed up by saying: Neutral Milk Hotel have a lot to answer for, don't they?