Monday, April 12, 2010

HIPSTER RUNOFF

HIPSTER RUNOFF

Jay-Z drops ultimate douchebag quote, describes Bono by using Dirty Projjies lyric ’stillness is the move.’

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 02:07 PM PDT

Link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-jayz
Via: http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/jay-zs-references-dirty-projectors/


Jay-Z is a popular mainstream rapper who many alt sites give authentic credibility, but I’m not sure why. He enjoys to give interviews where he talks about listening to ‘far out, real ass shit’, including indie buzzbands like Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors. The Dirty Projectors have a song called “Stillness is the Move”, and Jay-Z highjacked that abstract song title and used it to describe what makes Bono so awesome

Does this even make sense?

"In hip-hop, there's not many great performers," Jay-Z acknowledged. "I look outside the genre, measuring myself against others. I look at Madonna's production and envy that. Daft Punk's set, I'm like, what the. . . . And I look at the way U2 can command an audience. Bono's a performer pretty much like I am. He's not a dancer; he's not jumping around. He's having a conversation. He's using his stillness as movement."

Damn. Bono. Using his ’stillness as a movement.’
Does ’stillness is the move’ really mean anything, or is it just some poo poo abstract indie lyric?
Does it make u want to listen to ‘Stillness is the Move’ and connect with existential ideas?

Should I start using ‘his stillness was his move’ to describe other people in the real world?

Does this seem like a good application of ’stillness is the move’?
“The blacked homeless man had pissed and shat himself, laying passed out in the Chili’s Parking Lot. His stillness was truly his move.”

or

“My mom passed away that night in the County Hospital. The doctors did everything they could to save her, but now she was with God. Her body was at rest and her stillness was finally her move.”

or

‘The piece of poop fell out of my butt hole, falling into the port-o-potty. It fell into a massive swamp of human feces, united as one large mega turd, unphased by the falling pee and poop. The block of poop was moving in stillness. The stillness was its strength, it’s move, it’s escape. This is life, and stillness is the move.’

What does ’stillness is the move’ mean?
Have u ever used ur stillness as a movement?
Is Jay-Z ’stealing alt culture’?
Will Jay-Z steal indie lyrics on his next album?
Would the Dirty Projectors be happy ’singing the chorus’ on a Jay-Z song?
Is Jay-Z authentic, or are rappers just coolhunting high jackers?
Is ‘Biting Orcas’ the most important album of the 21st century?
Does n e 1 know if when Jay-Z sings about Brooklyn/NYC, he is singing about the ‘hipster parts’ or the ‘black people parts’?

Choir of innercity kids led by free-spirited + pony-tailed teacher covers Beach House

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 09:30 AM PDT


Beach House made the mistake of leading off 2k10 with their “Teen Dream” album release, now their album isn’t really ‘remembered’ by that many people. I can’t even recall if their album was ‘actually good’ or if I was just ‘excited about a new year of buzzbands / releases.’ All of their songs sound the same, so on some days this is a good thing, and on some days this is a bad thing for their brand.

I think this choir of kids record songs, then put them on youtube, then a bunch of famous people like Ashton Kutcher and Perez Hilton tweet about how their cover of a Lady Gaga song is ’so inspiring.’ They covered Beach House, probably because the teacher ‘fell in love’ with the album or something. Wonder if the kids were into it, or if they wanted to sing Justin Bieber.

Did this video ‘inspire’ u?
Is this innercity choir more famous than Beach House?
Is this choir unfair to these kids, because it is making them believe that they will end up being pop stars if they gesticulate enough?
Do u wish ur elementary school had courses which focused on making internet memes, how to be internet famous, and buzzbandology 101?
Is Beach House’s “Teen Dream” going to end up being a top 10 album of the year, or will they represent a valuable lesson for PR companies: ‘going first’ and releasing your album in January means that your album won’t be remembered at the end of the year?

The OO, a Japanese Tribute band for the XX emerges on myspace, sings in Engrish

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 07:18 AM PDT

Stream: http://www.myspace.com/theootheoo


The OO is apparently a Japan-based tribute band, celebrating the music of the XX. On the OO’s myspace are two covers of “VCR” and “Basic Space.” Even though the front man doesn’t really know how to speak English, he puts his entire lil AZN heart into this project.

In “VCR”, the OO front man croons:

i sink were superstahs

Is the OO ‘the funniest thing’ u will hear all week?
Do people in Japan not understand how the Western World works?
Are these covers authentic?
Do u feel pissed that the OO took such a sweet band name?
Does the OO prove that the XX writes songs that are too simple to be taken seriously, or does it make them ‘geniuses’ for turning something so simple into such a relevant album?
Do u hope more Japanese / AZN emerge to cover indie hits in Engrish?

Any time an AZN person covers a song and speaks in failed English, will it automatically become a meme?

Will Pitchfork give the OO above a 6.8?
Did the XX hire these AZNs to make this meme and ‘get more publicity’?
The OO: Band 2 Watch

NYTimes does ‘humanizing’ profile piece on the bros in MGMT

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:20 AM PDT

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/arts/music/11mgmt.html?pagewanted=1


Since the NYTimes is the ultimate blog aggregator, they were forced to cover the hit buzzband MGMT, who will soon release their leaked album Congratulations. I am not sure if they had some sort of agenda with this article, but I think it was sort of just a ‘mailed in’ profile piece about young people in a band maturing. Maybe the metaphorical equivalent of ‘moving from Brooklyn to Manhattan’ to ‘grow up & get serious about life’

I think the article brands the two MGMT bros as being ‘mavericks’ who only care about being artists, and not pleasing the masses. They are aware that they ‘peaked’ in college when writing “KIDS”:

"It's like the only songs we have that have really been noticed on widespread levels are songs that we wrote in college," he fretted.

Mr. VanWyngarden piled on. "We should really be listening to, like, the masses," he said, "instead of making an album that no one is going to like."

The NYTimes also asked an MTV Vice President for his opinion, because he probs knows a lot abt music + the music industry + buzzbands. Prob chills at tons of industry parties and hands business cards 2 buzzbands:

"There was an incredible amount of curiosity for this album," said Joe Cuello, a vice president at MTV. "We were all waiting for the prerelease from the label and sat down and listened to the whole thing in my office when we got it." Their response was that the record was "challenging," said Mr. Cuello, who oversees music licensing for MTV shows. "They're certainly asking for something from their audience, an investment and a perspective that doesn't fit the marketplace completely."

They talked about how the album wasn’t critically accepted, so they had to re-brand the whole album as a “grower” and try to make it seem like this was really MGMT’s artistic vision:

But the response has recently shifted as more people have heard the album, and as the label's marketing campaign, which urges listeners to take it as a whole and spend some time with it, has sunk in. "Congratulations" is now categorized as a grower, earning praise for its bravery if not always its artistry. (Mr. Cuello said that after considering it, he was a fan.) Whether it will sell is another question.

"Different's not bad," said Steve Barnett, the chairman of Columbia Records. Asked if the album was commercial, Mr. Barnett said: "Listen, I think Andrew and Ben are very smart, creative guys, and I think they understand the right path that MGMT should take, and from our perspective we're happy to support that. Sometimes I think we have to sit down and talk to them about consequences — if you do this this way, this is going to happen — and we've had that conversation. And at the end of the day I think their approach is really refreshing, where art leads, and commerce follows."

Wonder if some1’s head is gonna ‘roll’ at Columbia Records if this album flops hard.

Really enjoyed this paragraph where they tried to describe the essence/personal brands of the MGMT bros utilizing architecture + fashion:

Though the duo spent their early 20s living as any young transplants to Brooklyn do — giving and going to loft parties and goofing off, amping it up when they became successful, cavorting with groupies and acting debaucherous — now they seem rather sedate. Mr. Goldwasser recently moved from an apartment with roommates in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to a one-bedroom in Lower Manhattan with his girlfriend so that her commute to dental school in New Jersey could be shorter. Mr. VanWyngarden is a furniture and design buff, and his apartment is expensively and eclectically decorated, with a zebra-skin rug and point-of-conversation art (some of it scavenged from the street). Across from the vintage brown leather sofa in the living room is a wooden sleigh bed covered with throw pillows. Beside surfing books are copies of the magazine Art in America and the I Ching. In a plaid shirt and Doc Martens (Mr. VanWyngarden) and a gray hoodie and jeans (Mr. Goldwasser), neither would pass for rock stars. They barely pass for hipsters. They seem more like bookstore employees, and not even the judgmental kind.

The journalist probably asked them the entry level question ‘r u hipsters’ so that he could produce this quotable, made to get ‘tons of hipster blog headlines’:

"We're like yuppie Brooklyners," Mr. Goldwasser said. Mr. VanWyngarden listed his nonhipster credentials: "I don't blog. I don't have an iPhone. I've never done cocaine."


So many great blurbs. Here is the part where they talk about how they snubbed tons of mainstream artists who wanted to work with them. Does this make u respect them more?

At the height of their popularity, they said, they were inundated with requests to work with major artists but declined. "We said no to Coldplay, U2, Lady Gaga, Pink, Radiohead, Stone Temple Pilots," Mr. VanWyngarden said. "It's not a judgment on them. We didn't feel comfortable opening up for them."

They did agree to a collaboration with Jay-Z for his album "The Blueprint 3."

"We talked to him on speaker phone, and he's like: 'I want you to do whatever you guys want. Do your MGMT thing,' " Mr. Goldwasser said. "I think he was eating crackers or something."

They eschewed the beats that Jay-Z's camp sent over and made their own, a "vampire-pipe-organ, chromatically descending, really weird beat," Mr. Goldwasser said. Jay-Z, they said, responded by asking them only to sing on the track's chorus. They passed.

Does this make u say, “wow. they told Jay-Z to go fuck himself. Gotta give em props for saying screw u.” I feel like I kinda do, only because I think that rappers are just looking to hijack anything that is mildly cool just to build their personal brands. Not really into rappers.

Did u read this article?
Did it help u to relate to the band?
Do u feel like u ‘get’ MGMT now?
Are they just two bros trying to grow up and be in a buzzband at the same time?
Are the MGMT bros playing some sort of Joaquin Phoenix type of practical joke, and the Columbia Records PR department is just trying to ‘cover up the biggest mess’ in the history of mainstream indie record releases?
Were the bros “off message” during this interview (and pissing off their PR team to be rebellious etc) or does their Sony/PR team just have no idea how ________ they sound?
Did MGMT create a ‘cult classic’ or will this album just be forgotten?
Did MGMT create the greatest record of all time?
Is MGMT the ultimate indie band?

Do u feel pissed that MGMT had the forum, the funding and the technical ability to create one of the most important albums of all time, but treated it like it was some sort of joke, totally afraid of ‘taking on the beast’? Maybe this is why Animal Collective is ‘unconditionally loved’ even if they make something that is too weird/unapproachable.

Pitchfork gives MGMT’s “Congratulations” a lukewarm 6.8

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:02 AM PDT


On April 1, 2010, a fake blogger made up a fake joke that Pitchfork gave ’s hit album “Congratulations” a perfect 10.0. This prank went down as one of the Huffington Posts’ Top 40 jokes of the year. It seemed so ‘insane’ that some one would give this album a 10.0 that it became a certified alternative meme joke.

Pitchfork actually gave the album a 6.8. It seems like they sort of just ’side stepped’ any sort of harsh judgment of the album, but instead talked about the context in which the album was released:

If you’re coming to the second album because you loved “Time to Pretend”, “Kids”, and “Electric Feel”, there’s the door. No such moments exist on Congratulations. Hell, there aren’t even failed attempts at replicating those songs here. This time out, aren’t crafting pop; they’re Creating Art. The problem is that many of the half-million or so people who bought their debut, Oracular Spectacular, just want a couple catchy-as-fuck, ear-candy singles to blast in their cars or put on with their friends.

Here is the part where they say that the music is ‘kinda okay’, but still ‘retarded and unorganized’:

They’re in love with 1970s art-rock, and they’ve immersed themselves in uncool subgenres like pop-psych and prog. And despite the lack of marquee songs, they’ve made, top to bottom, a more interesting and even better record this time out.

If their success granted them the opportunity to do whatever they wanted, took advantage of it, layering songs with a surplus of ideas when a few good ones would have done. Every track here has successful passages, but frustratingly, they too often turn out to be detours or trap doors. In general, the less cluttered and more focused their tracks are, the better they turn out.

In the last paragraph, they sort of apologized for , trying to let people know that it is hard to be a buzzband and release a ’sophomore album’:

Few bands this year will release a record under more difficult circumstances than , and following a shock commercial success with a zig when your fans want you to zag has always been dangerous. aren’t hitting the self-destruct button here, but the best-case scenario is that a cult, happy to shed the carpetbagger fans of OS, are willing to follow these guys around from idea to idea.

Are the most interesting/obnoxious Pitchfork reviews the ones where they talk about the context in which an album is released, or the ones where they try to describe what the album sounds like?
Did Pitchfork ‘totally sidestep’ the opportunity to ‘pan’ most culturally significant album of 2k10?
Did PR DEPT do a good job to re-brand this album and make it seem like they are ‘artists’ as opposed to pop song writers?
Will this album chart at #1?
Have u forgiven ?
R u sad that only has 2 or 3 more good memes left now that the album has officially been released?
Has the album grown on u?
What score did this album really deserve?
Should Pitchfork give every album a 10.0 so that they can make tons of ‘referral money’ from ppl purchasing the songs thru their blog site?
R u ready for tons of articles about how ‘ did it their way, and we gotta love em for being artists–the true spirit of rock n roll– sayin eff u 2 the man’?

Did ‘fail to progress’ from their last album?

Worried abt buzzbands plateauing…