Sunday, January 17, 2010

my approach

I should probably finish planning class for the coming week, but...

I guess this blog also arose out of discussions with my friend Matt who has agreed to be on staff here. Matt is not an indie-rock dork. I think that until recently, he mostly listened to ragtime. He has some familiarity with the big hit songs from the past twenty years. And he is an expert on the popular autotuned hits (I believe that he was one of the friends who pointed out to me that my game of autotune roulette to be played on car trips with the "SEEK" button isn't very challenging since there is always one station playing autotuned songs). He can speak insightfully about popular music. And the stuff that he really likes is really good.

I've tried to share some music with him with varying success. I've also bounced ideas about why I dislike what I dislike off of him. And this was challenging. For example, I find Grizzly Bear annoying and boring. Their songs have some interesting parts to them but this is negated by none of their tracks being engaging for longer than say, 20 seconds. And indie-rock short-hand for why I don't like them is something like "do we really need a hookless denatured Pet Sounds? And besides, His Name is Alive did the indie Beach Boys thing better." But you can't really do that when your audience hasn't heard of His Name is Alive or even Pet Sounds. (That said, probably a lot of people who like Grizzly Bear know what Pet Sounds sounds like but probably don't listen to it.). Snarky blogger for why they suck is "They are the Jonathan Safran Foer of dreamy pop. Self-consciously 'experimental' but never challenging. Guaranteed to make their audience feel smart." But this isn't convincing to someone who doesn't share your worldview or record library or dislike of JSF. And just imagine my trying to explain why Micachu is tons better than Girls.

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