Saturday, July 26, 2008
 

I can't say it enough, but being a music fan in Seattle right now is a downright good time.  Two weeks ago I stumbled out of SP20 so sated on music I thought I might never need a live performance again in my life.  After catching Andrew Bird (and Josh Ritter) at the Woodland Park Zoo on Wednesday (even surrounded by 4 year olds and crotchety elders that man still wowed me) though, I'm re-amped for a weekend that promises to be fantastic.  They like to call it Capitol Hill Block Party and to say the least, it's a favorite festival of mine.  Four blocks of the most hipster area of Seattle are sectioned off to make way for two stages and a beer garden.  Bands play these stages as well as a host of local venues contained with the four blocks.  This year Fleet Foxes, Girl Talk, The Dodos, Vampire Weekend, Les Savy Fav and whole assload of other great acts will be taking the stage and I'm nothing if not wet-my-pants excited. Thus, if the gentle edge of giddiness creeps in at the corners of my usual cynical ramblings, please forgive me, I'm a little bit excited. As always, thanks for reading.

PITCHFORK: the most vicious circle alive.

I've diatribed about the world of music Pitchfork has helped create a great deal over the last two years of my life.  Being a part of the music industry has given me a pretty strange insight in to the hype machine that Pitchfork is slowly becoming.  I have a great deal of respect for the volume, and occasional opinion of the internet's bastion of hipster, but their recent puppy dog review of The Black Kids is slightly infuriating.  I haven't heard the album yet, but the only reason I, and pretty much the entire music listening world, was even turned on to the band in the first place was because of Pitchfork's glowing "Best New Music" review of their original Wizard of Aaaaaaaaaahs review.  At the time Marc Hogan described the album thusly, "Black Kids make catchy, tightly executed songs that put a memorable stamp on pop's classic themes." 

Again, I haven't heard the album, so I'm speaking in a fairly uninformed tone, but the singles I've heard are extremely similar to the original, Pitchfork approved EP.  What's changed then, that incites Scott Plagenhoef to such a childish, overly-negative review (at the first posting early Wednesday morning, Plagenhoef had given it a 0.0, quickly changing it to a 3.3 after an assumed slew of negative feedback)?  The Black Kids have gotten popular and Pitchfork hates just about anything that gets bigger than them.

Pitchfork, you selfish pricks, you helped create the buzz that made these fairly talented youth explode in the public conscious.  You hyped them, you proclaimed them "Best New Music", you made them a part of our musical context and now, when they've signed to a major, and they're growing more popular by the minute, you just can't stand it.  It's typical of Pitchfork, they like being the first to say "this is great", they love breaking an obscure band, but what they don't enjoy is being left behind.  A bands' second album on Pitchfork almost always scores far lower than their debut.  Call it a sophomore slump if you will, but I believe it's Pitchfork's inevitable backlash against their own ability to make bands.  They create only to destroy. 

Pitchfork your in the most powerful position in indy rock right now, you are the taste maker for most of hipster world, you have the power to make something small, something huge.  And this is what you use your power for?  You should be ashamed of yourself.
 

RATATAT: same old, same old.

RATATAT has impressed me in the past.  I've seen them live, I've burnt out multiple copies of their first two LPs, I've sat in dark rooms with headphones on eating up their casual electronic sound.  So it's safe to say, I was HYPED for the release of their newest LP3.  The singles were classic RATATAT but spiced up with what the faintest echoes of Bombay-infused drum kicks.  My hands sweated in anticipation.

Now that I've received the album and given it it's proper due, I feel somewhat, I don't know, bored.  It's a solid album of RATATAT songs, a very similar, very basic sort of gentle electronica propelled by swooping guitar and fuzzed out keys.  I would imagine that any fan of the group would be pretty well sated by the songs present on LP3, but I can't help but feel disappointed.  I don't exactly know what I'm asking for from RATATAT, they did exactly what I expected, compile a selection of songs that makes me smile and bounce my head, maybe even think about dancing once in a while.  But for whatever reason, whenever I listen to the album, I zone out after two songs, and the music just fades in to the background.  I've honestly turned the album on six or seven times now and by song three forgotten what I'm listening to.

At the end of the day, I think I just got myself excited that a new album by this band would involve a little more progression, a change in direction even that would take the band's sound somewhere new and altogether more interesting.  I think I personally built up my own hype, and when RATATAT delivered exactly the album everyone expected, it just didn't live up.  Which is fine, it's perfectly enjoyable, just not as exciting as I'd hoped it to be.
 

BLACK MOUNTAIN: a brief addendum to my best-of-list.

I must have been high on poorly cut meth again when I was writing my best-of-so-far-list for the site several weeks ago because I forgot to mention my number one, most played album of the year: Black Mountains' In The Future.  I've never listened to an album before that grabbed so much as the pulsing stoner-rock of these Vancouver natives.  Amber Webber's haunting echo grabs me every time, as does Steve McBean's everyman yodel.  I love the pure rock aspect of it, the driving guitar licks, the six minute repeated chords, the sheer joy of silence exploding in to guitar.  It's a perfect album for just about anything, and to my great surprise it's completely trumped their original self-titled debut. 

It's absolutely shocking to me that I left this album off of my original list, as it seriously jump-started me in to a sort of obsessive craze for all things Black Mountain-related.  Pink Mountain Tops, Lightning Dust, Blood Meridian - I bought them all.  After listening to the album, I've seen Black Mountain four times (in less than three months) and am still hungry for more live performances.  And then, when it counts, I just drop the ball.  If I thought Black Mountain, or anyone, cared whatsoever, I'd apologize. 
 

- Noah Sanders -



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