Friday Utilitarian Music: The Consolers

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I thought it might be fun to do a weekly music sharing post. So here’s my contribution:

That’s the Consolers, Sullivan and Iola Pugh, who are pretty great.

Sooo…leave your recommendations and youtube links in comments, and if folks seem to enjoy it, maybe we’ll try to do this weekly.

59 thoughts on “Friday Utilitarian Music: The Consolers”

  3. VM…hah! Apparently “avant cello” means “new age”. That’s kind of great; I’ve been coming to terms with my love of Enya, so this is just the thing….

  9. “Battle of Epping Forest” is hilarious. So gutsy and amazing it works so well. I still need a couple more of the Gabriel Genesis albums.

    The albums I was listening to in the last two weeks…

    COMUS – Song To Comus complete
    ((It is a crying shame this band never got a proper recording career going in the 70s. Not nearly as crazy as a lot of people said it was, but still very much worth the hype it got))

    PETER HAMMILL- In Camera
    ((I dont like this one as much as the previous two, but his existential rants are always amazing. I’ve really been loving him since the summer. What a hero!))

    VIRGIN PRUNES – If I Die, I Die
    ((Great crazy goth-ish punk, as if from an alternate world of laughing madness and squalor. Fantastic!))

    FAMILY – Music In A Doll’s House
    ((Classic early 70s album, good stuff, not much to say about it other than Robert Pollard sounds a lot like the lead singer of Family at times))

    RUSH – Fly By Night
    ((Quite good but they are just getting warmed up here))

    ART ZOYD – Nosferatu
    ((one of the oddest and best soundtracks I’ve ever heard from one of the most underrated prog bands I’ve ever heard. They were from the Rock In Opposition movement. Apparently they were one of the first rock bands to make a trend of doing silent film scores. Pleasingly bizarre and fantastic))

    LOVESLIESCRUSHING – Bloweyelashwish
    ((A shoegazing classic I’ve wanted for a long time. They seem to have taken the most hazy and least songlike parts from MBV and made it into albums. Very good, easy to submerge yourself into the haze))

    CRANES – La Tragedie D’Oreste Et Electre
    ((I’ve wanted this for a long time too, it is their most hard to find and most different album. A sort of soundtrack to a Jean Paul Sartre work. Weird, nocturnal and of course gorgeous like everything by Cranes))

    IN THE NURSERY – L’ Espirit
    ((Two guys who make amazing soundtracks for films that never existed. For early 4AD fans))

  11. Okay, so obviously this is a fairly popular feature.

    Just out of curiosity…would folks like to do themes? (Sharing country music, or electronica, or classical, or…) Or is the free for all preferable?

  12. A theme post might be better for discussion, but it’s also harder to keep participation going after you run through the most obvious themes (says the person who once ran a themed book recommendation/reading club).

    A*M*E ft. Mic Righteous – Find a Boy (Tropical Refix) for me. A*M*E says she is Kpop-inspired but there’s nothing particularly Kpopish about this song (another one, Play the Game Boy, has some eyebrow-raising visuals). I was listening to this a lot last week because it sounds like it could be on the soundtrack to Django. Forgot to bring my headphones with me to England, so I haven’t been able to listen to any new music this week :(

  13. I’ve also been listening to Lianne La Havas – Is Your Love Big Enough? a lot, and to Black Grass – Three, which gets a surprising amount of play in shops over here.

  14. This week I’ve been obsessing about these two songs:

    The long, beautiful 10-minute version of the late Peter Laughner’s “Amphetamine”:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PlK8FKCEYI

    and Brian’s Eno’s “St. Elmo’s Fire”…with that fabulous solo by Robert Fripp:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-3djUYgebU

    And “A Sailor’s Life,” as Steven mentioned, yes! I was just listening to the studio version this morning! One of my favorite Fairport tracks.

  15. That A*M*E video is great! Awesome sugary pop.

    I keep seeing people comparing her to Nicki Minaj? Which seems bizarre; they’re nothing alike. I guess it’s just that they both wear idiosyncratic outfits?

  17. AME has the same “look” as Nicki Minaj, this kind of doll-like body language but unimpressed gaze. And Nicki is into Asian pop culture, too, although less Kpop than Harajuku fashion like Gwen Stefani. So yeah, I think it’s their visuals/style more than their music that’s similar.

  18. steven samuels:

    “The Fall – What About Us”

    – one of my favorites!

    At least once a week (usually more than that) for the last several months I’ve been listening to De La Soul – …Is Dead and – Buhloone Mindstate. This week I also listened to Prince Paul – Psychoanalysis (What Is It?), Busta Rhymes – Anarchy, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Budapest Strings, 1988).

    links:
    I really like this remix of Keepin’ the Faith (De La Soul): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50NV0UX1hiM

    I kind of enjoyed this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tommkABFB8Y

    Probably found it more funny than it actually is. I blame the fact that it uses the same sample as Clothes Hoist (Foetus).

  19. @ave seems like you are into that 90s New York scene so you should definitely check the Joey Bada$$/Dyme-a-Duzin cut I linked to. Young kids from Brooklyn making old New York music.

    I was never crazily into Prince Paul but those De La records are still fire.

  20. If you can tolerate some truly deplorable and insecure high school homophobia in the initial “interview” this Pitchfork Selector freestyle is also pretty hot. If you want to skip the inanity altogether, this version of the link is timestamped to the point where they “find” the beat they want to rhyme over: http://youtu.be/XmUXgvkkqPs?t=2m49s

  21. Thanks Owen, I enjoyed both of those.

    re: Prince Paul, I like the first Gravediggaz album and (most of) the Handsome Boy Modeling School albums (these two songs in particular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICMdoZ3eXio & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICMdoZ3eXio ). Less wild about his first two solo albums, though they have a few real gems too. Early De La Soul is really on another level though. The Souls of Mischief album he produced is high on my list of things to check out.

    I’ve been going through a long 90s hip-hop phase for a while, which started by trying to get my wife to listen to De La Soul and Nice & Smooth and some others, and now seeking out more, so the recommendations are welcome.

    Here’s an antidote for the homophobic interview (non hip-hop related):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLVpZme0kRQ

  23. I’ve been heavy-rotation obsessed with Japanese jazzist Jun Miyake since seeing his work heavily featured in that Wim Wenders 3D dance movie, Pina. [That may be the most poseur-ish sentence I’ve ever typed, which is, well, that’s saying something]. Two clips:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWIs89Pub0w
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJYLHoRqIsI

    I don’t understand why that guy’s music hasn’t blown up more, internationally. But, then, I haven’t heard of 95% of the artists named here, so…

    For me, De La is all about Stakes is High. Love that album. Prince Paul’s okay, but he’s also the man who gave us the hiphop album skit, which is like saying, well Hitler was an okay painter, but he’s also the guy who…Much prefer Dan the Automator, if we’re going like for like.

  25. Jones, re Jun Miyake…huh. The dancing irritates me…cutesy romanticism is kind of hard to take. But I think if I don’t watch the video I can enjoy the music…

    It kind of reminds me of fusion and Steely Dan a little, which is no bad thing….

  26. Oh, definitely fusion, but not as cheesy as that description always sounds to me. Re: the dancing — the Wenders film is veeery inconsistent. Some of the pieces range all the way from awful to mediocre, but the second half of the film has some amazing routines (IMO).

  27. @Noah Man, if you think “Find a Boy” is sugary pop, I don’t know what you’d think of the rest of the music I listen to… this, for instance, which I also really like. Under the textbook definition of sugary pop, you’ll find this song. “Find a Boy” on the other hand, is a pop song but not a particularly sugary one… it’s more about embracing both the pleasures and the absurdities of pop music in an obviously knowing way than anything. Which is very British, of course.

  30. Heh. I thought you might say that.

    I’d argue that R&B at this point is more sugary than completely soulless pop, which tends to sound too bland to really be sweet.

    I like the Carpenters too, though, if that helps.

  31. Why bring in the Carpenters, are they sugary pop too?

    I’m not interrogating you about whether you like pop music, or trying to argue for the merits of sugary pop in particular, with or without comparing it to other pop acts you might like. I’m wondering about your standards for calling something “sugary pop”. To me “sugary pop” is a specific kind of pop music and “Find a Boy” totally does not qualify. It’s way too knowing, it plays with genre in a semi-ironic way, even this kind of stereotypically feminine “If I just find the right boy my life will be perfect” attitude is punctured by the rap verse (“you’re not going to find love in the night club”), etc. Sugary pop has the sole goal of being pleasurable and upbeat, the lyrics might hint at something darker (“Minimanimo” is about accepting a breakup and moving on, but the singers also propose a one-night stand with the ex) but the solution “fix” is to make something as happy-sounding as possible and just kind of elide over the bad spots. And along with that there’s a kind of childish viewpoint, bright colors, bouncy beat, power harmonies…

  32. When people say “sugary” they mean “too sweet”. Sugar is a refined form of sucrose, extracted from raw plant matter via industrial processes in order to create a highly addictive new substance.

    All pop music aims to be pleasurable and addicting, but sugary pop aims for it too much, or in ways that are too obvious. Obviously it’s manufactured, but that doesn’t say anything about whether it does its job properly or has any other interesting features. GLAM – I Like That is an example of a sugary pop song that is smart. ABBA too.

  33. I guess I just think of sugary pop as hooky and vapid. Probably a lot of girl group music would quality…or the Beach Boys, in at least some iterations.

    And I don’t think it has to be too obvious. I like sugary pop! (or some of it, anyway.)

  34. At least we can agree on the Beach Boys, and it’s good to see a male group counting as sugary.

  36. Since we’re discussing this and Ke$ha’s on the radio– just as an exhibit that sugary pop can be ironic and knowing. Bringing Sexy Back-era Justin Timberlake/Timbaland counts too, for a male example.

  38. I don’t think any of those groups are sugary… Well, maybe Ke$ha, since she is or was playing around with hyperfeminine markers of ultragirlyness (like that one MV with the unicorn and Dawson’s Creek star). Even then I’m sure it was really “sugary” in the sense of this concentrated rush of pleasurable sounds and sunny imagery, keeping with the “sugar” metaphor (When you talk about “vapid” you could be saying the same thing, like empty calories).

    Sexy Back is a great pop song, his new song Suit and Tie is a great pop song, Jay-Z and Kanye’s joint album Watch The Throne from the year before last is a great pop album, but “hooky and vapid” (or pretending to be vapid) is a major goal of pop music. What would a pop song that’s not “sugary” sound like, in your opinion?

  40. Sunshine on my Shoulder isn’t sugary pop? Surely you jest….

    I mean, in some sense, anything that gets tons of airplay (or whatever the equivalent is now) is pop…so that would include everything from Duke Ellington to Led Zeppelin. So I don’t think there’s a danger of not having anything pop which isn’t sugary….

  41. Well, Zeppelin is rock, Kanye is rap, Ellington is jazz, even though they all charted. Pop seems to be solidly middle-of-the-road, hinting at genres but rather interchangeably. The Beatles, honestly, kind of feel more like pop than rock to me most of the time– ditto Prince. Non-sugary pop (no judgment on quality)– New Order, Cheap Trick, Police, Robyn– it has to be angsty or party-y or sexy if it’s not sugary.

    I question John Denver’s irony.

  42. Agreed with Bert! Especially the part about genres being used interchangeably in pop – a hard rock song is part of the hard rock tradition and uses the tools of hard rock to establish itself as a hard rock song, and to evoke feelings associated with hard rock, like rebellion or angst-anger or sexual frustration; a pop song belongs to the current pop landscape and might use a songle element of “hard rock”, like a certain guitar tone in a bridge-solo, to signal things associated with hard rock in the current landscape, like being aunthentic or having musicianship or being white and middle-class.

    Pop music can be shallow, unmoored from genre constraints, but also affectionate and playful, not bound by tradition.

  43. Actually scratch “white and middle-class”, that’s indie-rock, and even then it’s “middle-class” more than “white”.

  44. Right…but Ellington and Zeppelin were kind of forming their genres at the time, so they were zeitgeisty then. We don’t see them as pop now, I’d agree, but isn’t that somewhat retrospective? I know real jazz fans (whatever that may mean) thought Ellington was a sell out at the time.

  45. Ellington was too musically serious, basically, to be remembered as poop. Of course the Beatles were pretty darn musically serious, but they were pared down enough to blend in with other radio music of the era. Really not the case for Zeppelin or Ellington, I feel, but Kanye is actually iffy. He really is more talented than Will I.M., but they’re not nhard to hear in immediate succession on the air. Less true for Will I.M. and thuggier stuff like maybe Rick Ross or Flocka, or funkier stuff like Drake or Kenrick Lamar.

  47. I think the erasure of past pops popness is actually a really important way that authenticity claims in music get constructed. Bill Monroe did a lot of gimmicky stuff to get radioplay when he was getting radioplay. Elvis and rockabilly were absolutely sold out pop in their time; big band swing was decried as sell out pop, etc. etc. Eventually, though, as they stop being commercial phenomena the fact that they were originally commercial gets forgotten, and they become mineable for, as subdee says, other cultural markers.

  48. Hey, I said that! About the genre markers. Subdee agreed with me.

    Pop, perhaps, is about releasing claims to authenticity, I agree. But that isn’t always constructed in hindsight. Elvis was actually considered quite edgy at the time, as everyone knows, and it’s a lot about how he constructed authenticity vis-a-vis blackness, which white musicians have been doing ever since. Bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys had a much looser grip on authenticity, and that makes them more pop, though not less talented than Elvis or Jimmy Page or whatever.

  49. Right…Elvis and Jimmy Page were authentic, because they were pretending to be black, but the Beatles were less authentic, because they were pretending to be middle-class.

    Which is really bizarre…but I agree it works how it works, and that the Beatles are therefore more pop than the other two.

  50. It makes me wonder if there’s anything other than bourgeois-ness that makes something pop, or anything besides class appropriation that makes something high art. Probably not, if those categories only exist under capitalism. But there can be puritanism and decadence in any art matrix, which is really the more universal duality perhaps.

  52. Being about sex makes something pop. 90% of pop songs are about fucking. There’s a particular set of emotions, and mindset that prioritizes the present over the past or the future, associated with pop. I don’t think “bourgeois-ness” enters in.

  53. But Jump blues about sex aren’t pop songs now, right? And Sunshine on My Shoulder or Rainy Days and Monday or Surfin USA are pop,and none of those are about sex.

    I think like any genre there are a mix of markers, which can include content but are also importantly about audience and relationship to other genres. Perceived authenticity, which has to do with class in some ways, is definitely part of it.

  55. Well, Robert Plant wasn’t pretending to be anything besides shirtless and hot. (Man, I could watch young Robert Plant sing all damn day and never tire of it. That VOICE.) I think he was pretty much the first iconic sex god with no shirt and long hair.

    For my pop video contribution, I present Leonard Nemoy and the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. I don’t think it’s about sex, and please don’t disabuse of me of this notion. My brain can’t handle it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC73PHdQX04

  56. I love Robert Plant’s singing, and definitely prefer it to his sources like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson and so forth. And Zeppelin’s relationship to those sources is somewhat sideways — they’re not flat out imitating like the (especially early) Rolling Stones. But…they’re definitely getting authenticity from the reference to black sources, and are so mimicking blackness in some ways (Anthony Heilbut talks some about how mimicking is a major artistic resource within gospel, and I think that’s true of popular music more broadly.)

  59. I guess I always think of folk revival as being as much a part of Zeppelin as the blues stuff. Around here, authentic folk was mostly played by geezers in coveralls and old ladies in gingham with those god-awful horn-rimmed glasses. (Kind of fun to think about Zeppelin in gingham.)

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