[lbo-talk] getting back to criticism

pandora akkiraz markanarch at gmail.com
Fri Dec 10 16:29:39 PST 2010


agree with you about NMH -- that voice is irritating, but it suits the Christo-folk sound that US kids love to get behind. Strange that better projects of the Elephant 6 collective/label did not initially receive the attention they deserved.

Loveless is a justified classic. Listen to the album on different formats, and with headphones, and with a different phase relationship to the speakers (move yr head side to side: it's an old trick Shields probably learned from La Monte Young's drone signals), and you'll hear why.

Guitars had simply never sounded that way before (and remarkably few bands have been able to capture since (maybe loveliescrushing), even their many pale imitators: just YouTube "getting MBV sound")-- most were created using drone strings and slight alternative tunings (i.e. one or two strings, unusual rotovibe effects and a jazzmaster tremolo arm, opening up a new sonic universe through washes of reverse delay), combined with guitar synth swirls and melodies. Earlier MBV had also broken new ground (the pure pop fuzz tones of the early eps), so Loveless comes as an additional revelation/revolution in sound.

Kevin Shields' attention to the production -- all reproduced and indeed superb live, though difficult to capture on live bootlegs because of the intense volume -- was rewarded with a unique and lasting recording (and despite the silly myths created about it): so many bands have taken one or two elements of it. They provided, alone with Dinosaur's You're Living All Over Me LP and Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, some of the first guitar parts people of my generation learned to sing (we wanted to move far away from the singer-songwriter folk alternative to synth-pop and a sound that captured our withdrawal from Thatcher's children and the yuppie branding of rock music). The very fact that MBV could get a song like 'To Here Knows When' into the British top 40 -- when it sounds, according to the band, like a broken washing machine, and has near-indecipherable lyrics -- was a breakthrough.

Could you be more specific about what it is you appear to dislike? if you have musical talents, sit down and try to play 'What you want', then get back to us.

On 10 December 2010 17:25, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 7:37 AM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> > At 12:22 PM 12/10/2010, Alan Rudy wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Can anyone explain some of why it is that people love Neutral Milk
> Hotel's
> >> CD, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?
> >
> >
> > I think it's a New York thing. I don't get it either.
> >
>
> Wasn't NMH the original Pitchfork band? It's the absolute epitome of a
> certain kind of 1990s indie.
>
> Mike Beggs
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

--

In tyrannos



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