Hardcore for Nerds

“

On whether the current roster bears similarities to those old bluesmen:

I think a lot. Especially someone like Wavves. He’s just real good at causing incidents.

—

label profile: fat possum records at 17 dots by desnoise

Interesting reminder that the WavvesBro attitudes aren’t necessarily anything new, and that hyperventilating medium of their transmission is perhaps also not much more than a technological updating of the old message.

Incidentally, I first knew about this label - via Epitaph, who “rescued Fat Possum from bankruptcy” in 1996 - through the Black Keys and Junior Kimbrough, but now I’m kinda interested in this new band of theirs Yuck. They’re from Yurip*, specifically London, and the comparisons tend to be with Dinosaur Jr, but I think should also include Male Bonding.

*No snark, but does the reference to “mostly European-descended” label owners just mean ‘white’? In contrast to mostly ‘African-descended’ early blues and rock musicians? I have trouble thinking of my continent in terms of race unless I’m dealing with history prior to 1800 (after which, of course, Europeans were still mostly white, but so were many Americans and Australians)

blues wavves male bonding uk punk pop dinosaur jr

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» Yr Not Punk And I'm Telling Everyone: You Wrote It, You Watch It

leoncrawl:

thereal90s:

Hi guys! So we’re back. I feel like we stopped posting after this weird dude Leon starting dissing us on the internet. He was all “Wavves is better than your blog!!!” or something and then we got heated about it (this all happened via internet btw). That’s not actually why we didn’t update though. I think it more had to do with me moving to LA, and then moving back, and then we got busy doing actual job-work.

We’re still busy doing actual job-work but also, I love doing this blog and I LOVE doing it with Elizabeth. Isn’t she cole-slawsome?

I also wanted to talk about this TV show from the 90s which was such a weird idea. It starred The State before they were “The State” and also Jon Stewart. I guess the premise was that people wrote things and sent them in (it was on MTV) and this cast of sketch comedians would perform them. It wasn’t good.

BUT, how cool is it that MTV used to do shit like this? MTV went like this: awesome (80s), fun (late 80s), slightly cool and experimental (early 90s), embarrassing but also cool (mid 90s), not cool to admit you watched it but you still did (late 90s), totally lame but borderline ironic or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify watching shows like The Hills (the rest of my life).

Anyway, I know I’m not “proving a point” or “opening up the floodgates for an intellectual discussion” but merely “taking a trip down memory lane” and having a “remember when” moment (lowest form of communication) and the reason why I’m using so many “Chris Farley” quotations finger marks like the “in a van down by the river” guy is because this is why I was “attacked” for having this fun 90s blog in the first place.

So if you don’t like the 90s and you don’t like lists (Leon and other boring people) please don’t submit to our You Wrote It, We’ll Blog It contest. This is where you write a list of the things you loved in the 90s, email it to me and I’ll post it.

Fun? Yes. Byeeeeeeeeeee,

xoxLesley

“First of all…this is so patriarchal. Telling girls “this has to stop”?!” Ahahahahaha… oh, feminism - the radical/fundamental answer to so many social injustices and the easiest way to stop ‘guys’ from being mean to you.

And at least they recognise there’s no “such thing as ‘The Real 90s’.” Indeed, in addition to all the fun, there’s probably a lot of interesting stuff to be found here about the history of memory. Maybe even some Foucault. Nostalgia as a disease, an ailment; since the “gendered phrase” of “romanticization” is already objected to, how about medicalization of the pain of the past?

“But what I definitely can’t abide is guys’ dismissive attitude towards our nostalgia and what it means.” An important part of nostalgia is the dismissal of it, because otherwise no-one would do anything truly new. And no-one would learn anything from history, because it would have no meaning to the present, only to itself, trapped in amber.

90s irony NO PAST wavves

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Living in the Age of Art vs Content @ MBV

Funnily enough, it didn’t quite register with me that this picture (filename: “wavvvvvvvves”) was a photocollage when I saw it first. Neue Sachlichkeit, indeed.

It will be interesting to see the Pitchfork-cum-Tumblr-sphere reaction when it comes, but the original piece is indeed worth reading. The art/content distinction is somewhat unsophisticated, especially since there’s no explanation of what ‘art’ is intended to define, while ‘content’ can mean substance as opposed to style, and thus an integral piece of art, instead of the instrumental product highlighted here. I also get the academic feeling: what would the Frankfurt School say? At one level, the contemporary discourse is a lot about the reproduction of art (downloading, and the consequent funding difficulties) and the creation of content (to be disseminated through the internet and, more specifically and narrowly, the blogosphere) whereas it should instead be the creation of art and the reproduction, qua product, of content. On the other hand, we’re smarter/older than that now, and there’s an inherent, valuable, and critical scepticism about art/content and its meaning now; so that while I can accept much of what the article says as true, it doesn’t much bother me, because it worries about meanings and assumptions long gone out of date. It also mirrors in its concerns the (reflexively optimistic) indie triumphalism of Eric Harvey’s Sonic Youth/Albini article for Pitchfork, which concludes:

“Perhaps more importantly, though, I think this minor online kerfuffle, as blown out of proportion as it is, serves only as evidence for a broader cultural shift. The fact that Albini’s ideas— as idealistic and inherently positive as they are— seem somewhat archaic in 2010 highlights that the now-three-decade reign of the punk-derived indie ideology doesn’t necessarily resonate with that many of us anymore, and is perhaps fading away for good.”

Fuck off, punk’s not nearly dead - and indie certainly hasn’t killed it, but there is a sort of zombie-like necrotization of the original ideals of rebellion, irony and revolution in the current edifices of indie rock such as Wavves or Arcade Fire, neither of which produce real art nor effective content: and therein is the rub - what is this mythical ‘art’ that transcends commercial manipulation or anti-commercial intransigence? Is it not in the very ‘content’ that the moderns and the hipsterphobes disdain to touch, to absorb, and critique?

wavves indie punk authenticism art

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www.shaveeverywhere.com

wavves men's lib like old spice guy but non-ironic

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the new arcade fire record

pitchforkreviewsreviews:

[…]

Nathan understands this too — that’s why he keeps insisting that he’s dumb. HE WANTS TO APPEAR UNWITTING, but like between me and you, i have never met an actual dumb person who understands and readily admits that THEY ARE DUMB. think about all the dumb people you know — they think they’re bright right? or at least competent. that’s part of what makes them dumb. saying that you are dumb means recognizing that there is a level of cognizance that you can’t reach, and that recognition itself is out of the conceptual grasp of a genuine idiot. if you listen to wavves, you knew this already. Nathan surrounds himself on stage with idiots and screams in your ear all day that he’s an idiot, but he’s not, and pardon the cliche but that’s his gift and his curse, and it’s what makes him really good and prevents him from being great in the way he envisions. does that all make sense?

[…]

I never thought to consider Nathan Williams as a Zen monk - or lunatic - before, but this does make sense. To recognise dumbness is to have a level of cognizance that itself precludes dumbness, so therefore he’s showing us that thought is an inescapable part of life, and that stupidity cannot exist without knowingness. But if being wholly aware of that is nirvana, it would be pure nihilism and seeking after detachment to live like that, so we have to engage with samsara and the other side of having thoughts and not avoiding them, hence:

“if it engages with you negatively and makes you WANT to see through it and call him on it, that’s better than nothing. so first, for this, i appreciate The Suburbs. there’s something in it to talk about. but no 24-year-old or 54-year-old or 104-year-old is gonna have the meaning of life, or the accurate and undeniable definition of the contemporary condition, much less put it on their record, and almost anyone who thinks they can ends up making a fool out of themselves”

Yet while it’s still true that “YOU CAN’T SAY YOU ARE MAKING A GENERATION- OR GENRE-DEFINING STATEMENT”, you’re getting hung up on the idea of unwittingness and of the idea of letting it take its course, when if we don’t engage with them they won’t happen, e.g.

“The Suburbs is a pretty good record if you can get past the pomposity […] the disdain for kids figuring themselves and their tastes out in a way that reminds me of how nick sylvester frames hipster runoff in his piece on animal collective while simultaneously purporting to represent ‘the kids’, the self-congratulatory ludditism […]”

when Hipster Runoff already made the central point you’re making with his take on “meaningful-core”, because like “genre-defining”, how can it be meaningful if that’s what it sets out to do, or is how it is received right away? But it doesn’t work just to know that, because otherwise nothing would have any meaning and all art would just be straight transcription, not unlike what you say here about (early) Bob Dylan and Lil Wayne:

“i think, and you may disagree and say i’m naive, but these are two people who DO NOT GET why people are ascribing grand meaning to their work and don’t trust anyone that does and thinks they’re missing “the point”, which is that there is no POINT, the music is a direct translation of their experience”

except that there’s no such thing as a “direct translation” when it comes to experience, on the one side, and art, on the other, and so the village is saved when it comes to making music with meaning but without meaningfulness (although really there’s no difference, we have to think but we can’t think at the same time.)

bonus explanation: To make omelettes you have to break eggs, and to make meaning you have to shatter the peace of silence, which is what you get when you block out Hipster Runoff or The Suburbs, or otherwise try and avoid cynicism or “UNCOOLNESS”.

buddhism zen wavves arcade fire

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» Pitchfork: Why We Fight #6 - Come Up to the Front of the Class

“Sometimes the tools that work for back-of-the-room sniping— diffidence, irony, not-giving-a-shit— fall apart when they’re asked to take charge of something. Parts of Wavves’ new album feel as if he got called out like that— “you wanna come up front and teach?”— and he’s upped the ante by saying fine then: send me to the principal’s office, you think I care?”

The problem with this is being another kid in the class watching this going on, the posturing and the oppositional defiance which you know can’t go anywhere constructive - neither side is going to win - and is just another tired rehash of a conflict engendered by the structural problems of schooling and authority (okay, maybe you don’t quite know that part, in specific terms, until college). Even if you don’t particularly want to learn, it’s a tiresome and uncomfortable distraction which whittles away at your faith in the innate goodness or sense of human beings. Just saying.

I guess the bigger problem is using a school situation to explain comparatively “serious” and “adult” things (I know we’re talking about Wavves, and Best Coast, here, but still) when it’s a severely limited and distorted version of the adult world, with vastly reduced personal and intellectual freedoms - compared, that is, to civic and not to corporate society. Read more here (personally, my own schooling wasn’t all that bad, or that long ago either).

“One difference, I suppose, is that Bragg often wound up doing what academics would call “problematizing” his subject matter: taking something mundane and poking at the conflicts and confusions inside it. Titus Andronicus songs seem to be all about the desire for the opposite— getting over complexity and confusion and finding a clear enemy to be fought. Which is more like the kid who wants to sit in the front seats and challenge the teacher on everything in the lesson plan.”

There’s more I want to say about, well, everything said here about Titus Andronicus (which I think is very profound, and a little worrying, but not irrevocably so). I’ll just stick to that classroom metaphor - “problematizing” being another term that had to wait for college. What if I wanted to sit in the second or third row from the front, and make contributions when I felt they really needed to be made? How punk am I now?

wavves titus andronicus punk

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“ I’m not a trendy asshole
I do what I want
I do what I feel like
I’m not a trendy asshole
I don’t give a fuck if it’s good enough for you
Cause I’m alive

— The Offspring - ‘Smash’

90s offspring punk wavves

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sucker with no self-expression:

“Instead let’s talk about the persona of Nathan Williams, a 24-year-old man whose lyrics move from teenage fantasy (“you’re never gonna stop me!”) to pre-teen rebellion (“I could say I’m sorry… but it wouldn’t mean shit!”) to a kind of infantile neediness (“I never wanna leave home, Everything in the back of my brain/ told me that I would be sick/ when I’m out there”). These are tough themes to pull off but they’ve been pulled off before, if only because there’s a difference between directness and artlessness. There’s also a difference between self-loathing, which Williams thinks he’s up to, versus self-pity, which is all I’m hearing. Here is a 24-year-old man who sings with a straight face, “Misery, will you comfort me in my time of need?” A 24-year-old man who fundamentally misunderstands what made fellow lowlife Kurt Cobain so great — not the navel-gazing, but the umbilical noose.”

—

Wavves: Just a Sucker with No Self-Esteem | Riff City | THIRTEEN

Nick Sylvester, back to writing about music. We agree about Wavves.

(via perpetua)

What’s being said here is a lot of what I was trying to say about a month ago when I got upset that the late Jay Reatard’s backing band had become the latest Wavves lineup. Sylvester is nailing the exact reason why I felt like Nathan Williams didn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Jay Reatard (even if I thought Reatard was, in his own way, just as much of an asshole as Williams is).

(via andrewtsks)

It took me a moment or two to remember who Nick Sylvester was - among other things, the author of this piece about Hipster Runoff and that ‘Animal Collective is a band created by/for/on the internet’ post, which I thought was a rather naive attack on cynicism (and irony). Although I dislike Wavves as well, this appears to fall into the same pattern.

At first, it’s not that different from what I or probably a lot of other naysayers would say about Wavves - obligatory check on the hubris of “his Nevermind” - but then almost with admirable honesty he switches to the straight ad hominem attack: “My guess is you don’t want to be dragged through the musicological reasons why I find these songs so unsatisfying, how they’re lacking in anything that remotely resembles swagger … Instead let’s talk about the persona of Nathan Williams.” Through the lyrics, and through some of the reported stage presentation, his persona is something that makes me uncomfortable - but I don’t see why or how one could usefully separate that from the music itself (which doesn’t exist, per se). Otherwise you really are dancing about the architecture.

That said - that being, that most of the piece is rendered redundant and is a flawed repetition of the usual, valid criticisms of Wavves - the comparison to Smash is an interesting one, especially as it comes off in its entirety as “less irksome” than “William’s borrowed nostalgia.” In part that’s an argument from the authenticity of the past - “borrowed nostalgia” seems tautological if I’m getting the sense correctly here - but mostly I’d agree that the “progressions are smarter, the lyrics are wryer”. That “the record itself was better produced, which is supposed to be Wavves’ ace in the hole here”, I’m not sure about. Thom Wilson’s production work on the Offspring’s Smash and Ignition is indeed very good, but for punk records (in terms of style as much as standards) and not the polished, 00s AnCo indie rock that King of the Beach largely aspires to when it’s not borrowing nostalgia for grunge riffs. It is better produced than Smash, but for the wrong genre to make comparisons with.

It’s entirely true that ‘Self Esteem’ apes ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ something awful, and it’s all the better for it. The mid-90s punk explosion was not meant to be a hotbed of originality - Green Day and Rancid, still two of my favourite punk bands, are proof enough of that - in terms of sound, if not in feeling and expression. However, in picking the Wavves-like line “I’m just a sucker with no self-esteem” for the title, he misses out on the irony indicated by the previous one “I may be dumb, but I’m not a dweeb”, which separates it out from the self-pitying lyricism of Mr. Williams.

90s offspring punk wavves

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But isn’t that sometimes part of the sexist attitude? That female artists are expected to be better singers than male ones? ‘Not just a pretty voice’, although at least that is integral to the artistic process.

And of course, each album ultimately stands or falls on its own, more or less. I was just playing with the fact that the two are considered together, and there are presumably a lot of people who like both records (and probably quite a few who strongly dislike both). Sometimes distractions are interesting.

best coast wavves

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