i hate the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first album, 'Fever to Tell.' Hate it. i hate the universally lauded and ubiquitous single 'maps' from that disgusting obnoxious adolescent mess of an album too. Hate it. go ahead. crucify me. i dare you. i dare anyone out there reading this to email me with a convincing, well worded argument as to why that is a good song. something that goes beyond the stock explanation i've heard "uh....its just.....so....good, man."
pretty confident
for a guy who knows no one is reading this...
that said, i tried to approach 'show your bones' with some objectivity. i swear i did. and you know what i found, much to my surprise? i really like this album. its got everything the first album lacked that made me hate it: melody, structure, and some vocal restraint from karen O, to name a few. a note to all aspiring singers out there: screeching like a banshee is not an effective device if you use it on every fucking song. seems self-explanatory to me, but obviously no one let karen know that before 'fever to tell.'
so i got exactly halfway through this album, and i was really digging on the melodies and the guitar riffs, when i found an article in the Philly Inquirer (that i'm not going to link to because its password protected. i'll paste excerpts though. don't you fear). the article is a review/interview/preview of a coming show. and right off the bat i knew we were on shaky ground when the article quoted O as saying "We wanted to have a confrontational band that attacked complacency." i thought okay, most artists that attack complacency just do it, they don't set out to do it. they don't make plans and strategize, they just do what comes naturally. and if people catch on, they catch on. right? but no big deal. i dig counterculture. damn the man. power to the people. the revolution will not be televised. etc, etc.
then i kept reading
"...gave way to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, after, as Zinner puts it, the duo realized that they wanted to be in a "sleazy and sexy" avant-garage band.
"One of my favorite things is matching pop with subversion," O says. "I like sucker-punching the audience, giving them what they want, in deadly doses."
The combination of O's charismatic stage presence - she's as likely to whip a crowd into a lather by spitting beer on it as threatening to swallow a microphone whole, or simply wagging her index finger - with the galvanic swagger of Zinner's crunching power chords quickly made the band an underground and critical sensation."
now hold the fuck on just one goddamn minute
are you serious?
are you being cute?
are you being funny?
the slim possibility that she's trying to be ironic was the only thing that kept me from putting my fist through the monitor in the exact spot where the picture of the trio decked out in tragically mod black and white clothes hovered, mocking me.
but then i thought about the bulk of this album and realized she was dead serious. listen to it. its a complete cop out. they took what made 'maps' popular and applied it to an entire album. and then had the balls to basically admit it.
congratufuckinglations yeah yeah yeahs, you are the WORST example of an overhyped sell out indie band since the neopunk movement started. you not only sold out. you SET OUT to sell out. you started a band because you thought it'd be cool to be "subversive" and then cashed in on your MADE UP persona, and went soft to sell records.
jesus
i'm so mad
my head is spinning
this is EXACTLY the kind of shit i was talking about in my conor oberst rant. these fake motherfuckers get up on stage and pretend to be something they're not and have the FUCKING AUDACITY to act like there is artistic merit in it. britney spears is an entertainer (at least she used to be). she has no illusions about herself. she gets up on stage and lip syncs and dances, because it gets people off and it makes her rich. good for her. she doesn't pretend she's "subversive" to sell records. she doesn't write songs about nothing and then act like she's the smartest songwriter since john lennon.
that's capitalism
that's pure
that's beautiful
i can respect that
i might not like it
but i respect it
not these backdoor, all for show, bullshit propaganda campaigns people like the yeah yeah yeahs run to sell records. exploiting a legitimate underground music scene to get famous. spit beer on the crowd? are you kidding me? spit beer on me bitch you won't have to pretend to swallow the mic cause i'll shove it down your fucking throat. do they have ANY IDEA what the progenitors of the legacy they are exploiting would do to them if they had pulled this poseur shit back in the day? can you imagine what gg allin or johnny rotten would have even said, much less done, if they had come face to face with this band? those guys didn't go to oberlin, or nyu film school. they didnt have the benefit of thirty years of honest (if insane) people doing what they were trying to do, only better.
let me explain something
that should be pretty fucking obvious
being deliberately "subversive" in a thinly veiled attempt to sell records IS THE COMPLETE FUCKING POLOAR OPPOSITE OF ACTUALLY BEING SUBVERSIVE YOU DUMB LITTLE BRATS.
attack complacency?
YOUR ENTIRE CAREER IS A METAPHOR FOR COMPLACENCY
neopunk
makes me
fucking
sick
the opening line of the Rolling Stone review that goes on to eat out this band's collective asshole with praise: "This is an underground-purist alert"
no fucking shit
pretty confident
for a guy who knows no one is reading this...
that said, i tried to approach 'show your bones' with some objectivity. i swear i did. and you know what i found, much to my surprise? i really like this album. its got everything the first album lacked that made me hate it: melody, structure, and some vocal restraint from karen O, to name a few. a note to all aspiring singers out there: screeching like a banshee is not an effective device if you use it on every fucking song. seems self-explanatory to me, but obviously no one let karen know that before 'fever to tell.'
so i got exactly halfway through this album, and i was really digging on the melodies and the guitar riffs, when i found an article in the Philly Inquirer (that i'm not going to link to because its password protected. i'll paste excerpts though. don't you fear). the article is a review/interview/preview of a coming show. and right off the bat i knew we were on shaky ground when the article quoted O as saying "We wanted to have a confrontational band that attacked complacency." i thought okay, most artists that attack complacency just do it, they don't set out to do it. they don't make plans and strategize, they just do what comes naturally. and if people catch on, they catch on. right? but no big deal. i dig counterculture. damn the man. power to the people. the revolution will not be televised. etc, etc.
then i kept reading
"...gave way to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, after, as Zinner puts it, the duo realized that they wanted to be in a "sleazy and sexy" avant-garage band.
"One of my favorite things is matching pop with subversion," O says. "I like sucker-punching the audience, giving them what they want, in deadly doses."
The combination of O's charismatic stage presence - she's as likely to whip a crowd into a lather by spitting beer on it as threatening to swallow a microphone whole, or simply wagging her index finger - with the galvanic swagger of Zinner's crunching power chords quickly made the band an underground and critical sensation."
now hold the fuck on just one goddamn minute
are you serious?
are you being cute?
are you being funny?
the slim possibility that she's trying to be ironic was the only thing that kept me from putting my fist through the monitor in the exact spot where the picture of the trio decked out in tragically mod black and white clothes hovered, mocking me.
but then i thought about the bulk of this album and realized she was dead serious. listen to it. its a complete cop out. they took what made 'maps' popular and applied it to an entire album. and then had the balls to basically admit it.
congratufuckinglations yeah yeah yeahs, you are the WORST example of an overhyped sell out indie band since the neopunk movement started. you not only sold out. you SET OUT to sell out. you started a band because you thought it'd be cool to be "subversive" and then cashed in on your MADE UP persona, and went soft to sell records.
jesus
i'm so mad
my head is spinning
this is EXACTLY the kind of shit i was talking about in my conor oberst rant. these fake motherfuckers get up on stage and pretend to be something they're not and have the FUCKING AUDACITY to act like there is artistic merit in it. britney spears is an entertainer (at least she used to be). she has no illusions about herself. she gets up on stage and lip syncs and dances, because it gets people off and it makes her rich. good for her. she doesn't pretend she's "subversive" to sell records. she doesn't write songs about nothing and then act like she's the smartest songwriter since john lennon.
that's capitalism
that's pure
that's beautiful
i can respect that
i might not like it
but i respect it
not these backdoor, all for show, bullshit propaganda campaigns people like the yeah yeah yeahs run to sell records. exploiting a legitimate underground music scene to get famous. spit beer on the crowd? are you kidding me? spit beer on me bitch you won't have to pretend to swallow the mic cause i'll shove it down your fucking throat. do they have ANY IDEA what the progenitors of the legacy they are exploiting would do to them if they had pulled this poseur shit back in the day? can you imagine what gg allin or johnny rotten would have even said, much less done, if they had come face to face with this band? those guys didn't go to oberlin, or nyu film school. they didnt have the benefit of thirty years of honest (if insane) people doing what they were trying to do, only better.
let me explain something
that should be pretty fucking obvious
being deliberately "subversive" in a thinly veiled attempt to sell records IS THE COMPLETE FUCKING POLOAR OPPOSITE OF ACTUALLY BEING SUBVERSIVE YOU DUMB LITTLE BRATS.
attack complacency?
YOUR ENTIRE CAREER IS A METAPHOR FOR COMPLACENCY
neopunk
makes me
fucking
sick
the opening line of the Rolling Stone review that goes on to eat out this band's collective asshole with praise: "This is an underground-purist alert"
no fucking shit