Ideas for Dozens (tiny)

I’m always surprised that I’m not bored by The Acorn. At first listen, their songs seem so simple and ‘traditional’. I don’t know what it is exactly that differentiates them from so many other bands that kind of sound like this, but there’s just something spellbinding about their songs to me. Kinda like #Fleet-Foxes — I’m not necessarily into this genre, but these songs just feel really good.

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This is definitely the Cut Copy song I can most get behind. It’s an interesting melding of #Clap-Your-Hands-Say-Yeah and classic #New-Order house. Jangly acoustic guitars float over rich bouncing bass lines. The drums alternate between a disco-y high-hat/snare alternation and a more conventional indie beat. Nasal affected vocals transform into vocoder. It’s an interesting blend of styles and this song shows it at its most effective.

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There’s a big contrast between this “new lo-fi” stuff and the original 90s sound it’s aping that I haven’t heard anyone point out yet: digital lo-fi sounds are worlds apart from analog ones. Where cheap tape recordings have a warmth to their distortion, this digital stuff sounds super bright to the point of being grating. In comparison, classic #Bakesale era #Sebadoh feels like a bath of warm butter. Even the famously harsh #New-Day-Rising by #Husker-Du sounds soft and fuzzy. Add the contemporary dynamic-squashing mastering that this stuff undergoes and you start to hear how far apart it stands even from the recordings that most inspired it.

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I just watched an MTV News report on the rise of lo-fi music: http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/34249893 in which #Times-New-Viking featured prominently along with #No-Age. No Age have been highly buzzful lately and I’ve really been trying to get on board, but I haven’t quite managed to succeed. I have to agree with Fluxblog: http://www.fluxblog.org/2008/05/wash-away-what-we-create.html Their songs are just a little too generically “90s teen punk” for me. The 90s retro movement that Fluxblog’s harping on definitely bothers me about it as well. While this song surely falls into that same genre trap, it has a stronger sense of pop drama. The way the high guitar follows the girl’s voice, reinforcing the melody, the more laid back beat, and the slightly darker more complicated harmony all make for a more emotionally evocative effect than any No Age I’ve heard. This is starting to get into old school #Sleater-Kinney territory, which is a rich vein of influence that wasn’t quite as brutally strip-mined as the main artery of the 90s “lo-fi” cliche.

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I always used to think that the “Death From Above” in this song’s title was a band name; it was a hipster offer: “let’s have sex and listen to cool music”. But now I’m starting to wonder if “death from above” doesn’t have the more conventional meaning of bombs falling onto your house.

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Rendering this dark, haunting #Grizzly-Bear song in neon plastic synth colors ironically makes it sound like #The-Knife after which it is almost certainly not named.

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