Indie Fantasy
With Fantasy Football a long ways away, and with Fantasy everything else sucking, we have created the obvious next step in "fantasy gaming"…. Fantasy Indie Rock.
Is there any better way to monitor the commodity that has become "indie" than by drafting artists as properties and tallying points? I don't think so. It's a simple formula: Their name gets mentioned on Pitchfork or Stereogum news, you get a point. Simple as that.
So me, Curran, Kenny, Matt and Rob sat down and did our inaugural "Indie Rock Draft" this week, and began tallying points. The scoreboard is on a Google cloud spreadsheet so everyone can make changes and update their rosters as need be.
I'll keep you updated on it's progress, but for your enjoyment (and so I can tag the shit out of this post), here's how the draft went (please note, Matt came late):
Curran Kanye West
Kenny Wilco
Rob Animal Collective
Brian Colin Meloy
Brian M.I.A.
Rob Lily Allen
Kenny Radiohead
Curran The Decemberists
Curran Neko Case
Kenny U2
Kroll Conor Oberst
Rob Girltalk
Brian Death Cab For Cutie
Brian Peter, Bjorn & John
Rob Sigur Ros
Kroll Ladyhawke
Kenny Andrew Bird
Curran Grizzly Bear
Curran Jane's Addiction
Kenny Bruce Springsteen
Matt Jesus Lizard
Rob Dangermouse
Brian No Age
Supplemental Draft
Matt Crystal Stilts
Matt Pains of Being Pure At Heart
The strategies were interesting… do you draft small-time bands with their SXSW stock rising, do you try to take a big guess on who's going to be announced at Lollapalooza (or the billion of other festivals doing press releases), do you risk taking the frontman of a band in the hopes you can double-up on points for their solo AND group material, or pick-up a producer who has his hands in a LOT of recordings but sometimes isn't mentioned in shorter news articles. Ohhhh, strategery.
If you're curious, here are the top-5 scorers as of yesterday, 3/25:
1. Animal Collective – 6
2. Dinosaur Jr – 5
3. Death Cab For Cutie (tie) – 4
3. Passion Pit (tie) – 4
5. *13 bands tied with 3 points each*… Beach House, Billy Corrigan, Black Lips, Conor Oberst, Department of Eagles, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Jimmy Chamberlin, Kanye West, No Age, Soundgarden, Vivian Girls, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3 Comments	| culture, entertainment, football, Indie, Music, Sports	| Tagged: Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Beach House, Billy Corrigan, Bjorn & John, Black Lips, Bruce Springsteen, Colin Meloy, Conor Oberst, Crystal Stilts, Dangermouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Department of Eagles, Dirty Projectors, fantasy, fantasy sports, Girltalk, Grizzly Bear, Indie, indie rock, Jane's Addiction, Jesus Lizard, Jimmy Chamberlin, Kanye West, Ladyhawke, Lily Allen, lollapalooza, M.I.A., Music, Neko Case, No Age, Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Peter, pitchfork, Pitchfork Music Festival, Radiohead, Rock, Sigur Rós, Soundgarden, stereogum, The Decemberists, U2, Vivian Girls, Wilco, Yeah Yeah Yeahs	| Permalink
Coldplay: Gonna Say Somethin'
First things first, I must admit I really like Coldplay. Dammit. It's true. Perhaps this is why I'm about to be hard on them.
Remember when Coldplay was the sleepy London band that gladly accepted the "music for bedwetters" tag, and wrote obtuse guitar-led ballads and strolled on the beach in slow-motion at dawn? I miss that band. From what I've heard of the new leaked album, that band is completely and totally gone.
Chris Martin and crew have, in four albums within a decade, attempted to cultivate the sort of grand sound and message that U2 worked nearly three times longer to cultivate, and even now U2's preaching still seems like a fight for relevancy. I'm not saying setting your sights on being the next U2 is a bad idea–I can't think of another band that's stayed more-or-less "important" for as long as they have.
To me, Coldplay's current trajectory seems baffling. With an upcoming double-named LP like Viva La Vida or Death and all His Friends, you know they're aiming for a "statement" album, and god bless 'em for giving it a go.
If the opening single, "Violet Hill", is anything to judge by, the upcoming album is a soaring political and spiritual (and self-deifying) CD that forgoes anything you might have liked about 2000 A.D. Coldplay. For a band whose debut album, Parachutes, featured 10 tracks of which only three tracks had more than one-word titles and none of which veered away from troubled love-drunk troubadour territory, this is an suspect undertaking.
The thing that irks me the most is that I don't know why Coldplay feels it's their place to produce some sort of politically, socially, and spiritually conscious album. Have they discovered something since the disappointing X&Y that caused a revelation about modern times?
2000's Parachutes rolled in with sweet guitar strum and nondescript lovelorness, and the impressive Rush of Blood to the Head followed in 2002. Hmm, maybe at that point, 2002, with 9/11 and London Subway Bombing memories still raw, it would've been a good time to say something about something. No dice. Coldplay upped the bombast, but the lyrics still wallowed in romantic vagaries and abstract forlornness. Though, now that I think about it, Martin seemed very concerned with Free Trade at that point. Hey, what happened to that?
So. Can stadium-filling bands make serious statements? Yes. They Can. Do stadium-filling bands really make a difference? I don't think so. They can succeed in looking serious, but then your encore is "Yellow" and then it all goes to shit.
Now that I've lambasted a band whose music I may or may not have used for College-era seduction purposes, we'll have to sit back and see. Maybe they'll pull it off. Maybe Coldplay will have a seat at the G8 convention. Maybe people buying 80$ arena seats will absorb whatever message of universality and global consciousness Martin is communicating. That would be an incredible and wonderful thing, and I will gratefully write an adoring and redeeming retraction.
P.S. "Life in Technicolor" sounds fucking great.
3 Comments	| Music, music reviews, Social Commentary, tangents	| Tagged: Chris Martin, Coldplay, U2	| Permalink