So, I wrote this thing defending Chill-wave, which is this sub-genre I actually care a lot about. If you’ve been reading the stuff I drop here that’s not about hip-hop–and even some of the hip-hop stuff–you’ve surely noticed a slow-rolling thesis/defense of New-Age music and this was a chance to sorta gel those ideas into something. Also, got to have fun dropping references to all the shit there’s really no other place to reference, you know, Mike & the Mechanics, Christopher Cross, and this amazing song you may recall from your childhood. I also couldn’t find a place to fit it into the article, but I encourage y’all to go read Carles of Hipster Runoff’s comments under Pareles’ inciting article. The secret about Carles is he’s one of the best indie music critics around right now.
”Glo-fi” or “chill-wave”, that sub-sub-sub genre of electronic indie pop, was kind of a big deal at SXSW this year. Well, as big of a deal as something solely focused on trying to sound like Christopher Cross on muscle relaxers can be in 2010 at a constantly internet-streaming, forever re-tweeted music festival. Big enough though that New York Times’ Jon Pareles dropped this awesomely brutal piece about why the scene is well, bullshit.
Pareles critiques chillwave’s formal elements, referring to its fuzzy grooves and gated drums as “annoyingly noncommittal”–”a hedged, hipster imitation of the pop [Chill-wavers are] not brash enough to make [themselves].” In short, chillwave sucks because it retrofits older, better music for younger, more ignorant, stuck-up weirdos and nerds. Sounds like the critique lobbed at every indie trend of the past decade.
Problem is, chillwave is the most interesting and vital, stupid indie trend in a minute, and in attacking it, Pareles fundamentally misreads chillwave’s influences and ignores its heady intentions. ’80s pop is everywhere–the sound chillwavers search out goes way beyond the Billboard charts of “the me decade.” It’s in Atari and Nintendo games. And Tangerine Dream’s sell-out, soundtrack period. CDs on the Wyndham label. And horror movies on VHS. It’s that “Happy Birthday To You” song that played at Chuck E. Cheese because the real “Happy Birthday” song is too expensive to license. Stuff even the most devout ’80s revivalists, from Lady Gaga to jj and everybody in between, wouldn’t deign use to spike their style…
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?
I like a lot of things about chillwave, from the actual music to the ideas behind, in, around, and through the music. I do not ignore the music’s heady intentions, and like you I LIKE ‘em. But I HAVE found that many people, friends of mine, with whom I try to share chillwave music with VOCALS…they can’t go there with me, they tune out.
So I think chillwave VOCALS are the thing a pop music critic can talk shit about, and the thing that lends the most credence to the Village Voice comment UNDER Carles’:
“Every generation is entitled to their own brand of trippy mystical/musical nostalgia, but it’s always a drug that only works on those with the same combo of youthful influences.”
Deee-lite was a group that had a lot of intellectual and art historical reasons for wanting to make their music out of sampledelic memory building blocks , but the fact that Lady Miss Kier could actually SING meant that enough people gave them their tracks the benefit of the doubt for their ideas to really reverberate in the culture.
I think the chillwave artists we have now still need great critics like you to explain their ideas to the world due to their neglect of vocals and lyrics and their preference for headiness over bass science…and that’s a shame when you look at rap music’s ability to explain itself and impose itself on the world because its favored musical elements are so gratifying to so many people as a constant daily soundtrack.
Johnny Sagan
26 Mar 10 at 10:28 pm
I like a lot of things about chillwave, from the actual music to the ideas behind, in, around, and through the music. I do not ignore the music’s heady intentions, and like you I LIKE ‘em. But I HAVE found that many people, friends of mine, with whom I try to share chillwave music with VOCALS…they can’t go there with me, they tune out.
So I think chillwave VOCALS are the thing a pop music critic can talk shit about, and the thing that lends the most credence to the Village Voice comment UNDER Carles’:
“Every generation is entitled to their own brand of trippy mystical/musical nostalgia, but it’s always a drug that only works on those with the same combo of youthful influences.”
Deee-lite! was a group that had a lot of intellectual and art historical reasons for wanting to make their music out of sampledelic memory building blocks , but the fact that Lady Miss Kier could actually SING meant that enough people gave them and their tracks the benefit of the doubt for their ideas to really reverberate in the culture.
I think the chillwave artists we have now still need great critics like you to explain their ideas to the world due to their neglect of vocals and lyrics and their preference for headiness over bass science…and that’s a shame when you look at rap music’s ability to explain itself and impose itself on the world because its favored musical elements are so gratifying to so many people as a constant daily soundtrack.
Johnny Sagan
26 Mar 10 at 10:31 pm
Oh shit, sorry to have two versions of this comment up here…number two is slightly revised. On the old blog you could delete fucked-up comments…
Johnny Sagan
26 Mar 10 at 10:32 pm
I enjoyed the article, but I jsut really want to agree about Charles and Hipster Runoff. The actual posts about music on the site are normally pretty great, once you get used to the writing style.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
27 Mar 10 at 2:45 am
Johnny-
Sorry about the no deleting option, I’ll do that for you. Maybe there’s something I can change? This Wordpress shit still confuses me.
Dee-lite is a good example, or maybe recently, Hercules and Love Affair? And yeah, these guys can’t compare, talent-wise, but again, they don’t even want to. I prefer the beautiful vocals of Christopher Cross to indie mumbles.
As I tried to say, the whole thing about it is that like the Chill-wave bros just don’t have a scene that from the outside looks cool or inviting. That’s obnoxious but also refreshing.
Brandon
28 Mar 10 at 5:51 am
get familiar
/watch?v=TrS4etrxb7s
pedro
30 Mar 10 at 7:09 am
dog no way was that bullshit written by carles from hro
doh
30 Apr 10 at 1:16 am