the lingering, unanimous aversion
November 5, 2013 7:09 AM Subscribe
In response to Pitchfork's recent History of Alternative Music, which dubbed 1997-1999 the era of "Fauxternative" Consequence of Sounds has published a Cri Du Coeur: In Defense of Post-Grunge Music.
Post-grunge Previously
Post-grunge Previously
Oh yeah major earworm trigger warnings of course, especially for anyone who went to a bar in 2001.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:18 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:18 AM on November 5, 2013
this part really jumped out at me as being highly from-left-field :
No wonder the post-grunge moment pissed off so many angry dudes. These bands took songs that wore signs of femininity and closed them tight inside hypermasculine shells. If there’s one thing angry dudes can’t stand, it’s gender scraping against gender.
in my anecdotal experience, the problem with these kinds of bands was not even remotely related to their lyrical content or themes, it was the fact that it was posturing, over-produced, autotuned, studio-perfect pablum of the worst MOR kind. it was music by committee, wrapping the barely-there edginess of prior bands around an overly (and overtly) faux-earnest pretension.
posted by radiosilents at 7:28 AM on November 5, 2013 [14 favorites]
No wonder the post-grunge moment pissed off so many angry dudes. These bands took songs that wore signs of femininity and closed them tight inside hypermasculine shells. If there’s one thing angry dudes can’t stand, it’s gender scraping against gender.
in my anecdotal experience, the problem with these kinds of bands was not even remotely related to their lyrical content or themes, it was the fact that it was posturing, over-produced, autotuned, studio-perfect pablum of the worst MOR kind. it was music by committee, wrapping the barely-there edginess of prior bands around an overly (and overtly) faux-earnest pretension.
posted by radiosilents at 7:28 AM on November 5, 2013 [14 favorites]
It was adult contemporary reskinned.
posted by symbioid at 7:31 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 7:31 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
A defense of post-grunge? Hmm, yes, I see...
*makes a note in his list of People Who Will Be Up Against The Wall When I Become Supreme Ruler of the Earth*
posted by entropicamericana at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
*makes a note in his list of People Who Will Be Up Against The Wall When I Become Supreme Ruler of the Earth*
posted by entropicamericana at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
These bands are the Blink-182 of grunge music, too polished and too deliberately commercial to fit into the scene they're aping. It brings success, but at the cost of never making anything worth listening to.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Audioslave made their share of weak production choices—the rhythm section on “Like A Stone” sounds like they’d be more comfortable in a classic hip-hop outfit
Uh ... you mean these guys? For chrissake.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Uh ... you mean these guys? For chrissake.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
To be fair audioslave sucks compared to early Soundgarden.
posted by symbioid at 7:34 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 7:34 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Or RATM for that matter.
posted by symbioid at 7:34 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 7:34 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I was gonna say, I really hate Audioslave, but to impugn that rhythm section is just ridiculous.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:35 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by uncleozzy at 7:35 AM on November 5, 2013
No wonder the post-grunge moment pissed off so many angry dudes. These bands took songs that wore signs of femininity and closed them tight inside hypermasculine shells. If there’s one thing angry dudes can’t stand, it’s gender scraping against gender.
This struck me as weird for a different reason. They're trying to position post-grunge as somehow transgressive, as if it pissed old grunge fans off because it was just too far outside their rigid gender norms. ("Gender scraping against gender!")
But it turns out that the "transgressive" move was... well, taking the least sexist, least homophobic, least gender-binary stuff you could find on hard rock radio at that point in history and going "Nope, too girly, let's man this shit back up."
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 7:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [13 favorites]
This struck me as weird for a different reason. They're trying to position post-grunge as somehow transgressive, as if it pissed old grunge fans off because it was just too far outside their rigid gender norms. ("Gender scraping against gender!")
But it turns out that the "transgressive" move was... well, taking the least sexist, least homophobic, least gender-binary stuff you could find on hard rock radio at that point in history and going "Nope, too girly, let's man this shit back up."
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 7:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [13 favorites]
This was something that I was just thinking about not long ago. It was in reaction to an article I saw somewhere that was making a similar statement about a slew of current "indie" acts.
This is all completely subjective, but I was thinking back on grunge and the beginning of "alternative" music and trying to draw some sort of distinction between things that I considered real alternative music and things that came later and tried to cash in on some of the aesthetics. I drew the line earlier than 1997, for me there were definitely bands making music not long after the whole thing kicked off. Definitely during the Alt becomes Pop period. It ended up being a personal enough exercise that it was just something that I thought about, but it's interesting to see someone else's take on it.
It was more difficult, because my personal opinion was that some bands just kept making "alternative" music all along and others never did. But defining it was so difficult and subjective that it became almost meaningless. I don't think the Pixies ever sold out, but RHCP sure did. Someone else might argue differently and when I tried to put it in words I just ended up with vagueness and contradiction.
Which makes it a perfect Pitchfork article, but I have a harder time stating my opinions as incontrovertible fact.
posted by jefeweiss at 7:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
This is all completely subjective, but I was thinking back on grunge and the beginning of "alternative" music and trying to draw some sort of distinction between things that I considered real alternative music and things that came later and tried to cash in on some of the aesthetics. I drew the line earlier than 1997, for me there were definitely bands making music not long after the whole thing kicked off. Definitely during the Alt becomes Pop period. It ended up being a personal enough exercise that it was just something that I thought about, but it's interesting to see someone else's take on it.
It was more difficult, because my personal opinion was that some bands just kept making "alternative" music all along and others never did. But defining it was so difficult and subjective that it became almost meaningless. I don't think the Pixies ever sold out, but RHCP sure did. Someone else might argue differently and when I tried to put it in words I just ended up with vagueness and contradiction.
Which makes it a perfect Pitchfork article, but I have a harder time stating my opinions as incontrovertible fact.
posted by jefeweiss at 7:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
(There were some gems in the "post-grunge" cesspool, though. Bush weren't much of a grunge band, but if you think of them as a rocked-up Throwing Muses they start sounding pretty good. And The Goo Goo Dolls were a pretty damn solid power pop band and I'll fight converse intensely with anyone who disagrees.)
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 7:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 7:46 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
This thread is Deadwood, everyone please check your weapons before entering.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:48 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:48 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Bush weren't much of a grunge band, but if you think of them as a rocked-up Throwing Muses they start sounding pretty good.
I was once on about Hour 19 of a two-day, 20-hour drive when "Machinehead" came on the radio. I pumped my fist and said, "YES!"
And then shook my head and pulled over to the side of the highway and had a nap, because I was clearly no longer in complete control of my mental faculties and was a danger to everyone on the road around me.
posted by Etrigan at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
I was once on about Hour 19 of a two-day, 20-hour drive when "Machinehead" came on the radio. I pumped my fist and said, "YES!"
And then shook my head and pulled over to the side of the highway and had a nap, because I was clearly no longer in complete control of my mental faculties and was a danger to everyone on the road around me.
posted by Etrigan at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
I vividly remember hearing Limp Bizkit on the late, lamented WFNX and thinking "these are the dudes who would have stolen Michael Stipe's lunch money and given Robert Smith a swirlie."
posted by pxe2000 at 7:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 7:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]
When the author of the second piece mentioned that Nickleback's initial hit single came out when he was 12 years old, I realized how old I really am and decided to quietly excuse myself before I made the entire room smell like Metamucil and Ben Gay.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
TWF, not sure which "artist" that's more of a burn to.
posted by symbioid at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I seem to remember the late 90s as when alternative was fully pop, and the new exciting genre was electronica, and all kinds of bands were trying to incorporate that stuff into their previously guitar-based music, like disco in the 70s or synths in the 80s (see Up by REM, Kid A by Radiohead). This is when the big albums were Better Living Through Chemistry and Dig Your Own Hole. The big alternative albums I have from then are by Cornershop and the Beta Band, which are almost electronic acts themselves, along with bands like Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Air and Portishead. I got the 10-year anniversary comp from Matador Records, and it's half electronic acts. Just kind of a dead zone for alt-guitar rock.
posted by LionIndex at 7:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]
posted by LionIndex at 7:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]
Sure, but Skrillex is nothing but autotuned modem handshake sounds, which I guess makes Limp Bizkit a live blue box.
posted by aaronetc at 7:55 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by aaronetc at 7:55 AM on November 5, 2013
Sure, but Skrillex is nothing but autotuned modem handshake sounds, which I guess makes Limp Bizkit a live blue box.
What on earth did Captain Crunch do to you?
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:56 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
What on earth did Captain Crunch do to you?
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:56 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
yeah, but up by rem is really, really good. i was just listening to it a few days ago. it's basically perfect background music for rune factory frontier.
posted by nadawi at 7:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by nadawi at 7:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
I wanted to give this a chance but then I hit "Fuel, Puddle of Mudd, Lifehouse, The Calling, 3 Doors Down, Staind, and Hoobastank" and had to stop. Grunge featured guys with long, greasy hair because they didn't seem to bathe. This stuff featured guys with long, greasy hair because that had become popular and the makeup & hair people had probably dropped $150 worth of hair gel into their manes right before shooting the impossibly moody video shot in a very dark green lighting. Why was everything in spot shadows in a room or area whose lighting looked like it was under the Sargasso Sea? It was like they saw the video for Fiona Apple's "Criminal" and thought, "That looks like a nice place to live!"
posted by yerfatma at 7:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by yerfatma at 7:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Most of the bands being complained about here are in Pitchfork's "The Mook Shall Inherit The Earth" section (1999-2002), not the "Fauxternative" (1997-1999). The Fautxternative era stuff seems well described by the label - stuff that definitely didn't fit in to pop or rock, but was certainly post-grunge. Third Eye Blind and Barenaked Ladies are both mentioned. And y'know, neither are really deep, life changing sounds, but damn if I don't like both of them. Solid music. Certainly in a different field than Limp Bizkit and Nickelback.
posted by maryr at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by maryr at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
yeah, but up by rem is really, really good.
I wasn't saying that the electronic stuff was bad in any way, just that an article trying to define or defend post-grunge as the main alternative music at that time is missing the target a bit.
posted by LionIndex at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
I wasn't saying that the electronic stuff was bad in any way, just that an article trying to define or defend post-grunge as the main alternative music at that time is missing the target a bit.
posted by LionIndex at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
(I think most of the Fauternative stuff would be considered pop today.)
posted by maryr at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by maryr at 8:01 AM on November 5, 2013
this part really jumped out at me as being highly from-left-field :
No wonder the post-grunge moment pissed off so many angry dudes. These bands took songs that wore signs of femininity and closed them tight inside hypermasculine shells. If there’s one thing angry dudes can’t stand, it’s gender scraping against gender.
This is also a weird thing to say because Nirvana did this, too. Kurt Cobain wore dresses onstage.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 8:04 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
No wonder the post-grunge moment pissed off so many angry dudes. These bands took songs that wore signs of femininity and closed them tight inside hypermasculine shells. If there’s one thing angry dudes can’t stand, it’s gender scraping against gender.
This is also a weird thing to say because Nirvana did this, too. Kurt Cobain wore dresses onstage.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 8:04 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
Yeah, thinking about it more, I have no fucking idea why Bush and Kristin Hersh are filed in the same slot in my brain. I think what I really mean is "In an alternate universe where someone had given Glycerine to her instead of Gavin Rossdale, it would be a song I still loved rather than a guilty pleasure I'd been embarrassingly attached to as a teenager."
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 8:04 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 8:04 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Good point! I consider 1997 the start of true Post-Grunge, but indeed this era essentially spans late-90s to mid-2000s, though I'd argue it was mostly displaced or at least diluted significantly by garage revival (<3).
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:06 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:06 AM on November 5, 2013
Another memory from the post-grunge era: Seeing Matchbox 20 (or was it "matchbox twenty" at that point?) on the cover of Spin the month I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One by Yo La Tengo came out and thinking "...the fuck?"
posted by pxe2000 at 8:08 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 8:08 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Also, some Nu Metal is really really good, namely the Deftones and System of A Down. Even Puddle of Mudd is rather enjoyable. Deal with it.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
*kicks over poker table*
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
This is also a weird thing to say because Nirvana did this, too. Kurt Cobain wore dresses onstage.
yep and it made him uncomfortable to sing things like rape me in front of frat boy dude bros. the diy scene that became alternative originally was so much more about gender scraping against gender than staind/nickleback/hoobastank/etc could even conceive of.
posted by nadawi at 8:10 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
yep and it made him uncomfortable to sing things like rape me in front of frat boy dude bros. the diy scene that became alternative originally was so much more about gender scraping against gender than staind/nickleback/hoobastank/etc could even conceive of.
posted by nadawi at 8:10 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
The thing that people just outside my generation never seem to understand is how quickly things turned on their ear after Nirvana. REM and Jane's Addiction set the stage, sure. But it was Nirvana that struck the death blow. Their 2+ album reign begins as the stuff indie kids listened to was marginalized as "college rock," bulldozered brutally by dunderheaded cockrockers. It goes from there to Nirvana sneaking onto MTV and playlists in rotation with those guys. And it ends with those bands' careers ending and new radio stations popping up in places like Tennessee and Arizona so that positively everybody would have a chance to hear the new Breeders single. It was a whirlwind.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:11 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:11 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
Not to bash the article I posted overmuch, but yeah, how about not equating 'Whining about your feelings" with "Being feminine"? Post-grunge was also expert at the "You Bitch You Broke My Heart I Hate You" song, which, man, really annoying.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:12 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:12 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
Needs more Eugene Chadbourne.
posted by mrhappy at 8:15 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by mrhappy at 8:15 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Jamming to this Puddle of Mudd song (Drift and Die) all morning :)
Now taking suggestions for Best Post-Grunge tune spotify playlist, go.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:15 AM on November 5, 2013
Now taking suggestions for Best Post-Grunge tune spotify playlist, go.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:15 AM on November 5, 2013
is tool nu metal? i enjoyed the hell out of tool at the time. it was pretty powerful for me to hear a boy sing about being the victim of sexual abuse (although the autobiographical nature of that is questioned).
posted by nadawi at 8:16 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by nadawi at 8:16 AM on November 5, 2013
I must have been doing something wrong in the late 90's, because I was listening to A Perfect Circle, Deftones, and System of a Down. I don't really understand how Creed and Nickelback are somehow the logical progression out of Alice and Chains and Soundgarden.
posted by Brocktoon at 8:18 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 8:18 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
*stripper with smeared mascara drives away in classic car, tossing clothes into the street*
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Tripp Lamkins (of the mighty Memphis indie band the Grifters) dubbed that post-grunge/mook shall inherit the earth stuff "goat rock," because it nearly always involves goatees, and the pained, dudely bellowing so often sounds like a goat bleating.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
is tool nu metal? i enjoyed the hell out of tool at the time. it was pretty powerful for me to hear a boy sing about being the victim of sexual abuse (although the autobiographical nature of that is questioned).
Tool was more thoughtful than nu metal, but the nu metal kids were the ones into them. I think they were/are just as insincere.
posted by cellphone at 8:20 AM on November 5, 2013
Tool was more thoughtful than nu metal, but the nu metal kids were the ones into them. I think they were/are just as insincere.
posted by cellphone at 8:20 AM on November 5, 2013
I've started to pity Eddie Vedder as time goes on. He started with a half-decent idea (singing kinda like Roger Daltrey, but in a lower register) and ended up spawning generations of dumbass dudebro imitators he surely cannot stand but often takes blame for.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:23 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:23 AM on November 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
posturing, over-produced, autotuned, studio-perfect pablum of the worst MOR kind
Yeah, the thing with grunge and that era was that it was aggressively weird and knowingly transgressive, while its nu-metal successors went for simply aggressive. Kurt Cobain blithely cross-dressing with a smirk was actually sticking a finger in the eye of Christian Coalition types while also mocking the how his hair-metal cock-rocking predecessors could never seemed to acknowledge the feminine aspects of their acts. There was a purposeful goofy awkwardness to the era mixed in with sly social commentary.
The "fauxternative" bands lacked any trace of that edge, they were basically just pop music reconfigured so it wouldn't sound like the now totes uncool music of before. The nu-metallers dropped the background vibe of social criticism in exchange for simple cynicism. Yeah, they seemed to working with less emotional distance in their lyrics, but they were also doing so without any of the introspection or intelligence seen by their grungy forebearers. Korn's song "Faget" was clearly coming from a genuine place of hurt, but its lyrically are literally "I'm not a faggot" and "suck my dick."
It's basically scream therapy for disaffected teenagers, which has its place (I certainly screamed along), but that's part of why it feels so embarassing now. It was a musical genre stuck in the emotional and intellectual complexities of Junior High. Nirvana fells like an art project conceived by mature Continental intellectuals in comparison.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:24 AM on November 5, 2013 [10 favorites]
Yeah, the thing with grunge and that era was that it was aggressively weird and knowingly transgressive, while its nu-metal successors went for simply aggressive. Kurt Cobain blithely cross-dressing with a smirk was actually sticking a finger in the eye of Christian Coalition types while also mocking the how his hair-metal cock-rocking predecessors could never seemed to acknowledge the feminine aspects of their acts. There was a purposeful goofy awkwardness to the era mixed in with sly social commentary.
The "fauxternative" bands lacked any trace of that edge, they were basically just pop music reconfigured so it wouldn't sound like the now totes uncool music of before. The nu-metallers dropped the background vibe of social criticism in exchange for simple cynicism. Yeah, they seemed to working with less emotional distance in their lyrics, but they were also doing so without any of the introspection or intelligence seen by their grungy forebearers. Korn's song "Faget" was clearly coming from a genuine place of hurt, but its lyrically are literally "I'm not a faggot" and "suck my dick."
It's basically scream therapy for disaffected teenagers, which has its place (I certainly screamed along), but that's part of why it feels so embarassing now. It was a musical genre stuck in the emotional and intellectual complexities of Junior High. Nirvana fells like an art project conceived by mature Continental intellectuals in comparison.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:24 AM on November 5, 2013 [10 favorites]
Seriously though: sing a generic "YEAAAAHHHHH" like you're a goat and see if you don't sound ready to join Candlebox or Seven Mary Three.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:25 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:25 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I thoroughly enjoyed the rambling analysis of post-grunge -as in, everything that came after grunge- in this episode of Low Times. ("The Most 90s Song of the 90s").
On Seven Mary Three:
"That's Pearl Jam reaching Florida. That's what that is. . . .It doesn't have any of the spirit of grunge but it has the trappings of it. I'm sure ...they probably liked metal, but grunge is what people were buying."
"So what you're saying is Pearl Jam is the monolith from 2001, the guys in Seven Mary Three are the apes, and 'Cumbersome' is the bone they grab and say THIS IS WHAT WE DO WITH THIS."
posted by like_a_friend at 8:29 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
On Seven Mary Three:
"That's Pearl Jam reaching Florida. That's what that is. . . .It doesn't have any of the spirit of grunge but it has the trappings of it. I'm sure ...they probably liked metal, but grunge is what people were buying."
"So what you're saying is Pearl Jam is the monolith from 2001, the guys in Seven Mary Three are the apes, and 'Cumbersome' is the bone they grab and say THIS IS WHAT WE DO WITH THIS."
posted by like_a_friend at 8:29 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
is tool nu metal?
And here I thought I could just come through and read comments and stay neutral but Potomac Avenue was right, this is Deadwood.
posted by komara at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
And here I thought I could just come through and read comments and stay neutral but Potomac Avenue was right, this is Deadwood.
posted by komara at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Anyone slanders Throwing Muses in that way again in this thread and there will be arched eyebrows. I am not playin'.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
This thread makes me very thankful for the existence of the UK in the desolate music years of 97-01 and bands like Supergrass, Super Furry Animals, Belle & Sebastian, and Mojave 3. And many thanks to Canada for Sloan.
posted by otters walk among us at 8:31 AM on November 5, 2013 [10 favorites]
posted by otters walk among us at 8:31 AM on November 5, 2013 [10 favorites]
Also, are we allowed to like Incubus now? Because it would have killed me to admit it at the time, but in hindsight they were pretty okay.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 8:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 8:32 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
is tool nu metal? i enjoyed the hell out of tool at the time. it was pretty powerful for me to hear a boy sing about being the victim of sexual abuse (although the autobiographical nature of that is questioned).
Heavens, no. The Wikipedia entry for nu-metal says that Tool are one of the bands which laid the groundwork for nu-metal, but this is kind of like saying that Fred Blassie laid the groundwork for Sugar Hill Gang because "Pencil Neck Geek" is kind of like rap.
Tool are essentially a prog band.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:33 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
Heavens, no. The Wikipedia entry for nu-metal says that Tool are one of the bands which laid the groundwork for nu-metal, but this is kind of like saying that Fred Blassie laid the groundwork for Sugar Hill Gang because "Pencil Neck Geek" is kind of like rap.
Tool are essentially a prog band.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:33 AM on November 5, 2013 [9 favorites]
yes, but an angry prog band. i listened to them along side a bunch of industrial, i'm pretty sure (and a bunch of tori amos). but, i lived in a small town in the south, so genre lines were always a bit fuzzy.
posted by nadawi at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Now taking suggestions for Best Post-Grunge tune spotify playlist, go.
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(You're welcome.)
posted by entropicamericana at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
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(You're welcome.)
posted by entropicamericana at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
Thankfully, we have Sparks to sum up the era for us.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by pxe2000 at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Sorry to brag, but I lived through this time and I have no idea what any of these so-called post-grunge bands sound like.
posted by univac at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by univac at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013
And early Tool was basically a jesus lizard cover band with different vocals.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:48 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:48 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I wanted to give this a chance but then I hit "Fuel, Puddle of Mudd, Lifehouse, The Calling, 3 Doors Down, Staind, and Hoobastank" and had to stop. Grunge featured guys with long, greasy hair because they didn't seem to bathe. This stuff featured guys with long, greasy hair because that had become popular and the makeup & hair people had probably dropped $150 worth of hair gel into their manes right before shooting the impossibly moody video shot in a very dark green lighting. Why was everything in spot shadows in a room or area whose lighting looked like it was under the Sargasso Sea? It was like they saw the video for Fiona Apple's "Criminal" and thought, "That looks like a nice place to live!"
Not Criminal. You can actually make out discrete objects and there's a vibrant color palette --- darkness around the edges of the frame, but pink and orange and green and blue in the center. It's Smells like Teen Spirit they were ripping. Angst and spotlights in a green-brown fog.
As for the article --- she admits: the music was simpler, the lyrics were dumber, the emotions were maudlin, and she liked it because she was 12. If this is a defence, post-grunge deserves the chair.
posted by Diablevert at 8:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Not Criminal. You can actually make out discrete objects and there's a vibrant color palette --- darkness around the edges of the frame, but pink and orange and green and blue in the center. It's Smells like Teen Spirit they were ripping. Angst and spotlights in a green-brown fog.
As for the article --- she admits: the music was simpler, the lyrics were dumber, the emotions were maudlin, and she liked it because she was 12. If this is a defence, post-grunge deserves the chair.
posted by Diablevert at 8:51 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Pixies made it ok to scream, R.E.M. made it ok to sing alt rock with a Southern twang, and Jane's Addiction made it ok to bring back the wah-wah, monster drums, and echo pedals. Perfect storm.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:52 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:52 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Hating on post-grunge is very easy, but I think the FPP makes a perfectly good point. Much of post-grunge really was the male version of Jagged Little Pill. Limp Bizkit was all "haw haw haw, I did it for the nookie," but post-grunge was more vulnerable.
...
A song that presaged the post-grunge mentality and sound: The Offspring's "Self Esteem."
...
A lot of it would be considered Country today, oddly enough. Give the singer a hat and a bit of a drawl and Def Leppard is early 2000s Country and post-Grunge late-90s pop/rock is what Country looks and sounds like now.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. What many people really hate about post-grunge (and similar styles) is that it's basically Major Label Country, but with the twang surgically removed. Many of the stories told in these songs are confessional laments of "manly" woe.
Hatred for Major Label Country is often based on the crappiness of said music, but there is also often a whiff of snobbery against them goldurned peckerwoods, of the sort described by Jim Goad in The Redneck Manifesto.
Compare post-grunge and Major Label Country with how Avril Lavigne (aka Mrs. Nickelback) was originally a country singer before the label reformed her image. Many of her songs could be trivially re-orchestrated to be country or post-grunge. While her physical image was initially, vaguely "punk", almost nothing about the music itself was actually inspired by even pop-punk.
Compare with how Avenged Sevenfold have twang into their (IMHO highly enjoyable) butt rock thrash metal.
Check out ballads like "Broken", by Seether (feat. Amy Lee). I wager that, just by twiddling the knobs in the mixing room, I could turn it into a flat-out country song.
...
It's a little weird that some people get so het up over the idea of a tattooed bro crooning about this kind of subject matter. Some of it seems like gender policing, but in a "cool", stealthy way.
For Pitchfork readers, who are typically white middle-class music connoisseurs, I wonder if there's something to the idea that a man is not supposed to be singing about this kind of stuff, unless there's some sort of stylistic remove. You need to be from another era, or another culture, or you have to coat it in some sort of detachment, or irony, or you have to be a retro-cheese band, like Journey or ELO. (Both of whom are great, BTW).
But you sure as fuck shouldn't be a white bro in tattoos, singing about adult feelings. There's no way to acknowledge that even the dudes who had pick ups in high school had real thoughts and feelings.
They don't categorically decry confessional hip-hop or country. There's plenty of love for kick-ass metal, whether it's self-consciously soaring or all about wizards and demons and goblins and whales.
There's also plenty of love for emotionally-bare concept albums (The Antlers' Hospice) or outsider music (Daniel Johnston).
But, directly confessional music by contemporary men, in a Western rock mode? There's more resistance to this than people acknowledge.
Even the Pitchfork types will often bag on "whiny" emo and indie. That's how the whole aloof, ironic thing became cool - it was never quite cool to bare your heart as openly as a country singer would. Hell, I remember Pitchfork having a huge hate-boner for Jimmy Eat World, whom they decried for "wussifying" rock - maybe you like Jimmy Eat World or maybe you don't, but what was so categorically wrong with hooky rock-pop about heartbreak?
And when it comes to post-grunge, forget about it. Macho squares can't express their feelings that way! So whiny! Why, this isn't kick-ass at all!
I know that there are major exceptions to this. Still, I think this is more of a trend than people acknowledge.
...
Also, some Nu Metal is really really good, namely the Deftones and System of A Down. Even Puddle of Mudd is rather enjoyable. Deal with it.
You are not wrong. At all.
Deftones and Serj Tankian both rule. A lot.
I feel like people got hip to Deftones after White Pony, but they were always a good band. They were solid even before they made their sophistication obvious.
I haven't deeply listened to actual SOAD, just Serj Tankian's solo stuff, and only that just recently. But, yeah, he's great.
(Side story: a friend of mine had an ex. The ex showed up at her high school graduation. Okay, weird. But, the best part was when he handed her a book of Serj Tankian's poetry. "Look! It combines your love of poetry, with my love of System of a Down!" They did not get back together.)
I don't really know Puddle of Mudd, outside of what I've heard on the car radio, but thanks to you, NOW I'M GOING TO CHANGE ALL THAT.
...
I will also defend much of Korn's output. The acoustic version of "Freak On A Leash", with Amy Lee? That's a great track. Hell, they had a number of great tracks. I dig "Falling Away With Me." It's easy to take them for granted now, but when they came out, there wasn't really anything like them on the radio. They were like Cop Shoot Cop, except with Mike Patton-ish vocals, and with a lot more songs about surviving sexual assault.
...
Speaking of Mike Patton, I remember a friend of mine making the funny point that Faith No More (and Mike Patton) were great, but almost all of the bands they had influenced were terrible. He was mostly referring to Nu Metal with this. But isn't a lot of Nu Metal merely FNM/Patton-style rock, but with the Fantômas references changed to references about having a drunk dad and a broken marriage?
...
Speaking of Cop Shoot Cop, they're a band ripe for rediscovery. They were the cooler precursors to Nu Metal, in many ways.
Also, the CSC spin-off band Firewater is terrific. The Golden Hour was an especially strong record, as well as being directly confessional. The "klezmer gypsy magpie" sound gets around a lot these days, but Firewater did it in a non-shitty way.
...
Bush were often a perfectly good band. Maybe people thought Gavin Rossdale was pompous, or a pretty boy, but whatever. Golden State is a perfectly good record. On the other hand, they did also do some super cheesy stuff: the overly moody video for "Letting the Cables Sleep" was directed by Joel Schumacher, about a doomed relationship with a Deaf woman.
...
And while it's not post-grunge at all, I'm calling it now that music history will smile kindly upon My Chemical Romance. They've only been getting better and better. Their recent string of EPs has been marvelous.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:53 AM on November 5, 2013 [11 favorites]
...
A song that presaged the post-grunge mentality and sound: The Offspring's "Self Esteem."
...
A lot of it would be considered Country today, oddly enough. Give the singer a hat and a bit of a drawl and Def Leppard is early 2000s Country and post-Grunge late-90s pop/rock is what Country looks and sounds like now.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. What many people really hate about post-grunge (and similar styles) is that it's basically Major Label Country, but with the twang surgically removed. Many of the stories told in these songs are confessional laments of "manly" woe.
Hatred for Major Label Country is often based on the crappiness of said music, but there is also often a whiff of snobbery against them goldurned peckerwoods, of the sort described by Jim Goad in The Redneck Manifesto.
Compare post-grunge and Major Label Country with how Avril Lavigne (aka Mrs. Nickelback) was originally a country singer before the label reformed her image. Many of her songs could be trivially re-orchestrated to be country or post-grunge. While her physical image was initially, vaguely "punk", almost nothing about the music itself was actually inspired by even pop-punk.
Compare with how Avenged Sevenfold have twang into their (IMHO highly enjoyable) butt rock thrash metal.
Check out ballads like "Broken", by Seether (feat. Amy Lee). I wager that, just by twiddling the knobs in the mixing room, I could turn it into a flat-out country song.
...
It's a little weird that some people get so het up over the idea of a tattooed bro crooning about this kind of subject matter. Some of it seems like gender policing, but in a "cool", stealthy way.
For Pitchfork readers, who are typically white middle-class music connoisseurs, I wonder if there's something to the idea that a man is not supposed to be singing about this kind of stuff, unless there's some sort of stylistic remove. You need to be from another era, or another culture, or you have to coat it in some sort of detachment, or irony, or you have to be a retro-cheese band, like Journey or ELO. (Both of whom are great, BTW).
But you sure as fuck shouldn't be a white bro in tattoos, singing about adult feelings. There's no way to acknowledge that even the dudes who had pick ups in high school had real thoughts and feelings.
They don't categorically decry confessional hip-hop or country. There's plenty of love for kick-ass metal, whether it's self-consciously soaring or all about wizards and demons and goblins and whales.
There's also plenty of love for emotionally-bare concept albums (The Antlers' Hospice) or outsider music (Daniel Johnston).
But, directly confessional music by contemporary men, in a Western rock mode? There's more resistance to this than people acknowledge.
Even the Pitchfork types will often bag on "whiny" emo and indie. That's how the whole aloof, ironic thing became cool - it was never quite cool to bare your heart as openly as a country singer would. Hell, I remember Pitchfork having a huge hate-boner for Jimmy Eat World, whom they decried for "wussifying" rock - maybe you like Jimmy Eat World or maybe you don't, but what was so categorically wrong with hooky rock-pop about heartbreak?
And when it comes to post-grunge, forget about it. Macho squares can't express their feelings that way! So whiny! Why, this isn't kick-ass at all!
I know that there are major exceptions to this. Still, I think this is more of a trend than people acknowledge.
...
Also, some Nu Metal is really really good, namely the Deftones and System of A Down. Even Puddle of Mudd is rather enjoyable. Deal with it.
You are not wrong. At all.
Deftones and Serj Tankian both rule. A lot.
I feel like people got hip to Deftones after White Pony, but they were always a good band. They were solid even before they made their sophistication obvious.
I haven't deeply listened to actual SOAD, just Serj Tankian's solo stuff, and only that just recently. But, yeah, he's great.
(Side story: a friend of mine had an ex. The ex showed up at her high school graduation. Okay, weird. But, the best part was when he handed her a book of Serj Tankian's poetry. "Look! It combines your love of poetry, with my love of System of a Down!" They did not get back together.)
I don't really know Puddle of Mudd, outside of what I've heard on the car radio, but thanks to you, NOW I'M GOING TO CHANGE ALL THAT.
...
I will also defend much of Korn's output. The acoustic version of "Freak On A Leash", with Amy Lee? That's a great track. Hell, they had a number of great tracks. I dig "Falling Away With Me." It's easy to take them for granted now, but when they came out, there wasn't really anything like them on the radio. They were like Cop Shoot Cop, except with Mike Patton-ish vocals, and with a lot more songs about surviving sexual assault.
...
Speaking of Mike Patton, I remember a friend of mine making the funny point that Faith No More (and Mike Patton) were great, but almost all of the bands they had influenced were terrible. He was mostly referring to Nu Metal with this. But isn't a lot of Nu Metal merely FNM/Patton-style rock, but with the Fantômas references changed to references about having a drunk dad and a broken marriage?
...
Speaking of Cop Shoot Cop, they're a band ripe for rediscovery. They were the cooler precursors to Nu Metal, in many ways.
Also, the CSC spin-off band Firewater is terrific. The Golden Hour was an especially strong record, as well as being directly confessional. The "klezmer gypsy magpie" sound gets around a lot these days, but Firewater did it in a non-shitty way.
...
Bush were often a perfectly good band. Maybe people thought Gavin Rossdale was pompous, or a pretty boy, but whatever. Golden State is a perfectly good record. On the other hand, they did also do some super cheesy stuff: the overly moody video for "Letting the Cables Sleep" was directed by Joel Schumacher, about a doomed relationship with a Deaf woman.
...
And while it's not post-grunge at all, I'm calling it now that music history will smile kindly upon My Chemical Romance. They've only been getting better and better. Their recent string of EPs has been marvelous.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:53 AM on November 5, 2013 [11 favorites]
Further self-torture listening:
Crossfade - Cold
Seether -- Remedy
Staind - Fade
Deftones - Change
Fuel - Hemorrhage
Saliva - Always
Enjoy. :)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:53 AM on November 5, 2013
Crossfade - Cold
Seether -- Remedy
Staind - Fade
Deftones - Change
Fuel - Hemorrhage
Saliva - Always
Enjoy. :)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:53 AM on November 5, 2013
Cop Shoot Cop is way too fucking awesome to belong in this thread. Please saddle them up and ride em east.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:57 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:57 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
Compare with how Avenged Sevenfold have twang into their (IMHO highly enjoyable) butt rock thrash metal.
Man I haven't caught up with anything they've done past Waking the Fallen. Is this really where they went?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2013
Man I haven't caught up with anything they've done past Waking the Fallen. Is this really where they went?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2013
I seem to remember the late 90s as when alternative was fully pop, and the new exciting genre was electronica,
Yes. I knew that that someone listened to these bands, but really, I didn’t think anyone listened to these bands. You know, the kind of thing that’s obviously popular (like certain reality shows) but you don’t personally know anyone who likes it.
posted by bongo_x at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yes. I knew that that someone listened to these bands, but really, I didn’t think anyone listened to these bands. You know, the kind of thing that’s obviously popular (like certain reality shows) but you don’t personally know anyone who likes it.
posted by bongo_x at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Also, this kind of bugged me about the article. She says:
Post-grunge led me from Top 40 airwaves to Nirvana, to Soundgarden, to Alice in Chains, and to Pearl Jam
Which, okay, sure. But then, at the end:
But, post-grunge was my hinge into alternative as it existed before the term got swallowed up by the mainstream.
These bands - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, et cetera - represent more or less the exact moment the term alternative was swallowed by the mainstream. These bands were the point at which "alternative" stopped meaning, "There really isn't any place else in the record store we can put this," and started being a genre.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:59 AM on November 5, 2013 [12 favorites]
Post-grunge led me from Top 40 airwaves to Nirvana, to Soundgarden, to Alice in Chains, and to Pearl Jam
Which, okay, sure. But then, at the end:
But, post-grunge was my hinge into alternative as it existed before the term got swallowed up by the mainstream.
These bands - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, et cetera - represent more or less the exact moment the term alternative was swallowed by the mainstream. These bands were the point at which "alternative" stopped meaning, "There really isn't any place else in the record store we can put this," and started being a genre.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:59 AM on November 5, 2013 [12 favorites]
It always surprises me that there are people who would actively seek out Third Eye Blind or Matchbox 20, and by "actively seek out" I mean "buy their albums and go to their concerts". What do you need the CDs for when you can hear them in the lobby of your local dentist's office?
posted by pxe2000 at 9:00 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 9:00 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
I seem to remember the late 90s as when alternative was fully pop, and the new exciting genre was electronica . . . bands like Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Air and Portishead.
Late 90s were definitely when my friends and I found Kraftwerk and started down that rabbit hole. And we sure as hell weren't rolling on E to the dulcet tones of Staind. It was Massive Attack all the way.
posted by like_a_friend at 9:02 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Late 90s were definitely when my friends and I found Kraftwerk and started down that rabbit hole. And we sure as hell weren't rolling on E to the dulcet tones of Staind. It was Massive Attack all the way.
posted by like_a_friend at 9:02 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Cop Shoot Cop is way too fucking awesome to belong in this thread. Please saddle them up and ride em east.
OH, I'M SORRY, AM I PLAYING THE JOHNNY MNEMONIC SOUNDTRACK TOO LOUD FOR YOU
...
It's basically scream therapy for disaffected teenagers, which has its place (I certainly screamed along), but that's part of why it feels so embarassing now. It was a musical genre stuck in the emotional and intellectual complexities of Junior High. Nirvana fells like an art project conceived by mature Continental intellectuals in comparison.
Hmm, I see where you're going with this, but I have some qualms.
Nirvana never felt all that mature or intellectual, if I'm parsing "intellectual" correctly. Nirvana was smart, but it wasn't cerebral, nor even all that conscious. Nirvana was visceral and emotional, sometimes to the point of incoherence and/or purity. Why look at their influence as being glass half empty? Maybe it was a good thing, that Nirvana made it okay to reach down inside.
Scream therapy for teenagers is more than okay. There's a lot to be said for music that lets people rock out (or dance out, or whatever) to their frustrations. "Adult" songs are great, too, but what's wrong with expressing those starker, more "immature" emotions?
It reminds me of a quote from Russell T. Davies, he of Doctor Who. He said, comparing writing for families to writing for adults, that children were more fun to write for, because children only ever had real concerns. Adults worried personal boundaries and years-old slights. Children worried about the world blowing up.
Besides, many of the "concerns" of post-grunge are explicitly not the concerns of teenagers. "I will be a better father to my child than my father was to me" is an adult concern. Not that some teenagers don't also become fathers - but even then, once you've become a parent, you have now inherited adult problems.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:03 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
OH, I'M SORRY, AM I PLAYING THE JOHNNY MNEMONIC SOUNDTRACK TOO LOUD FOR YOU
...
It's basically scream therapy for disaffected teenagers, which has its place (I certainly screamed along), but that's part of why it feels so embarassing now. It was a musical genre stuck in the emotional and intellectual complexities of Junior High. Nirvana fells like an art project conceived by mature Continental intellectuals in comparison.
Hmm, I see where you're going with this, but I have some qualms.
Nirvana never felt all that mature or intellectual, if I'm parsing "intellectual" correctly. Nirvana was smart, but it wasn't cerebral, nor even all that conscious. Nirvana was visceral and emotional, sometimes to the point of incoherence and/or purity. Why look at their influence as being glass half empty? Maybe it was a good thing, that Nirvana made it okay to reach down inside.
Scream therapy for teenagers is more than okay. There's a lot to be said for music that lets people rock out (or dance out, or whatever) to their frustrations. "Adult" songs are great, too, but what's wrong with expressing those starker, more "immature" emotions?
It reminds me of a quote from Russell T. Davies, he of Doctor Who. He said, comparing writing for families to writing for adults, that children were more fun to write for, because children only ever had real concerns. Adults worried personal boundaries and years-old slights. Children worried about the world blowing up.
Besides, many of the "concerns" of post-grunge are explicitly not the concerns of teenagers. "I will be a better father to my child than my father was to me" is an adult concern. Not that some teenagers don't also become fathers - but even then, once you've become a parent, you have now inherited adult problems.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:03 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Cop Shoot Cop is way too fucking awesome to belong in this thread.
You know, I've been a fan of Firewater ever since I picked up their first album shortly after release and utterly on a whim - Soul Coughing's drummer Yuval Gabay did the drums for 'Get Off The Cross ...' and I was like, "Okay, why not?"
Anyway point is I love all sorts of Firewater and Tod A. and I've heard since the beginning that he was in Cop Shoot Cop and yet somehow I've never gone to listen to them even though I've meant to for ... oh god, I guess fifteen years now? Good grief.
posted by komara at 9:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
You know, I've been a fan of Firewater ever since I picked up their first album shortly after release and utterly on a whim - Soul Coughing's drummer Yuval Gabay did the drums for 'Get Off The Cross ...' and I was like, "Okay, why not?"
Anyway point is I love all sorts of Firewater and Tod A. and I've heard since the beginning that he was in Cop Shoot Cop and yet somehow I've never gone to listen to them even though I've meant to for ... oh god, I guess fifteen years now? Good grief.
posted by komara at 9:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
After reading this, I did not realize that I remembered the lyrics to "Shimmer."
There's nothing wrong with a little Veruca--
Wait, what?
Make it stop.
posted by gern at 9:11 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
There's nothing wrong with a little Veruca--
Wait, what?
Make it stop.
posted by gern at 9:11 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Release is my favorite Cop Shoot Cop album, although Ask Questions Later is awfully close. IMHO they got better and better with every album.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:12 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:12 AM on November 5, 2013
The more I think about the Pitchfork article, the angrier I get at their 2003-and forward analysis. An article bitching about the "Oligopoly" of alt rock, whining about the "hollowed out young male listenership", and completely ignoring the rise of "indie" music and the role of the internet in opening up a non-local radio source of music? Fuck off.
Plus, look at the numbers however you like, keep bitching about "known quantities", but American Idiot was an amazing album from a Green Day that had already put out a Best Hits record and that I, for one, pretty much thought of in the past tense of the grunge era. I'm not saying there wasn't other stuff out there that should have gotten more play, but that was a solid fucking album. That album had four solid singles (American Idiot, Holiday, Wake Me When September Ends, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams). Maybe in another era the nine minute long Jesus of Suburbia medley wouldn't have gotten airplay, but fuck it, isn't it kind of beautiful that a nine minute long medley got played on FM stations?
OK, I'm not actually cool enough for this thread, I'll go work now.
posted by maryr at 9:14 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Plus, look at the numbers however you like, keep bitching about "known quantities", but American Idiot was an amazing album from a Green Day that had already put out a Best Hits record and that I, for one, pretty much thought of in the past tense of the grunge era. I'm not saying there wasn't other stuff out there that should have gotten more play, but that was a solid fucking album. That album had four solid singles (American Idiot, Holiday, Wake Me When September Ends, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams). Maybe in another era the nine minute long Jesus of Suburbia medley wouldn't have gotten airplay, but fuck it, isn't it kind of beautiful that a nine minute long medley got played on FM stations?
OK, I'm not actually cool enough for this thread, I'll go work now.
posted by maryr at 9:14 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's how the whole aloof, ironic thing became cool - it was never quite cool to bare your heart as openly as a country singer would.
Aloofness and irony never became cool. They are part of the essence of cool, since Miles' Birth of the Cool. The essence of coolness is nonchalance, preserving a layer of emotional detachment in the face of great pressure. Cool is obsessed with authenticity but can never be sincere.
posted by Diablevert at 9:16 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Aloofness and irony never became cool. They are part of the essence of cool, since Miles' Birth of the Cool. The essence of coolness is nonchalance, preserving a layer of emotional detachment in the face of great pressure. Cool is obsessed with authenticity but can never be sincere.
posted by Diablevert at 9:16 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
System of A Down got their out of jail free card with Boom, doing an antiwar song at the worst possible time, on the eve of the War on Iraq and getting the feel of that time exactly right, including the exhilaration of seeing so many people oppose a senseless war and the despair as we saw that the fuckers were going to go ahead with it.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:16 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by MartinWisse at 9:16 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
The more I think about the Pitchfork article, the angrier I get at their 2003-and forward analysis. An article bitching about the "Oligopoly" of alt rock, whining about the "hollowed out young male listenership", and completely ignoring the rise of "indie" music and the role of the internet in opening up a non-local radio source of music? Fuck off.
To be fair, the article explicitly states it's dealing exclusively with alternative radio charts. You wouldn't expect them to spend a lot of grafs on say, the Decemberists or Iron & Wine, since they didn't actually make said charts.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:17 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
To be fair, the article explicitly states it's dealing exclusively with alternative radio charts. You wouldn't expect them to spend a lot of grafs on say, the Decemberists or Iron & Wine, since they didn't actually make said charts.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:17 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
This was the era in the 90s where I nearly gave up on rock entirely, and even lyrics entirely, and went deep into IDM and full-fledged electronic weirdness (Squarepusher, Autechre, Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin, Plaid, Orbital, The Orb, Oval, et al.) Consequently I look back on it as one of the greatest eras for music of my lifetime.
Post-grunge was also expert at the "You Bitch You Broke My Heart I Hate You" song, which, man, really annoying.
Yuuup. I think this has my vote for the absolute nadir of 'alternative rock radio': Puddle of Mudd - She Hates Me. I heard it all over my college campus and felt like the world was ending. Felt so disillusioned about higher education and the idea that I would be among smart, culturally literate people that I could relate to and connect with. So much angst in that period of my life. SHE FUCKIN' HATES ME, MAN.
posted by naju at 9:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Post-grunge was also expert at the "You Bitch You Broke My Heart I Hate You" song, which, man, really annoying.
Yuuup. I think this has my vote for the absolute nadir of 'alternative rock radio': Puddle of Mudd - She Hates Me. I heard it all over my college campus and felt like the world was ending. Felt so disillusioned about higher education and the idea that I would be among smart, culturally literate people that I could relate to and connect with. So much angst in that period of my life. SHE FUCKIN' HATES ME, MAN.
posted by naju at 9:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
If Cop Shoot Cop ever turns up on Spotify, I'll be all over it. Because like komara, I love me some Firewater and Tod A, but I don't know 'em that well, either.
Firewater is one of my very favorite bands, though. They make "world music" but not in a pass the dutchie/make sure the coffee is fair trade/I heard the most adorable drum sound from an African fellow kind of way. Theirs is a seedier, surlier sound, like they'd found the crummiest bars in Eastern Europe, in Turkey, in India, etc. and worked them all into one damaged guy from NYC's purple prose drinking anthems, shouters, and shanties. They're frigging terrific.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Firewater is one of my very favorite bands, though. They make "world music" but not in a pass the dutchie/make sure the coffee is fair trade/I heard the most adorable drum sound from an African fellow kind of way. Theirs is a seedier, surlier sound, like they'd found the crummiest bars in Eastern Europe, in Turkey, in India, etc. and worked them all into one damaged guy from NYC's purple prose drinking anthems, shouters, and shanties. They're frigging terrific.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
We always called this stuff viking-rock, because the singers all seemed to be doing their best impressions of what a teenage boy might imagine singing viking warriors would sound like.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by saulgoodman at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
The best analogy I have for the post-grunge bands was that they were the equivalent of the Hair Metal era bands. They were ostensibly genre descendents of better hard rocking type bands, but most of their hit songs that got played over and over again on the radio were crappy ballads, and even their harder stuff was never as good as the bands that they were emulating. So the fact that not many people are nostalgic for Staind is for the same reason that most people don't consider Poison to be one of the best bands of the 80s.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:21 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by burnmp3s at 9:21 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
i love system of a down. they're great to listen to while playing racing games (and thus, awful to listen to while being a law abiding citizen driving a car).
posted by nadawi at 9:23 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 9:23 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
(Best Cop Shoot Cop Song)(okay back to the bleats)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:27 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:27 AM on November 5, 2013
PS Deftones' White Pony isn't really nu-metal or fauxternative. If anything it's one of the first nu-gaze albums. Great stuff!
I just realized how crazy it is that Bjork didn't get any radio play around this time (with Homogenic, the best album of her career.) It exposes the lie from the article that post-grunge was feminine music made by men and people can't deal with it. Bjork was feminine in the messy, inconvenient, uncomfortable way that women musicians from the early-to-mid 90s could get away with in the overground, but she was virtually ignored by the radio and MTV during this period (after getting a decent amount of air time with "It's Oh So Quiet" in 1995.) Post-grunge goat rock emerged partly as a reaction to stuff like Lilith Fair, Tori Amos, Bjork. It was embarrassing because it was a de facto "macho males have dark brooding feelings, isn't this more palatable and unchallenging, what about the mens" movement.
posted by naju at 9:47 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
I just realized how crazy it is that Bjork didn't get any radio play around this time (with Homogenic, the best album of her career.) It exposes the lie from the article that post-grunge was feminine music made by men and people can't deal with it. Bjork was feminine in the messy, inconvenient, uncomfortable way that women musicians from the early-to-mid 90s could get away with in the overground, but she was virtually ignored by the radio and MTV during this period (after getting a decent amount of air time with "It's Oh So Quiet" in 1995.) Post-grunge goat rock emerged partly as a reaction to stuff like Lilith Fair, Tori Amos, Bjork. It was embarrassing because it was a de facto "macho males have dark brooding feelings, isn't this more palatable and unchallenging, what about the mens" movement.
posted by naju at 9:47 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
('97-'99 was the height of second-wave emo, too, and that was music largely by men, about feelings, so why wasn't that all over the radio?)
posted by naju at 9:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by naju at 9:54 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
weirdly, just the other day i heard bjork in a suburban oklahoma town at the meat counter. it was so strange to hear it in that context.
posted by nadawi at 9:55 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by nadawi at 9:55 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
The article is not saying that people couldn't deal with feminine music. It's saying that, among other things, the "cool" crowd - the kind that shits on Nickelback and Bush - didn't want to deal with confessional themes coming from rawking men.
I'm not seeing the Björk connection. Björk got plenty of airplay, especially relative to how unusual her music was, especially within the demographic that also scorns post-grunge. Björk's music came from her heart, but it wasn't typically confessional in the Jagged Little Pill way. She didn't really spawn any mainstream movements, nor did she follow any, so there's no comparison with her being post-anything.
That, and she was always unambiguously feminine, and presented as such. Even when MTV teased her, as in their commercial where they show her as a baby, being carried away by elves, the teasing had nothing to do with her being not-feminine. Ditto for the infamous (and awesome!) swan dress. No gender confusion there.
('97-'99 was the height of second-wave emo, too, and that was music largely by men, about feelings, so why wasn't that all over the radio?)
You're missing the article's focus. Post-grunge was very popular.
The visceral reaction against it comes not from the mainstream, but from the "cool" kids, the kind of people who read Pitchfork or MetaFilter, or even /mu/ or Reddit.
It's the hipster equivalent of "disco sucks." Yeah, a lot of disco did suck, just as a lot of post-grunge also sucked, but there are other issues burbling underneath. It's not so much that you have to like disco or post-grunge, but rather that the knee-jerk reaction doesn't entirely come from a completely awesome place.
It was embarrassing because it was a de facto "macho males have dark brooding feelings, isn't this more palatable and unchallenging, what about the mens" movement.
This is exactly what the article is talking about. When was Staind ever presented as a substitute for Alanis Morrisette, or even as a counterargument? Why couldn't both men and women sing about this kind of stuff?
The "what about the mens" invocation would only make sense if, say, the top 5 punchline bands were all Alanis/Tori fare, and people were talking about that, but then somebody chimed in to say, "no, male-led post-grunge is that which is truly discriminated against, let's talk about that."
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:05 AM on November 5, 2013
I'm not seeing the Björk connection. Björk got plenty of airplay, especially relative to how unusual her music was, especially within the demographic that also scorns post-grunge. Björk's music came from her heart, but it wasn't typically confessional in the Jagged Little Pill way. She didn't really spawn any mainstream movements, nor did she follow any, so there's no comparison with her being post-anything.
That, and she was always unambiguously feminine, and presented as such. Even when MTV teased her, as in their commercial where they show her as a baby, being carried away by elves, the teasing had nothing to do with her being not-feminine. Ditto for the infamous (and awesome!) swan dress. No gender confusion there.
('97-'99 was the height of second-wave emo, too, and that was music largely by men, about feelings, so why wasn't that all over the radio?)
You're missing the article's focus. Post-grunge was very popular.
The visceral reaction against it comes not from the mainstream, but from the "cool" kids, the kind of people who read Pitchfork or MetaFilter, or even /mu/ or Reddit.
It's the hipster equivalent of "disco sucks." Yeah, a lot of disco did suck, just as a lot of post-grunge also sucked, but there are other issues burbling underneath. It's not so much that you have to like disco or post-grunge, but rather that the knee-jerk reaction doesn't entirely come from a completely awesome place.
It was embarrassing because it was a de facto "macho males have dark brooding feelings, isn't this more palatable and unchallenging, what about the mens" movement.
This is exactly what the article is talking about. When was Staind ever presented as a substitute for Alanis Morrisette, or even as a counterargument? Why couldn't both men and women sing about this kind of stuff?
The "what about the mens" invocation would only make sense if, say, the top 5 punchline bands were all Alanis/Tori fare, and people were talking about that, but then somebody chimed in to say, "no, male-led post-grunge is that which is truly discriminated against, let's talk about that."
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:05 AM on November 5, 2013
That, and she was always unambiguously feminine, and presented as such.
(She may have more obscure work where there is gender play, but I can't think of it at the moment. It certainly wasn't part of her mainstream presentation.)
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:07 AM on November 5, 2013
(She may have more obscure work where there is gender play, but I can't think of it at the moment. It certainly wasn't part of her mainstream presentation.)
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:07 AM on November 5, 2013
Thanks to this thread, I realized that the part of "It's Been Awhile" where he goes, "I'm on the outside, I'm looking in, I can see through you, can see the real you" is actually part of completely different song called "Outside". Cool! Anyway, I like that song those songs ok.
posted by Kwine at 10:28 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by Kwine at 10:28 AM on November 5, 2013
When I was a 90s teenager I followed Kurt Cobain's t-shirt collection into the 80s Touch & Go catalogue. Now when my friends do Goo Goo Dolls at karaoke, I feel a weird ersatz nostalgia for a 90s I only came into contact with at the mall.
posted by Beardman at 10:38 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by Beardman at 10:38 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Nirvana never felt all that mature or intellectual, if I'm parsing "intellectual" correctly.
More of a comparative value than an absolute, but the grunge era bands seemed to trying at least have a occasionally wanted to say something about the world external to them, while the nu-metal bands were steadfastly focused on their interior monologues. Not that there wasn't overlap and there's nothing wrong with personal introspective music.
Looking back at lot of the lyrics of bands like Korn or Staind though, feels like reading the awkward hackneyed poetry of unusually akward teenager. Being an unusually awkward at the time no doubt explains why the music resonated with me at the time, but, returning to it now, it just feels kind dumb.
Even when Jonathan Davis was at his most emotionally raw, there was still the kind of lyrical obliqueness of grunge, just now done less artfully and relying a lot more on cliches. I get a lot more out of returning to the classic grunge-era bands than I do returning to the big nu-metal group, because there's actually a greater sense of personality to those bands.
posted by Panjandrum at 10:47 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
More of a comparative value than an absolute, but the grunge era bands seemed to trying at least have a occasionally wanted to say something about the world external to them, while the nu-metal bands were steadfastly focused on their interior monologues. Not that there wasn't overlap and there's nothing wrong with personal introspective music.
Looking back at lot of the lyrics of bands like Korn or Staind though, feels like reading the awkward hackneyed poetry of unusually akward teenager. Being an unusually awkward at the time no doubt explains why the music resonated with me at the time, but, returning to it now, it just feels kind dumb.
Even when Jonathan Davis was at his most emotionally raw, there was still the kind of lyrical obliqueness of grunge, just now done less artfully and relying a lot more on cliches. I get a lot more out of returning to the classic grunge-era bands than I do returning to the big nu-metal group, because there's actually a greater sense of personality to those bands.
posted by Panjandrum at 10:47 AM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
There's plenty of love for kick-ass metal, whether it's self-consciously soaring or all about wizards and demons and goblins and whales.
The only 'problem' I have with this sentence is figuring out: is "Plenty of Love" the band name and "Wizards and Demons and Goblins and Whales" the breakout album, or do I have that backwards?
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:48 AM on November 5, 2013
The only 'problem' I have with this sentence is figuring out: is "Plenty of Love" the band name and "Wizards and Demons and Goblins and Whales" the breakout album, or do I have that backwards?
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:48 AM on November 5, 2013
More of a comparative value than an absolute, but the grunge era bands seemed to trying at least have a occasionally wanted to say something about the world external to them, while the nu-metal bands were steadfastly focused on their interior monologues. Not that there wasn't overlap and there's nothing wrong with personal introspective music.
The second-wave grunge bands were only aping something they couldn't really understand. Do you really think Chad Kroeger or Scott Stapp (more like stahp amirite?) were actually in touch with their feelings? No, they saw Eddie and Kurt and Layne and Jerry and Chris making mad ducats by like, y'know, talking about feelings 'n' stuff, and they wanted in on it. If they had come along ten years earlier, they would have been wearing spandex and shrieking about "sweet surrender" and all that nonsense.
They like to sing along but they know not what it means, to coin a phrase.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:57 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
The second-wave grunge bands were only aping something they couldn't really understand. Do you really think Chad Kroeger or Scott Stapp (more like stahp amirite?) were actually in touch with their feelings? No, they saw Eddie and Kurt and Layne and Jerry and Chris making mad ducats by like, y'know, talking about feelings 'n' stuff, and they wanted in on it. If they had come along ten years earlier, they would have been wearing spandex and shrieking about "sweet surrender" and all that nonsense.
They like to sing along but they know not what it means, to coin a phrase.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:57 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Had not thought about Shriekback in a long time.
Still I think the real story is all the forgotten great hip hop from that time period.
posted by PHINC at 11:08 AM on November 5, 2013
Still I think the real story is all the forgotten great hip hop from that time period.
posted by PHINC at 11:08 AM on November 5, 2013
The visceral reaction against it comes not from the mainstream, but from the "cool" kids, the kind of people who read Pitchfork or MetaFilter, or even /mu/ or Reddit.
Well, FWIW, my crowd of young musician friends and I could by no sensible definition ever be described as the cool kids (although weirdly, there was a little window there in the early 90s when people suddenly started treating us better and acting like they thought we were cool). We were the high school social misfits who only ever managed to find any sense of personal identity or community through making music, and as such, were often on the receiving end of bullying and intimidation from various hyper-macho types. We hated viking-rock partly because it seemed so self-consciously macho, contrived and derivative. We also hated it because the kind of people who picked on and marginalized people like us seemed to like it (while being blissfully unaware or indifferent to the fact that these viking rockers had cribbed all the technical innovations in their music from betters who didn't get as much mainstream acclaim).
posted by saulgoodman at 11:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Well, FWIW, my crowd of young musician friends and I could by no sensible definition ever be described as the cool kids (although weirdly, there was a little window there in the early 90s when people suddenly started treating us better and acting like they thought we were cool). We were the high school social misfits who only ever managed to find any sense of personal identity or community through making music, and as such, were often on the receiving end of bullying and intimidation from various hyper-macho types. We hated viking-rock partly because it seemed so self-consciously macho, contrived and derivative. We also hated it because the kind of people who picked on and marginalized people like us seemed to like it (while being blissfully unaware or indifferent to the fact that these viking rockers had cribbed all the technical innovations in their music from betters who didn't get as much mainstream acclaim).
posted by saulgoodman at 11:09 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Someone posted the wrong Sparks song a little ways above. Here is the correct one.
posted by Nomyte at 11:17 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Nomyte at 11:17 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
And The Goo Goo Dolls were a pretty damn solid power pop band and I'll fight converse intensely with anyone who disagrees.
The Goo Goo Dolls predate postgrunge and in that time created one of my favorite power pop albums of all-time: 1993's Superstarcarwash, which came out during a brilliant but ignored blast of Great American Powerpop like Jellyfish's Spilt Milk and The Posies' Frosting On The Beater. But the public couldn't be bothered because all of the alty-come-latelys were stuck hard on posing superserious crap like Candlebox, who were the true forebearers of shit like Nickleback.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:33 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
The Goo Goo Dolls predate postgrunge and in that time created one of my favorite power pop albums of all-time: 1993's Superstarcarwash, which came out during a brilliant but ignored blast of Great American Powerpop like Jellyfish's Spilt Milk and The Posies' Frosting On The Beater. But the public couldn't be bothered because all of the alty-come-latelys were stuck hard on posing superserious crap like Candlebox, who were the true forebearers of shit like Nickleback.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:33 AM on November 5, 2013 [6 favorites]
All I'll say is that the second article successfully defends nothing but the reminiscence bump theory!
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:41 AM on November 5, 2013
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:41 AM on November 5, 2013
OK, everyone here needs to chill out a bit. Why don't we all just relax and listen to some Sixpence None The Richer or some Counting Crows?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Well, now here's your chance.
And why the heck not?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:56 PM on November 5, 2013
And why the heck not?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:56 PM on November 5, 2013
I know some people who are Counting Crows devotees. I have seen Counting Crows perform at a minor league baseball stadium in the lower Hudson Valley. Their live show, far as I can reckon, is the band vamping while Adam Duritz wanders around the stage and tells incoherent stories in a mournful voice.
posted by uncleozzy at 1:16 PM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 1:16 PM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]
Limp Bizkit is nothing but Skrillex played on guitars and real drums."
"Wagner is the Puccini of music."
posted by klangklangston at 1:34 PM on November 5, 2013
"Wagner is the Puccini of music."
posted by klangklangston at 1:34 PM on November 5, 2013
My other big "Alternative" moment as a yute was seeing the MTV Alternative Nation tour in an amphitheater right after graduating high school. It was a pretty solid snapshot of what was happening in music at the time. You had Screaming Trees being awesome, but treated like one hit wonders by a crowd who no concept of the quality and breadth of their work. +"Play the one from Singles!) You had Soul Asylum, right as they rounded the corner from scrappy indie to flabby arena band. (They were pretty good, really, but they were kinda trying on their Bon Jovi chops, if you follow.) And the Spin Doctors, the band most folks had come to see. (I wouldn't have even stayed for them, but there was a girl...) Even the people who were psyched to see them had to admit, after watching two such rock solid bands that they were a mess of haircuts, hats, and noodling. The crowd dropped to half its size inside of the first five songs. Their moment had still been going six weeks before when the tickets went on sale, but was definitely over by the time the show actually came around. Such were the fickle tastes of alt rock.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:45 PM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:45 PM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
It's so weird reading this stuff here, especially the defenses of the Deftones and Korn. I remember this time — it was right after I graduated from high school — and I worked as a music writer for most of the early 2000s. This was exactly the kind of music I loathed.
One of the big reasons was that I was covering music in Southeast Michigan, which meant I was writing about what later got called the "garage rock revival." Bands like The White Stripes, The Dirtbombs, Bantam Rooster, The Avatars, The Detroit Cobras, The Go, The Paybacks, The Henchmen… they all just had so much more life and verve, even when stripped down, compared to these lumbering post-grunge dinosaurs.
This was especially true because I'd come up listening to a shit-ton of indie rock, and that was about when the rock started to fall away from "indie," as indie morphed into the endlessly twee glockenspiel and ukelele plinkings, like the states had just gotten a dub of C-86.
But the grunge bands I'd loved had also gotten terrible too, honestly. Soundgarden's Down on the Upside blew. Nirvana was dead. Pearl Jam was putting out solid albums that just weren't very exciting (they're much better in hindsight than I thought they were when they came out — they're not a band that innovates with each record). Stone Temple Pilots became a weird glam band for a while. The Butthole Surfers determined to sell out, did, and dynamited their taste along with it. Even Faith No More put out kind of a boring album (King for a Day) after the eclecticism of Angel Dust.
Every other genre seemed to be exploding outward, not least because that was when Napster (and Kazaa and Limewire and Sharebear and whatever else) finally exploded, and it became easy to hear music from a lot of different genres. Everything that I was listening to was getting weirder, more mingled, building on the huge mass of teaming strangeness — why would anyone listen to Linkin Park if they could hear Brainiac? Everything was getting broader and more interesting, except post-grunge. That seemed like it was willfully regressive, determinedly dull and intentionally shallow.
The other thing that bugged me at the time was how inflated a view the bands had of themselves. I remember an interview with Puddle of Mudd where they complained that they were always being compared to Nirvana, "Why doesn't anyone compare us to Led Zeppelin?" the singer wondered. Well, my answer was, compared to Led Zeppelin you suck even more than you do compared to Nirvana.
And now, in hindsight, why would anyone go back and listen to any of this music again? It's mid-tempo melodic mush, compressed to all hell and functionally fungible. The best thing about bands like Creed and Nickleback is that they finally destroyed rock radio as a thing, by bloating it to ridiculousness and making the whole genre something to be escaped by anyone with interesting taste. That made it even easier for pop-rap to take over, and honestly, we're in another golden age of radio pop because of it.
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on November 5, 2013 [12 favorites]
One of the big reasons was that I was covering music in Southeast Michigan, which meant I was writing about what later got called the "garage rock revival." Bands like The White Stripes, The Dirtbombs, Bantam Rooster, The Avatars, The Detroit Cobras, The Go, The Paybacks, The Henchmen… they all just had so much more life and verve, even when stripped down, compared to these lumbering post-grunge dinosaurs.
This was especially true because I'd come up listening to a shit-ton of indie rock, and that was about when the rock started to fall away from "indie," as indie morphed into the endlessly twee glockenspiel and ukelele plinkings, like the states had just gotten a dub of C-86.
But the grunge bands I'd loved had also gotten terrible too, honestly. Soundgarden's Down on the Upside blew. Nirvana was dead. Pearl Jam was putting out solid albums that just weren't very exciting (they're much better in hindsight than I thought they were when they came out — they're not a band that innovates with each record). Stone Temple Pilots became a weird glam band for a while. The Butthole Surfers determined to sell out, did, and dynamited their taste along with it. Even Faith No More put out kind of a boring album (King for a Day) after the eclecticism of Angel Dust.
Every other genre seemed to be exploding outward, not least because that was when Napster (and Kazaa and Limewire and Sharebear and whatever else) finally exploded, and it became easy to hear music from a lot of different genres. Everything that I was listening to was getting weirder, more mingled, building on the huge mass of teaming strangeness — why would anyone listen to Linkin Park if they could hear Brainiac? Everything was getting broader and more interesting, except post-grunge. That seemed like it was willfully regressive, determinedly dull and intentionally shallow.
The other thing that bugged me at the time was how inflated a view the bands had of themselves. I remember an interview with Puddle of Mudd where they complained that they were always being compared to Nirvana, "Why doesn't anyone compare us to Led Zeppelin?" the singer wondered. Well, my answer was, compared to Led Zeppelin you suck even more than you do compared to Nirvana.
And now, in hindsight, why would anyone go back and listen to any of this music again? It's mid-tempo melodic mush, compressed to all hell and functionally fungible. The best thing about bands like Creed and Nickleback is that they finally destroyed rock radio as a thing, by bloating it to ridiculousness and making the whole genre something to be escaped by anyone with interesting taste. That made it even easier for pop-rap to take over, and honestly, we're in another golden age of radio pop because of it.
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on November 5, 2013 [12 favorites]
That made it even easier for pop-rap to take over, and honestly, we're in another golden age of radio pop because of it.
Oh man, I was with you right up until that last sentence. (Well, that and the remark that Down on the Upside wasn't very good.)
posted by entropicamericana at 2:40 PM on November 5, 2013
Oh man, I was with you right up until that last sentence. (Well, that and the remark that Down on the Upside wasn't very good.)
posted by entropicamericana at 2:40 PM on November 5, 2013
It's so weird reading this stuff here, especially the defenses of the Deftones and Korn
Maybe you wrote Deftones off without giving em a chance? I don't blame you. But songs like "Digital Bath" and "Knife Party" were simply worlds away from all the bands they got lumped in. And the fusing of metal and shoegaze wouldn't be explored again until indie acts like Isis and Jesu became critically acclaimed for it well into the 2000's.
posted by naju at 2:46 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Maybe you wrote Deftones off without giving em a chance? I don't blame you. But songs like "Digital Bath" and "Knife Party" were simply worlds away from all the bands they got lumped in. And the fusing of metal and shoegaze wouldn't be explored again until indie acts like Isis and Jesu became critically acclaimed for it well into the 2000's.
posted by naju at 2:46 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Yeah, if you think Deftones are interchangeable with Creed, or even Korn, then you are just plain not paying attention. I'm not saying that you have to like any of those bands, but they sound nothing alike, outside of a few surface features. You might as well say that The White Stripes and The Arcade Fire sound the same.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:16 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:16 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
"It's the mix and master, for the most part."
That and that the songs aren't nearly as strong. "Black Hole Sun" was the beginning of the end for Soundgarden.
"Maybe you wrote Deftones off without giving em a chance? I don't blame you. But songs like "Digital Bath" and "Knife Party" were simply worlds away from all the bands they got lumped in. And the fusing of metal and shoegaze wouldn't be explored again until indie acts like Isis and Jesu became critically acclaimed for it well into the 2000's."
I had a lot of friends who were really into the Deftones, to the point where I still have a DVD around somewhere of, like, 6 million hours of MP3s including concert and outtakes and bootleg singles, etc. (Though, frankly, it's probably as bitrotted as the rest of my CD-R wallets by now). They never got beyond background sound for me. Even those two tracks, which I'll say are better than I remembered from the Deftones, still don't strike me as particularly interesting — they remind me of Stabbing Westward off the top of my head. As for no one really doing shoegaze plus metal, well, that's not really true — most of the desert rock scene was doing that and better, folks like Kyuss. And that's leaving aside the explosion in the noise rock and drone scenes around the same time, which eventually gave us bands like Earth.
"Yeah, if you think Deftones are interchangeable with Creed, or even Korn, then you are just plain not paying attention."
That's a fair cop. They're all terrible for different reasons, except Deftones, who are just kinda mediocre.
posted by klangklangston at 3:58 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
That and that the songs aren't nearly as strong. "Black Hole Sun" was the beginning of the end for Soundgarden.
"Maybe you wrote Deftones off without giving em a chance? I don't blame you. But songs like "Digital Bath" and "Knife Party" were simply worlds away from all the bands they got lumped in. And the fusing of metal and shoegaze wouldn't be explored again until indie acts like Isis and Jesu became critically acclaimed for it well into the 2000's."
I had a lot of friends who were really into the Deftones, to the point where I still have a DVD around somewhere of, like, 6 million hours of MP3s including concert and outtakes and bootleg singles, etc. (Though, frankly, it's probably as bitrotted as the rest of my CD-R wallets by now). They never got beyond background sound for me. Even those two tracks, which I'll say are better than I remembered from the Deftones, still don't strike me as particularly interesting — they remind me of Stabbing Westward off the top of my head. As for no one really doing shoegaze plus metal, well, that's not really true — most of the desert rock scene was doing that and better, folks like Kyuss. And that's leaving aside the explosion in the noise rock and drone scenes around the same time, which eventually gave us bands like Earth.
"Yeah, if you think Deftones are interchangeable with Creed, or even Korn, then you are just plain not paying attention."
That's a fair cop. They're all terrible for different reasons, except Deftones, who are just kinda mediocre.
posted by klangklangston at 3:58 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's a fair cop. They're all terrible for different reasons, except Deftones, who are just kinda mediocre.
Ouch, klang. Harsh realm.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:25 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Ouch, klang. Harsh realm.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:25 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
And this thread has led me back to listening to Incubus, who I used to confuse with Deftones because they had the same sort of lineup. But Incubus is far worse.
posted by klangklangston at 4:56 PM on November 5, 2013
posted by klangklangston at 4:56 PM on November 5, 2013
Give the singer a hat and a bit of a drawl and Def Leppard is early 2000s Country and post-Grunge late-90s pop/rock is what Country looks and sounds like now.
An excellent observation, and it's no coincidence. Mutt Lange, who produced Def Leppard's hits, was married to Shania Twain during the peak of her popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s and produced three of her biggest albums--and, as recently as 2008, Nickelback.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:03 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
An excellent observation, and it's no coincidence. Mutt Lange, who produced Def Leppard's hits, was married to Shania Twain during the peak of her popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s and produced three of her biggest albums--and, as recently as 2008, Nickelback.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:03 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
As for no one really doing shoegaze plus metal, well, that's not really true — most of the desert rock scene was doing that and better, folks like Kyuss.
What??? You do not know what shoegaze is if you think Kyuss are shoegaze.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2013
What??? You do not know what shoegaze is if you think Kyuss are shoegaze.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2013
Kyuss are more shoegaze+metal than Deftones are. Are you maybe confusing shoegaze with dream pop?
posted by klangklangston at 5:33 PM on November 5, 2013
posted by klangklangston at 5:33 PM on November 5, 2013
I call these "The Raffi Years" when the seas of pop music crested and broke, but all that coursed through chez Biblio were the dulcet tones of Mr. Cavoukian. And Jonatha Brooke.
posted by Biblio at 5:35 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Biblio at 5:35 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
What about Local H? Where do they fit in? Because As Good As Dead is one of my most favorite albums, for some reason.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:45 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by uncleozzy at 5:45 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Local H fits in as the best Halloween cover band ever, but kind of a one-hit-wonder outside of that.
posted by klangklangston at 5:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by klangklangston at 5:47 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
i love local h. the kids are alright and eddie vedder get constant rotation on my lists.
posted by nadawi at 5:59 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 5:59 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
I remember hearing Nirvana on WKNC in 1992 (?) and thinking "This is going to change everything". Then Pearl Jam, then the rest of the grunge hit. Then, what? Where have we been since then? Alt rock became a thing, then? I guess I'm just getting old. Perhaps it was some sort of echo after Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now" where everyone did expect everything to change, and it didn't.
On a side note:
1. I must listen to more Jesus Lizard, clearly I missed them at some point.
2. Tool is prog rock and I will gladly duel anyone who disagrees.
3. I miss RATM as well.
4. I am open to musical suggestions that skip nu metal and all forms of country.
posted by Farce_First at 6:07 PM on November 5, 2013
On a side note:
1. I must listen to more Jesus Lizard, clearly I missed them at some point.
2. Tool is prog rock and I will gladly duel anyone who disagrees.
3. I miss RATM as well.
4. I am open to musical suggestions that skip nu metal and all forms of country.
posted by Farce_First at 6:07 PM on November 5, 2013
Since neither Uncle Ozzy or Nadawi are from Chicago, I wonder: Did you guys ever get to see them do a Halloween show? Every year at the, uh, I think the Metro but maybe the Empty Bottle, they'd dress up as another band and do an amazing cover set. You can find some of 'em online — the Nirvana one is particularly good, but the Tom Petty one is pretty fun too.
posted by klangklangston at 6:14 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by klangklangston at 6:14 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Kyuss are more shoegaze+metal than Deftones are.
At this point, I honestly do not believe you have ever heard either of those bands. Really.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:33 PM on November 5, 2013
At this point, I honestly do not believe you have ever heard either of those bands. Really.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:33 PM on November 5, 2013
Well, I've listened to the majority of Cop Shoot Cop's album Ask Questions Later thanks to it being uploaded in its entirety in a single YouTube video. I'm convinced, and I'd like to buy the album online, but I can't find anywhere that sells a digital copy. Any sources I may not have considered? I really can't see buying an actual CD and paying for shipping ... that just seems wrong.
[and by 'sources' I do actually mean some sort of storefront that might in some tiny way get the $0.001 of profit back to ... uh ... the band? Interscope? I have no idea who I'm expecting to profit from my legit purchase.]
posted by komara at 7:11 PM on November 5, 2013
[and by 'sources' I do actually mean some sort of storefront that might in some tiny way get the $0.001 of profit back to ... uh ... the band? Interscope? I have no idea who I'm expecting to profit from my legit purchase.]
posted by komara at 7:11 PM on November 5, 2013
I know some people who are Counting Crows devotees. I have seen Counting Crows perform at a minor league baseball stadium in the lower Hudson Valley. Their live show, far as I can reckon, is the band vamping while Adam Duritz wanders around the stage and tells incoherent stories in a mournful voice.
Counting Crows and I have a complicated relationship. I think their second record Recovering the Satellites is a legitimately incredible record. Had they disappeared immediately after it (and had their lead singer been less easily-caricaturable) I think we'd remember them far differently now.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 8:33 PM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
Counting Crows and I have a complicated relationship. I think their second record Recovering the Satellites is a legitimately incredible record. Had they disappeared immediately after it (and had their lead singer been less easily-caricaturable) I think we'd remember them far differently now.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 8:33 PM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]
that might in some tiny way get the $0.001 of profit back to ... uh ... the band? Interscope?
Well, as far as I can tell all the Cop Shoot Cop stuff is out-of-print, and Interscope seems to have no interest in re-releasing CD's or digitally releasing anything of theirs.
So it looks like your only option is to find a used or previously unsold CD on ebay or Amazon or in whatever local music stores still survive in your area. In either case, the band and/or label already got their money, so you can buy guilt-free. Although you may not feel like paying the $25 to $50 that the discs seem to be going for.
Or your local library may actually have a copy. Long shot, probably, but possible.
I'd like to buy the album online, but I can't find anywhere that sells a digital copy. Any sources I may not have considered? I really can't see buying an actual CD and paying for shipping ... that just seems wrong.
CSC is one those bands from that era that seems to have slipped though the cracks. Possibly the label just doesn't see enough income potential to reissue stuff even in digital format. Possibly there's some kind of legal or contractual issues or hostility between the band members that would make a re-issue more expensive or complicated. Shit like this - the band no longer has any control over their music getting out to the public - is why Steve Albini wrote his famous "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked" essay back in the early 90's, addressing the very issue of indie bands signing their life away to major labels.
And I'm truly confused about what "seems wrong" about buying an actual disc. I guess it's kinda old-school, but it's not like you're hunting down a truly ancient format like wax cylinders or something. Shit, apparently these days the kids are even reviving cassettes. (Cassettes, I tell you - for the love of Pete, I've got NO IDEA what's going through their heads. And they need to get off my lawn.)
posted by soundguy99 at 9:00 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Well, as far as I can tell all the Cop Shoot Cop stuff is out-of-print, and Interscope seems to have no interest in re-releasing CD's or digitally releasing anything of theirs.
So it looks like your only option is to find a used or previously unsold CD on ebay or Amazon or in whatever local music stores still survive in your area. In either case, the band and/or label already got their money, so you can buy guilt-free. Although you may not feel like paying the $25 to $50 that the discs seem to be going for.
Or your local library may actually have a copy. Long shot, probably, but possible.
I'd like to buy the album online, but I can't find anywhere that sells a digital copy. Any sources I may not have considered? I really can't see buying an actual CD and paying for shipping ... that just seems wrong.
CSC is one those bands from that era that seems to have slipped though the cracks. Possibly the label just doesn't see enough income potential to reissue stuff even in digital format. Possibly there's some kind of legal or contractual issues or hostility between the band members that would make a re-issue more expensive or complicated. Shit like this - the band no longer has any control over their music getting out to the public - is why Steve Albini wrote his famous "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked" essay back in the early 90's, addressing the very issue of indie bands signing their life away to major labels.
And I'm truly confused about what "seems wrong" about buying an actual disc. I guess it's kinda old-school, but it's not like you're hunting down a truly ancient format like wax cylinders or something. Shit, apparently these days the kids are even reviving cassettes. (Cassettes, I tell you - for the love of Pete, I've got NO IDEA what's going through their heads. And they need to get off my lawn.)
posted by soundguy99 at 9:00 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
my car from 99 has a cassette player. I have a box of tapes in the backseat.
posted by nadawi at 9:06 PM on November 5, 2013
posted by nadawi at 9:06 PM on November 5, 2013
And I'm truly confused about what "seems wrong" about buying an actual disc.
I am literally only going to use that physical item for the ... what, two minutes? it takes to rip it to a digital format. I don't want this thing packed up in a cardboard box so big that it requires something to be used to pad the empty space, and sent via truck or plane burning fossil fuels, and then the manpower of getting it on and off the truck - not to mention the wait time involved. All of this, just so I can rip it and then stick the disc in a drawer or send it off to Goodwill? Absolutely unnecessary, if there's a digital version available.
... which unfortunately there does not seem to be.
posted by komara at 9:48 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
I am literally only going to use that physical item for the ... what, two minutes? it takes to rip it to a digital format. I don't want this thing packed up in a cardboard box so big that it requires something to be used to pad the empty space, and sent via truck or plane burning fossil fuels, and then the manpower of getting it on and off the truck - not to mention the wait time involved. All of this, just so I can rip it and then stick the disc in a drawer or send it off to Goodwill? Absolutely unnecessary, if there's a digital version available.
... which unfortunately there does not seem to be.
posted by komara at 9:48 PM on November 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I was into grunge and industrial in the mid/late 90s, then I heard this album and it changed my life.
posted by empath at 11:05 PM on November 5, 2013
posted by empath at 11:05 PM on November 5, 2013
Hum - "Green to Me"
Is also what you have. Downward Is Heavenward is a criminally under-appreciated album.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:18 PM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
Is also what you have. Downward Is Heavenward is a criminally under-appreciated album.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:18 PM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I just now realized that Fuel isn't Lit, which is sort of comforting. That one Lit song is okay. Fuel just blows. Which doesn't stop me from absentmindedly singing, "strawberry surprise / pink linen and white paper / lavender and cream / da da da da ah fuck it" sometimes while I'm doing dishes.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:50 PM on November 6, 2013
posted by uncleozzy at 12:50 PM on November 6, 2013
I love Downward Is Heavenward, I think it's one of the most well produced albums ever. It's dynamic, heavy without being muddy, and there's an obvious stereo soundfield. I've heard them classified as post-grunge but I guess "space rock" works best (the short yelling in "Comin' Home" is the most obvious post-grunge thing).
"Why I Like The Robins" off of You'd Prefer an Astronaut is one of my favorite songs.
They definitely feel like a half-way point between a lot of this stuff, except I don't think they ever got very big, other than Stars. Maybe they were just too good.
posted by gucci mane at 4:43 PM on November 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
"Why I Like The Robins" off of You'd Prefer an Astronaut is one of my favorite songs.
They definitely feel like a half-way point between a lot of this stuff, except I don't think they ever got very big, other than Stars. Maybe they were just too good.
posted by gucci mane at 4:43 PM on November 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
I feel bad for Seven Mary Three. They're from my town, & when they had their big hit, they played a show here, & the crowd bullied them & stole their equipment. Nice victory lap.
posted by broken wheelchair at 7:07 PM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by broken wheelchair at 7:07 PM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Has anyone actually ever listened to Sixpence None The Richer other than members of the band, their spouses, and people who watched that one movie that one song was in and didn't feel like turning off the TV during the end credits?
Yes. I hate the song, but I watched that video every time because I was convinced that the singer was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Once I googled her, & found out she had gone into hiding because of a stalker, & then I felt really ashamed for googling her.
posted by broken wheelchair at 7:50 PM on November 6, 2013
Yes. I hate the song, but I watched that video every time because I was convinced that the singer was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Once I googled her, & found out she had gone into hiding because of a stalker, & then I felt really ashamed for googling her.
posted by broken wheelchair at 7:50 PM on November 6, 2013
Sixpence None the Richer were Christian Contemporary. "Kiss Me" was very controversial, just like Amy Grant was a decade earlier, because some communities never learn a thing if possible.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:43 PM on November 6, 2013
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:43 PM on November 6, 2013
i was going to say that i listen to sixpence all the time, but them i realized it was the cardigans that get a lot of rotation. for sixpence it looks like i have their big single, and two covers performed by them, 'dancing queen' and 'there she goes'
posted by nadawi at 5:47 AM on November 7, 2013
posted by nadawi at 5:47 AM on November 7, 2013
The Cardigans are great, and not just because of their big song.
Incidentally, there's a really funny "Lovefool" joke in Hot Fuzz, and it's all the funnier because the joke might be no more than two seconds long.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:53 AM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Incidentally, there's a really funny "Lovefool" joke in Hot Fuzz, and it's all the funnier because the joke might be no more than two seconds long.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:53 AM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
i absolutely agree - i'd say i listen to lovefool the least of all the songs. i adore disk 2 of the best of album with all the demos and tiny snippits.
posted by nadawi at 6:02 AM on November 7, 2013
posted by nadawi at 6:02 AM on November 7, 2013
Re: Downward Is Heavenward, the downbeat and first few measures of "The Scientists" is one of my favorite musical moments ever.
posted by aaronetc at 8:03 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by aaronetc at 8:03 PM on November 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm so happy this thread is focused on Hum and The Cardigans now.
posted by naju at 5:40 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by naju at 5:40 AM on November 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
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posted by Kitteh at 7:15 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]