Tag Archives: Landfill Indie

Flogging a Dead Cliché

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Tim Hall

When a writer begins with the line “much has been made of the recent death of guitar music and how this year should see its glorious return“, is there really any point reading any further?

I may be missing out on some really wonderful music, but I get the feeling I probably won’t. I get the impression that any writer who uses such dreadful tired clichés as the one above thinks “three-chord indie-pop” and “guitar music” are synonyms, and genres like blues, metal or punk which centre around the sounds made by electric guitars either don’t exist or aren’t relevant. I can also safely assume the band he’s writing about are most likely to be some form of dull landfill indie and will not be worth three minutes of my time.

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And People Accuse Prog of Conservatism?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Tim Hall

A link to a press release for a new band it might be better not to name turned up in my Twitter feed.

A band who struck a chord with each other and found a common ground in the love they have for the same music – bands with identities and guitars!

Wow! Guitars! Whatever will they think of next? Will they actually learn to play them?

The guys are armed with a strong identity and craft for song writing. They brim with a confidence not seen since the Britpop days with songs that reach to grab you from the intro and don’t let you go till the last note is viciously struck in a punk vein.

What can I say? With a press release as clichéd as that, can we assume the music is equally formulaic? And it’s the second time you’re used the word “identity” too. Does this perhaps imply an emphasis on style at the expense of content?

Lyrically they offer an insight into the social commentary and satire of contemporary suburban British life, with choruses to get you singing along and po-going the night away to your hearts content.

Let me guess. Songs about fights outside kebab shops on a Friday night. I bet nobody’s done that before…

They put on a captivating live show and are often described as a musical blend of Blur, Bloc Party and Wire. A juggernaut of a sound!

As a metal fan, I have trouble using the word “juggernaut” when it’s abundantly clear by now that we’re talking three-chord indie. Other vehicle descriptors might be more appropriate. How about “moped”?

I did listen to their promo on YouTube. Well, about 45 seconds of it, which was as much as I could stomach. It was every bit as bad as I feared; tedious, tuneless landfill indie-by-numbers. The breathless Nathan Barley style PR guff had inadvertently described it very well, but just not the way the author had intended.

People accuse progressive rock of being a conservative and backward-looking genre, and a lot of it is probably guilty as changed. But in my mind 90s Britpop was a far worse offender with its insular parochialism and extremely limited palette of musical influences. Much of it came over as a pastiche of the same second-division guitar pop that represented the “stagnant musical forms” Steve Hackett famously wanted to get away from back in 1970, combined with a bit of watered-down punk shorn of the visceral energy that was really the whole point of punk.

It was bad enough in the 1990s. Making the same sort of music in 2012 is a pastiche of a pastiche. That ship has not so much already sailed as been consigned to the breaker’s yard.

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Where is all the good music?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Tim Hall

We’ve all heard friends like this. “There’s no good music around any more”, they say, like Homer Simpson. We know there’s all kinds of wonderful music out there in every genre from prog-rock to death metal to alt.country to electronic to solo bass to many many more that most people have never heard of. But they only know of the ITV Indie and Asda-pop of the commercial mainstream.

Steve Lawson said on Twitter

Ever heard anyone complaining that there’s no good music around any more? Those people are insane. Ignore them.

But I think Steve Lawson, thought he has a point, is still being a little bit on the harsh side, and although the people he rails about are indeed quite wrong, I can understand where they’re coming from.

When these people were in their teens and early 20s, they had plenty of time to discover new music. All the best music was well outside the commercial mainstream; they listened to the radio late at night, bought music papers, went to gigs, traded tapes with friends, all of it to discover the good stuff.

Now they’re older, with jobs and mortgages and kids, and they no longer have the time do that. All the new music they hear is the lowest common denominator slop served up by the mass media, drivel like X-Factor or daytime commercial radio.

What they forget is the mainstream media always was rubbish. At their seventies peak even huge selling acts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were conspicuous by their absence from TV or daytime radio, and people who weren’t active music fans were unaware of their existence. TV was filled with the likes of Brotherhood of Man and The Nolan Sisters in the same way as today has formulaic landfill indie.

Same as it ever was, if you want good music, you have to go look for it.

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Mark McGuire and the fetishising of lack of technique

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Tim Hall

I have a reputation for being opinionated and argumentative online, which is one reason I don’t post much on band forums nowadays – there are too many self-important sycophants who take offence, often on behalf of others, at what was intended as constructive criticism. So now I’m back baiting Guardian music journalists again.

Such an example is Ben Beaumont-Thomas’ Guardian Music Blog piece attempting to praise the guitar talents Mark McGuire, which starts with this opening paragraph:

Claims for the greatness of guitarists are often badly skewed. Many seem to regard guitar playing in a similar way to skateboarding, that greatness is about isolated feats of technical brilliance (an idea which Guitar Hero taps into and perhaps slyly satirises). Therefore songwriting from the likes of Dragonforce, and to a lesser extent Van Halen, Queen, and Guns’n'Roses is modular: guitar theatrics slotted into a framework, rather than folded into songs.

To which my first reaction is “Oh dear”.

Whatever you might think of Mark McGuire’s music (It sounds interesting, reminds me a bit of Matt Stevens or even very early instrumental-era Twelfth Night), I still maintain that opening with a thinly-veiled slur at Dragonforce (of whom I’m not a particular fan) is equivalent to me opening a review of someone like Panic Room with a paragraph about why I think The Libertines are rubbish. It would rightly be a distraction from the main body of the article.

After getting a few responses from the author in the comments, I realised that the thing wasn’t just about McGuire’s music at all, but was using him as a hook to hang a piece fetishising lack of technique. But far from being the iconoclastic position he implies it to be, all he’s doing is restating the orthodox position of the majority of rock critics from the past thirty years. 17-year old Dragonforce fans do not represent the establishment; that position is held by 40-something old punks. And I believe their attitude is deeply damaging to music. As commenter Troyka says:

Since the punk era it has been the norm to pretend that technique and ability don´t matter as much as enthusiasm. The result of which we can see in the uniform dullness of a lot of today´s younger guitarists (in the U.K at least).

Which is pretty much why we haven’t seen any great guitarists emerge in mainstream British music for at least 15 years. Yes, there are plenty of younger guitarists in metal, blues or prog, but they’re minority genres and largely aren’t on the BBC/NME/Guardian/Q radar screen.

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What is the point of The Mercury Music Prize?

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Tim Hall

What is the point of The Mercury Music Prize?

I’m not going to comment on the merits or otherwise of winners The XX – they’re so far removed from my own tastes in music that I’m simply not qualified to judge them. But I think it is fair to comment on the very obvious exclusion of entire genres from Mercury shortlists.

Apart from the token jazz and folk entries, it does seem dominated by various sub-genres of indie plus the odd hip-hop record. Far from being as broad as it’s apologies claim, it’s pretty much restricted to the sorts of artists that Apple Macintosh-owning urban metrosexuals might have heard of. I recognise that prog is too niche, but it’s unthinkable, for example, for a metal band to make the shortlist. Admittedly a lot of cutting-edge metal seems to be Scandinavian these days, and The Mercury is restricted to British and Irish acts. But why have Iron Maiden never got nominated? And when was the last time an out-and-our pop album got nominated? Surely Simon Cowell’s karaoke drivel hasn’t killed pop completely?

Alexis Petridis’s Guardian Article gives the game away – he doesn’t quite come and out and say it, but I think the subtext and inference is pretty clear. The main purpose of The Mercury Music Prize is indeed not to celebrate the best of British music in all it’s diversity, but is merely a cynical ploy to sell records to the demographic that doesn’t know much about music, but wants to think of itself as cool and sophisticated.

Which is a perfect justifcation of why, despite the genre’s eternal popularity, you’re never going to get a Metal band in Mercury shortlist. Metal just isn’t a genre you can sell to people like David Cameron or William Hague.

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The Oneties – Some Musical Predictions

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Tim Hall

The Guardian’s Luke Lewis has some predictions for the music scene over the next ten years. If those are his, these are mine.

2010

Peter Mandelson’s internet access is cut off under his own file-sharing law, but the record companies refuse to name the recordings he allegedly downloaded so as not to further embarrass him.

Alan McGee tips The Grants as the band to watch out for in 2011

2011

In environmentally conscious times, the genre known as “Landfill Indie” is renamed “Recycling Plant Indie”. But it’s still rubbish.

The NME’s circulation continues to fall, and it’s revealed that it sells fewer copies than the north-east rock and metal fanzine “Heavy“. People who ought to know better continue to take the NME seriously for reasons nobody can really understand.

2012

In a shock move, the Tory government privatises Radios 1,2 and 6, and sells them to Universal Records. Nobody is able to detect any changes to their programming.

Alan McGee tips The Grants as the band to watch out for in 2013

2013

Slough’s greatest metal band Sledgehammer announce they’re reforming, on the grounds that so many years have passed that everyone had forgotten how bad they were.  They’re still awful.

2014

Hundreds of living brains in jars are discovered in Bono’s mansion. He claims that they’re necessary to provide the neural processing power to run his ego after the latest upgrade.

Alan McGee tips The Grants as the band to watch out for in 2015.

2015

The surviving record companies convince lawmakers that having a tune stuck in your head constitutes copyright infringement, and demand the right to scan everyone’s brains for evidence. But their proposed “Three Strikes And Your Out” law mandating beheading is defeated in Parliament after people realise that hearing Rod Stewart’s “D’Ya Think I’m Sexy” might become fatal.

2016

Simon Cowell decides to follow Pete Waterman’s lead and introduce a range of model locomotive kits. But following the pattern of X-Factor he rejects all the accurate models at an early stage in favour of misshapen and strangely-proportioned ones, purely to make the flame wars on model railway forums far more interesting.

2017

The proposed tour by the supergroup comprising Mark E Smith, Yngwie Malmsteen and Noel Gallagher is cancelled after arguments during rehearsals require the intervention of UN peacekeepers.

Alan McGee tips The Grants as the band to watch out for in 2016.

2018

A survey reveals that thanks to downloading and the cutting out of middlemen, the number of working musicians now exceeds the total number of music fans. It is not revealed quite how many of them are solo bassists.

2019

Alan McGee tips The Grants as the band to watch out for in 2020.

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Oasis: Not as good as Saxon

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Tim Hall

So the most overrated band in all music history have finally split up. Even Adolf Hitler is upset about it. The NME will need someone new to put on the cover every third week.

The Guardian’s increasingly risible Tim Jonze claims that they were arguably Britain’s greatest ever rock’n'roll band. I’m guessing fans of bands like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or The Clash would rather dispute that fact. The truth is that Oasis were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and were at the receiving end of so much undeserved hype from hacks like Jonze that it completely went to their heads.  Yes, they did a couple of decent albums, but even most their devoted fans admit that they were just coasting after their early years.

Far from being the new Beatles, the reality is that (in my opinion of course) Oasis were not as good a band as Saxon.

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Sausage of the Year Award

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Tim Hall

Why do people still take the Mercury Music Prize seriously?  In it’s early years it may have picked a few innovative and creative acts, but recently it’s become nothing more than an extension of the music industry PR machine. The shortlist makes depressing reading with it’s over-hyped usual suspects and entirely predictable absence of entire genres.

As commenter Jonana puts it:

Anyway, what are you talking about, other genres of music? I thought nothing outside timid electronica and ‘indie’ pop-rock, with a token folk presence, was produced by anyone anywhere ever.

Naturally the sheeple don’t realise there’s anything else out there than what’s spoon-fed by mainstream media. This is falsely presented as ‘real music’ in opposition to Simon Cowell’s gunk. They don’t seem to realise it’s another product from the same sausage factory.

Sometimes I wonder who are the Mercury judges are.  I’m guessing they’re Jo Whiley, Conor McNicholas, Simon Cowell, Michael Eavis and one randomly-selected 11-year old.

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First Up Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes!

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Tim Hall

The BBC has a list of so-called “tastemakers” who tell us the music that we’re going to be force-fed with over the next twelve months. Their 15 pundits are the A-list of all the people responsible for the utter crapness of the mainstream music scene with it’s wall-to-wall landfill indie and Asda-pop – the controller of Radio One, the appalling editor of the NME, the producer of “Later with Jools Holland”, they’re all there.

I wonder if the people who’s annual record purchases consist of 2 or 3 CDs a year from Asda don’t realise that all the music the mainstream will hear is pre-selected by such a small clique of people, and how cosy the relationship between the BBC, the major record companies and the music press has become. Do they know they’re sheep, or do they just not care?

Personally I think BBC radio and TV is failing to satisfy the public service remit of the BBC charter by it’s marginalisation of all but a narrow range of genres of popular music, and I find it hard to justify the existence of some BBC radio channels in their present form.

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