Pitchfork on Tall Dwarfs

Talking about the name of a band isn't the same as talking about the music the band is making.

Esteban, I heart you.

Does anyone really pay any attention to music critics? Why should I care whether someone else like the Tall Dwarfs or not? It doesn't have any bearing on whether or not I will like them.

Perhaps trying to soften the blow he’s just landed on indie rock's chin, he broadens his attack. “Look,” he says with a sigh, “I think the popularity of all music in our society is a measure of how much disposable income there is and how much interest we have in the unnecessary.”

I know *why* art criticism exists, I merely question it's value.

Oh, and Stupid? Immature? Look no further than your own post. You could even add foul-mouthed and inarticulate to those if you wish.

Oh and be quiet you idiot.

x-post the fact that most bands are reaffirm why this point is redundant.

x-post your employedness is showing, forkboy.

http://www.citypaper.com/sb/83487/bars.jpg

But but but that all important Belgian market.

DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT HOEFENSTEFFER BEER.

http://www.sportsposterwarehouse.com/warehouse/hostetler93sl-1.jpg

Who wins? We all do! :D

Then again, these two albums are supposed to sound better so I'm not sure what the issue is. The songs aren't as good on the whole as the early albums? The production still wasn't good enough?

i just find this review especially infuriating, way more than most pf reviews which i don't even bother to read

ihttp://www.hypnosisinmedia.com/Miscellaneous/Artwork/hypnotist.jpg

The part where Anthony's right is that yes: I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly would incline someone in one way or the other. And I wish I'd had the word count or personal time to really chase after that point, especially because -- and this was surprising to me -- I really couldn't find much out there that really dug deep into the interior of the band. "Perfect songs" and "toolshed greatness" and "very New Zealand," yes, but ... it almost seems like something about the band is actually resistant to unraveling, a point I wish had occurred to me in those words last week so I could have put it into this review. So no, I didn't get nearly as far with that as I usually like to, and the result might skew more consumer-guide than I normally advocate for.

xpost: uh, thrice? ahem

they'll just sound like a couple of freaks banging out rickety crap at a rate of an album a weekend.

..and this was addressed to "most of you" in that final paragraph. Since when do Pitchfork readers not enjoy bands that can often consist of freaks banging on rickety crap of an album a weekend?

Aside from the IMHO overarching final paragraph, this is pretty much a "let's agree to slightly disagree on Tall Dwarfs thing" to me. The comparisons to Jad Fair, Syd Barrett, and Ween are cogent however, and I liked pretty much everything else in the review.

Thank yez.

FRED DURST

Sings the songs of Dead Can Dance

By being specifically self-limiting, they're asking for marginalisation, to a degree.

So you want another lead-singer-of-Disturbed type guy then? Um, ok.

How do you know they're specifically aiming for anything? I mean, maybe they just do what sounds naturally good to them? I have a hard time thinking that a man that's not afraid to do a live dancehall-on-78 style cover of "Nothing's Going To Happen" while dancing around on stage after dropping his effect pedal on the floor is thinking "Hmmm, gotta think of ways to rub against the natural traditional rock rhythm. THINK dammit!"

Haha, well both Durst and Burns have boasted "candid" photos so far.

I'm gonna go back to my rule where I don't discuss stuff after reviewing it, because discussing means thinking more, and there comes a point in thinking more where you'll just wind up bugging yourself with thoughts you wished you'd expressed better in the text.

Actually, at their best they sound like the Beatles. Okay, so it's all home-made. I think that would be the sticking point with people who don't take to them. Well, that and their radical politics and philosophy of music. But the songs are great. A better comparison might be another song-oriented band like Guided by Voices.

Cosmically speaking, is there a difference?

Wondering about two things. One is whom the "aesthetic that can be gathered up in other places" (i.e., instead of w/ Tall Dwarfs records) refers to. (Which artists/bands? And, amongst these artists/bands, are there some elements that the TD's had to offer that are not accounted for and, ultimately, a significant loss?)

And, considering a record like Hello Cruel World, my other question is whether the "your life will be no less complete for not getting this band" suggestion is applicable to the Tall Dwarfs in general or just to the two records Nitsuh was reviewing.

Honestly, I've always been a little on the fence about this band. Thinking more about the DIY lo-fi aspect, I seem to be more inclined to enjoy this with post-punk bands that are more experimental or humor oriented. Tall Dwarfs seem to be more about a beautiful head music experience; hence, my comparing them (somewhat unfavorably) to the sonic qualities of sixties psychedelic records above.

Anyway. I didn't mean to say "Pitchfork sux0rs!". I just think the sentiments of the last paragraph could have been phrased in a less seemingly-condescending manner. The scrappiness (a la early Pavement) is part of their sound to be discussed, rather than an add-on that we need to be warned-off about. In quite that manner. Er.

I'm gonna go back to my rule where I don't discuss stuff after reviewing it, because discussing means thinking more, and there comes a point in thinking more where you'll just wind up bugging yourself with thoughts you wished you'd expressed better in the text.

Actually, I think what you just said here would have been great in the review itself (phrased differently and edited slightly of course)! There's nothing wrong with admitting being conflicted and confused by something.

I think '3Eps' is best but then I don't much like Hello Cruel World. But then I am pretty much over Chris Knox anymore cause he's irretrievably PC these days although really he always has been I just find him more annoying now. Alec Bathgate's records are the real gems. It's a shame he's only done the two. 'Stumpy' doesn't get as much love as it should either.

I can understand the review because hearing the Tall Dwarfs for the first time now would probably lack any real impact. They made more sense back when people from Pavement were appearing on their records. Now I'd rather listen to Fonda 500.

That's annoying - there's no agenda, but every distinctive rock band has an aesthetic strategy, and over 25 years Tall Dwarfs' rhythmic approach - softened on it a bit recently, fucked with it in some interesting ways on Stumpy and elsewhere, but never abandoned entirely - has been the pair of spoons rhythming on a cardboard box thing. Unless you think it never occured to them that other bands had drummers who hit drums on the one.

An argumant that this might explain why the reviewer chose to say that "To most of you reading this, these songs won't even sound challenging or interesting-- they'll just sound like a couple of freaks banging out rickety crap at a rate of an album a weekend.", especially given the general power the band's guitar attack can muster and the brilliance of the songs themselves when they get them right, is more than reasonable. I think it is right - I'd love them to lead a proper rhythm section doing a CD's worth of their best material.

I'll qualify why I thought those comparisons were cogent.. they were in the context of someone who has never heard them before and would want to grasp at what immediately came to mind.. there's enough of a sense of humor and home-recorded amateurness to their sound that thinking of Ween wouldn't seem so off the handle.. of course, this comparison makes no sense, as neither do the syd nor jad comparisons, after absorbing an album or two for tall dwarfs... I think anyone would agree with this.

nabisco clearly targetted this review to indie kids who either never heard them, or heard about them via Olivia Tremor Control, or saw them and didn't know what to think.

Michael, I'm as much as a Tall Dwarfs fanatic as you are, I gather, but you kinda have to get out of the shell before lashing out with a comment like that... 1997 -- the year where, I think, Tall Dwarfs enjoyed the most exposure in college rock and good word of mouth thanks to the initial uproar about NMH and OTC, who always plugged the Dwarfs every chance they got, and also just enough time after their excellent The 3 EP's release -- doesn't seem to long ago, but it's almost a decade now, and enough such that there's a new generation of "teh indie YOOF" out there who either don't know about them now or flat out reject them.. especially in New Zealand.

As for the whole "traditional rock rhythm" thing and "rejection of real drums"... um, hello, Toy Love?

They also had a former Toy Love member record with them on real drums for The Short And Long Of It mini-LP from 1985, which is probably the single release where you can claim that early Pavement were Tall Dwarfs wanna-bes... "Conduit For Sale!" is more of a 'rip' of Dwarfs' "Get Outta The Garage" than it is either Swell Maps' "Harmony In Your Bathroom" or The Fall's "New Face In Hell"

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/clean/anthology.shtml

was so much better received than the dwarfs records. no doubt i understand different reviewers have different tastes, but for a while i've heard the clean and the tall dwarfs, along with swell maps, as quite similar in their proto-pavement ramshackleness. it seems that too dismiss one for the reasons listed in the review would be to dismiss the other

If people were doing that, this thread wouldn't exist in the first place!

note that any glitches are to be blamed on my DVD/CD-ROM and not the songs...(arrh, time to get a new drive soon, I think this one's been overworked, matey)
And it goes without sayin': mpthree --> mp3 -- there.

From Hello Cruel World (compilation of EPs and mini-LPs from 1981 to 1984)...

"All My Hollowness To You" (orig. from Three Songs EP)
*bam* *ba-BIN-BIN-BUM-BOOM* *CLAP*... *bam* *ba-BIN-BIN-BUM-BOOM* *CLAP*...

"Shade For Today" (orig. from Canned Music mini-LP)
A nice Alec Bathgate number.. possibly his best

"Crush" (orig. from Slugbuckethairybreahmonster EP)
Possibly the best Dwarfs song ever... (is that a future Strokes break-out single in the notes there?)

From The Short And Sick Of It (compilation of 1985's The Short And Long Of It/Wall of Dwarfs mini-LP/single, and 1986's Throw A Sickie mini-LP)

"Get Outta The Garage" (orig. from The Short And Long Of It/Wall of Dwarfs mini-LP/single)
the major point of the "what influenced 'Conduit For Sale!' trifecta"... (note: the CD mastering fucked this song up and puts the final part into the beginning of the next track. I concatenated the parts so this is the full song here.)

From Fork Songs/Dogma (compilation of 1991's Fork Songs album and 1987's Dogma EP)

"Lurline Bayliss" (orig. from Dogma EP)
A poem/spoken word piece over tribal percussion and guitar experimentation. My Little Pony and getting an injection figure heavily into this.

"The Slide" (orig. from Dogma EP)
Sad ballady waltz.. ok, maybe THIS is the best Dwarfs song ever

"Lucky"
Moody pretty piece.. one of their most underrated songs

"The Winner"
Tongue-in-cheek "Fuck You" song... ok, hmmm, maybe this is their best song then?

From Fork Songs/Dogma (compilation of 1991's Fork Songs album and 1987's Dogma EP)

"We Bleed Love" (orig. from Fork Songs album)
The pretty...

"Oatmeal" (orig. from Fork Songs album)
The ugly...

"Starry Eyed & Wooly Brained" (from the A Question Of Medical Ethics section)
This is a great intro track for anyone wanting to hear this band first

"More 54" (from the Up The Down Staircase section)
Very droney, echoey, pretty.. for Spiritualized/later Spacemen 3 fans

"Senile Dementia" (from the Sam's Spaniel section)
One of two songs in this section co-written with Scott Kanberg and Bob Nostanovich... Pavement never denied the influence.

..I'll probably get to selections from later releases later this weekend.

Meanwhile... sorry. Sorry for all the people having a go at the Pitchfork review based on my misleading quotation of the last paragraph. It's a mostly good review (ie "good as a review") but nevertheless I think the "Most of you reading this" sentiment and the "Your life will not be less complete" line are unnecessarily condescending and presumptuous. I suppose it's just that it sounds like he's worried about someone reading his review, buying some Tall Dwarfs and then going "Nitsuh's full of shit" or something - like it's about losing face. Something about that rubs me the wrong way in a review.

Anyway. Thanks for the YSIs, Dom. Yup, The Slide = awesome. I look forward to downloading these.

What, where? I agree with everything. Said by the right people that is.

So do we all, so do we all.

----------------
OK, I read carefully. But, when you state "initially," like, when, and where do you mean? Is your "pioneers" thing a direct quote from something?

Just as a for instance, you state the Dwarfs were compared "especially" to Ween. That's a bit like saying the Velvet Underground were most compared initially to the Violent Femmes.

Ween's first release dates from 1990; the Dwarfs were putting records out from '81 (earlier if one counts the amazing Toy Love material which is from '78 or '79 I forget which).

Half Jap is an obvious comparison, I just don't remember seeing them being a reference point in any 'zines or anything at the time. I do not recall Barrett being noted, though they sure were comparedd to the Beatles a lot, if I recall correctly.

Also, on which albums did Hitchcock record on a home (or toolshed) 4-track? I'm curious to know, as it's news to me that he did record and release anything that way. Even the sparse-sounding "Trains" was done in a big ole studio with engineers and stuff.

X-post Donut: '97? I didn't know that's when they got known. Rad you played 'em so much and stuff.

Myself, I heard them a lot on the radio in the mid to late '80s, on WFMU. My ex roommate and WFMU DJ Bill Berger had Chris Knox on the station after Knox's second solo trip to the US. Knox's first US tour had him opening up for the Clean and playing a set with them, as well. One of the best shows I've ever seen, holy fucking fuck.

And x-post on Pavement sounding so much like the Tall Dwarfs: I don't see it, myself. Everyone I knew (in and out of bands) was discovering and loving the Flying Nun stuff in the mid to late '80s, via fanzines like Too Fun Too Huge and Forced Exposure, but also via WFMU and Pier Platters. There were also two comp.s of New Zealand music in the mid '80s that turned a lot of people onto kiwi stuff, "Tuatara" and another one I forget the name of.

To my ears and understanding, there def. was an F. Nun influence on Pavement but I think it was more *general*. And specifially I've always thought the real obvious comparisons of the Velvets, Swell Maps and the Fall being key with those guys. Malkmus later did "Death and the Maiden" solo, right?

Also, thanks for posting all these mp3s. my favorite tall dwarfs tune today is "turning brown and torn in two."

Well, when i said "the year where, I think, Tall Dwarfs enjoyed the most exposure in college rock and good word of mouth thanks to the initial uproar about NMH and OTC", I wasn't intending that to be simplified as "when they got known"... but I'm not sure what you meant by that statement.

I first heard them on recommendation of Coley's column in Spin magazine in 1987, when he did a small piece on the Dogma EP... but 1997 was the year where they were most popular in college radio in the U.S. I think, and I stress "I think"

I'll be in New Zealand (for my first time ever) in mid April, so -- while I don't expect to find every Dwarfs rarity there -- I hope to find some literature on them. I know Alec and Chris live on opposite sides of the country now (I want to say Auckland and Dunedin, respectively, but I'm not sure), so between those places, Christchurch, and Wellington, maybe I'll find a copy of that FE!

I never expected to find the early L.A. punk comp Public Damage in a small crate of vinyl at a record store in Reykjavik, but I did. And I've found the first Gordons EP and a Bless EP in Seattle... I guess the moral here is: you'll find rare gems as far away from the creators' locale as possible.

i'll give you anything for the alpaca brothers' self-titled ep if you find it there, fyi.

hope someday to track them down and stick a few of those songs on a YETI CD, that would be fun. unless someone else reissues it first.

Pretty much sums up my TD position. Sometimes I've loved them, but I knew people doing home-recording pop all along, much of it as good as TD (The Perfect Strangers - 1980), and started doing it myself in 1974 (not claiming TD greatness for that, just the ethos) so the novelty - wonder- awe is largely missing for me. Leaving the songs; Beatlesque pop at best. Very well done at times. But Oh My God those PC lyrics. I cannot let this go. How much guilt can (must?) one white man have? Therapy for some, but torture for the rest of us. And (IMHO) a kind of intellectual dishonesty - Chris knows he's being a phony, surely? I can see how, in the (mostly) excessively sexist & racist U.S. of A., this might be much more appealing than it could ever be in New Zild - at a certain stage of development for privileged white boys (here's a cue for you soul sisters to berate me about how much they've meant to you) - but really. I mean REALLY. That's the craw-sticking point for me - and it's not always there, of course. But it cheered me to read, some threads back, that others have also become alienated by Knox's childish politics - it's not just me. If I go on much longer I'll probably rant about his looting and vandalisation of Flying Nun when he was de-facto boss, but this is well covered in Mathew Bannister's great book Positively George Street, as well as some NZ TV documentaries. I do love him tho- check out Peter Keen and Graeme Humphrie's new CD, The Overflow (Sweet Pea Sounds) which has Knox singing and writing, with Humphries (ex-Able Tasmans) on the hidden track at the end, the best Pop-Rock he's done since Toy Love. The whole is far more listenable than a TD CD too, though hard to define. Maybe Pitchfork could review The Overflow?
Cheers

Have you been to the U.S. ever, George? or even talked to anyone who's lived in at least two U.S. cities?

I'm about to visit New Zealand for the first time in a few weeks. I hope them bitches be fleshy and pale, cuz that's how i likes em. FREEDOM!