"Should we be suspicious of hipsters’ newfound love of R&B?" or "Race and indie music, part 4762"

indie fans always complained about the wrong indie being over-venerated in the press. now r&b fans get to do the same. progress!

xxxxpost Jesus, Tim, it wasn't trolling. It wasn't done to provoke a reaction. It was done for wholly legitimate reasons. Why do you feel you can infer my reasons for commissioning it when I have already told you what the bloody reason was!

IIRC that Klaxons review was pretty much the first thing Lex wrote for the Guardian so pretty much no one who didn't actually know him would have inferred very much from that decision, he wasn't an established critic and it would have just looked like a negative review for 99% of the people reading it. It's hardly in sending Steven Wells to review Belle and Sebastian territory.

Also Wells was writing for the NME which had a clear direction. Not sure if that can be compared w/The Guardian at the time (was there a clear music policy then?)

more one-star reviews of more kinds of music please

It wasn't done to provoke a reaction. It was done for wholly legitimate reasons.

If it's not obvious, I was deploying a slightly expansive definition of "trolling" here which includes "having someone write a review in the knowledge that they are not actually the intended market for the music or its hype (even if there are air quote references to dance music in the PR) and that they will hate it and the resulting review will cut across the typical crit discourse."

This is b/c the reason I invoked the lex review in the first place was as an example of something that wasn't stupid decision-making by an editor when it comes to having the "wrong" critic review a record.

Sometimes trolling is for noble purposes. Music criticism needs judicious amounts of it.

Though this kind of trolling happens all the time when critics who don't like pop are assigned to review big pop records - but this has become such a familiar practice that it is mostly accepted as a done thing, and hence falls outside the definition.

"Now, the Art Dealer Chic EPs don’t do anything as blatant as sampling Beach House or namechecking Coachella, but they do find Miguel — maybe cynically, maybe not — surfing the same sort of gloops of chiffon synth that are currently cool with the cool set."

what an absolute disaster of a sentence on every conceivable level

tell me again how stereogum became influential? because idgi

the phrase "cool with the cool set" is just...someone typed that, and filed it, and published it

part of me wishes that guardian comments had existed back in the klaxons days

imagery wise he was definitely riffing on something post-weeknd... "arch & point" specifically, but that sentence is def a stretch... "gloops of chiffon synth" isn't a useful descriptor for the ADC eps at all

how the fuck is anything about arch & point "post-weeknd"? or was it actually the weeknd who invented purple rain all along

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

not saying the song is totally based off the weeknd but you'd be foolish to think that there is no weeknd influence there at all... did he mention the weeknd when you interviewed him? he did to me unprompted (not in relation to "arch & point" specifically)

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, December 23, 2012 5:47 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark

well he did more in first week sales in the US than miguel, so

ouch

it's a horrible world we live in

lemme just say as an early-20something college grad: people my age loooooooooooooove the fuckin weeknd, like he's definitely seen as an example of "good music" in the way, like, mumford & sons is

By the same people?!

Will, I agree R&B is this year’s big aesthetic story. But I want to bring race into the conversation in a more explicit way. It’s been argued that the fantasy of becoming a post-racial nation helped to make Obama’s historic 2008 election possible. But the optimism of 2008 soon gave way to disillusionment as economic woes and increasingly entrenched class divisions came to the fore. It isn’t surprising that indie and indie-sounding R&B became cool again this year. With its emphasis on melancholic confessionalism and interior concerns, so-called “progressive” R&B (far more so than most mainstream club-oriented R&B) delivered authentic blues feeling to a post-affluent culture suffering from collective disillusionment.

sorry, i'm reading this for the first time

& almost certainly the last time

actually this isn't awful

Rev: on a couple of occasions, yes! People who are casually into music but into whatever "indie aesthetic," I guess

It does sort of make me happy that pop sort of ”won” in the respect that everything is now pop in a way, but this victory is making popists act like old school indie grumps

lol @ the idea that pop "won"

tell that to the guardian commenters on the day carly rae jepsen won our tracks poll

Maybe the commenters are angry because they 'lost'?

i do wonder if the slow-burn success of 'adorn' will result in KD selling more than that dreadful weeknd triple-header

indie fans always complained about the wrong indie being over-venerated in the press. now r&b fans get to do the same. progress!

This is one of the more OTM things in the thread.

Didn't realise music was about winning and losing.

^

Yeah it's not but p much everything lex writes has a sort of victim complex about pop suffering under the shackles of the critical establishment that prefers classic rock & indie, so shit like weeknd or I guess the ”wrong” ppl liking Miguel even ppl who - gasp - like mumford & sons is a betrayal

No

i do wonder if the slow-burn success of 'adorn' will result in KD selling more than that dreadful weeknd triple-header

― maura, Monday, December 24, 2012 5:13 AM Bookmark

KD has more total sales at this point, but then it's been out longer, too.

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, December 23, 2012 3:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do and think 'house of balloons' is a classic. the backlash on weeknd has been massive

ha speaking of Stereogum here's ONE MORE THINKPIECE YAY

http://stereogum.com/1225571/2012-in-review-the-new-wave-of-rb-comes-into-full-bloom/top-stories/

can someone please come round and physically stop me clicking on that

blog-powered underground

p much everything lex writes has a sort of victim complex about pop suffering under the shackles of the critical establishment that prefers classic rock & indie

otm, it's been what 8 years or something you've been writing/posting with this tone, please evolve

lol you don't even read half the stuff i write! stop being so presumptuous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxkgvvJiLqs

So long as we're talking "truth" about Lex on Christmas I'd like to say that I approve of Lex's victim complex and find it endlessly entertaining and am always agreeing with his outlook whenever I read an English music magazine

<3

i agree with lex's outlook more often than not! that's why it pains me when he couches it in callow rhetorical devices.

Have yourself a joyous twelvetide, Lex. You're still in the top tier of posters imo.

can someone please come round and physically stop me clicking on that

― lex pretend, Tuesday, December 25, 2012 1:25 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

dying

a weird thing about all these pieces is that THEEsatisfaction never get mentioned despite being one of the better "indie r&b acts" AND being on sub pop

Speaking as someone who came v v late to the DDM/Dawn Richard proceedings, but loves Armor On, is there really no chance that all this R&B cred will lead to Goldenheart becoming a major 2013 buzz album?

that stereogum thing isn't the worst piece i've ever read but it also starts from a base thesis (r&b is finally good!) that's totally weighs it down

Good line about Kaleidoscope Dream: It’s not a feel-good album so much as an album about feeling as good as possible at all times, and to its infinite credit, it never fails to make me feel incredible.

Bad line:

last year’s pleasantly pedestrian “Sure Thing"

also "genre cocktail" or w/e he said

Has anyone written a piece in which the writer, thanks to Miguel-Ocean-Weeknd or whatever, has gone back to older R&B and finally heard what he'd ignored? A much better essay than "Holy shit R&B is suddenly hot."