HAIM

the singer lady sounds like ani difranco. no judgments.

really feeling this record

this whole "its retro but hmmm what kind of retro is it?" talk drove me crazy when people were dissecting Kaputt and it drives me crazy w/ Haim. sure, no music exists in a bubble but jeez you guys give it a rest-- it sounds like 2013!!! music is music its not evolutionary biology.

― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 3 October 2013 14:18 (Yesterday) Permalink

otm!

this whole "its retro but hmmm what kind of retro is it?" talk drove me crazy when people were dissecting Kaputt and it drives me crazy w/ Haim. sure, no music exists in a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR-NXv5Tma0&oref jeez you guys give it a rest-- it sounds like 2013!!! music is music its not evolutionary biology.

― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 3 October 2013 14:18 (Yesterday) Permalink

lol

i really like haim but what is up with "my song 5"? have we discussed this? did timbaland produce it?

Astonishing and shitty Everett True piece on why Any Music Writer Who Says They Like Haim Is Lying And Only Doing It For Web Traffic

http://www.collapseboard.com/everett-true/haim-an-open-letter-to-christopher-r-weingarten/

Oh, now he's taken it down. But here it is.

Hey Chris

You miss the point, if you think this is a reignition of the old ‘pop vs rock’ debate. (Scott’s written far worse criticism of near most all the cherished ‘buzz’ indie bands, for example.)

Far as I read it, Scott had two main criticisms of the Haim album.

1, It’s not a good album. (At least your brief blog entry attempts to address why you like it, which most others haven’t – instead howling ‘sexism’ at the slightest criticism.)

2. The critics who profess to like it… i.e. the 40-something white male middle-class Guardian critics… are actually being way more patronising and (yes) sexist in their professed understanding of teenage girls than folk who just come out and say it’s no good. And this is who much of the review was aimed at.

I too think there is often something inherently sexist when ‘indie’ fans express a dislike for ‘pop’ bands. However, I don’t think this is one of these occasions. I believe that Scott’s criticisms were far more directed towards the usual defences that male, white, middle-aged, middle-class music critic will use (and have already used) to help express their ‘love’ for Haim..

How fortunate that so many WHITE MIDDLE CLASS MIDDLE AGED CRITICS (mostly from the US and UK) have discovered the latent love for pop music that always laid deep within, just at a time when it’s been proven that you WILL NOT GET WORK AND CERTAINLY NOT GET PAID if your music criticism does not attract the requisite number of hits in web 2.0 environments. And what are folk more likely to read about? A mild ‘controversy’ around Haim and Miley Cyrus or a 2,000 word rave about the new The Garbage & The Flowers reissue?

An interesting volte face for the field of music criticism, I’m sure you agree – from opinion-leaders and gate-keepers to mainstream cheerleaders, there to reassure EVERYONE (but especially those in the popular eye) that their taste is just as valid as everyone else’s – more so, in fact, because more people agree with them. Fuck having personal opinions or values, feel the warmth of the tens of thousands of hits.

Of course the rockists – MOJO, SPIN, Q Magazine, Rolling Stone et al- needed taking down however many pegs they wrongly claimed for themselves. Sure, you can consider elitism a dirty word – although why it’s dreadful to determine your own value system and aesthetics, separate to those being battered into you by mainstream pop culture and the mainstream critics, I don’t understand. But the pendulum has now swung so extreme the other way (mostly pushed by the former rockists: there’s nothing like a born again music critic) that now you’re not even allowed to criticise certain genres of music – ‘pop’, say, whatever the hell that is – without being called rockist or sexist. Hmmm. They do say that interpretation often says more about the person doing the interpreting than the original creators.

Quite why certain mainstream UK music critics find themselves so riled by the writing of Scott Creney and also Neil Kulkarni – to my mind, two of the finest (nay, *only*) music critics in the UK and US – is a conversation for another time. The impression I receive is that they’re intimidated – not because they’re in fear of their jobs (clearly, they’re under no threat there) – but because the writing of Scott and Neil remind them of the freedom to speak your mind that the greatest critics have always displayed, a freedom they lost long ago.

Cue more self-righteous outrage. Sigh.

I’ve written this email after having just driven 15 hours back to Brisbane from Sydney, so you’ll need to excuse me if it jumps around a bit: but I’ve been thinking about this for most the way – inspired yesterday by various old rock critics’ provocative Tweets calling Scott’s article ‘sexist’ – something which it clearly isn’t. (Man, the irony of having a MOJO editor accuse Collapse Board of gender imbalance!)

And I wanted to get it out while it was still fresh.

As is the norm these days, wherein every personal conversation is considered important enough to hold in public, I will of course be publishing this email on Collapse Board.

Anyway. Appreciated your blog. Thoughtful as always, even if I do feel you entirely misread Scott.

All the best
Everett

P.S. This criticism might not apply to every U.K. broadsheet (website, music magazine) music critic out there. I’m starting to have my suspicions that Dorian Lynskey (for example) might be being sincere – even if I do violently disagree with some of his combative language and ABSOLUTELY disagree with his conclusions (at least in this matter). But Lord knows, it applies to enough of them.

Glad you were able to preserve that. Unfortunately, it gave me headache.

Misses the point that in the media outlets he's criticising, the reviews of pop acts that get traffic are the complete demolitions, not the raves. The raves just get the old men moaning.

Just had an email exchange with Everett, who says he went overboard with that one.

must admit i'm completely baffled by the rage this album elicits? it's not for me b/c i'm not so into that sound that i care about people recreating it so faithfully but even i can hear the hooks are there and it'd be catnip for others.

Overboard? I thought it just read as a bit drippy. I realise he probably wrote it in a grumpy slumber, but if you're going to present an argument at least come up with something a bit more convincing than these empty ad hominems. Same goes for the Haim review - I'd be more inclined to take a negative review seriously if it did more than said 'if you like this band you are either a pretentious idiot or too young to know better'.

That's one thing. Berating a band because they are not enough like a band you prefer is another. Comparing it disdainfully to your new favourite book, though......

Ageing rock critics get very angry when young people like music they thought they had consigned to the critical dustbin 20yrs previously.

I don't get the sense that Haim are aimed at young girls particularly anyway? I mean one of the reasons they were so highly-tipped in the first place was an obvious pan-generational appeal.

There's also a sub-resentment here about critics who don't EMOTE enough, but if you genuinely believe the prose of Scott Creaney invokes the blistering white heat of rock and roll then you've got bigger problems then old people liking a Haim album.

The critics who profess to like it… i.e. the 40-something white male middle-class Guardian critics… are actually being way more patronising and (yes) sexist in their professed understanding of teenage girls than folk who just come out and say it’s no good. And this is who much of the review was aimed at.

This argument is really something.

The crux, as Matt suggests, is that ET thinks that "passion", when expressed in the form of "c'mon kids" rants directed at soft targets (ie MM when he was in his pomp), is the zenith of music journalism and that everyone else is just a time-serving establishment lackey. If that's his taste, great, carry on commissioning - it's a strong voice, it strikes a chord with some people - but it doesn't occur to him that a lot of people just think it's terrible, terrible writing. I'm not scared of The Truth. I'm scared of overheated, posturing, adolescent bullshit written by people some distance from adolescence.

Man, the irony of being called "old" by Everett True.

And what are folk more likely to read about? A mild ‘controversy’ around Haim and Miley Cyrus or a 2,000 word rave about the new The Garbage & The Flowers reissue?

^ bit of a cliffhanger to end that paragraph on.

FWIW I'm entirely pro- that sort of writing when it's done with actual style and verve and wit and INSIGHT and not just a firehose of signifiers of excitement saturated with prejudices the writer has never bothered to challenge. The difference between Steven Wells and that Haim review is vast. (Btw I think Kulkarni has written a lot of great stuff)

I mean I understand that making prejudice into a virtue is kind of the point but if you're going to do so don't piss yourself when people point and laugh.

I'm all for passionate prose but it needs to tell you something beyond "I stand for good music, not bad music" and schoolboy Stick It to the Man rhetoric. Most of the stuff I read in that style today is a long way down from the late 80s/early 90s work of Steven Wells or, dare I say it, Everett True.

I've always had the distinct impression the bulk of their fans are 20-something's like themselves, not teens or middle aged men.

^^^ Middle-aged white dude.

Word.

The idea that in a hits-driven business climate, a positive review of a new and heavily hyped act would generate more attention than a scathing evisceration is kind of mystifying.

Also mystifying is this presentation of pop-leaning critics as caving into popular consensus, as if there aren't critical outlets in less pop-friendly, less obviously mainstream spaces whose reviews clearly set the tone for how certain sacred cow acts are received. How is that reality any different from the fantasy scenario he's just constructed?

I was hoping DL would have steamed in furiously (not that I've ever seen this happen) and before realising he had been exonerated in the final paragraph.

^^^ Middle-aged white dude.

And you too. I'm also one. FFS don't return his tennis ball.

Like isn't the lazy use of that term one of the poorer parts of that piece?

Also the idea that there's anything risible enough about this album to merit such uh...vibrant disagreement is weird. So lex otm.

yeah, there are tons of equally vapid indie records

It's going to be rewritten and reposted, apparently.

bit of a luxury

i'm sure we're all on tenterhooks

are people still allowed to disagree with the first draft or should we destroy any devices which have a trace of it?

'Middle-aged white dude' now = 'First world problems' of online music rhetoric it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74DeoFjmA74

Huh, I've never heard of Garbage and the Flowers, but that sounds right in my wheelhouse! Thanks, screed writer of screed I opted to skim at best except for some reference to an obscure New Zealand band that caught my eye.

17 individual listeners on last.fm this week, surprised they aren't getting a lot more coverage in the broadsheets tbh

"The critics who profess to like it… i.e. the 40-something white male middle-class Guardian critics"

in my experience this has not been the majority but what do I know

that http://www.collapseboard.com/everett-true/haim-an-open-letter-to-christopher-r-weingarten/ is working btw.

I hope ET isnt trying to compare Scott Creney (terrible writer) to Neil Kulkarni.

also lol at ET having a go at white middle aged writers.

as for "Haim are pitched toward young girls!" my theory is that can be traced directly back to when people discovered that valli girls press release. I've seen a few people (mostly commenters, but) try to make some sort of Lana Del Rey non-authenticity/"plant" argument from it, which is iffy because it betrays very little knowledge of what it's like to be someone in LA trying to break into music, or what types of connections are likely to get you PR emails that get opened. it's like saying "this chef is a hack, she worked at Panera once in high school!"

and as for "how convenient that everyone rediscovers pop once people figured out you WILL NOT GET WORK if you don't like it because pageviews" -- to an extent there's a nugget of truth to this, but I also think an act like Haim would have been covered just as widely back in, oh, 1997, probably even more so.

LOLz at the Grantland piece presuming that everyone thinks Haim are an indie group when actually – and here's the big reveal – they're a mainstream pop group. Did anyone think Haim were an indie group? Ever? Really?

maybe it's because indie and guitar pop is indistinguishable now? Have to admit I cant imagine anyone saying they're indie though. Certainly not fans of indie.

I can see Haim being popular with teenagers as much as middle aged radio 2 listeners. Not sure they're being aimed at just one market. I find them very boring but nothing a 15 or a 50 year old couldn't enjoy.

haim seems as indie as, like, phoenix. make of that what you will i guess.

I thought that grantland piece had it backwards. it seems like the pop charts might start to diversify a bit from all-euro-dance-beats-all-the-time, which would be more like the beginning period of "alternative" wouldn't it? who is the charting nirvana that haim's sugar ray is pushing out of the charts?

xp Critics loved Hanson in 1997 and plenty of mainstream pop besides, if you look at P&J results. It's not like a generation of indie snob critics have suddenly come around to pop because of SEO. In fact the true snobs, like DeRo, are digging their heels in. It's a completely false narrative.

"MMMbop" topped the P&J singles list.

I was a little puzzled when I saw Haim described as an indie band, but I think it's more a reference to their trajectory (DIY band with Jenny Lewis/Strokes connections) than anything else. One result is that they get played/respected in places that might not have time for "just" a pop band -- they've been played a lot on World Cafe, e.g.

And that in turn is presumably what bothers the likes of DeRo -- people Who Should Know Better are taking them seriously.

love it when DeRo goes down fighting