Lana Del Rey

tell me Howe this ends cuz I pulled out my eyes and ears 20 seconds In

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

FP

the foster the people guy arguably had even worse stage presence than her on snl last year

I am so happy that I missed this

foster the people performance on snl was hilarious too, but more because singer had seriously bloodshot eyes and the back-up tamborine man was VERY animated. they didn't fail to get the song over, though.

i know the defense is that everyone looks nervous on SNL but not everyone's trying to push over a bond-theme ballad when they can't sing

my fave bad performance from last year was that brit band who played on letterman and letterman couldn't stop laughing and he made fun of their drummer and they all kinda slunk off the stage. hahaha! that was great. the band was like bad coldplay or something and the drummer thought he was in lightning bolt. oh god that was truly awful.

well that's what i said way up top there. video games is like singing a capella. you are really alone singing that song! they should have had the music drown her out.

ello were bad coldplay from the united kingdom!

re-watching the foster the people performance, singer really does look like he's been pulled over by a cop and nervously submitting to a dance test to prove he's not totally wasted.

hey karmin is playing snl soon, I think lorne michaels is trying to troll the internet all at once, maybe the entire free world

"is that your regular drummer?" hahaha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvsHJjldYW8

hey nice job way to go buddy! lol

thank you gentlemen, thanks for being-- ok, what, ok you don't... ok, see ya! goodbye! goodnight everybody!

ugh. kinda reminds me of an entirely uninteresting future islands? [via vocal mannerisms]

... and OF COURSE their other song titles would include: "we bros", "brooklyn girls", "videogame sandwich diamonds"

Been steering clear of this thread but greatly enjoyed Maura's article that was linked.

Listened to the album again on headphones this morning and I like it all the less for that. I keep thinking how amazing some of these songs would sound had it been a year ago and, say, Amy Winehouse was on them. LDR doesn't have enough personality in her voice to make these songs work. Doesn't help that the production is really thin throughout - the whole record seems to strain for a grandeur that it can't reach.

a strain for things she cant reach is at the core of the ldr h8 in my pro opinion

i think the production is too much, actually - very little is as sparse as "video games", too often the songs are sort of slathered in unnecessary strings and get corny vaguely hip-hop beats and samples tacked on to them.

ok i am officially listening to this for the next hour or however long it takes

spotify -> "enable private session"

haha

lol

thanks for the kind words everyone, and yes i was totally thinking of the cristina 'is that all there is?' when i wrote that last graf

well then.

first thing: everyone on the production side of this should be ashamed of themselves--it's a terrible sounding record. portishead by way of a st vincent depaul thrift store with no polish, no cohesion, no ideas. it seriously sounds like it was put together by a bunch of old guys who have no idea what is cool and what might actually sound good. after it was over i immediately put on the precedent for what this record should have sounded like: mono - "life in mono" c. 1997 which at least had some *style* not a bunch of dorky mashed together beats and strings.

second thing: ldr herself. i think we all agree that she's talented but she is either not comfortable with singing, or not comfortable with singing this music, or she just doesn't have much of a natural ear. i heard so much odd phrasing and timing, when she would slip into and out of different voices it was just awkward. she's best doing the deep droll-y voice but they also try to make her sing high and breathy and then like a big pop singer and then doing some weird pseudo-rap thing that i don't even understand. like the production, this all could have been fixed with time and effort but no one seemed to really care.

last thing: there were times where i could close my eyes and try really hard and see the trashy/kitschy fun of some of this (and that's an aesthetic i strongly dislike to be fair) but the album just vacillates too much between that and moments of legitimately embarrassing material and moments that are just so joyless and po-faced that i can't imagine how someone would enjoy this as a pop record. oddly my fav track is "this is what makes us girls" which is kind of awful but is at least *about something* and seems to wink a bit unlike most of the other songs which seem to be the lyrical embodiment of that video where ldr doesn't do anything except embrace the guy with tats.

have Wu Lyf REALLY got a song called Videogame Sandwich Diamonds? about 5 years ago Manchester clubs, bands, etc were *drowning* in Talking Heads references so it wouldn't surprise me.

r they wu-affiliated idgi

did you watch the letterman clip? seems likely

is the the drummer papa wu i think maybe

what this record should have sounded like: mono - "life in mono"

yes!!! have been reading the "this sounds like 90s trip-hop" criticisms everywhere but none of them were very specific, and a lot of the bigger trip-hop acts seem way off-base as comparison points. but this, yeah - cuz i think mono were also aiming for a kind of lynchian vibe here too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aa1tEh82I

talking of lynch though, i think this record could've been a lot better if it had been really stripped down à la julee cruise's first album - most of the songs have the hooks to survive that treatment.

i think that's true--nothing about the songwriting seemed objectionable to me tho it was almost totally oversahdowed by bad arrangements, weird singing, or stupid lyrics

FWIW, Siobhan de Maré of Mono hit the Lynchian vibe perfectly once she hooked up with Robin Guthrie.

i'd totally forgotten about violet indiana and had definitely forgotten it was the same girl - i really liked their first EP

her singing is the weirdest thing about the album because at times she absolutely nails the character and the emotion but at other times it's just so weirdly tone-deaf. it's kind of like she's only got a handle on half of what she's trying to convey

Mono is such a great, specific reference. I would have dropped them into my review if I thought people would know who the hell I was talking about.

probably time for triphop comebacks in general anyway.

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

"her singing is the weirdest thing about the album because at times she absolutely nails the character and the emotion but at other times it's just so weirdly tone-deaf. it's kind of like she's only got a handle on half of what she's trying to convey"

i don't know how many times people have posted a variation on "she really isn't ready for the big time yet" on here, but it's a lot. i think i've done it 20 or 30 times myself by now.

Man now I really want to listen to that first Mono album again.

As for Wu Lyf, what the fuck

yeah I kept thinking of lamb when I listened to the record. it's too bad they don't let baz luhrmann make movies anymore, think of the mileage he could get out of lana.

xp

xp yeah it's pretty rare to run into someone who is being marketed as a pop singer by a major label where you can call the competence of the singer and/or producers into question! but it's really the only explanation i can come up with for some of the stuff on the record

wu lyf explained

All the best bands walk off after a groundbreaking peroformance, take nirvana for example when they did territoriality pissings, they just all fucked off after, WORLD UNITE!

BommyBum13 2 weeks ago

hahahah ty for that historical perspective bommybum

the drummer likes lightning bolt, the guitarist is a godspeed you black emperor fan, the singer likes coldplay and arcade fire, and...okay, i don't even know what to think about that band.

Thread revived for everyone's enjoyment:

Wu Lyf

the singer seems like a legit strange person

i did not enjoy that band at all no

well i sort of did

he seems like a prat who would like to be thought of as a legit strange person but no he's just a prat

probably time for triphop comebacks in general anyway.

creep!

i could imagine creep ft. lana del rey very easily actually

i think the production is too much, actually - very little is as sparse as "video games", too often the songs are sort of slathered in unnecessary strings and get corny vaguely hip-hop beats and samples tacked on to them.

agreed