twenty one pilots

it's not just bemusement though.

I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack for a horror movie sponsored by Hot Topic, in which the great and terrible horror was just learning to be you.

sure it's snark but it also feels really perceptive to me, it cuts through to something important about the how the band project their identity onstage and how that connects with people

most people writing removed pop sociology wouldn't have bothered going to a concert. a field report! i dig that. i was just re-reading greg tate's review of a bruce springsteen show in new jersey and i could read that kinda stuff all day long.

sfj spent most of his last few years at the new yorker explaining what songs sounded like and it was super boring imo

but i also don't need to read a 20,000 word nu-journalism account of a twenty one pilots show. not that anyone is really doing that. maybe john jeremiah sullivan could do it.

i was trying to read that grover lewis anthology recently and my eyes started glazing over. zzzzzzz......soooooo long. and so dated too in a way. the attitude. the allman brothers should have kicked his butt.

(same thing happened when i tried to read that old nik cohn rock book recently. ugh, get me out of here...)

that graf is boring! also i go to shows all the time :p

aw c'mon

sorry but yeah i'm not! it's a totally facile observation

well maybe but imo it's deliciously put.

there are other things to be said that could be more about the music, or just about any music - like there are actually tons of "remember when you were a kid, and having a parent, when you were a kid???" songs in the charts. there have been for years now. which you wouldn't know from that article. "don't you worry child" by swedish house mafia. lukas graham. there are so many more than i can't think of right now because i've spent time actively trying to block them out. (lukas graham slipped through the net)

i just googled "pop songs about being a kid" and this article was on the first page of results. i think we can all agree this is a valuable resource.

http://www.chilldad.com/10-dirty-pop-songs/

yeah and the "'member that" positioning is especially strange given how aggressively pop has skewed younger over the last two decades

i like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUBW8bkjQ4

the other new song is way more "someone's lazy idea of a twenty one pilots song"

this song is cool and good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmL9TqTFIAc

and the album itself is surprisingly good and engaging throughout. their rapping will always be kinda repellant to me but it's well-balanced with the mutant rock/pop/r&b/trip-hop record that the rest of this is

big Sunday NY Times profile last weekend, tldnr

new album blasting downstairs at student pit

i find it encouraging that a band this huge made such a weird and collagistic record but i also think this album may be too arty to sustain what blurryface did

my bro convinced me to listen to this and i kinda liked it, wasnt expecting to liek any of it. some parts kind of sounded like manchester orchestra to me. wish they would drop the rapping obv.

Jumpsuit is carrying the linkin park torch nicely. prob my favorite song on here

"bandito" is mine, it absolutely rules

Bandito and Morph are great.

"they suck but the basic materials they work with could be good." from brad about their earlier material was completely otm, but i didn't expect them to ever actually deliver on that potential, this album is pretty good!

kinda surprised that this album has been pretty ignored critically, like this band is massively popular and clearly has enough going on that surely critics would have something interesting to say about them.

"Nico and the Niners" is still pretty dreadful though and I don't think "Pet Cheetah" really works for me either

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sO-Y1Zbft4

they're good now

Solid mainstream band I think

relistening to trench today, even better than i remembered, probably better than i characterized it upthread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_9Kf0D5BTs

aiight maybe i've done the full heel turn, i love this song

"bandito" is so good, i nearly forgot

also i will halfheartedly defend most of blurryface at this point. i... like "ride" now?

here let me ruin vampire weekend for you *slowly turns up volume dial on twenty one pilots "ride"*

most 21 pilots superfans would tell you that blurryface is a mainstream concession and vessel is the real shit but i find vessel real juvenile still. some of the hooks are wonderful ("ode to sleep") but many of the almost-good songs are still like rube goldberg machines of bad decisions. what's worse than the rapping? nearly every time this band breaks out the ukulele

of course, trench is >>>>>>>>>>

even the uke tracks work

"shy away" is underwhelming, just feels like part of that small wave of major label pop rock bands who tried to sound like the strokes (neon trees etc.)

it's not bad but kinda forgettable and uninteresting which is the last thing this band should be. even when they've been horrible they were at least interestingly horrible making the worst musical decisions possible etc.

on the plus side: no rapping!

idk it’s a really well-written song imo. everything a hook

been stuck in my head for a week

I will rep for blurryface. Great songs, great visual aesthetic too. Saw them twice live in this time (w/ my teen kids) and the energy start to finish was impressive (band and crowd). Surging quasi pit filled most of the room. Many backflips were flipped. Show climaxes with Tyler on a 30 foot steel pillar above the crowd singing Car Radio.

i really like blurryface at this point. even lowlight “lane boy” has a sick dnb freak out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sBRnnnZyFw

really good imo

it's good until the second half where it goes into half-time and then the outro rap is dreadful

god what a weird record

like in many ways it is deeply unweird, cf. "saturday" is just a groovy song about the weekend! until it consumes itself pixel by pixel

they largely make the weirdness work for them for this time instead of making you go "that is one of the worst musical decisions i've ever heard"

"bounce man," tho... i don't hate it but they gotta lock the uke in the closet

and his rapping too, though it's not quite as bad on this one as it's been in the past

"bounce man" isn't good but it's not like bafflingly in the way say the "guns for hands" bridge is or anything

i think dude's rapping majorly improved between blurryface and trench, so for the most part i think it's rad, another tool in the unexpectedly deep toolbox this band's working with. still a few lines that make you clutch your forehead and wish you didn't know what words are

in mood/songwriting/everything else this feels like a complete photonegative of trench and i'm really about bands that make these kind of hard right turns between records

"mulberry street" -> "formidable" is the part of the album i could credibly describe as sophistipop

it's mostly just i hate the sound of his rapping, he just sounds like a less technical eminem or something and it's not pleasant