TOP 10 UNLISTENABLE PRETENTIOUS INDIE CRAP OF 2006

I want to apologize for the "Best of" music lists that I posted the other day. If you actually visited some of the sites/blogs that I linked to, you might have found some good indie rock songs. However, there's an equal chance that you also accidentally heard some unbelievably horrendous garbage. Holy sweet wolfmother, some of this stuff is atrocious! Indie bloggers seem to be in the mindset that they have to "outcool" the next guy by choosing bands that are obscure, avant-garde, and uncategorizable, preferably all of the above. They also want to praise their new find way before anyone else, and I don't think they actually spend any time LISTENING to it. When I hear some of this nonsense I wonder if people actually listen to this stuff at home, in the car, or at parties? I'm guessing no. These pseudohipsters just put it on their iPod along with 5,000 other things and listen to it on shuffle occasionally, and whip it out to impress god only knows who.

Before I slogged through some of these lists, I used to consider myself an "indie rock" fan, but I think I need a whole new genre to describe my tastes. Maybe "conventional indie rock": something with lyrics, a chorus, melodies, and a singer who can (sort of) carry a tune. A great deal of this stuff lacks all of those key ingredients that IMHO make music enjoyable and listenable.

So here's my TOP 10 UNLISTENABLE PRETENTIOUS INDIE CRAP OF 2006. Listen if you dare.

10. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House. You know, with a name like that, I expected something less wimpy. Okay, the song "Easier" is not that bad, but it surely doesn't ROCK MY FUCKING SOCKS OFF.
Favorite hipster quote: "The album was recorded in Edward Droste's mother's Cape Cod home, and that familial, clean sheets, cookies-baking warmth is weirdly palpable." (Pitchfork)

9. Regina Spektor, Begin To Hope. Just listen to the annoying way she extends the word "heart" in the song "Fidelity". I don't ever want to hear that again. I wish there was some way to UNhear it.
Favorite hipster quote: "The hushed 'Sampson' combines biblical imagery and references to Wonder Bread to sketch a relationship that's turned unexpectedly fragile." (Onion AV Club)

8. Matmos, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast. An instrumental album filled with songs about famous gay artists? What does that even fucking mean? And where's Liberace? His exclusion from this project is an outrage. (Actually, I think I just hit on something: if it's described in a review as a "project", that means listening to it is going to feel like work. From now on, I'm going to focus on "albums" with "songs".)
Favorite hipster quote: "Take for example 'Public Sex For Boyd Mcdonald' which tries to convey the writer through the sound of a pencil scribbling on paper, the street at night, warped records, and well, public sex."
(Note: I just found out that one of the 2 members of this duo is a "Pitchfork contributor". Ah ha! I caught you, you nepotistic nimwits!)

7. Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds. A band named after a queer Japanese videogame series. An album title with the word "poo" in it. A song lyric saying something about, "His massive genitals refused to cooperate/no amount of therapy can hope to save this memory." I want to kick this twee twat in his throat with his own foot.
Favorite hipster quote: "It's the personal nature, together with the way that Pallett’s vocals veer from fey to screamingly intense, which makes the sad fates of his characters in almost every song—impotence, boredom, self-harm, being killed by giant fish—compelling rather than abstract." (Stylus)

6. Man Man, Six Demon Bag. Well, they're certainly no Tin Tin, The The or Talk Talk; they don't even beat Lisa Lisa. It sounds like James Hetfield trapped at the circus. God, what the fuck is this?
Favorite hipster quote: "The countless Kodak moments here-- from the drunken lament of "Feathers" to the Noreaga shoutout on "Black Mission Goggles"-- only attest to Man Man's ability to power pawnshop ditties with a ramshackle classic rock bigness." (Pitchfork)

5. The Knife, Silent Shout. The Pitchfork Media #1 album of the year! Uh huh. Lord knows, I tried to listen to this, but the accents and the synths just irritate me. If I wanted horrible retro Swedish crap, I'd buy a bean bag chair from IKEA.
Favorite hipster quote: "The way they structure their tracks, every sound sticks out like a lone wire waiting to be stripped, but the more you tug on any given strand, the more all the rest--unstable harmonics, queered pitches, android shanties, looping tales of forest families--is plunged into the most addictive kind of inscrutability." (Pitchfork)

4. The Liars, Drums Not Dead. I don't know where to begin with this drum heavy offering. The song "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" is like one long primal drum solo augmented with the screams of the tortured souls forced to listen to it. Pretty soon you'll add your own screams.
Favorite hipster quote: "You will be hard pressed to find anything better this year." (FUNTIMEOK.com)

3. Boris, Pink. God, this is so irritating to listen to, like a Mogwai CD run across a cheese grater. "Pseudobread"? Pseudomusic! (See how I turned that around?) I call it "Crapcaphony".
Favorite hipster quote: "Prickled nerves and spasmodic movements aside, Boris’ contribution to the artistic color field is soporifically monochromatic: Ryman on Risperdal." (Stylus)

2. Scott Walker, The Drift. This guy's voice contains more bombast than Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell III and Andrew Lloyd Webber combined. It's like goth opera for the mentally challenged. I defy you to listen to his song "Jesse" and not laugh your ass off, oh let's say at about 2:15 in.
Favorite hipster quote: "Presiding over this palace of gloom is Walker's gnarled, throaty croon, a gallows moan that braids sweetness and violence." (Pitchfork)

1. Joanna Newsom, Ys. This is inexplicably on most people's best of lists. If you want listen to a girl from California who has such an arty, affected voice that you'd think she's from Saturn, then this is for you. Otherwise, stay away from this pretentious Bjork ripoff.
Favorite hipster quote: "In the middle of this record, she sits alone with her harp for 10 minutes, asking stuffed birds 'Why the long face?'--it feels like four minutes, tops, and you can spend at least two of them right up toward the edge of your seat." (Pitchfork)

God, I am so done with Pitchfork and their indie sissy wannabe spinoff blogs (except if they offer free mp3s). 2007 is going to be the YEAR OF THE ROCK.


(Thanks to David Thorpe for the inspiration for this extended indie rock rant.)