Definitive Pigeons. Emu Sofa. Wallaby Junction. Owl City. Freelance Whales.
All insufferably precious. But only two of them are actual band names. The other three I just made up. (Although "Wallaby Junction" is in fact an online game.)
Owl City is responsible for perhaps the worst popular song of the last three to five years: "Fireflies." Completely incomprehensible. I mean, "Cause I'd get a thousand hugs/ From ten thousand lightning bugs/ As they tried to teach me how to dance"? What the hell does that even mean?
The worst crime of Owl City, however, is the one outlined by Pitchfork: the retroactive indictment-by-association of the musically terrific, if totally depressing at times, Death Cab for Cutie:
All insufferably precious. But only two of them are actual band names. The other three I just made up. (Although "Wallaby Junction" is in fact an online game.)
Owl City is responsible for perhaps the worst popular song of the last three to five years: "Fireflies." Completely incomprehensible. I mean, "Cause I'd get a thousand hugs/ From ten thousand lightning bugs/ As they tried to teach me how to dance"? What the hell does that even mean?
The worst crime of Owl City, however, is the one outlined by Pitchfork: the retroactive indictment-by-association of the musically terrific, if totally depressing at times, Death Cab for Cutie:
At this rate Death Cab are staking out Pearl Jam status in the 2010s, i.e., a band that gave many astute listeners an entry to more outré sounds but ultimately became reviled for the shitty music they, through no fault of their own, inspired.
Death Cab's frontman, Ben Gibbard, also brought the world The Postal Service, aka The Band Whose Song Plays Behind Those UPS Whiteboard Ads. And it is The Postal Service, perhaps moreso than Death Cab, that led to Owl City. The horrible, terrible, no-good Owl City.
And now we have Freelance Whales to contend with.
I mentioned my particular revulsion toward both Owl City and Freelance Whales on Twitter, and was met with a prompt "you're out of your gourd" from Bessie Cherry and Wyndham Manning (both of them founders and organizers of Madison's Forward Music Festival).
I respect their musical acumen and taste, so I tried to give Freelance Whales, they of the recent radio-player "Hannah," another try.
Nope.
I'm not alone in finding Freelance Whales to be less objectionable than Owl City. At least the Whales' lyrics make sense. But that's faint praise when their lyrics are so insipid as to include this gem: "Every now and again she offers me a lemon Now & Later/ Please don't play the matchmaker/ Please don't be a player hater/ If you dig her recent work/ You should go congratulate her."
So while they're less bad, they're by no means good. And really: everyone compares them to both Owl City and The Postal Service. It can't be just a facile or simplistic interpretation if music writers are doing it right alongside dilettante food-writing bloggers like yours truly.
I do know that Pitchfork takes a lot of shit for seeming to value its own status and import more than anyone else does. But their review of Freelance Whales' "Weathervanes" album is positively brilliant--in a completely negative way.
I know "beep boop boop sweetness" seems like an easy formula to replicate, but please. No more cutesy animal bands mimicking the call of The Postal Service. It's a height you just can't reach.
And now we have Freelance Whales to contend with.
I mentioned my particular revulsion toward both Owl City and Freelance Whales on Twitter, and was met with a prompt "you're out of your gourd" from Bessie Cherry and Wyndham Manning (both of them founders and organizers of Madison's Forward Music Festival).
I respect their musical acumen and taste, so I tried to give Freelance Whales, they of the recent radio-player "Hannah," another try.
Nope.
I'm not alone in finding Freelance Whales to be less objectionable than Owl City. At least the Whales' lyrics make sense. But that's faint praise when their lyrics are so insipid as to include this gem: "Every now and again she offers me a lemon Now & Later/ Please don't play the matchmaker/ Please don't be a player hater/ If you dig her recent work/ You should go congratulate her."
So while they're less bad, they're by no means good. And really: everyone compares them to both Owl City and The Postal Service. It can't be just a facile or simplistic interpretation if music writers are doing it right alongside dilettante food-writing bloggers like yours truly.
I do know that Pitchfork takes a lot of shit for seeming to value its own status and import more than anyone else does. But their review of Freelance Whales' "Weathervanes" album is positively brilliant--in a completely negative way.
I know "beep boop boop sweetness" seems like an easy formula to replicate, but please. No more cutesy animal bands mimicking the call of The Postal Service. It's a height you just can't reach.
Ok. A couple things right off the bat. Both reviewers you link to like Freelance Whales... one says, in as many words, that they don't sound like a direct rip off of Postal Service.
(Also, as far as the title of this post, I direct you to Fleet Foxes. Or Frightened Rabbit. Or Modest Mouse. but I digress!)
I question Pitchfork's mantle as the arbiter of cool, but even if one did use their tepid review of FW's debut album as a reference, they liken the band to Sufjan Stevens (twee, banjo) and Arcade Fire (orchestral, layered instrumentation). As well as Ben Gibbard (likely because the lead singer's voice bears more than a passing resemblance to Gibbard's). Still, no mention of Postal Service.
The Postal Service remains one of my favorite bands despite their limited oeuvre, and yet I can't think of something that blatantly screams Postal Service in Freelance Whales' music. Perhaps the occasional synth (which is lamentably heavy handed in their most widely-known song, "Hannah") but it's tempered by tambourine, glockenspiel, and other eclectic instruments, not to mention beautiful vocal harmonies. And synth/sampling is no longer a gimmick that owes something to P.S. or Death Cab-- it's being used by all those hip kids nowadays, and has been for some time (see "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn," Bright Eyes circa '05)
Freelance Whales supported themselves by busking in subways in NYC before getting a record deal-- something a strictly electronic duo like Postal Service or a solo electronic musician like Owl City could never do. And it is evident in their music that they are laying tracks down, together, as a 5-piece-ensemble, using the electronic elements as a base upon which to build organic vox and instrumentals, whereas Owl City works solo and the long distance Postal Service collaboration is legendary.
I wouldn't call Freelance Whales my new favorite band or anything, but I think they've done an admirable job of bridging the gap between electronic music and indie rock, with not a little musicianship thrown in for good measure. They are definitely going places.
I'd direct you to this Stereogum feature for an assessment that I think is far more reasonable than P4K's... http://stereogum.com/92961/band_to_watch_freelance_whales/franchises/band-to-watch/
Also, if you haven't gotten too far into Weathervanes, I find "Ghosting" or "We Could Be Friends" more representative of the band's overarching sound than "Hannah." You can hear the fingers sliding up the guitar strings- hard to replicate that via synth.
Please write about music more often! It's great to open up these discussions.
My "couple of things" are that
1) I probably went too broad and too mean with my title. I love Modest Mouse (though I'd say mice aren't particularly odd). But that leads into...
2) I don't write about music very much because I really have no business talking about it in a contemporary fashion. I don't believe I've consciously heard a Fleet Foxes song, and I'm not sure I've ever even heard of Frightened Rabbit.
I'm glad to know that the things that turned my ears down about "Hannah" are kind of particular to "Hannah," but it also makes me leery of digging further into a catalog.
When I call myself a "food-writing blogger dilettant," I'm being charitable. My main source of contemporary music awareness are the commercials I tease in my post. Dig through my "Purchased" playlist in iTunes and you'll see what I mean. Single after single, most from cutesy car commercials (Simple Kid's "Lil' King Kong," plus, like, every Apple commercial...you know the drill).
I define "poseur," but I'm glad you chimed in! I need smart music people to set me straight when I get a wild hair about some perceived offense against "good" music.