Beats Update

My head hurts too much from reading all day to spend much time here, but, well, I wanted to let you all know a bit about recent bandwagon trips I’ve taken.

.: The Postal Service. Despite Steve’s playing track two enough times at work that I started to like it, Give Up is not actually good. It’s not bad, of course, but it’s not great. Not good enough to be in a Friendster profile (Clay). I used to really mark out for IDM, back before the three letters had ever been put together, but this is kind of just boring. Yeah, it’s a little sweet and airy, but, for now, I’ll just stick to Boards of Canada or something. Additionally, its mediocrity deserves extra note because of the band’s being touted as an indie “supergroup.” Supergroups are supposed to be good. Or at least tragically bad. This is just sorta whatever.

.: Franz Ferdinand. I heard about this band for the first time at Jimmy’s three nights before they played a show in Chicago. I was commenting to Sarah that I was thinking of going to the Electrelane show, and she asked if I was going to the Franz Ferdinand show. I said no. Then, like a day later, Blender done came all over the début album. I ignored it at the time, but then the new Blender came, as it were, and ordered me to download Franz Ferdinand. OK, OK. Anything that sez “disco beats” is immediately interesting to me, so there you go. And now, having heard it…

…Well, it’s personally a little too rough for my taste. The shabby-sounding distortion, etc., sounds a little too garagey for me, but, then, I love my production crystal clean and Abbaesque. “Take Me Out” is a drop dead great single, and it is also rather obviously a ton of fun to cover. Yes, I’m already imagining it all out, now. I could rather easily sing this song. I’m curious as to general lyrical readings of the song, though. I’m on the fence about whether it’s just an aggressive love song, or a fuck you song, or what.

The roughness calls to mind early Talking Heads (well, a lot of it does), and the disco beats call to mind, um, middle Talking Heads? Plus, the slower, more melodic moments sound, to me, like archetypal Belle & Sebastian. But, then, I don’t like B+S, so who am I to say what they archetypically sound like. I swear it’s not the Scotland thing, but maybe the elocution does call the connection to mind.

More importantly, this sounds a lot like what I imagine the Strokes wished they sounded like. Too bad the Strokes were too busy blasting lines off groupies’ chests to develop any sense of musical direction. That’s not to say that Franz Ferdinand is a group of visionaries, but the album is pretty fun, and that’s saying a lot. So is rock still dead? Yep. But that’s ok.