February 2007 Archives

The Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are two of the hottest indie rock bands to grace hipster ears over the past couple years. Why? Well, because the Arcade Fire had a fresh sound, were quirky and hailed from Canada. CYHSY also had a fresh sound, were also quirky and hailed from Brooklyn (which, on the hipness scale, ranked as the number one place in 2006 to have your band hail from; followed closely by Canada).

So. That’s all it takes to make it big in the indie rock world. Fresh sound, quirkiness and being from the proper place (at the proper time). But what happens when its time to release a follow up? The Arcade Fire and CYHSY already have two strikes against them, their sound is no longer fresh and they are no longer considered to hail from a cool place (Montreal and Brooklyn were so 2005, y’all. This year it’s all about the Bronx and Quebec City).

Seriously though, the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and CYHSY’s Some Loud Thunder are decent albums. Sonically, they follow the same path laid out by the respective bands on their respective debuts. And this is the sad part; since both bands were uber-cool they'll have to work extra hard to regain uber-cool status, which, with the throw away mentality of the hip, is a Sisyphusian type task. Better start pushing now.

Web Sites: The Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Stuff to Sample: From CYHSY’s Some Loud Thunder “Love Song No. 7” and "Underwater (You and Me)." You can hear tracks from the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible here.

Anybody watch the Grammy last night? I didn’t. I completely forgot it was on. Which, when you get right down to it, is serendipitous because I hate the Grammy’s but I watch then every year and bemoan the sad, sad state of what is considered “popular music.”

Notable Wins

Tool picked up that worthless little paperweight for Best Recording Package for 10,000 Days. The Flaming Lips’ At War With The Mystics won for Best Engineered Album, Non Classical. Rick Rubin was recognized as Producer of the Year, Non Classical. And Wolfmother won for best Hard Rock Performance for their single “Woman,” but they beat out Tool and Nine Inch Nails, so in the grand scheme of things, I’ll chalk this one up as a loss.

Notable Snub

The American music loving populace for being subjected to this crap, year after year after year.