Time for a rapid-fire edition of Ben's Hot Takes. I'm going to write up a bunch of hot takes (and some "Fun Facts") with a couple sentence explanation for all of them. I may come back to it?
St. Vincent should be the face of female indie:
What can't Grammy-winning Annie Clark do? She can play the guitar (Really Well), she can sing (Really Well), she's avant-garde, she's accessible, she's all that. Every album that she has released has shown stylistic growth from different parts of indie. From the soft singer-songwriter-esque Marry Me to the harsh art/chamber pop of her self titled album in 2014, she has proven that she has the potential for a range of emotion and styles. She also has a social presence that is a bit pretentious, yet accessible to her audience (with the creation of her mixtape delivery service). The fact that she is able to pivot to different subsections of indie and has a connection with a lot of people give her the means and opportunity to become the female face of indie.
Future Islands is great at putting out singles, not albums:
Name three great Future Islands songs. If you named "Balance", "Seasons (Waiting On You)", and "Ran"; congratulations, you just proved my point. I'm not saying that Future Islands is bad, I'm just saying that all of their music sounds forgettable in comparison to those three songs.
WU LYF would be 100X better if the singer didn't sound like a reptile:
This goes for a couple bands (*Ahem* Okay *Ahem*) and I get it's a stylistic choice, but you can go for a more metal sounding candor or something else, anything else. The music and the sentiment of these bands are fantastic, but I cannot get over the raspy, rough, reptilian vocals. I also can get behind the juxtaposition between the sweet sounding music and vocals, but it's too dissonant for my taste.
Modern Vampires of the City was overrated:
Probably the hottest take I've had, I've held this in for such a long time. This is the point I will get back to in the next coming weeks. Some of the songs sound like they said, "Let's make an album and have some of them sound like California English", and I don't like the song "California English". I love "Obvious Bicycle", and "Hannah Hunt" but the album, in comparison to the previous two albums, seems like it is trying to be dreary without some of the substance that the previous albums had. I don't think it should be lauded as the best album of 2013 as some have put it. I think it's a pretty good album, yet overrated.
Did you know that these two vocalists are men?:
Rhye and Youth Lagoon are both men. Huh, learn something new every day.
Snoop Dogg is the Nicholas Cage of music:
He was on Corey Feldman's Angelic 2 The Core... I feel like I've said enough. I wonder what that conversation was, but I think I know what Snoop's response was. "Man, I don't like it, but I'm gonna get that money"
