Bands not called Arcade Fire seem to be having trouble writing satisfying, good, interesting songs that last more than 3 minutes. Everything these days seems to be "get in, get out, wham-bam-thankyoumaam." What the fuck is up with that? What ever happened to courtship? starting slow and building up? What happened to romance? What have we come to? How many questions can a blog post have? What is the meaning of life?
Well, Family Cactus are changing that, they've got a new album called Come Howling full of 4 minute plus songs (with a couple of exceptions).
Here's "Come Howling" coming in at a never boring 6.47 minutes:
Come Howling by Family Cactus
And here is their first video for their song "Kingmaker:"
I agree that there is a 'Girl Talk' generation, not being able to focus in a song for more than 30 seconds. However, my dislike for Arcade Fire being referenced as holy saviors of everything pure, and my overall 'meh' feeling for their Suburbs, caused me to run an iTunes experiment. Out of 1772 tracks produced in 2010, I found 169 that are 6+ minutes long. 10% is not bad.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, songs in many of my favorite albums this year appear in the list. some artists are:
Autolux, Avi Buffalo, Caribou, Deerhunter, Four Tet, Hot Chip, Janelle Monae, Joanna Newsom, LCD Soundsystem, Matthew Dear, Oh No Ono, Owen Pallett, Royksopp, School of Seven Bells, Sufjan Stevens, Superpitcher, Women.
Not my favorite, but also on the list: Vampire Weekend.
end of procrastination bout.
Also, good post!
ReplyDeleteGreat posts/comments all around, who's up for a meta analysis?
ReplyDeleteAs for the meaning of life, I'll leave it to K Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle:
"Man - 'What is the purpose of all this?'
God - 'Everything must have a purpose?'
Man - 'Certainly'
God - 'Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this'
And God went away."