Dream Pop has a somewhat overwhelming presence in the indie music landscape of 2018. Groups like Beach House, Tennis and American Football influenced a wide array of groups to make their own twinkling dreamlike soundscapes. What I can’t help but feel is that this genre is stuck in a rut of wanting that midwest emo twinkle without bringing anything novel to the table. The sound is so dominant and the albums so numerous I find myself asking myself “Why am I listening to this instead of American Football LP1?”. What I mean by this is: what about this record is gunna stick with me. While not all dream pop is really even that stylistically similar to American Football, I think comparing dream pop to the classic emo album is apt. They both attempt to use airy vocals and a laid back sound to inspire a peaceful reflective mood. American Football did this so well with their 1999 full length and their 1998 ep that they are still easily relevant in music discussion today even though midwest emo is mostly underground at this point. 

The question then isn’t really about a direct comparison; really what I ask of any Dream Pop is for something thats gunna make me remember them. Sounding like the rest of the twinkle isn’t the way to accomplish that. I don’t however think that the genre is saturated and I want to highlight a few artists that I keep coming back to and why. 

Alvvays – Upbeat pop songwriting backed with amazing vocals, and enough of a twist in their chord progressions to keep it from being boring (the Cmaj7 chord at the end of “In Undertow” kills me listen for it) 

Frankie Cosmos- I don’t know how so many ideas are fit into such short tracks but they somehow manage it. They don’t dwell on one idea for too long and it makes listening to their albums really fun. 

Japanese Breakfast- Absolutely incredible songwriting and arrangement, each of Michelle Zauner’s songs sound so so so unique. The entirety of Soft Sounds From Another Planet is so memorable so much so that reading a track title alone is enough for me to immediately remember the melody and sound. 

A few others of note for me are Trace Mountains, Soccer Mommy, Diet Cig, Girlpool, and Adult Mom. 

The end goal of any art within a certain genre doesn’t have to be novelty. Dream Pop is generally an enjoyable genre to listen to, and the Pitchfork flavour of the month dream pop album for whenever you are reading this is probably a good album. When a genre becomes saturated with a certain sound, it makes sense to go with the flow and incorporate that style. Unfortunately, a lot of the artists now likely won’t be remember purely because of the amount of other indie dream pop sort of emo sad emotionally vulnerable stuff out there. Only the best of the best is gunna stand out 10 years from now, which sucks because theres a lot of really good music out there that won’t get the same recognition if the genre was smaller. American Football stuck out because it was the only thing that sounded like that at the time and it also had the benefit of being really well executed (Steve Lamos’ drumming oh my lord). Similar quality work in Dream Pop exists to be sure, but the extra push of unique songwriting or instrumentation is what the acts that stick around will have. 

It’s likely you don’t know this band unless you pay close attention to my spotify activity or are one of the people who has gone through my record collection and asked me about the weird 7″ with Japanese writing all over it. I found said 7″ for .50 cents and it spins at 33 which I thought was goofy. I went expecting nothing and after I listened to both sides I found a noise rock band I quickly fell in love with. 

Trumans Water doesn’t make music. Where noise groups like Deerhoof and Sonic Youth take elements of noise, improv, and dissonance to write songs, Trumans Water writes songs that are a fallacy. Anything relatable or interesting in their songwriting is a just an exaggerated representation of something much better. Music that is made out of pure naivety. The desire to make noise overpowers anything that resembles an interesting melody or a catchy chorus. 

What’s left in the rubble is a question in your mind: Did I just listen to good music? Trumans Water manages to play a brain wiring trick on their listeners. Avant-Garde / No-Wave music often is intentionally meant to alienate the listener and in the process aim to expand the idea of what music is meant to be. Trumans Water doesn’t intentionally alienate you, but their music isn’t inviting either. They lie somewhere right before the uncanny valley where something is keeping your brain invested in the melody or the tone but objectively speaking there are mistakes on the recording or the track is sloppy due to its clearly improvised nature. Just as much as I wanna turn off  Trumans Water my brain would hurt if I did like when someone stops singing a scale right before the octave note. There’s enough of a progression in the song that I wanna hear the rest of the song but I also cant stand something about their tone or the production or the vocals or whatever it may be. 

Trumans Water just kind of exists because they want to exist. They make songs because a few people with instruments were in the same place, and the songs they make technically qualify as songs but just barely. It’s some dudes from california’s creative outlet and it wasn’t meant to get big or be their career. Finding them, at least for me, was like finding an old sketch pad from when you were 12. There’s just random drawings that you felt like drawing at the time and there was no other purpose to them besides the fact you felt like drawing them. I don’t think Trumans Water was formed as an intentional artistic statement as their satirical spotify bio is indicative of; if they were they aren’t good at it. The beauty of Trumans Water is simply that some dudes made music and if you feel like it you can to. Pure human expression. 

If anything at all about what I said interests you I would recommend their album O Zeta Zunis. That being said, this band is kinda objectively bad. I think I just have a really specific interest in this specific band because they scratch a really weird itch for me. I have trouble saying I really even enjoy this band. More so than me liking their music or finding any inspiration in their songs, this band is sort of like musical thrill seeking for me. I just get a feeling when I listen to this band (and The Hospitals) that I like. As I said earlier, its like the wires in my brain are being crossed. I personally like it but I don’t think many people besides me, and John Peel apparently, enjoy it too much. I guess if you wanna taste of what I mean you could put a few tracks but even I get sick of it after about 20-30 mins and have to listen to actual songs again. 

There isn’t a lot to say about Car Seat Headrest that Pitchfork or Madeline Singh hasn’t already said. Will Toledo writes very vulnerable music despite how pretentious and aloof he can be, and the emotionally charged energy of his music has caught me off guard on many occasions (aka i’ve cried to his songs). I’m not gonna talk about this bands sound or why they are good or why I like them (TL;DR They sound like Guided By Voices + classic rock, Will Toledo writes relatable sad bullshit, and I was sad). Instead, Car Seat Headrest acts as an interesting case study for the classic “Well I like their older stuff more but the new stuff is still good!” that any fan of a band will run into, specifically with Will Toledo’s decision to remake the album that launched him into indie stardom: Twin Fantasy. 

Tracking the progression of any bands ability to make good music is a hard thing to pin down. Bands that have very solid early releases can have their reputation crushed by a record with a new sound that isn’t received well. It’s really a tightrope walk; artists want to grow and experiment while also needing keeping some of what hooked their fans in the first place. It also becomes harder to write fast punk songs about love, lust, and friendship when you are 32 and instead you might be much more musically interested in lunar conspiracy theories. While I love making fun of Alex Turner, the question really is Alex Turner owe Arctic Monkeys fans anything? Is he required to just keep releasing albums of the same genre for the rest of his musical career? How much leeway should fans give an artist as far as experimentation goes?  Would Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino have been better received if it was released as an Alex Turner record? I would really like an answer to these questions but I think it really comes on a case by case basis. I think I would have minded the sound change for Arctic Monkeys a lot less if Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino was a better record, especially considering AM was pretty different for the band and it wasn’t nearly as poorly received due to its quality. 

Car Seat Headrest, conveniently, answered these questions. Will Toledo’s songwriting was heavily impacted by the introduction of additional band members and recently the complete absorption of an entire other band. 5 years ago one would expect a Car Seat Headrest album to entail lo-fi indie rock, but 2016’s Teens of Denial is emotionally tinged hard rock and 2018’s Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) re-writes some of the lo-fi classics from Twin Fantasy as dance infused rock. Even more extreme are the new live arrangements of Twin Fantasy‘s tracks which are straight up disco / dance songs (no hate from me they rip). Will Toledo used the emotionally rawness in the songs he wrote in his formative years and made something that appealed to him musically, much to the disdain of fans who had 7 years to form an emotional connection to the original Twin Fantasy.  In spite of outspoken fans of the original, Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) likely introduced a lot of people to both Car Seat Headrest and to Twin Fantasy which wasn’t widely available. 

People form strong connections to music that they relate to, and to the time in their life at which that music was important to them. This intimacy fades over time as both the artists and their fans change, and works newer or older than the songs you adore seems incomplete. As much as music journalism can attempt to categorize music into the good and the bad, nothing can account for a certain song hitting a chord with a specific person. Both editions of Twin Fantasy can appeal to different groups. Holding artists accountable for always releasing music that appeals to everyone starts to seem a lot less fair when Car Seat Headrest can release the same album twice and still manage to get flak from hiehards. 

I’ve always struggled to explain to people what is good about australian garage rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. I spent the entirety of my high-school years listening to nothing but 70’s psych rock and when a friend of mine introduced me to King Gizz I was instantly sold. There was something about their sound that really appealed to both my newly attained indie-sadboi tastes and my old love of long drawn out songs with unique instrumentation. The more I talk with people about this band, the more I realize that I might be almost completely alone in this. King Gizz lacks a sort of mainstream appeal outside of a few tracks, but they have a wide enough discography that a large variety of tastes can be accounted for. This lands a lot of first time listeners in a weird situation of not listening to the album they may enjoy the most and painting their entire discography in that sound. 

It may seem like the band is stretching themselves to thin by mixing it up to frequently; not sticking to a certain sound has landed lots of other bands with horribly received albums. King Gizz manages (somehow) to keep one foot planted hard in 70’s psych rock allowing them to explore other sounds. Flying Microtonal Banana makes heavy use of microtonality and interesting instrument choices, while Paper Mache Dream Balloon uses an acoustic only approach for a very flowery sounding album. The slew of albums they have released in the past 6 years in addition to their variety allows anyone with a love of psych rock and most other genres to find something they like in this band, but the size of their discog is intimidating. Someone who likes mellowed out indie but doesnt like metal would be as interested in Sketches of Brunswick East as they would be turned off of the band by Murder of the Universe. Getting into King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard almost requires a friend who both knows your music taste and the bands discography well. 

That being said, sometimes I have rose coloured glasses when it comes to this band. They scratch such a specific itch for me that I just adore this band so much. When I take a step back from the adoration, there’s noticeable reasons they aren’t able to achieve a more wide appeal. The band is a 7 piece with 3 Guitarists, 1 Bassist, 2 drummers, and a harmonica / keys player. The size of the outfit, while being part of the diversity of their sound, also keeps their sound fairly predictable. Gizz songs have a lot of shared motifs, even across albums, and their sound has a few staples which can be found across their albums (except for Paper Mache Dream Balloon and maybe Quarters!). The lead guitar lines usually are doubling the vocals, verses will end with fast pick slides / feedback loaded with delay and reverb, bass lines are usually in a bluesey steady groove, and most songs breakdown with a harmonica solo. While I love the sound of all of these, these trends and a few other prevail throughout their music and not enjoying them would essentially prevent one from enjoying any of their music. This really is the trap that most jam bands fall into, and its easy to spot just from the fans alone. 

People who like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard usually really like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Despite the bands own admission that the lyrics are mostly sci-fi sounding nonsense, fans on various platforms have poured into the bands lyrical content and constructed a lore for their albums called “The Gizzverse”. It’s pretty thin stuff, but its very indicative of what kind of fan base they appeal to. It’s the new age version of people who like The Grateful Dead, and I guess all i’ve realized is im one of those people. I really just love this band, and if I get the opportunity to I will talk about them for half an hour or more and bore the fuck out of my friends. I’ve achieved the indie kid version of not shutting up about Pink Floyd, which is fitting because in high school I didn’t shut up about Pink Floyd. 

If you want to get into this band, find someone that knows them to get a good recommendation on a starting point; my personal recommendation for an accessible entry point is Gumboot Soup. If you don’t want to do that and have patience, give a few different albums a try. Try to keep an open ear and don’t let the first album you try dissuade you from finding another album of theirs you might dig. If you listened to nothing but your 60 year old dad’s record collection growing up this band won’t be anything new. 

I figure i’ll just keep making my way down the list of artists that I don’t shut up about in any social setting so up next is what might be my favourite band of all time.

Parquet Courts are a Brooklyn / Texas based post-punk group, who went from playing DIY basement punk shows in 2011 to playing on Ellen while promoting their 2018 album Wide Awake!. Though the group easily fits in with any descriptor of post-punk, they manage a very unique sound by being one of the few post-punk acts that doesn’t sound like a Joy Division cover band. Short fast classic punk style tracks are just as common in their tracklists as 8 minute noise explorations, all of which is backed up by the groups effective songwriting, catchy bass lines, and memorable hooks. 

Despite their post-punk tendencies Parquet Courts are often very honest and curt about social issues. Across their discography they discuss the struggles of living in large cities (Human Performance), the effect mass media and technology is having on culture (Content Nausea), and on their newest album Wide Awake! the group rallies for social justice. Wide Awake!‘s tracklist covers topics ranging from the evils of capitalism to gun violence. Instead of bothering with complex metaphors to deal with these issues, frontman A. Savage’s lyrics are straight to the point. His songwriting often presents a sort of vignette which allows the listener to be place in the shoes of the situation. For example, the track “I Was Just Here” off of Human Performance puts the listener in the shoes of someone in a New York City apartment, and the end of the track ends with his repeated shouting of “I was just here!” when he finds out his favourite chinese food place isn’t there anymore. 

This style of songwriting seems to be tailored to the era of music in which we live. With easy access to any music one desires through streaming, both music fans and casual listeners often spend less time with a particular group or album. Instead of pouring over the contents of a specific songs because its the only CD you have in your car, you make new playlists almost weekly with new tracks. If any deep lyrical analysis is done, Genius provides most people with a quick and suitable analysis. A. Savage’s lyrics require no interpretation, and Parquet Courts sticks out for it when their songs end with “Fuck Tom Brady”. 

I fear if I write anymore it’ll be boring. I really want to write like 20 more paragraphs and try to explain why this band is good but really you just need to listen to them to get it. I’ve been following this band for coming up on 2 years now, and I really wish I found them earlier. I’ve watched their spotify monthly listeners number almost triple in the past year, and I hope it goes higher. Parquet Courts have an incredibly unique but accessible sound, and their albums are so catchy and fun to listen to. I put on Human Performance while writing this and I lost my train of thought so many times because god DAMN Sean Yeaton does nasty things with a bass guitar. I have no doubt this band will get bigger and better, and I’m super excited for their future. I never get bored of this band and you won’t either, check out either of their latest two records please Ty UwU. 

I feel its only fitting that I write about Death Grips for my first blog post so here we go.

Death Grips find themselves with a unique sound both in mainstream hip-hop / rap as well as their contemporaries in experimental hip-hop. Zach Hill’s technical and overwhelming drumming, MC Ride’s wailing and cryptic lyricism, and production that is soaked in distressing sounds all layer together to form a sound unlike other experimental groups which usually have one foot in traditional hip-hop. MC Ride himself describes their sound best on the track Guillotine:

Out of the shadows barrage of witch tongue
Cobra spit over apocalyptic cult killer cauldron smoke
Stomp music seriously

Death Grips tracks are packed front to back with metaphor soaked verses like this, and while the metaphors above are quite simple to digest and analyse when reading them off Genius, Death Grips obscures their lyrics behind their abrasive sound. The manner in which these metaphors reach your ears is almost as important as the content itself. Typical Death Grips tracks often discuss themes of addiction, depression, drug use, and violence; these themes become apparent not due to the lyrics alone. A common line I hear in reaction to first listens to Death Grips is usually along the lines of “This makes me want to bash my head into the wall”, a likely intentional effect. Death Grips taps into the destructive and sometimes empowering urge to do bad things.

The trap that people fall into when listening to Death Grips is misunderstanding their crypticness and abrasiveness for depth. Despite the initial shock of their tracks, the structure backing up their music falls into a very familiar verse chorus pattern found in most genres of music. This familiar structure allows their songs to become very easy to listen to over time, and also act as a point of familiarity for people coming into their music fresh. This combined with their ever evolving sound rewards long time listeners of their music by allowing a re-living of that first time your friend put on the music video for Guillotine.

Due to this, Death Grips ends up being Fisher-Price avant garde. Instead of seeking to cause legitimate discomfort in those who listen by a removal of points of familiarity, it leans very heavily on a familiar verse chorus pattern to achieve the musical equivalent of a jump scare filled horror movie: Loud noises and sudden changes. This doesn’t mean Death Grips (or horror movies) aren’t able to provide a meaningful commentary on the themes they choose to discuss or create a fun and unique experience. It’s important to appreciate any art for what it is, and assigning Death Grips praise because they are cutting edge and innovative is misguided. Death Grips are worthy of praise for creating an accessible environment for listeners of more dialed in music to explore concepts outside of what they might usually explore. Death Grips accesses emotions that few other artists do, and they do an amazing job of it, but they aren’t from bleeding edge innovators .

Despite a lack of significant musical development and innovation, Death Grips has certainly left their mark on the musical world. Experimental hip-hop is flourishing due to their influence and they will likely be remembered for their impact for years. As much as I can complain about how Death Grips aren’t really that original and sound like a pompous asshole, they make good music that I regularly listen to and talk about, and you should too. Check out their 2012 album The Money Store if you haven’t already you’ll have a good time.

-Harris