you say you want a revelation?

one of the neater, classier album covers I've seen in a while

Again, I've got a handful of new music since my last post, including The New Pornographers' Together, Crystal Castles' (second?!) self-titled album and Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record. I even went out of my way and paid for the first and last of those. Now they've all been highly rated, and reviewed all over the internet, so I'm not going to waste a lot of my time or anyone else's by writing reviews for those. Suffice it to say: I love Together, I'm in love with Forgiveness Rock Record (yes, there's a difference), and I'm lukewarm towards Crystal Castles (II? 2010? what's the procedure here?), so it'll have to grow on me.

What I'm gonna do today is a bit more of an experiment. I'm posting a song, and you have to decide what you think it sounds like. It used to be that you could throw out simple terms for music: rock, pop, hip-hop, country, jazz, maybe electronic. Then the internet age began, and as technology increased, so did the experimenting and collaborating people were doing. Genres were folding in upon themselves, some were expanding like veritable universes, and some were falling out of existence altogether.

For a joking take on what I mean, check out this t-shirt from (often read) hipsterrunoff.com blogger Carles. It would be both futile and hilarious to try to pick out the best genres from there, but hopefully you get an idea of what I'm talking about. So without further ado, I delve into the discussion by offering you a cut from Spanish group (?!) Delorean's recent effort, Subiza.

Delorean - "Stay Close"

Now what does that make you think of? Is that a maraca? Is that an old soul sample crooning "baby"? Those are definitely synths, no? There's vocal effects galore, pedal effects thrown in for good measure, then dance-y English vocals. What the hell? Now, this breezy kind of music, with an intentional push of most of the sounds on the track under a layer of "lo-fi" - albeit a thin one in this case - classes it with my often-hated-on genre of "chillwave". But I actually like this song. I like the album for the most part too. Nine consistent tunes, hearkening a night on a Greek island beach, high on life, and maybe a bit tipsy from the drinks. Some of the songs delve into maybe waking up on that beach the next morning, somehow feeling even better, and watching the sun rise over you. Other ones might take you back to the club from whence you came to the beach. Either way, there's a mood, a theme, and Delorean does a great job as a collective sticking to that.

But let's not get too off track from the track itself. We're talking about chillwave here, or at least I'm pointing the discussion in that direction. Some artists, like Best Coast, hate being branded as chillwave, to even more of an extent than when "lo-fi" branding was all the rage over a year ago. It seemed to cause a rift and confusion between those who did it out of necessity, and those who did it as an aesthetic. Was there a right and a wrong use for the lo-fi sound? That's up for argument as ever, but chillwave is decidedly a direction you have to take by your own volition. 

Much of the blame for branding of course comes from reviewers, who, like myself, are always looking for a way to class something, to attach a genre to it. It makes comparisons easier I suppose, but with all the genres out there, and the list ever-expanding, your search for similar sounds either gets you something too specific, or leaves it so wide open that it's a pointless endeavor to try and class a song or group or artist in the first place. Now Delorean, as you can see above, are - quite strangely - better described by where they sound like, more than who or what. Sometimes, it's simply laziness that leads reviewers into this genre-fying. When you really search for an in-depth comparison, it may be better than just bandying about taglines like "sun-tinged lo-fi" or "attic-dwelling chillwave". What the hell does that even mean? may be the thought coming to most reader's and listener's minds.

We've delved a bit into that issue of genre and classifying then I hope, or at least my stance on it. But that still leaves this whole chillwave thing, and how I can rectify my liking this Subiza album while still maintaining a healthy disdain for the chillwave sound as a whole, and especially as a way of classifying new music. I can do so, by saying that Delorean's sound is nothing more than dance music. That's right. Plain, simple, dance music. Throw in a bit of that lo-fi sound, and you've got their charming aesthetic. Maybe lo-fi just makes it sound like you're not trying that hard, so it's cool, it's effortless...it's chill. Whoa. I think I just brought that shit full-circle.

But truly, Delorean have just crafted an unpolished dance record, free of the glitz and glam that leads most dance records astray (I'm kiiinda looking at you, David Guetta/Armen Van Buren). And I say that in the best way about Delorean. They've got all the dance music elements, from the BPM's to the synths to that Euro sound. That's not a knock on it. That they can make it so appealing to an otherwise "indie" crowd, who've sworn off anything remotely techno for as long as I can recall, is truly an accomplishment. Maybe it's that there's a bit of likeable pop mixed in there on some tracks, but that's for another day's judgement.

In the end though, it was my iTunes that steered me to this all-encompassing revelation. I'm a bit OCD, which I may or may not have mentioned on here before. Now I'm not so much that I'm gonna have to now go through all my old posts to see if I have mentioned it - I just like there to be some order and organization in my life. So in my music library, you won't find a lower-case letter starting a word for song or album titles. Each song is given a genre, and most importantly, an equalizer setting. Usually I'll wait til I've listened to the song to decide if it should be "Acoustic" or "Rock" or even "Jazz" if it's got the right sounds. 

But back to genre for a second. In light of everything I said above, I'm obtusely narrow-minded in giving genres to my music. Heck, I don't even know why I still do it. People just like classing stuff; it's a game we all play, and for me in particular, it goes: "I got some new music. What kinda genre should it be? There, cool, I'm done." It doesn't help me sort my music in any way, and it doesn't even help me pick what to listen to really. 

It's that equalizer that really matters though, because that dictates what's brought out from the multi-layered sounds in a song; it tangibly and truly affects how I listen to my music, which I think makes it the most important classing practice there is - at the very least, on iTunes. So when I listen to Delorean, I think: "Dance". There, simple as that. As for genre labeling; I give out the simple ones like "Electronic", "Alt. Rock", "Pop", "Rock", "Hip-Hop", "Folk" or the catch-all, "Alternative". You know, the way it used to be in the old days.