Lap-pop II!

Glyph in reply to trizzlor says:

The Knife are pretty awesome. I haven’t picked up the newest one yet though, I keep waiting to find a cheap copy. Ben Gibbard did get annoying, but I did like the first two DCFC albums (and there are later songs that are still pretty good too). I have to be honest – though I appreciate his talent, Four Tet sorta leaves me cold (as did his prior band – Fridge – pun partially intended).

Regarding my definition of “pop”, I go with this: it encompasses both anything that actually achieved widespread success, or seems like it could or should have. This gives you the elasticity (and the word “pop” definitely sounds elastic) to cover ACTUAL popular music; plus totally left-field stuff, no matter how outre or experimental, that somehow burst through and became a mainstream hit; plus all the stuff that SHOULD have been hits, but fell through the cracks for one reason or another; while excluding say Metal Machine Music or whatever else you just know was never gonna strike a chord with everybody.

So to me that definition covers (limiting myself to this post) the Dntel track, since despite the production (which is no longer all that weird anymore anyway) it has a very pretty melody, understandable lyrics and a beat you could sort of dance to. Ditto for the FBH track at the end, no matter how relatively-obscure they may be.

But it doesn’t cover the múm tracks, exactly, since although they are melodic and pretty, they are a little more fractured, strange and diaphanous than pop music usually gets. But what to call them? It doesn’t strike me as all that “experimental” or avant-garde or difficult to listen to…I feel like almost anyone could listen to it and think “that’s pretty!”, since it sounds like music boxes and dreams (and probably, if pressed, I’d go with “electronic dream-pop” or something).

Which leads me to something else – in these posts, I often try to avoid delving into genre descriptors like that, except at high levels – for example, in the Burial post I was careful to call him an “electronic” musician rather than a “dubstep” one; and in my 90’s electronic flashback post I mostly avoided terms like “trip-hop”, “house”, “big beat”, “IDM” “techno”, etc. (though I did feel for whatever reason that a bit of explication of jungle/drum and bass was necessary).

The reason for that ISN’T that these genre designations aren’t fun to argue about (they are), but I am trying to make these posts as broadly appealing as possible, and I thought using micro-genre terms was likely to make some people who might otherwise give a tune a spin say, “I don’t know what THAT term means”, and click away.

IOW, I am trying to be as inclusive as possible, rather than exclusionary, in the OPs. Like the clerk at the record store who’s happy to argue esoterica with his fellow employees, but tones it down a little for the customers so it doesn’t come across as snobby and arcane. Nobody wants to have to do homework before they can listen to some good music.

Which is not to say you shouldn’t feel free to go off the deep end in comments, nor that I won’t follow you. Just trying to explain my thought processes.Report