Pitchfork Watch
Pitchfork on Monday reviewed Stars' "new" Do You Trust Your Friends?". It's a song-by-song remix of their absolutely wonderful Set Yourself On Fire, and despite the great source material, my first listen left me utterly bored and I give it about a 25% chance that I'll ever listen again.
Remixing well is tough; you have to make enough changes that the song sounds "fresh" and that you've actually added something meaningful to it, but you also have to retain enough of the song that you don't lose what made it great in the first place. For most of these songs, the remixes manage to paradoxically stay too close to the material while managing to remove the spark that made me like the songs. In the end, boring.
Covers give a band a little more freedom, but it helps if you actually like the band doing the cover, and you still want to have some parallels between the coverer and the coveree. Although most of these groups are in some way tied to the Canadian scene whose big names I'm a fan of, they're for the most part not that interesting to me.
Pitchfork also spends some time addressing the phenomenon of all these remix albums. They can be shameful cash-ins, they can be a way to keep the band's name in the conscience of a press and fans who move so quickly on to the next thing with music being so readily accessible. The only one that I remember Pitchfork liking was Bloc Party's Silent Alarm Remixed, and that may have even been setting a bad precedent.
Bottom line, bands need to find a way to keep themselves on the minds of their fans and the press, without burning themselves out by touring too much and constantly having to put out new music.
The tupperware of microwaved leftovers of that is these albums, however, is not it, and bands would be smart not to put them out lest they cheapen their best efforts.
Remixing well is tough; you have to make enough changes that the song sounds "fresh" and that you've actually added something meaningful to it, but you also have to retain enough of the song that you don't lose what made it great in the first place. For most of these songs, the remixes manage to paradoxically stay too close to the material while managing to remove the spark that made me like the songs. In the end, boring.
Covers give a band a little more freedom, but it helps if you actually like the band doing the cover, and you still want to have some parallels between the coverer and the coveree. Although most of these groups are in some way tied to the Canadian scene whose big names I'm a fan of, they're for the most part not that interesting to me.
Pitchfork also spends some time addressing the phenomenon of all these remix albums. They can be shameful cash-ins, they can be a way to keep the band's name in the conscience of a press and fans who move so quickly on to the next thing with music being so readily accessible. The only one that I remember Pitchfork liking was Bloc Party's Silent Alarm Remixed, and that may have even been setting a bad precedent.
Bottom line, bands need to find a way to keep themselves on the minds of their fans and the press, without burning themselves out by touring too much and constantly having to put out new music.
The tupperware of microwaved leftovers of that is these albums, however, is not it, and bands would be smart not to put them out lest they cheapen their best efforts.
Labels: music
posted by L. Maxwell Ward at 11:36 PM
