Comments on: Gobble Gobble – Neon Graveyard

By: Rampant Chutney Consumerism

Rampant Chutney Consumerism — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:55:57 +0000

i love la roux

By: Tart

Tart — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:27:30 +0000

Dylan, I think you already have tinnitus. And you can’t spell. And you want to take a shovel to my head. So fuck off.

kisses,
Tart

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:36:44 +0000

DC – I am getting that way with dusty Americana suffused with slightly Gothic folk imagery, and also with bands who are a bit too cabaret/circusy/Eastern European with all their instruments and such. It can be very difficult to find the patience to sit down and listen without the knee jerk ‘oh, another one of those‘ reflex kicking in.

I really strongly disagree that Gobble Gobble have fuck all else beyond the beeps. In actual fact if I were to level a criticism at this album it would actually be that because there is so much else there that they could perhaps afford to use the beeps and the crackle with a somewhat lighter touch.

But if you look beyond that, the underlying bones of this album are very varied, that really can hardly be disputed, and I would personally say quite unusual, which might be more contentious.

La Roux is just shit, of course, no argument there.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:03:20 +0000

Tart, what you could do if you want to listen to stuff like this is simply copy some music you like onto a cassette tape, get an old Walkman, bury the Walkman and the cassette in the garden, dig them up some time later, put batteries in the Walkman, run the tape for a few hours until the batteries are almost flat, give the Walkman headphones to an enthusiastic puppy to chew on, ask a friend to clatter you about the head with a shovel until you develop tinittus, take the headphones away from the puppy, plug them into the Walkman, place them on your head, place your head in the washing machine, and just click ‘play’.

Brilliant!

By: Drunk Country

Drunk Country — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:22:09 +0000

gameboy/glitch whatever is probably the wrong phrase/genre to use, but it’s all much of a muchness to me these days. I’m just sick of getting all these albums through the mail & none of them doing anything even vaguely different with their casio/bontempti/computer blips & boops &, well, fuck all else. I mean, Christ, La Roux is the future of ‘pop’ music now? Yikesafuckinlive.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:13:56 +0000

There’s definitely a lot of ‘with fuzz added’ electronica doing the rounds, Tart, on that level I agree with DC entirely.

I would disagree with the gameboy glitch-pop thing though, because I think the genres played with on this record are a lot more varied than that, which is why I like it. It works very well as an album, if you ask me.

By: Tart

Tart — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:43:54 +0000

I like it

And honestly, have you heard loads of stuff like this already? Because it’s certainly not made its way into my inbox or radio… at all.

call me sheltered,
Tart

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:10:56 +0000

I know what prose is, Dylan, thank you, but I rather think that sort of description over-legitimises the kind of verbal cough which represents the average blog comment.

Ben (and the rest of you) – I wouldn’t entirely dispute your point that the hiss and so on are applied with little subtlety. But I would say that something of the sort is needed just to drag some of the songs away from the sound they might have without the noise.

Tracks like Eggs in Carrion would be fine, but some of the songs which are more pop would become, in my view, too pop without the hiss and crackle. In fact, taking an RnB pop song and adding all sorts of mess is pretty much the aesthetic point of those songs, surely, so losing it entirely would simply give you a different beast altogether.

Having said that, I do agree (for all the ludicrous language) with Dylan’s first point, that such effects have to be administered with a lot of care and a lot of restraint. In a fair few cases on this album I would certainly concede that they seem to be used a little automatically, but I still think I prefer the sound of it ‘with’ to what I think the sound of it would be ‘without’.

So, while I agree that a bit more sophistication in use of those tools might well be called for, I still think that they are the right tools to use, and that largely the right kind of thing is being done with them.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:54:17 +0000

Yes, Ben. Precisely. That's what I said. Only with filets mignon. And, Matthew, what the hell is it, if it isn't prose?!

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:25:06 +0000

Is it just me or would the second track be infinitely better without all the effects bollocksing around. I wish bands like this would have a little faith that their music is actually listenable to and stop needlessly obscuring it behind toys.