This sort of stuff burns my insides. From what I've heard of them, this is all that I hate about indie music.
As a small preamble, I read an article once that asked what this generation/fad would give to coming generations. The line that stuck with me is "with so much Retro going on its a wonder what they could possibly give. You can't pass on 'remembering.'"
Thats my issue with this stuff. She sings like a record played in 1942. With all due respect to the FDR administration, I'm glad it isn't 1942. At least Taco had the balls to be upfront about what he was doing.
This is where I see a massive divide in the movement and I bitched about it in the Hipsters thread. A lot of great indie reaches back and takes lessons from older music and merges it with, depending on the artist, the 1980's underground. But what we're seeing here is a replication. This is museum music. I don't think this is any different than the swing movement, except Williamsburg didn't jack any styles from a half century ago.
I can't find the words to put it into succinct phrases, but half of indie, the sort of decommercialized portion for lack of a better term, appears to go back to Lightning Hopkins, Woody Guthrie, and Joy Division and reads their notes and their play book, the other half, this pomplamoose half as it were, seems to take the music without layers. Its all the up-front-image of the thing. Theres no mechanics to it.
If I can try for a late-game hail-mary description, some bands learn how to build a car, and some bands can tell you what the exterior looks like.
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