galt54

OK: Sorry for my long absence. I did come back to Sweden on February 14. But due to the fact that I am away from home 14 hours per day from Monday to Thursday due to work, combined with the fact that I have many things competing for my spare time, I have had too little spare time available to be able to make any new posts here. I will rectify that now. I will give you all my take on the songs posted on pages 12 and 13 of this thread.

1) Grizzly Bear - Dory: This song does not impress me because the melody is not the type which excites me and "sticks" in my mind.

2) Tame Impala - Feels Like We Only Go Backwards: Pretty good! Definitely has a clear and distinct melody. I will probably purchase this song from iTunes, if it is available there.

3) Animal Collective - Rosie Oh: Not good. I perceive this song as "noise".

4) Tame Impala - Island Walking: This is OK. But the melody is not to my taste all that much.

5) Tame Impala - Mind Mischief: Too slow and somewhat dissonant. Not my cup of tea.

6) Animal Collective - Guys Eyes: I don´t like the element of dissonance in this song.

7) Jack Johnson - Better Together/Good People: Not my cup of tea. I am not fond of acoustic music unless it is exceptional.

8) Fleet Foxes - Tiger Mountain Peasant Song: Good melody, but the song is not lively enough to tickle my fancy.

9) Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks: Pretty good melody, nice and lively. However - it is not in the same league as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and the other stars of the 1960s.

10) Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know: Rather boring.

11) Shiny Toy Guns - Le Disko: Not my cup of tea - the song does not "flow smoothly".

12) Bastille - Laura Palmer: Generic, non-interesting melody.

13) Fleet Foxes - The Plains/Bitter Dancer: I cannot really explain why, but this melody is not my cup of tea. I don´t like it.

Conclusion: Out of 14 songs (there were two by Jack Johnson) I only like one of them enough to go out and purchase it. And I would not say that said song, by Tame Impala, is in the same league as the songs of the great pop bands of the 1960s.

The most recent two pop music groups/artists which I really like a lot are Madonna and The Pet Shop Boys (Yes, I like many of Madonna´s early songs for their melodies!). These two groups/artists broke through during the 1980s. No one more recent really excites me. I do like a few songs each by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Scissor Sisters, No Doubt, Right Said Fred and Oasis.

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Good to see you back. At least you liked one.

Animal Collective does add a lot of ambient/background noise to their music. Sometimes they do overdo it a bit, but even in those cases I tend to ignore it. For Guy's Eyes, it didn't really have any "dissonance," but the part that might turn some people off is the countermelody which does not fit against the main melody in the same way most countermelodies do. It makes the song sound "busy." Personally I think that makes it more interesting and adds a level of sophistication most pop tunes don't have.

If you liked that one Tame Impala tune I suspect you'll like others. Might want to give some of their songs a few more listens. I'm surprised you didn't like Mind Mischief, since it's practically a Beatles ripoff, even moreso than any other Tame Impala song.

Anyway, from the looks of it I'd say you've got very specific tastes, which probably explains why you don't like a lot of recent stuff. I'd say your objection to recent music has nothing to do with the educational issues you mentioned before; rather, it has more to do the fact you only like a very small subset of things. If you don't even like acoustic, melodic stuff like Jack Johnson, I don't know what to say.

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Need I say more?



I mean, ^that^ could be straight off Revolver.

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Here's a little "trick" one can do to find out whether a song has a nice melody. Especially for a band like Animal Collective who adds a lot of background and electronic effects to their songs, a good idea is to try to find an unadorned version and see if the melody stands on its own. This is a great example here:

"In the Flowers" by Animal Collective. It actually has a quite beautiful melody - reminds me a lot of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, frankly. Here we have a completely unadorned version - just a vocalist singing against a piano.



Now add the modern arrangement and you get this. A lot more going on obviously, but beneath it, still the same beautiful melody. The trick is to find the beauty beneath the ornamentation. One must learn how to listen through the effects and focus on the core of the song. This is why I think songs like this are actually quite sophisticated: You cannot grasp the merits of the song on the first (or even second) listen, the songwriter is forcing you to listen to it carefully and mentally peel away some layers to find the song's inner beauty.



Then, once you've discovered the song's "inner beauty," the additional ornamentation makes more sense - it is adding atmosphere and complexity to a melody which is really fairly simple.

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Surell

I think that's a great point. I think it's sort of similar to bands like Dinosaur jr. or Pavement who mask their solidly written or simply beautiful songs with feedback. The melodies might be really great or poignant, but they present in a kind of bashful way. It might not be quite the same, but a lot of noisy bands suffer a little for their choices in feedback or layered production

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galt54

I do have very specific tastes. I like simple melodies more than complex ones. I find it easier to listen to "simple" music. This might have something to do with the fact that I am a recovered psychotic. I was afflicted with schizophrenia when I was in my late teens. Ever since then I have had great difficulty with the concentration thing. My attention tends to wander. And I am not good at multitasking. If a piece of music is complex then I would have to do something akin to multitasking in regard to the listening. I would have to "pick up" several different elements in the music at the same time. I find classical music to be boring - probably because it is complex.

Here are the eight musical artists/bands which I most like to listen to: Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, the Beatles, Blue Oyster Cult, the Queers, the Punkles, Blondie, the Rolling Stones.

What do those eight disparate groups/artists have in common? Songs with simple melodies is the common denominator which I see in them.

Another concrete example of my preference for simplicity in music is that I like to listen to many of the 1970s era songs by - get this _ Kiss! Kiss is just about the most simplistic rock group that ever walked the Earth! But those four rock and roll clowns did write some catchy melodies!

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

I see. Well then, Animal Collective definitely isn't going to be for you. I presume you're not really into jazz, either.

Along those lines, here's a Grizzly Bear song you might like. This sound very much like an 80's pop tune. It came out in 2009, on the same album as the "Dory" song I linked before.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

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Neapolitan

I couldn't handle the second Animal Collective. I like music which would be consider unusual to other people, but something about it didn't grab me at first. I like to identify with something in a song. Is Animal Collective on the charts or popular? Honestly I don't think I could name any recent Pop songs.

Here's a little "trick" one can do to find out whether Pop is improving or not. A good idea is to try to find songs from different bands with identical title and see which one you like. Take "All Summer Long" for example, I think the Beach Boys and Hatcham Social is clearly better that the Kid Rock song so it seems like Pop was good then turns bad then turns good again I guess, I don't really know if Hatcham Social is a Pop band or not. But if it isn't a Pop band that only proves another theory that the less mainstream a song is the better.

July 13, 1964


April 5, 2008


October 22nd 2012

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Somehow I don't think finding songs with the same name is a good way to compare them. Much too random.

Finding somewhat similar - and yet representative of their period - songs would be a better way.

Like this ...

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Or this ...

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