Vetiver - "Busted"
Yo La Tengo - "Daphnia"
Nirvana - "Lithium"
Here's my thought for the day. (And to be clear, you're lucky I have even a single thought. Sorry to slide into daddy blog mode again, but day 2 of the single parent experiment was a great big FAIL. Poor little A vomited all the contents of his baby stomach - - more than you'd probably imagine - - all over himself and his crib around 9:45pm. Occasional vomiting and much sleeplessness followed - - for him both, for me the latter. Now back to the program...) Is "produced" still a dirty word in music? I guess somewhere around the 90s lo-fi craze of Neutral Milk Hotel, Sebadoh, GBV etc., saying something sounded "produced" was almost akin to saying "it sucks monkey balls." Of course that was never really true. And this song just jumped out at me this morning as Exhibit A. Oh man, the production on "Lithium" sounds good: clean electric guitar riffs, pristine vocals, and the quiet spaces in between making room for the crashing chorus. Really this whole record was a thing of beauty in the production department. Of course all credit is due Butch Vig (who also twiddled the knobs on The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish.) According to Wikipedia, Vig "incorporated overdubs and vocal doubletracking, whereas Nirvana's previous album, Bleach (produced by Jack Endino) had a more 'lo-fi' sound. Kurt Cobain originally refused to double-track his vocals and guitars but Vig reportedly got him to comply by saying 'John Lennon double-tracked'." It also goes on to mention that Kurt later criticized the album's slickness, although that's a bitter pill to swallow considering the enormous success. Although we all know how ambivalent he was about that... Anyhow, I think the stigma is pretty much gone today, don't you? Bands like Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective and even Flaming Lips seem to pretty much craft their sound in the production end of things. Then again, I'm no expert. Least of all today.
TV On The Radio - "Shout Me Out"
Gnarls Barkley - "The Boogie Monster"
Bob Dylan - "Highway 61 Revisited"
Luna - "That's What You Always Say"
Whiskeytown - "Reasons To Lie"
Coldplay - "We Never Change"
And then I got to work.
Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 9
Total minutes of music (approx.): 38
Song with the most previous plays: "Busted" - 6
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 8
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: Windy!
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3 comments:
Well, bombast seems to back in these days, so "producer" probably isn't a dirty word any longer. But I also remember back in the 1990s, when Steve Albini and others liked to use "Recorded by..." instead.
You know, if the songs are good, it doesn't matter how overproduced they may be. The same goes for if they're bad.
I agree with comoprozac. Some producers become so large and so identified with a particular "sound" that they overshadow the band, such as Trevor Horne did in the 80's with bands such as ABC/Frankie Goes To Friggin' Hollywood, etc). His "orchestra blasts" sounded positively sci-fi at the time but seem horribly dated now. Ditto for Phil Spector as well. I think that the best producers capture the essence of the band in the studio and simply enhance it, such as Roy Thomas Baker did with The Cars and Queen and Rick Rubin did with the Beastie Boys and especially Johnny Cash.
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