Today’s recommendation is inadvertently poignant. The band have no idea that it’s poignant, but it is. Just yesterday a debate raged online, particularly on Twitter, among music bloggers following an interesting article in which the founder of Drowned In Sound, Sean Adams, was interviewed on a piece entitled, “The Slow Death Of Music Blogging“. Don’t panic people, The Recommender isn’t going to die any time soon, what Sean was discussing was the end of the blogging spectrum that indulge in what we dismissively call ‘Churnalism‘. It’s when an exciting band arrives exclusively on one blog, but is then re-blogged by dozens and dozens of others immediately. The main issue is that they post the mp3 (or the video etc) but write zero commentary, or opinion about it. These blogs have proliferated widely in recent years, chasing visitors in an imaginary race, often posting music before they’ve even had a chance to hear it, so they’re seen to be ‘relevant’, fearing the situation where they look like they’re late to it. It’s facile and it’s a rather dangerous indictment on the music lover. It incorrectly suggests that people no longer spend time with music, getting to know and love it. It also removes any heart from blogging. It’s the music blogging equivalent of entering X-Factor to become a famous singer. It’s the short cut to hits.
At best these sites are ‘news blogs’ for music and that’s fine if that’s their modus operandi. Thankfully most of these blogs don’t usually last long, often due to a lack of originality. Also, can you imagine how dull it is to continually post exactly what everyone else is posting, then hurrying to check your stats to see how many visitors have come to your blog. It’s madness really, when you consider that everyone visiting your site simply arrives, takes what they came for and leaves immediately afterwards. We can imagine, (fellow blogger of the decent kind), Robin correctly describing this as ‘one-night-stand’ blogging. These sites are more of a busy news stand, whereas The Recommender, and others like it, prefer to consider themselves to be a rather enjoyable, independent cafe, where you can grab quality products and take your time to digest them in friendly surroundings. We like to blog with thought and consideration. How else will you be noticed if you have no opinionated voice? How do you get that voice if you don’t spend time with the music? And so today we are going to be speaking about a band that have caused a precise example of this churnalism. You might well ask why are we also posting about them? A fair question. Let us explain…
Today sees the release of the first song and accompanying video by an exciting Manchester girl band, a quartet called Pins. They’re hot in every sense of the word. They look incredibly awesome, but their music is so spot on that it’s as if they’ve written it using a Nasa-designed laser-guided pen. When the buzz around a band is this loud the debut material is always going to be given as an exclusive to the right blog first. That duly happened, in a campaign that we have to state is being brilliantly operated by their manager – and fellow music blogger – Matt Britton, of Pigeon Post and Lost Lost Lost fame. What then exploded around the blogs is nothing short of turbo-churnalism, as every mp3 blog you can imagine immediately put the new song and it’s accompanying video up on their sites within minutes. It was like lifting up that first blog only to find a thousand frenzied maggots scurrying underneath. OK, so that’s a little harsh – we love our blogging network after all – but you get the idea, this went properly blog-viral and everyone wanted a piece. Including us.
We therefore feel like we should explain why we’re entering this silly scrum. Well, firstly we’re not into churnalism – we put our opinions on this piece of editorial having actually taken the time to watch the band live and to meet up with them after the show for a chat, then we’ve been in touch with Matt Britton and asked the right questions so we have the facts straight. Secondly, we truly believe this band are exceptionally good – we told them so to their faces and we stand by that – so this blog post, just like every other on The Recommender, is posted because we genuinely adore the artists we cover. You will fully understand once you’ve clicked the below play buttons too, as this is a band finally worthy of the hype. They’ve been put together by the impossibly-adorable singer, Faith Holgate, who searched out the three other girls, forming a band that not only have a wonderful chemistry on stage, but that we also couldn’t imagine would quite work the same way if it was punctuated by a boy. They dress like they’re the coolest 1970s New York punk band you ever saw, although we noticed the drummer had on a dress that finished above the knee giving most of the crowd an unexpected view, but we figured she didn’t give a flying fuck about it. Their sound hits somewhere between the style of My Bloody Valentine – something that’s finally made The Horrors accessible – whilst infusing it with the fuzzed guitars that wash all over The Velvet Underground, but importantly they never forget to include sensational pop melodies in a manner reminiscent of Beach House. Finally they’ve poured sackfuls of grit on top of it all.
Girls will want to be them, boys will fancy them. In fact girls will fancy them too and boys will also probably want to be them, so deadly is their concoction. Imagine EMA, without the cliches, such as drinking straight out of the Jack Daniels bottle on stage, or 2:54 but without the forgetful tunes, or Warpaint without the over-indulgent psychedelia. It’s no wonder every tastemaker in the country will hit on them and every mp3 blog will attempt to ride their glorious trail of hype. Did we mention their debut release, Elevneth Hour, is being released on a hand-made, gold-painted cassette tape too? It’s equal parts gimmicky and utterly useless, but we still want one, just to hang on our wall, and then to perhaps sell on Ebay for millions when the band are massive in years to come. By keeping a keen eye on the need to write pop into what is otherwise a straight up garage guitar band they’ve bottled something that will broadly appeal and have the record labels salivating. With their chemistry – we adored how the bassist, Anna Donigan, kept looking up from the fret board to smile across the stage at the other guitarist, Lois McDonald – in a manner that reflects their youthful excitement, but also reminding us that this is a band at an early stage who seem to be truly enjoying the attention. It’s so utterly refreshing and watching their rise will be very interesting. So ignore the saturation that churnalism brings and consider why this band are getting the mp3 bloggers excited in the first place – you can’t create a bandwagon for the blogs to jump upon without writing exceptional music. Today Pins bandwagon just started rolling. (MB)
Nice post Mike – there’s something on Breaking More Waves tomorrow morning (Friday) that covers some of the same issues with regards to Sean’s ideas on ‘churnover’ and the obsession with the new. It talks about one night stand music a bit more and er…. necrophilia music as well.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on twitter. Like myself you occasionaly post links to twitter / you tube – tracks that maybe you think people will be interested in but that you aren’t featuring on the blog. Do you think this adds to the deluge of ‘churnover’ as we’re effectively posting something with very little commentary.
It’s something I’ve been pondering on for a bit and would welcome your comments / view ?
Robin at Breaking More Waves
Hi
Yeah, cool. That’s a good point. I consider Twitter the perfect forum for more immediate updates. At 140 characters it can’t try and pretend to be anything more than that I guess. It makes me wonder why those blogs that just post updates and news don’t just do it via the medium of Twitter. It is in fact the perfect place for short posts of youtubes/small updates/news/soundclouds etc. Little updates. At it’s best Twitter is an amazing ‘sharing site’. It’s not about chasing hits or registering on Hype Machine, or any of that facile stuff. Also, I don’t think sharing it on Twitter equates to churnalism. It’s not trying to be journalism from which the phrase derives.
Thanks
Mike
While newbies to the online music writing world, I’d like to say that I agree with the idea that the music should be lived with before you just mindlessly post whatever is fresh and new. I’m also a career musician, so I can see how damaging it could be to a new artist to be ‘big’ before they’re ‘ready’. I’ve actually seen that happen to friends…
Twitter seems to be more an extension of our websites these days, a necessary and valuable asset to those of us who want to share in multiple formats. No, we can’t express our editorials in 140 characters, but we can drive people to the music (or to an article such as this one) very quickly and without tainting it with the “coloring” of what our opinion might be.
After all, we’re here to share what we are hearing with people who trust us to do our best, right?
Thanks for posting this… I’m sharing it all over the place.
Keith @ Resounders
Cheers Mike – yep your thoughts make a lot of sense and are pretty much what I was thinking.
They sound good alright take nothing away from but this bands sound has been done 10 times over here in the states. Vivian Girls, Frankie Rose and the outs, Wax Idols, Grass Widow to name a few.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The Guardian went further calling them “the most Brooklyn band ever to come from Manchester” just yesterday – http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/apr/12/new-band-day-pins
Personally, I still think a band can be awesome, even if they ain’t particularly original.
Many thanks
Mike
While I can see where the Brooklyn comparisons comes from, I think there’s a big slice of vintage Manchester in there too; certainly echoes of The Chameleons or Martin Hannett’s work.
On the wider point about blogs I agree completely. I gave my blog the slogan ‘The only place to hear the hottest bands in the world four months too late!’, which admittedly was primarily a reference to my own ineptitude, but also a nod to the fact that I’d much rather take time over a band than post 15 one line updates a day that offer the reader nothing of any worth at all. Thankfully that’s definitely not something your site is guilty of, so keep up the great work
Thanks for your thoughtful comment Andy.
Always appreciate insightful comments such as this.
Mike
“Girls will want to be them, boys will fancy them. In fact girls will fancy them too and boys will also probably want to be them, so deadly is their concoction”
Lesbianism and men looking at women reverentially is deadly? Great choice of language. Fuck your blog, fuck all blogs. Fuck this band too, they are boring. This is why I’m quitting. Fuck The Internet. Fuck everything.
lolz
If you’re going to grip us up on our language, please read it again. Their concoction is deadly, not lesbiansim.
We imagine you’re going to also hate the latest London buzz band, Savages too then. Gulp.
x
I’ve read it again and it’s still lazy. The implication of the sentence is that this exciting hip young buzz band have such a deadly concoction that it will drive women to (DEAR LORD) be attracted to them and men to (OH GOSH) hope to emulate them. It’s dull and reductive writing but it is about dull and reductive music so I guess I should be less dismayed than I am.
I just scanned your writing on ‘Bluebell’. You list female artists in a catch-all list that includes Nicki Minaj and Florence & The Machine; they couldn’t be more different, in approach, sound, vision. That’s like writing a list of human artists; Run DMC, Klaus Nomi, Chas & Dave, Husker Du .. all humans, thus reducible to one another in lazy writing, right? You refer to Bluebell as “the latest pretender to a throne that’s currently got an over-abundance of perfectly-formed, tight little bottoms perched upon it.” and then go on to refer to “the hacks”. You are one! That sentence belongs in The Sun. Is the Recommender really an ‘alternative’ to mainstream media? No, it’s as boring and thoughtless as a tabloid music supplement.
DESTROY ALL MUSIC BLOGS, DESTROY ALL MUSIC.
OK, I love an opinion and cannot tell whether you’re serious or not, but it’s cool with me either way. I guess I should respond out of respect and to defend my writing, as I do consider things carefully before I set out on a post…
I wasn’t saying those female artists were musically the same. I was only stating that they were female artists. They were all women.
I stated that “in defence of the music hacks”, but never disassociated from them. Are music bloggers journalists? Maybe, but I never said either way. I certainly wasn’t calling them hacks to differentiate myself.
I’m still not sure what you’re problem is with my description of Pins being attractive, either sexually or otherwise. Why is it dull? It’s just a play on the better-known line “girls want to be them, boys want to be with them”.
Look, if you don’t like the band, don’t like them. Please don’t have a pop at me and my little blog. It’s not like I only write about Pins, there’s loads of variety on this site. Maybe you will like something else? Just click the music players if you don’t like my writing.
The light-hearted sentence about “tight little bottoms” was intended as a bit of humour. It was a play on how the over-saturated female-fronted world of pop music is often sexualised and how artists are often seen dancing around in their hotpants or what ever.
Loving this raging debate, but perhaps take a deep breath before you respond? Please.
Thanks
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