Will history absolve Elephant 6 of their sins?

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/0/0b/200px-Elfpowerredking.jpg

that's the one i have, it's cool.

i dunno, there's a lot worse shit than elephant 6 in this world of ours.

Srsly.

^ haha does anyone else have the crepey poster that this cover is based on?

i wonder if animal collective will turn out to be the next elephant 6 type thing ... the shitty spin-offs haven't started spinning off yet, but we'll see...

It was a conscious decision.

Lots of NMH songs have trumpets.

They also have transcendent awesomeness.

I once saw AIS live and wow, those sidepeople must be very, very tolerant and patient people to sit in a van with the lead guy. I read somewhere that the band got together cuz he was "the crazy guy" on a bus and when he asked the future guitarist who his favorite band was he made the mistake of saying The Beach Boys (in hopes of shooing him off!).

FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY

But then I love Velocity Of Sound and apparently AIS fans hate that album, so what do I know.

then again, i never understood the fuss wr2 apples in stereo in the first place -- i never thought that they were all that.

I like the concept of Elephant Six a lot but it is probably true that the majority of what they have put out aren't great records, they just get a lot of lip service offa MNH and OTC. I like a lot of their records though in a casual sort of way. I wouldn't go to the mat for Elf Power but I basically like them. I like E6... they have put together a shambly kind of aesthetic that I personally am fond of, I see no "sins" per se, other than having been embraced on a wholesale basis by a bunch of gross know-nothing hipsters.

No, Beulah weren't one of the original E6ers. Background info on all the bands in the collective here.

As far as Elephant 6's 'extended family' (check website) goes, the Instruments are making some amazing folk music and Of Montreal....where do I even begin with these guys. Kevin Barnes is the closest thing we have to a Brian Wilson today...ridiculous you say ? Listen to 'Satanic Panic In The Attic' or 'Hissing Fauna....' and try argue otherwise.

dude you could paint a fence with all the spoooge over those two albums on this board....

plz to listen to Panda Bear 12".

He's not. You lose.

Aren't the powers of suggestion wonderous ?.....

http://www.snowbirds.org/csanews/issues/53/images/p34-3.jpg

hahaha, yeah -- i used to actually say back then that E6 was a sort-of indie rock wu-tang. glad to know that i was not alone in thinking along those lines.

(obviously I meant NMH before, not MNH, BTW)

How sad but true!

destroy everything else

that one made it top ten in best ilm albums all time, it may have been top five even.
i've gone back to otc records and still like them, i still love nmh, but the apples didn't age well, dressy bessy had one good record, von hemmling ha!, beulah were always horrible, same with summer hymns, music tapes, gerbils, secret square was just dull, of montreal is one of my favorite bands still.

its earnestness would surely be a negative now. robert schneider is a fine producer, he was able to make some nice pop records out of jams. apparently he's quite the math fiend. lilys made their best records when they were auxillary members.

TEH EARNESTNESS OF E6 WOULD HAVE CRUMBLED IN A CRUEL WORLD OF WEBLOG BACKLASHES!

How sad but true!

yeah, really, otm

blah

the highs are high (CIRCULATORY SYSTEM!!!), and the lows are generic/obscure enough that no one can really be bothered to get all that worked up

I agree with that. I can't understand anyone hating E6. Maybe not digging it, but actively despising it? Eh.

Yeh! - OTC, Circulatory System, Of Montreal's recent stuff, NMH, oh, and Jeff Mangum's largely forgotten Bulgarian music compilation. which is pretty incredible.

Eh. - Apples in Stereo, Beulah, Elf Power.

Word. Also his sound collage track as Korena Pang on the AUX comp last year. That shit's crazy wonderful, I think.

Other big ups to:
- Frosted Ambassador (Eric from OTC, I think)
- Lorkakar/New Sound of Numbers (Hannah Jones from the Circulatories)
- first Hawk & a Hacksaw album (the others are a little too Beiruity for me.

The performance of Gardenhead that begins about a minute into this one (after he stops playing Two Headed Boy) never fails to knock my socks off.

Otherwise:

Of Montreal = good to pretty damn good
Sunshine Fix = gags
Minders (only heard the last album) = not bad!
Olivia Tremor Control = rarities album blah, black foliage not aging well though I was bout it at the time
Marbles = blah
High Water Marks = still holds up okay

what am I forgetting....

I think all the hype scared me off at the time, then I just never got around to seeing what the fuss was about. Hype usta freak me out something terrible, I tell you.

Elf Power: The Phantom Limbs record is cool, mostly 'cuz it sounds suitably shitty and the Dwarves tune makes me laff. Plus the cover art rules.

OTC: I remember half liking Dusk At Cubist Castle, but not enough to make me listen to it often.

Apples: Fucking terrible.

I never heard a lick of Apples; a friend warned me off them. And he knows that I'm a sucker for some twee indie, which apparently they sort of are, which is weird.

And somewhere on that page Ray linked, there's--I believe it's Mangum and some others, I couldn't name who--a fantastic cover of "Glue." I love that version of the song. It builds up pretty nicely.

And I always tried to like OTC and CS, but was too impatient to give any a proper listen and tended to end up skipping through the bleep bloopages. I do remember "I Have Been Floated" being something pretty.

I mean I'm sure his cool transcends message boards and he'd buy a bum a sandwich but, at best, it almost looks like something parody of cheerful.
Heal the world or something like.

my bizzad.

and maybe i am a cactus, but even genuine, they're still a little too hug for me. I can't imagine enjoying myself at an Apples show. I *can* imagine annoying X'd kids clapping their hands and chorusline kicking. a scene i hope to never ever witness again.

On Avery Island is a fantastic album.

For me, anything after Tone Soul Evolution is not so great as far as the Apples are concerned. Science Faire is a super compilation.

this sentence is impenetrable

I think I saw a t-shirt of this on engrish.com ;-)

btw, I saw the Apples 4 times late last year and they copiously fucking rocked. Seriously.

It was no cutesy twee thing AT ALL (not that I don't have a ridiculously soft place in my heart for that sort of thing).

I believe I am listening to Jeff Mangum DJing on WFMU now, yeah?

http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/43047

I really missed the boat by not buying a bunch of tickets for his upcoming show and scalping them at the last minute.