Based on the shitty beyond shitty new Apples in Stereo album, and that godawful Beirut racket that is Of Montreal’s brother I guess?
Not to mention the dozens of other crappy CDs emblazoned with the E6 logo! I mean, the Essex Green ffs.
For whatever misguided reason, Neutral Milk Hotel will forever cast a positive light on the E6 in the minds of most.
Olivia Tremor Control >>>>>>>> Neutral Milk Hotel
The new Apples In Stereo is genius. Softrock is genius.
Elf Power were cool.
I mean, they were so silly, they could have been on Bulb! Doesn’t this album cover look like something Bulb would have put out?
I like that Elf Power album the Winter Is Coming one. Haven’t listened to them in a LONG time, tho. It says something that the best cut on When The Red King Comes is the Eno cover. (I guess?) And that my other favorite Elf Power Song just rips off “Oh Yoko.” Hrm.
I like that Elf Power album the Winter Is Coming one.
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.
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
xpost: i dunno, there’s a lot worse shit than elephant 6 in this world of ours.
indeed
The Winter Is Coming is pretty great. I honestly think Elf Power were, like, significant! Sounds very nineties now, but forward thinking, too. I hear a track like “The Secret Ocean” and I think, “Did any Britpop band EVER write a song this good?”
Srsly.
^ haha does anyone else have the crepey poster that this cover is based on?
elf power and olivia tremor control control both great.
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...
xxxpost The Circulatory System album isn’t awesome or anything. It’s just OKAY.
i’ve never heard any of it. ever. and i didn’t even try to avoid any of it! it just completely passed me by.
seems like they are all ready for a comeback though given the new love for all things twee and elvish.
Nobody’s mentioned Beulah.
Apples In Stereo were ok. If I was dating an Elf Power fan I’d ask her for a CD-R cuz I bet she’d know the 3 or 4 poppiest songs on each album. Everybody else I heard never did much for me, aside from that one NMH song with the trumpets “Song Against Sex” I think.
Nobody’s mentioned Beulah.
It was a conscious decision.
xpost
Lots of NMH songs have trumpets.
They also have transcendent awesomeness.
Well I think “Song Against Sex” is the one this band I know covers and it’s on that Merge comp. No fond memories of anything else I heard.
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!).
That’s a trombone on “Song Against Sex”.
Did I say trumpets? God, even the friend’s band used a trombone. Righto, sorry.
FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY
Awh the new Apples in Stereo isn’t that shitty, it just shouldn’t have been a double album, to the extent that I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking making it a double album. It would have made a perfectly decent single disc.
But then I love Velocity Of Sound and apparently AIS fans hate that album, so what do I know.
wasnt beulah kinda 2nd gen, offshoot E6, i didn’t think of them as being core to the posse...like they were the peedi crack of Elephant 6 or somehting?
haha this label’s greatest sin is being out of touch with this decade’s trends. they’ll do alright legacy-wise just from being responsible for olivia tremor control, neutral milk hotel, and elf power.
then again, i never understood the fuss wr2 apples in stereo in the first place — i never thought that they were all that.
I love the new Apples record, it isn’t shitty at all. I mean if you are not into indie/power pop/rock then you might not want to bother with it but no reason to hate on it then either. The Apples are in their prime right now, so if you never saw what was good about them before, now is a good time to check.
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.
xpost
No, Beulah weren’t one of the original E6ers. Background info on all the bands in the collective here.
Honestly I think the whole idea of E6 was a lot of fun, and great marketing from an indie standpoint. It would play out so differently today and probably be crushed by instant weblog backlash. More compelling than MySpace links IMO. Some boring records, so what — boring indie records are all over the place, that’s not an E6 thing.
Whats with all this Elephant 6 bashing.....you old, sad, cynical bastards. Neutral Milk Hotel may have been hyped up to a ridiculous extent, but despite all the hyperbole, ‘..Aeroplane Over The Sea’ still remains a beautiful song cycle. Beulah are really growing on me too..finally picked up ‘Yoko’ last week and it’s a great pop album. Apples in Stereo have released one brilliant album after another....my personal favourites being ‘The Discovery Of A World Inside The Moon’ and their newie.
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.
Has this ever happened otherwise outside of hip-hop, where a group of bands says “We’re a crew and we have a logo and everything” and then a bunch of other bands join?
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....
Kevin Barnes is the closest thing we have to a Brian Wilson today
plz to listen to Panda Bear 12“.
...as in “Bros”.
i own 98% of the e6 records released in its ‘heyday’. a quarter are great, another third are ok-to-good, the rest are boring or trash. i’m looking at you, von hemmling.
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.
He’s not. You lose.
“dude you could paint a fence with all the spoooge over those two albums on this board....”
Aren’t the powers of suggestion wonderous ?.....
Has this ever happened otherwise outside of hip-hop, where a group of bands says “We’re a crew and we have a logo and everything” and then a bunch of other bands join?
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.
matter of fact, a “taking sides: elephant-6 vs. wu-tang” could be an interesting thread idea :-)
I smell mashup...
(obviously I meant NMH before, not MNH, BTW)
Honestly I think the whole idea of E6 was a lot of fun, and great marketing from an indie standpoint. It would play out so differently today and probably be crushed by instant weblog backlash.
How sad but true!
search: the last 2 of montreal albums, “in the aeroplane etc” (shut up it’s pretty good)
destroy everything else
“in the aeroplane etc” (shut up it’s pretty good)
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.
its earnestness would surely be a negative now.
TEH EARNESTNESS OF E6 WOULD HAVE CRUMBLED IN A CRUEL WORLD OF WEBLOG BACKLASHES!
these are some good dudes
oh god the music tapes. wretched, awful.
Honestly I think the whole idea of E6 was a lot of fun, and great marketing from an indie standpoint. It would play out so differently today and probably be crushed by instant weblog backlash.
How sad but true!
yeah, really, otm
blah
Elephant 6 in general isn’t neccessarily genius, but Apples In Stereo (other than “Velocity Of Sound”) and OTC (other than those non-conventional non-melodic noise tracks) are.
I may never, never understand the hype surrounding In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
i just tried to watch some E6 action on youtube. didn’t get very far. the olivia tremor control video wasn’t that bad.
It ain’t about video man...
i wasn’t looking for visuals. i just went there to hear some of the bands.
sorry, i should have said, “i just tried to LISTEN to some E6 action on youtube”.
just promise to keep yr eyes closed!
it’s not a bad idea. not too much sex appeal going on there.
Satanic Panic is alright, but I think Sunlandic Twins is twice as good. Compile the best songs off of the last three Of Montreal albums onto one CDR, and that would be just about perfect.
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.
the minders made a couple of my favourite E6 tracks, although from the second proper album onwards they were pretty shabby
It is sad that, thanks to blog backlash, indie bands will find out they suck sooner. :(
> oh, and Jeff Mangum’s largely forgotten Bulgarian music compilation.
> which is pretty incredible.
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.
I was really into the first two Summer Hymns albums when I was in school. Haven’t heard the ones since then, but those were favorites for listening to and getting blazed around 6pm, after classes.
Has everyone seen this stuff? NMH live audio/video, rarities, etc.
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.
I will admit that I’ve never gotten around to buying/hearing Aeroplane buy how come nobody ever big-ups On Avery Island as a whole? That album is flat out fantastic even though I hated it for the first couple months. Also great, as E6 stuff goes, is that Circulatory System album. The follow-up is turning into indie-rock’s answer to Chinese Democracy, though. C’mon, Cloud Recordings/W. Cullen Hart!
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....
On Avery Island is great. It’s a shame that it always gets eclipsed by Aeroplane.
Ray — pretty amazing that you know all those bands and love Avery Island and have never heard Aeroplane!
Isn’t it insane?
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.
NMH: “Song Against Sex” is wonderful. “Gardenhead” should be much, much longer. Otherwise, Avery Island is a wash. The Aeroplane record has a good song on it, too. Plus some funny marching band stuff that you don’t really need to hear more than once.
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.
(Heh, I even remember where I bought On Avery Island—at Bert’s on Main Street in Newark, Delaware! Like everything else in that store that wasn’t used, it was sorta overpriced, but totally worth it.)
I still haven’t heard Dusk! Need to rectify that. Eventually.
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.
“Stream Running Over” is really not a bad Apples song. I like it enough.
But I did see them on Conan a few nights ago and they seemed an annoying live performance. A little too...putting on the cheery.
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.
Weren’t Macha considered an E6 associate at one point?
there are a whole slew of awesome pop songs on black foliage by OTC—“mystery” was always a big favorite of mine, as well as “black foliage itself”, “hideaway” and “sylvan screen.” I never got nearly as into Dusk At Cubist castle.
And “A Peculiar Noise Called Train Director.”
and ‘A Place We Have Been To’, my personal favourite (although Peculiar Noise is a close second)
I wouldn’t mind hearing a cheap copy of that sometime. I only burned two songs from Cubist Castle before selling. (They are: “The Opera House” and “Jumping Fences.”)
tim, i’ll YSI some tings later for you if i can find my black foliage CD.
Thanks, friend!
The Apples are not “putting on the cheery”. Robert is a genuinely sweet and cheery nice guy. In fact, he is so ungodly nice and cool that it must actually seem like an act.
Pudding on the cherry or not,
the performance was a mirror of this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6gSSsCdFeA
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.
OTC’s “Grass Cannons” >>> all other E6
re: Elf Power: they just put out a new EP a few months ago, and it was actually quite good. Keep in mind, it was a lot of their older recordings, and a cover of the Byrd’s “Feel A Whole Lot Better”, which was great.
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.
and maybe i am a cactus, but even genuine, they’re still a little too hug for me
this sentence is impenetrable
What about the 2 commercials that have Of Montreal songs? The Outback Steakhouse and NASDAQ (who even knew they needed commercials?) both have OM songs in them. I’m not going to throw out the “sellout” card, as I understand bills have got to be paid. But, NASDAQ?
and maybe i am a cactus, but even genuine, they’re still a little too hug for me
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?
I really missed the boat by not buying a bunch of tickets for his upcoming show and scalping them at the last minute.