Quote:
|
Originally Posted by demonrail666
Even in terms of Rock, an album like Loveless is far less innovative than I think it's generally credited with. What that album marks is a sense of opening up parameters within an already myopic 'back to basics' Punk idea of what Rock is: (simple chord structures, standard drum patterns, etc) but certainly can't compare, in terms of innovation with the plethora of albums released in the late 60s-early 70s by bands such as Soft Machine or Yes (and obviously Beefheart) all of whom strike me as having a for more expansive attitude towards what Rock could be. I'd certainly say that, compared with those, Loveless closes Rock down far more than it opens it up. I'd even go so far as to say that, in terms of the Valentine's peers, an album like The Butthole Surfers Locust Abortion Technician was infinitely more innovative than Loveless - which I still can't see as anything more than a decent welding together of Dinosaur Jr riffs with Cocteau Twins textures and Beach Boys harmonies. Fortunately, innovation is one of the factors furthest from my mind when I listen to Rock.
|
Soft Machine are a really good example - I think their intimacy with jazz and their sense of the preposterous makes for more 'progressive' music than much of prog music proper.
Interesting you mention the Cocteaus there - I was going to say before that where rock is capable of being interesting is on a lyrical level. I love the Fall, but they're hardly pushing music too far forward. Lyrically though (and this mightn't apply to their later stuff) there's some really fascinating ideas. With the Cocteaus I find it really fascinating how they created this language-myth around what sounds to me like prosody.
That's clever, to my mind.
Also, while I'm not a fan myself, I know a lot of people who see the Cardiacs in the kind of terms we're talking of here.
And finally, I really can't hear it in Drunkdriver either. Mattin is sometimes interesting, but rarely for his music.