{"id":20466,"date":"2013-11-05T23:01:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T04:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=20466"},"modified":"2013-11-05T23:02:04","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T04:02:04","slug":"something-wicked-this-way-comes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/something-wicked-this-way-comes\/","title":{"rendered":"Something Wicked This Way Comes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had an unfortunate experience on Monday morning. I&#8217;m sure it was exacerbated by driving to work in heavy traffic, and thanks to Daylight Savings, right into the sun. I was tired, I was cranky. And I made the mistake of listening to <strong>The Lumineers<\/strong>. A colleague lent it to me, and stupid me, trying to be open-minded about new music these days, decided to give it a listen.<\/p>\n<p>I made it through about two thirds of the album before switching it off. I had to put on the Mamas and the Papas to get the bad sound out of my ears (tangent: &#8220;Shooting Star&#8221; is such a goofy and weird track that it always puts me in a good mood).<\/p>\n<p>But back to The Lumineers. This band is the epitome of many things I am hating about a current trend in popular music. What is that plinky-plonky sound? Oh, it&#8217;s the arrangement of multiple acoustic instruments. What is that echo? Perhaps it&#8217;s to make us think that that wash tub bass is being played and recorded in a barn. What is that horrible whining sound? Yessirree folks, it&#8217;s the nasally, earnest voice of the lead singer.<\/p>\n<p>And then I looked at a video:<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zvCBSSwgtg4?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>You don&#8217;t want to hear their cover of &#8220;This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Monday evening, Mr. Royale listened to my rant and came up with an interesting analogy: The Lumineers are like <strong>Haircut One Hundred<\/strong>. Instead of artfully-draped sweaters, we have suspenders. No more classic haircuts; we&#8217;ve moved on to facial scruff. Created for style; substance is of limited value. The recipe has been changed up, but the intent is the same.<\/p>\n<p>But my question to you is <em>How did we get here?<\/em> Why is faux folk played on acoustic instruments by bands most likely from an urban hub so popular now? Is this Retro <strong>Retromania<\/strong>? Don&#8217;t tell me that <strong>Fleet Foxes<\/strong> started it. Say what you like about their beards, but those bad boys can sing. Was the start of this evil trend <strong>Arcade Fire<\/strong>, the band that tried to temper their bombast by telling everyone that at least the recording was made in an old church? I really liked that first album of theirs, but I&#8217;m guessing that if I listened to it now, I might feel differently. Help me, and please explain what happened.<\/p>\n<p>And you can not tell me the answer is menopause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had an unfortunate experience on Monday morning. I&#8217;m sure it was exacerbated by driving to work in heavy traffic, and thanks to Daylight Savings, right into the sun. I was tired, I was cranky. And I made the mistake of listening to The Lumineers. A colleague lent it to me, and stupid me, trying <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/something-wicked-this-way-comes\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1838,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[63,668,864,127,865,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1838"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}