WELCOME...

This begins the advent of my music blog “Skeletons & Candy.” I am beginning it in reaction to the increasingly homogenized music blogosphere in the wake of Pitchfork and its countless imitators. Let me begin by asserting I am thankful for the advent of Pitchfork. It came along at a time when there was a massive vacuum in terms of coverage of independent music. Rolling Stone was long since irrelevant, The Wire existed but only on a month to month basis and it carried a hefty price tag for those looking for something different, and everything else was either genre specific or little more than shells of their former selves stuck in the mindset of the early 90s (looking at you Spin). Pitchfork came along and created a space for people who were not only interested in fresh independent sounds but who were junkies for it, like myself. They reviewed everything from metal to drone to jazz to hip hop, and of course, their staple, indie rock. They did it in a professional manner with often good writing and they helped foster a community. A community that you can hang with every July in Chicago during Pitchfork’s Music Festival, a community that fostered sub-branches in Williamsburg, Portland, L.A., Chicago, Columbus and many more locals. From those communities came some great artists, artists that would in turn be highlighted and supported by Pitchfork. Some have criticized this inevitable circularity as self-absorbed and masturbatory. I disagree, I think this sort of self-sustaining community was a wonderful thing and produced a genuine movement not defined by politics, or social issues, but by the love of music. For that I thank Pitchfork. I thank them a million times over.

But, like all scenes eventually it wears itself out. The hype kills it…and the hype is killing Pitchfork. Over the past couple of years I have noticed inflated ratings in Pitchfork’s record reviews (sort of like grade inflation in grad school, when what you really earned was a B, but what you got was an A to make the student body look smarter than it actually is so that the college can seem more desirable than it actually is). Often those ratings are awarded to the bands with the most hype surrounding them. Case in point - the band Girls. Girls has made an album of pleasing and sometimes wonderful indie pop. There is nothing wrong with that. Every now and then I put their album on and enjoy the simplicity of the songs and the joy of the band’s delivery. It is a good album, but it isn’t a five star, game changing album. Pitchfork apparently disagrees, they rewarded it with a ridiculous 9.1 out of 10, when a couple of years prior it would have probably garnered a high 7, which it would have deserved. What has happened in the last couple of years to cause this inflation of praise? Well a whole lot of wannabee Pitchforks have sprung up and wanting to get a leg up they have entered “the next best thing” contest, hyping up bands to ridiculous proportions and then ensuring the hype was legitimate by tripping all over themselves to hand out reviews that are totally disproportionate to the actual music. Again, Girls, good album, but not fucking Exile on Main Street, so stop treating it like it is.

Unfortunately for bands this hype cuts both ways, it propels them to semi-stardom, but once the hype has died down the inevitable backlash begins and suddenly all the little Williamsburg emperors are found to be wearing no clothes after all. What is lost in all of this is the actual value of a band’s music.

Another thing killing Pitchfork is its growing insularity and investment in disposable culture. It used to be that you could find reviews covering the many genres populating the independent music world on Pitchfork. That isn’t the case anymore. Instead while you may get every single fart to come out of Williamsburg, assuming it fits the “indie rock” mold or has a Casio keyboard, you won’t find a decent rendering of Type record artists, or even Touch UK, the granddaddy of experimental and drone music, a staple of the underground for a while now. Pitchfork and their imitators seem to be stuck in a rut and have betrayed their roots as a clearinghouse of information for people who genuinely love independent music of all types. Instead they are navel gazing on the increasing plastic and disposable nature of indie culture. A quick read through blogs like Hipster Runoff or Stereogum will illustrate that indie culture is becoming cannibalized by the need for the next new thing (something that has always been a threat to music culture admittedly), thus making yesterday’s bands disposable. An example of this, to pick on Pitchfork again, is Mogwai, a band that has been doing it for better or worse for well over a decade. There was a time when they were kings of the underground along with Godspeed You Black Emperor. But they are last year’s, nay, last decade’s news. So what happens when they produce one of their very best albums ever, as they did with last year’s “The Hawk is Howling”? Well, they are dismissed, given a paltry 4.5. They aren’t on the radar of the hipsters anymore (and plus some of those hipsters weren’t even out of kindergarten when “Young Team” dropped), but the music that they do know, The xx and Neon Indians – well it reflects a certain plastic crap that they are used to, a disposability that reflects their own short attention spans and desire to be cool, to be hip for this very thing in this very moment and who gives a shit about sustainability and longevity. I can promise you that no one will give a shit what The xx or Neon Indians do in two years. Frankly, I don’t give a shit now, since their music sounds like…well, shit. But it is cool shit, hyped shit, disposable shit and the scene loves disposable shit, so Pitchfork, of course, rewarded both bands with “Best New Music” awards.

I don’t entirely blame them. I understand, to quote the aged sage David Bermen “When I was younger I was a cobra. In every case I wanted to be cool. Now that I’m older and sub-space is colder I just want to say something true.” I get that. In fact when Berman sang those lyrics for the first time, all I wanted to be was cool as well. Looking back though, so much of the “of the moment” shit I listened to was disposable as well, and I wouldn’t bear to listen to it again, yet some of it was true and it still sounds fresh today (Jesus Lizard, Slint, Silver Jews and so many more). Unfortunately though, Pitchfork, who for so long so deftly balanced the cool with the true have lost their footing and fallen, landing with their heads up their own asses and talking about how cool it is in there.

It is because of this state of affairs I am going to begin writing about music. Who the fuck am I? I am a dad who hates “Dad Rock,” a music fanatic since I first heard the Clash at age 14 over a quarter of a century ago. I obsess and think about music the way most guys obsess and think about sports. I consume music more than all other sustenance combined. I live for it. Period. I used to write about music a long time ago for what we used to call a newspaper, a relic of a time since past. I enjoyed doing it and kind of wish I had stayed with it. In some ways this is a return to that path not taken, but my inspiration comes from the disillusionment of a fan who no longer has a place (website or blog) to call home. BrooklynVegan does a great job covering tons of different indie music, but it is more of a documentary of what is going on in NYC than it is a site full of reviews and criticism. That is what I aspire to do. I hope to take pretty much the same wide-angle approach as BV from the critical side of things. I am DIYing a site that I would want to read, and hopefully other obsessives and fanatics will enjoy as well.

I am calling it Skeletons & Candy for a couple of reasons. The name comes from something my youngest daughter once said. She is a story teller. She writes songs and creates epic stories that are both horrible and sweet. Princesses appear alongside characters that can do nothing but pee all over the place, or create enough havoc to draw blood. One time when she was describing a story and she said it was about Skeletons & Candy; everyone died, but everyone came back to life and got candy in the end. Her wonderment in the face of horror and sweetness is something that I would like to take credit for. I think she gets it from me and my own fascination with the extremes in all of life, but in particular music. It is an extreme that I wish to reflect here. I will highlight and review the most extreme black metal and noise alongside the candy-like sweetness of indie pop, and pretty much everything else, with the caveat that it is independent music, or has its roots in independent music.

In the end though I am doing this to promote the music I love and call bullshit on the music I don’t. I have no advertisers to please, no hype to perpetuate and no festivals to sell tickets to, it is just me and me alone listening to music and separating the wheat from the chaff. I hope you enjoy…