I don't know who I would impress by buying something 'arty' that I don't like - that would presume 1) I've got people pawing through my record collection that I want to impress and 2) they've got the musical breadth of knowledge to appreciate the 'artiness' of whatever it is I'm trying to impress them with.

Much more common is having people wonder why the hell I've got Carmen Miranda or Elton Britt records and thinking I'm a frickin' weirdo because of it.

I will say this - I have bought records that are supposedly essential and then struggled to find a way in with them, but I do tend to keep those records because I know that they may take more than a few listens to really 'get' them. I remember the first few times I heard 'The Modern Dance' by Pere Ubu, I just didn't get it, then one day I had a hangover and put that record on and it suddenly made perfect sense. I have been a huge Ubu fan ever since. I can think of several instances like that.

Maybe those arty records that you have but you don't like are just waiting for the right moment to latch on to your brain. Everything happens for a reason.

Are we talking about the album itself, or the people who generally tend to like it? I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Manners is just another indie pop album. The whole nature of the genre falls a little to the pretentious side because of its fans (although that's a generalization if I ever saw one), but it doesn't stand out to me as being any more or less up in itself about its "craft" than any of its contemporaries.

For the record, I'm also not trying to be a "too deep for you" contrarian. I just feel like Manners had too many hooks and palatable melodies to really be considered genuine "arty sh*t".

The only right answer is Beefheart.

Right, but I don't own any of those contemporaries, and the thread was just asking about the records we happened to have owned. :)

That's fine. I consider myself to be an expert in terrible pop music, and Passion Pit's music stands in its own way. I can't say it's fully enjoyable, because it's trying VERY hard to not be typical pop music while... just being simple pop music. It just has a glossy, sleek production that throws it into the "artsy" subgroup. Again, I don't hate the album. I enjoyed quite a few songs. But generally speaking, they're just dressed up pop songs, and that to me makes them pretentious.

Essentially, it boils down to the differences between our definitions of "arty sh*t", which is really the entire point of this thread and makes our whole dialogue kind of redundant. Or demonstrative. I'm not sure which. But yeah, I totally agree with you about the production, it's very over-consciously engineered. People eat that stuff right up, but it makes you feel kind of dirty when you're listening to it if you know the game right from the get-go.

Seriously?? Someone actually put that on an album??? :confused:

It's like Rule 34 applied to music. No matter how weird it sounds, someone's probably done it.

It's actually surprisingly interesting, too, if you have an ear and the interest for that sort of thing. Each model has a distinct sound that's easier to pick up on if you know how to separate yourself from the whole "I'm listening to copying machines" deal. Very reminiscent of Étude aux chemins de fer, which kind of comes with the territory.

What's this album called? I might want to...check it out.:shycouch:

Was it released before Björk's Vespertine?

"Copying Machine Music" by Xerophonics (YouTube'd for convenience's sake)

About four years after it.