Pitchfork generally isn't THIS bad. At least DC is getting some recognition, but its too bad this is such an awful, horrible piece of shit of a review.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/45643-the-throne-of-the-third-heaven-of-the-nations-millennium-general-assembly Few (if any) reviewers of Le Loup's debut so far have bothered to know, or research, or point out that, wow, these ballsy kids named their debut album after the pinnacle of outsider art: the golden seat for Jesus built from trash over 14 years by South-Carolina-cum-Washington-D.C. loner/janitor James Hampton. Several cluelessly cited the band for the album title's "quirky" and "arduous" unwieldiness, even though the record's blog hit is named after the imperative (FEAR NOT) on the sign that Hampton hung over the mammoth structure. Cult author Denis Johnson even co-opted the lengthy phrase for his Collected Poems, and included a picture of the Throne on the book's cover. His title poem about the work could be read as a prompt for Le Loup's rural-versus-urban, organic-versus-machinated, new-math sound-- Johnson describes the structure of "the forest" and "the city" as systems so full of "stuttering mystic replication" and "blithering symmetry" that they make you "go crazy."
The above stuff is just more reason why Le Loup's, you know, pleasant and even artful indie folk-- that's almost all it is, promise-- is difficult to appraise/enjoy on its own merits due to the icky/lazily hyperbolic and expectant climate around it, some of which the band brought on itself, some of which is circumstantial, and the rest of which was generated by them ever hype-democratizing bloggers. The incongruities between aspects of Le Loup's promotion/reception problematize the whole endeavor of typing about music, and by extension, your skimming of that typing.
One can't "just listen," right; isn't that what is implied by blog posts about bands to watch? More than the music must be "observed," a band's name must be propped between high-profile, supposed soundalikes (Le Loup get saddled as both So You Think You Can Arcade Fire and America's Next Top Sufjan), inaccurate clichés and mushbrained stereotypes must be tossed at it for blurry context (banjo=Appalachia, very simple songs + seven band members=intricate and complex music), and then the band's show-by-show evolution must be tracked on the back of a box of Instant Legacy cereal flakes, until the inevitable Discard By date apocalyproaches. Just as open-ended, tabloidy narrative arcs, with uninteresting characters, saturate the 24-7 news cycle ("the Lohan chronicles"/"the Britney saga") to help there be enough (non-progressive and misanthropic) news, the burden of currency on the mp3-osphere often oversells its freeware for the sake of constantly a) generating interest in blah content, and b) flattering the consumer with faux omniscience re: a cultural moment (Band of the Week!/ Day!/ Nanosecond!). Okay, okay: I teach an introductory composition course at an open-door school in the South, and some of the most inane fucking bullshit I've ever read has been published online about Le Loup.
Please note: Le Loup's music is not uninteresting or blah-- it's often beautiful (more so in the scruffy/uncanny K Records way than the babysitting/unchallenging Starbucks way) and risks such seriousness that some listeners will no doubt find its handful of straight-faced songs about the end of the, er, world sort of silly. "Canto I" sets up the emo-Dante vibe, its fragile spoken-word bit and expanding banjo-riff atmospherics aping a fine Books B-side. I won't type the title of the third track but it's lovely: beginning as a kind of mash of virginy Stars and visionary Laurie Anderson, it ends as a stately minimal dance piece, suggesting a Factory Records single made in someone's bedroom. "(Storm)" decently glitches up a cloud's noise, "We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!" does homegrown handclap electronica, the organ-led "Look to the West" bursts from pompous whispers into rousing hell-yeah swagger, and elsewhere a kind of cyclic-Phil-Glass-versus-wispy-Cat-Stevens ethic obtains, never flirting with Tunng-like snooziness.
Forget all the names I just dropped though, and try to forget how much revolutionary new music ends up later providing a context for shopping (I've actually heard: "I only bought the stupid dress because the store was playing Panda Bear"). Don't freight Le Loup with D.C.'s venerable indie heritage, ignore know-nothings calling them "amazing" due to having grown up in a PR feedback loop that naturalizes messianic overestimation, and try not to emphasize the 9/11 release date. Let the deliberately infectious songs of Sam Simkoff and his six Craigslist recruits be, you know, songs, in your bedroom or on a walk or on a train, and they'll more than serve you well. Maybe they'll even survive.
-William Bowers, October 05, 2007
