When you have the indie cred of Ian Svenonius, frontman for The Make-Up and Weird War, not to mention snarky host of the brilliant Soft Focus series, you can pretty much say whatever you want. While promoting his new band Chain and the Gang in an interview with the Village Voice, Svenonius sounded off on Kanye West and pretentiousness in modern popular music. Didn’t he hear that Kanye was humbled by South Park?
“Who wants to hear Radiohead, or Pink Floyd, or Kanye West, or someone who’s so important?” he asked VV’s Evan Hanlon. “’Oh, the record is seventy minutes long, and it’s so important, it’s such an event.’ And it’s like, ‘No, good music is not an event.’ It feels organic. And when it’s important, it’s because of the narcissism of the star.”
Ian Svenonius calling someone else a narcissist is a bit suspicious, but it’s an interesting point in the wake of last weekend’s Record Store Day. See, he goes on to suggest that the advent of large album covers, superficial packaging attached to music, and the celebration of every major record release have all helped propagate musical mythologies that are detrimental to creativity.
We don’t really agree with him that 12” vinyl album covers were bad for music, but 5” CD covers were kind of a lame part of the transition from analog to digital music distribution. Remember that useless cardboard packaging they had for a while?
For the complete interview, including Svenonius’ view on historically relevant music, how Kanye hasn’t “done anything worthwhile” and more click here.