Little Man Tate - 'What Your Boyfriend Said'
Regular readers of Chartblog may already have some idea of how I am going to feel about this song. It's by one of those bands that form the post-Libertines pop world by being Indie As A Genre, where that genre consists of people with Pete Doherty complexes considering themselves educated about music because they have ripped some of their parents' CDs to their mp3 player. It's part of what calls "landfill indie", which although I don't agree with Alexis Petridis about pretty much anything else there, is a good term.
I know, I know, the song. Got to write about the song in question, not just froth at the mouth about the number of songs identical to it which have inexplicably charted recently and thus been placed before me on the smorgasbord of new releases like a kipper that's been down the back of a sofa for a week.
Except I CAN'T. This thing is inextricable from its loathesome anti-musical genre. Admitedly it's marginally more listenable than a lot of the other stuff that's been thrown up by the various acts with self-consciously bad names who make this sort of noise and the breakdown with the keyboard is actually quite good, were it not for the atonal singing and sickening smugness of the whole procedure. I have no idea what to write about these songs anymore; you know what they sound like, you know what they're about, you know what the band probably say in interviews (something like "COMING OUT ON TOP: LITTLE MAN TATE STICK TWO FINGERS UP AT CRITICS") and you know they'll have disappeared in two years when something else comes along.
The attempt to make everything more 'real' than any other sort of song leads to sloppy playing that only just holds itself together, when it does at all, lyrics about some kind of (presumably) made up 'realness' to do with being a bit hacked off with modern life, without any suggestion of what to do about it other than possibly form a band and make some money doing not a lot. Which basic concepts of economics would tell you can't possibly happen to everyone, thus bestowing delusions of 'specialness' on these bands.
Herein lies the problem: it is not special. Neither is it particularly real. It is just rubbish. I don't want to sound like I'm prematurely ageing too much but I don't even understand what the lyrics of this song are about; I'll swear at the start the girl's come round to the singer's house to hang out with him while her boyfriend's wherever and then by the end the singer's hiding in a cupboard waiting to be annihilated by the boyfriend who's come back to (presumably his and the girl's house) for his keys. And that is the most interesting thing about the song, the fact the lyrics seem to not totally know why they're in trouble with this boyfriend. That is, in fact, possibly the ONLY interesting thing about this song AND IT IS NOT EVEN INTERESTING.
Isolated, this song would just be mediocre instrumentation further spoiled by abominable singing, slightly lifted by a reasonably good middle eight. However, context is important when you're talking about newly charting singles so it has to be called by its real name of 'rubbish band your mates formed, was funner for three minutes and you might find a tape of their stuff in your old bag stuffed down the back of a wardrobe twenty years from now, put it on and get misty eyed'.
It's not good, the music industry's just got sentimental towards these "really real youngsters telling stories of blighted, gritty youth" and just as you ought to have cleared your wardrobe out before it got to that point, there's no reason for this sort of indulgent, musically menopausal rubbish to get a look in.
Download: Out now
CD Released: June 2nd
(Hazel Robinson)
Comment number 1.
At 6th Jun 2008, Asp wrote:I just watched the video from start to finish to try and understand the DHL van and Royal Mail man.
I even read the lyrics to try and figure out if they matched in anyway.
I'm still lost....
(Remember, other delivery services are available)
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Comment number 2.
At 16th Jun 2008, PJH_90 wrote:I do feel that you seem to be missing the point of the band. . . entirely. . . . they are not aiming to please people who like yourself, who seem to continue to rant into the bottomless well that you call the "post-Libertines pop world."
They aren't the Libertines, they are Little Man Tate, they play because they love to do it, they sing songs that don't necessarily interest you because with a name like "Fraser McAlpine" I doubt you've seen too much of the real world.
Not to get completely blue collar about this, but the stuff they sing about, its real and what we want to here in the parts of the country you'd want to avoid, like, oh i don't know, anywhere thats north of the M25. So, slate WYBS all you want, listen to "3 Day Rule" and "Down On Marie" and you might realise something. Your wrong.
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Comment number 3.
At 16th Jun 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:"with a name like "Fraser McAlpine" I doubt you've seen too much of the real world."
I'm not getting into a turf war over this, but there's a few things you should be aware of.
1: I didn't write the review. It was written by Hazel Robinson, whose name is at the bottom.
2: Fraser McAlpine isn't a white-collar name, or a middle-class name, it's a Scottish name.
3: Scotland is a really really long way north of the M25.
4: I actually quite like Little Man Tate.
Lots of love
Fraser
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Comment number 4.
At 16th Jun 2008, PJH_90 wrote:lol my bad!
apologies!
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Comment number 5.
At 16th Jun 2008, PJH_90 wrote:take it all back obviously, but there always seems to be a negativity towards them, honest mistake seeing the wrong name, is this young impressionable youth forgiven?
:)
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Comment number 6.
At 20th Jun 2008, upbeat_person wrote:did you get bullied at school?
do you have acne? do you live with your mum still? have you ever got laid?
cheer up you miserable Knut
try and enjoy yourself
+ves = at least you didnt mention the f* Arctic Monkeys
xxxxx
LMT
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Comment number 7.
At 20th Jun 2008, HazelChartblog wrote:Yes, no, yes (albeit not "still," merely "again, briefly due to unemployment") and yes, probably more recently than you.
I do try and enjoy myself, part of how I do this is by not listening to sour whingers like Little Man Tate who glorify something which, had they ever experienced it, they probably wouldn't glorify. Girls Aloud's lyrics have more to do with earthy tales of real life than theirs do.
And actually, your first set of questions do suggest that Little Man Tate, despite their spiel re: fighting for the underdogs of society, are in fact just for cool people who never had any obstacles in their way throughout life. So my point's proved there.
xxx
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Comment number 8.
At 20th Jun 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:Whoa! Whoa!
Have we actually had a comment there from the band themselves? I'd have got in some biscuits if I'd know you were coming, lads...
Although, if you don't like people who got bullied, or had acne, or live with their parents, or aren't enormously sexually attractive, maybe not the BEST biscuits.
And if you really DON'T like people who've had those experiences, and you're happy to let this be known, could that explain why your band isn't as big as the Arc...oh hang on, you don't like that either, do you?
Fraser
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Comment number 9.
At 20th Jun 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:PJH, I seem to have missed your apology there. Sorry about that. Of course you're forgiven.
Erm...but I might've just slagged LMT off for being rude to Hazel, so if you're cross with me again, my forgiveness might not mean a lot.
OH WHY CAN'T WE ALL BE NICE TO ONE ANOTHER???
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Comment number 10.
At 21st Jun 2008, PJH_90 wrote:thanking you!
hehe not at all FraserMcA, rather witty on your part tbh!
Although, Hazel does have a bee under her bonnet about them though, even though she has "no idea what to write about these songs anymore", she still gave it a good go.ish. Kind of. Just semantics all told.
The reference to Girl Aloud Though? really?
"Something kind of ooh."
compared to
"The Self Appreciation Club". . . could well of been written just for you Hazel, you lucky thing.
I will say this though, aesthetically, Girls Aloud have it, hands down.
:)
Lyrically, i'm going to go with LMT, 'caus they generally have a more original, than manufactured stylee. That might be just me though, i mean, "Love Machine" could actually be a pro-feminist, Sylvia Plath view on women as just objects rather than people.(Had to get that in, A2 English Lit!) Then again, it might just be used to get people up on the dancefloor at weddings.
What a debate this is!
PJH
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Comment number 11.
At 22nd Jun 2008, HazelChartblog wrote:There are some completely genius lyrics on GA's second album, it's partly in the delivery of course but not only do they tend to use very complicated syntax and superb metaphors, they do have some really brilliant snotty punk moments. And the lyrics are based off conversations they have, so it's not all monkeys hitting typewriters. Even so, I'm aware it's not to everyone's taste but my point was that you don't need to be a shouty young man to have lyrics people can relate to on an socio-emotional level.
I do indeed have a bee in my bonnet about these bands. They drive me up the wall. I like all kinds of music, from Norwegian folktronica made by black metal musicians to dubstep that sounds like pianos being hit with mallets underwater to commercial r'n'b to noise punk and I listen to tens of new albums and possibly hundreds of new songs a month but I've never honestly come across anything more hopelessly derivative and cookie-cutter than these indie bands that are going top 20 at the moment, bar possibly manufactured boy-and-girl-bands in the 90s. The risible Scouting For Girls easily lead the way in terms of 'sounding exactly like they ought to be a jingle for a special offer on turkey escalopes' but the rest are just as bad. There's all this pseudo-class-warfare tied up in it that's just so damaging and snobby and it's all this strange dressing up act to try and be late 70s Britpunk. I appreciate there's an interesting sociological desire to justify yourself, as a Young Person (of which I am one, incidentally) by attempting to position yourself as the people your parents idolised. The problem is that the world and the country have changed; people *know* that The Other Half live like that now, it just sounds kind of ridiculous when musicians blargh on like this about how tough it is being young and unemployed (which I also am, I might add- they don't pay me for this) and how incredibly unfair it all is, without actually suggesting any particular solution to the problem other than 'buy our records so we can have a whinge about being famous, next.' I'm all for radical leftist politics but there's a bit more to it than just building up resentment, is there not?
I appreciate that other people like the bands but I can't give them a good review just because of that, since it's musically bad. I like plenty of things I'd be forced to give a bad review and sometimes I don't particularly love things I give really ace reviews, simply because I know that there's excellent musicianship and beautiful songcraft being exercised in their creation and execution. That just isn't something I can say here and I think even Little Man Tate's fans would find it hard to argue that that was the case.
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Comment number 12.
At 22nd Jun 2008, PJH_90 wrote:hmmmm, your getting me thinking, Scouting For Girls are essentially releasing the same record over and over again, with different lyrics, so i do agree with you there. And, i do agree that you can't give a record a good review if you don't like it, so I'm glad you've at least accepted that they have got fans! I know its seems like they're releasing records for the money or so they can have another whinge. But really, LMT are a band that have songs that are so so so good live. They play because they have a laugh doing it, they don't go for the whole mainstream shannanigans because its not what they're about. I know it seems daft but its the fact that they are just some lads from Sheffield that sing about what they've been up to as teenagers that makes them so good; to a lad such as myself anyway. beautiful songcraft isn't what the fans are bothered about. we just want to have an awesome time at their gigs.
btw. . . we do.
:)
not every band can be meticulously (i think thats how you spell it) accurate to the note and key; that would be a little boring.
and. . .
i am employed, i'm not trying to emulate the Wigan Casino scene that my parents idolised, and, pfff its late! bed time for me!
PJH
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