The quiet, twee girl singer: Five years ago I was bitching about weak male vocalists, and how any skinny emo boy with a good band fashions themselves a singer, where back in the day they’d have been in the back toiling away behind a hired great singer. Many of those bands have died down; a seemingly good trend has taken its place, cutesy, sweet girl singers. On the heels of a slew of decent singers like Jenny Lewis, St. Vincent and Regina Spektor, a new wave of vocalists like starlets Zooey Deschanel, Scarlet Johansson and Lana Del Ray felt the need to sing behind a wall of distorted ’60s production values putting out decent music with little vocal effort. Acts like Lykke Li, Best Coast, Uh Huh Her and Haim, while putting out great music, seem to be singing from a chaise lounge basking in twilight. Much how the electronic artists brought back strong male vocals, I say it’s time for the ladies to rise up and pipe up! Singers like Florence Welch, Daughter, Savages and the enchanting Zola Jesus might be leading the charge.
LL-CPS-BND-NMZ: If you need help, that All Caps Band Names. For the love of God, it was cute back in the day when bands like ABBA and REM were abbreviations; even when MGMT and SUBTRKT came about in the ’00s, it was whimsical. But can we stop already? Every week a new band pops out of London or Brooklyn dropping vowels and raising fonts. It’s gone from fun to downright angry.
Animal names: Fun, rugged trend, but we simply have enough bands (again mostly from Brooklyn) with animal names: The Dear Hunter, The Dears, Dear Reader and Dearhoof for example, not to mention Bears and Cats. Quite frankly the casual listener will hear one of you and lump all of you diverse bands into one. I know I have. The zoo.
LIL: Bow Wow, Wayne, Jon, Romeo. OK, you’ve been at for a while now and you’ve earned your Lil, and two of you have done the wise thing and dropped it. At least a decade later though, Lil’s keep popping up (mostly in Bieber’s camp) and it’s getting old. At first it wasn’t working because, really, what man wants to be known as little, but now it’s taken on almost a “drag house” feel to it, with Lil Jon spawning Lil Za and Lil Twist. Makes me miss Big Joe and Big Daddy Kane!