The Hotelier - Goodness (May 27, 2016) Album • Page 16

I'm guessing the panning effect? Pretty sure intentional.

 

Let me critic. I have a very influential blog/reach of me telling my brothers and one friend that they need to listen to that.

 

If they want everyone to have their own first impression and expectation, they shouldn't have released art and a song first to be honest. Release the album as a whole entity at once, no long interviews and song premieres, pre-releases, or anything like that. But I'm a music writer, so I guess tune me out?

 

Wait.... Do you....

 

My interpretation of that was more or less him saying, make sure you form your own opinion of the music. The part where he says to tune out writers is a little strange I agree, but I still think he meant it in more of a, "let the record be more personal to you sort of way." Like written above its not like writers have been giving the record bad press haha. Anyway I agree just release the entire record at once...

 

Yeah, I assumed that's basically what he meant, and that's great, and something I wish didn't need to be said. But where it just rubs me the wrong way is two fold: First, if that's what you really want, then why employ any marketing? Like they did interviews with Ian Cohen. Video premieres with big publications. The label sent out the advances to people to talk about it, review it, and hopefully get people excited. It feels so, probably unintentionally, hostile to then basically say "tune them out." Like I take it personally, even if I probably shouldn't, when artists say things like that. Because I'm also a fan, like, first and foremost I'm a fan, I just happened to also build a website, and I derive a lot of joy from telling people that I love a band or album and it just kinda stings when you think you're doing something awesome or that makes you happy and then someone says to just — ignore it? — I dunno. I know I'm taking it far more personally than I should, but it's a personal thing to me.

And, I dunno, if the artist's main goal is letting the art be seen with no expectations, I think that's great, and totally within their right to release it however they want and to everyone at the same time with no lead time or hype or anything — but it's weird when they court the press and then toss a little shade at the same time. Whatever, I'm reading into it more than I should, I hope people like the album and I'll talk about it less until more people can.

 

I'm kinda thinking the promotion is seen as a necessary evil. You need to do that kind of promotion to get out there these days, especially if you're on a label with expectations?

 

And if a band considers it "evil" in any degree, I mean, again, totally fine and their prerogative, but I wish I knew beforehand so I could decide where to spend my time. I don't wanna do something someone thinks is evil. I get begged, literally begged, to write about bands on a daily basis, and I dunno, I feel bad if I put time into something and it's not what the band wants at all or they want people to ignore it. It makes me wish I would have diverted my energy that day into something else. I'm just speaking personally, as someone that writes about music and has been pretty vocal about how much I like their music, that seeing stuff like that does hit me on a personal level. More it's like, huh, well, ok, wish someone coulda just told me that to start with, I dunno, embargo the album, or hold off on sending it or something.

 

Yeah I get you totally! I've noticed some bands and artists see journalism as a kind of faceless entity and speak of it like that rather than realising there are just people in the background that really like music and have made their lives out of it. Seems a common thought to me

 

There's been a constant thread of that feeling that rears its head from time to time. I mean, hell, the very, very negative side of that is what Ronnie Radke did just a few days ago. And I don't think anyone in The Hotelier thinks anything like that at all. (So, yeah, first, just wanna be clear and say I'm taking this totally away from any specific thing here and am speaking in very broad generalities now.) But there always seems to be a feeling of "well you couldn't be in a band, so you just write about music" or "those that can't do X just do blah" that I've seen over and over again throughout the years. And, for me, personally, it's always disappointing. First, because it's not that I "couldn't" be in a band, it's that I never wanted to be! I get more happiness from writing than I do making music. And I express my creative side in that writing or in the things I like to make (drawing, websites, applications, etc.). And I dunno, every time I see stuff like that (and it's on my mind a lot because of the 500+ twitter @mentions I've had to scroll through the past few days) I get this feeling that there's not a lot of understanding even for what goes into making something like a website to write in in the first place. Haha. I mean, it took like 3 years of work to build chorus.fm — from the code to the design to the just crazy amounts of time and sacrifices and money spent doing it — and that's not even talking about the 20+ spent working and doing AP.net. And it's like — I didn't dedicate two decades of my life to something because I can't do something else, it's because I love doing it. It's inside of me and this is how it comes pouring out.

 

No. You should. You think the Hotelier would have moved beyond The Hotel Year without bloggers buzzing about their tracks and spinning them on turntable.fm? No way in Hell. It's definitely a respect thing that goes both ways. It's not like they're calling out writers who critiqued them in a negative way. This is a broad statement saying what we as writers say shouldn't matter.

I see both sides of it. I don't write reviews often because I don't care to read reviews. I prefer listening for myself before reading other's thoughts. But like you said, it's bizarre to send a record out specifically for press, then tell people not to read it. That's a waste of our time as freelance critics.

I haven't had this thrown at me personally, but a lot of my friends have (primarily women). Shit accusation, IMO.

 

I hate this and I see it all the time and it always makes me want to punch the person who said it in the face.

 

Hah, I have at least a hundred variations of this and about how jealousy is what led me to write I didn't like FIR on Warped Tour in my Twitter mentions right now.

 

I've gotten it from friends on Facebook before, which is really annoying. I think a lot of people just don't understand what we do at all. Especially since most of what we do isn't going out of our way to listen to someone's music and "rip and tear it apart" (to quote that fucking stupid Transit song), but to praise and promote music we're excited about. I think I wrote less than 10 outright negative reviews on AbsolutePunk and I made it to 200.

 

For what it's worth im glad you hyped the album, helped get me excited and I don't think it was a waste of time.

 

Agree with Teebs last post^^

Also, yeah I Don't think Christians comment was meant to be rude. I think more than anything he was just saying "go into your first listen ready to have your own opinions formed".

 

Somewhat excited for this

 

Maybe you could email Christian and express your concerns.. When I posted sun on YouTube he messaged me and offered to talk to me in depth about why he wanted me to take it down. I just took it down immediately but thanked him for the offer. Seems to be a real straight forward guy and would probably be open to seeing your side of this. Of course that could always make things worse and I would understand if you didn't want to make a "thing" of this but it's just a suggestion.

 

I just literally climbed to the top of a mountain and listened to "Goodness Pt.1" at the peak of a summit. I don't know if that song will ever mean more to me than it did in that moment looking over hundreds and hundreds of miles of land/mountains. What a moment.

 

re: music writing thing

I think Christian telling people to tune music writers out is valid but not in the way that people are interpreting it. I don't think the statement was aimed at music writers, but rather a response to a very specific situation where people who have strong expectations for a record are having their experience of the album affected by what people with advances say about it. I don't think it's wrong at all on the part of music writers to talk about a record and I don't think that's what Christian meant, but I also have issues with the way that promotion cycles, of which music writers are an integral part of, exploit curiosity and excitement. Music writers get people excited and curious, and this gets said people talking, which gets more people excited and curious, which results in a greater number of people checking out/buying the record on release day. This is a positive thing for the artist and the label and most of the people involved, but the idea that the label is exploiting people's connection to art doesn't sit right with me on a certain level. It just feels a little dishonest. It also contributes to this atmosphere of wanting to talk about something that isn't there, that isn't tangible. A good chunk of the AP Goodness thread before Piano Player came out revolved around people with advances (and I'm not just talking about staff, Ian Cohen's tweets and unbornwhiskey were a major part of it) giving small details about the album, and people (myself included) taking them and trying and failing to create a discussion out of it. Pages and pages of empty hype without any real discussion is just a bummer.

Went off in a tangent there and I'm kind of expressing my own opinions at this point rather than talking about Christian's statements but basically while music writers are a positive force and certainly not doing anything wrong, their voices and presence can alter the way that people who already have expectations for an album connect with it, and this is arguably a bad thing. I think it's amplified in this specific case because people have such strong and specific and varied expectations for this album, and this band's music is very personal. I don't think drawing a comparison between the word of mouth that resulted in Home blowing up and the word of mouth that's happening now is valid because they're two wildly different situations. Home's promotion cycle was very very different from this one.

 

@KennedyBN What mountain?

 

nah mine has a snare hit four times in succession, might be an artifact. also the drums in the bridge of settle the scar sound really weird (not in a bad way, just weird, as if the drum fills were drenched in reverb?) and in opening mail the gang vocals of "i'm coming for you" cut off abruptly into a single vocal track several times. guessing these are all artifacts of my copy but just wanted to make sure

 

Yamnaska. It's in the rockie mountains in Alberta where I'm from. Not too tough but super fun. The conditions were actually sketchier than we thought they were gonna be though ha, it was so icey on the top

 

Looks like an awesome headwall. Isn't it still snowy at those elevations?

 

It was definitely written for the fans reading it, but that doesn't make it better. It still says a lot about how Christian feels about music writers spreading the word about his music. It should be up to listeners to decide whether or not they read or discuss a record before it drops. Making that argument is fine. He could have said "We think it's better to go in free of preconceptions," but then he added the bit at writers, which is lame.