tirado/thrown

School of Seven Bells, “My Cabal”, Alpinisms, [Ghostly International, 2008]

There was a point in which this post was going to have some commentary on how SVIIB’s music is often under-represented in the indie music press as merely influenced by shoegaze and dreampop.  They’re obvious references, really; but the band’s sound suggests influences that are definitely more along the lines of what one would hear in freestyle and urban pop during the mid to late 80s.  It’s difficult not to hear traces, afterlives of Sheila E, Lisa Lisa, and other Latin@ musicians of the time.  But among the collateral deficiencies of rockism is a tendency to produce some negligent and lazy criticism, to say less of the dismissal of certain rhythms unbeknownst to the typical rockist as somehow ‘exotic’.  For shame.