Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler has caused the Internet to go nuts with his comments on Radiohead, which he made over the weekend to BBC6 Music. “I think they’ve lost the plot,” Kubler said when asked the now-standard-in-every-music-interview question about Thom Yorke et al’s recent album In Rainbows. “What are they doing? Where are they going? What’s happening? I don’t get it any more. They lost me. I still appreciate what they’re doing, or what they’re trying to do. But I think they’re trying too hard not to be Radiohead. That seems a little ridiculous to me.” Kubler then went on to praise… Oasis. Ooh, burn! Yorke and his bandmates were unavailable for comment, but the Internet was more than happy to rush in and fill that particular void.
Perhaps my favorite reaction came from former Idolator guestblogger Matthew Perpetua, who wrote–in a post titled “Apples vs. Dim-Witted No-Talent Hacks”–”The most charitable description of The Hold Steady would be ‘a glorified bar band with a tone-deaf asshole shouting over the top.’ … [they] are essentially just Nick Hornby as a rock band.” (Which isn’t far away from others’ assessments of the group.) Meanwhile, Pitchfork’s Marc Hogan referred to Kubler’s quote as the band’s “Sister Souljah moment.”
Somewhat surprisingly, not all the reaction I’ve seen so far has been pro-Radiohead; another former guest of this site, Sam Yurick, said that he’s kind of tired of the Radiohead hoopla and that praising In Rainbows for its distribution scheme is not unlike saying that Cloverfield should get an Oscar for its ads.
So readers, once and for all: How do you feel? (I was going to write “who could win in a fight,” but if we’re talking about sheer brawn, I think the winner is obvious.)
Hold Steady vs Radiohead [BBC6 via half of my Tumblr friends]
Apples Vs. Dim-Witted No-Talent Hacks [Fluxtumblr]
The burning question for me: Which band attracts more douches (percentage-wise, to account for Radiohead’s much bigger following) to their shows?
@HarveyWallbanger: I can’t speak for Hold Steady fans, but there were about 5,000 pothead losers at the Camden, NJ show a few weeks back.
Radiohead is only OK.
The Hold Steady isn’t even that.
The newest Radiohead album is the only album of theirs I’ve liked other than OK Computer. I think the Hold Steady are just voicing what about 3/4ths of the people I know who know who Radiohead are were saying two albums ago.
The one thing that statement can’t do is make The Hold Steady sound good.
I say God bless that man. Nothing against Radiohead (although I could go on ad nauseum on that subject), but at least someone out there is willing to go against the prescribed rules of his sub-culture and admit that maybe the sacred cow is just a cow. Albeit, a very lovely one.
Wow, glad to see from these comments I’m not the only one not convinced of Radiohead’s “genius.” Of course, as Silverfuture succinctly pointed out, they’re still better than The Hold Steady.
Also, there’s something I’ve been trying to figure out: Is The Hold Steady the American Art Brut, or is Art Brut the British Hold Steady?
You know what would be great? A cage match between both bands. Maybe they’d all destroy each other and I’d never have to read about EITHER ONE EVER AGAIN. That would be nice.
@Marth: I’m not sure, but they put on a helluva show when I saw them together.
Do Idolator commenters ever think a band isn’t terrible and over-rated?
Radiohead: overdue for a critical takedown
Hold Steady: not the people to do it
@mhulot: Sure but where’s the fun in that?
@Marth: Sacred cow makes the best sacred hamburgers, no?
@mhulot: yes, but for me, it ends up being the “wrong” band: Between the Buried and Me, Lykke Li, Natalie Merchant… I’m not sure what the right answer is. Jonas Brothers?!
The fact that this is a “controversy” is some sad shit. Almost as sad as the fact that I have to side with a guy from a band I can’t stand because he’s one of the only other people I’ve ever heard of who thinks In Rainbows was a really lousy Radiohead album.
@gregcoff: Yeah, that just about nails it.
@TheRunningboard7: Agree with the first paragraph — Kubler’s statement would’ve made more sense (to me, anyway) 12 months ago, not now — In Rainbows was the first Radiohead album I’ve fully enjoyed since OK Computer.
I’d still rather listen to the Hold Steady, but evidently I’m in the minority here…
Have any of you Radiohead naysayers seen the band live? I’m a week removed from two incredible shows and if you haven’t experienced it then you clearly do not know that of which you speak…surprise, surprise. There’s a reason they’re one of the most sought after bands on tour. Now apologize for your ignorance and we can all move on.
@beezskis: Oh yeah, sure, I ALWAYS shell out $100+ for a ticket to see a band I can’t stand!
I was with the Hold Steadydude, then he lost me with the Oasis bit. Totally invalidated his arguments. I used to really like Radiohead up to and including Ok Computer. The worldwide hoopla surrounding Kid A and subsequent releases have unfortunately overshadowed the fact that they have not earned the praises they get over their actual musical output. I’m sorry but Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail To the Thief and In Rainbows are snoozers. Never could listen to any of those in one sitting. Don’t know the Hold Steady and don’t care.
I have zero love for the Hold Steady, but I give the guy credit for voicing his opinion (gasp!) on music. He’s not saying anything worse than anything I’ve ever read anywhere on the internet about Radiohead in the last five years. Not that I agree with him - it’s just not that bold of a comment. (And he probably didn’t think it was a bold comment when he said it, either.)
Does the fact that he makes music mean he can’t voice his opinion on other bands? Or that his band must hold its own against any band he ever deigns to speak critically of?
I’m just surprised that nobody else heard Kubler’s prOasis stance back when he & Craig Finn did the NYTimes Playlist a few weeks ago:
KUBLER “Stop the Clocks” (Columbia) is kind of a best of, but they’ve refused to call it a greatest hits. It’s kind of a love-hate thing for me. The chord structures in the songs are brilliant, the melodies fantastic. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but it’s fantastic songwriting. I enjoy that there’s a lot more to them than meets the eye. When you initially hear it, it sounds like sugar-coated pop music. But when you listen, it’s a lot more intricate than you expected. It’s like Michael Jordan makes basketball look easy, but when you actually try to apply that to what you do, it’s incredibly more skillful than you had initially thought. They had four No. 1 singles off their first album. There aren’t a lot of bands that can do something like that. They have continued to write good songs. Like Oasis when we go into the studio, we go in with more material than we know we can put on an album.
FINN I’m not super familiar, I don’t have any Oasis on my iPod or anything. Since I’ve been in the U.K., I’ve seen that since the Beatles they’re the biggest band. They’re huge stars in the media. I don’t really listen to them. When it comes on I like the hits, but I don’t own any records.
>D.R. Mosby: I only raised the point about “fetishism” because the term implies an interest in something far outside the mainstream - to the point where it is a substitute for normal desires. The question then arises - what in rock can be considered “normal”?
Quite right. Yet consider: arguably this is a common thread that’s run for decades now about ‘real’ rock and roll, or if you prefer ‘normal,’ something as distinct from a mainstream that purportedly gets it all wrong and/or ignores it and/or exploits it. No need to rehash every example, but there’s a state of siege mentality that regularly evidences itself whenever this mythical entity is perceived to be threatened, something which I sense an echo of in Kubler’s sense of abandonment. As a result I’m always wary of claims made on its behalf, and the fetishizing appears in these ideas of ‘no it must be like THIS’ — a fetishizing of reality, of normality, in the face of something else, something other. An inversion of your construction, if you like, or a parallel.
I’ll also be the first to admit that the desire to hear these elements is culturally informed.
Which probably is the paramount point in the end, really. My own early self-conscious musical lodestones in 1983 were, above all else, Duran Duran and Def Leppard, at the time popular, omnipresent, mainstream — ‘normal’ if you like. Yet at the same time the rhetoric about them at the time was heavily negative and suspicious, channeled through a variety of viewpoints (social, political, whatever) that ranged from them being examples of how rock and roll was intrinsically awful to their being anything *but* ‘normal’ or ‘real’ rock and roll, which was intrinsically great. Has anything changed much besides the names and genres under discussion?
And pageviews… achieved! Nice work folks.
Champagne for all.
the hold steady has a point. but they also sound like bruce springsteen’s radioactive ballsweat, so, uh, yeah, who gives a shit what they think.