this is cringer, my fearless friend (chuckles wryly)

Tweet Sometime around about last week, all the trendy new music coming out of the 'States stopped sounding like The Clean, and started sounding like the fucking soundtrack to He Man played through a ropey VHS machine with fanta spilled on it. Or this... MP3: Memory Tapes-Plain Material Anyone in a lo-fi band called Deer(something) who harbours ambitions to make it onto Gorilla vs Bear this week is properly fucked. Today, it's all about memory this, neon that, and melty synths puking half-digested melodies all over the carpet in a sickly, nostalgic mess. It's all very escapist and regressive in a way, like a mass musical retreat toward the womb. Stylistically, the current crop of cartoonidelica bands owe a huge debt to Boards of Canada who tweaked the same nostalgia neurons over a decade ago, particularly during those enigmatic little sound sketches which initially sounded slight but ultimately turned out to be the most rewarding moments on the stone cold classic, 'Music Has the Right to Children'. MP3: Boards of Canada-Olson As fun as Neon Indian, Memory Tapes and their ilk are, their music probably doesn't shoulder the comparison to Boards of Canada. It's lacking the deeper hues, the colder currents and the genuinely strange undertows. Like He-Man they're fun, they're bright, but they're a bit 2D.