I think Idiot Pilot gave a shout out to Pitchfork in the midst of last night's set.
Daniel: How about we do a song where you sound all ethereal on the verse.
Michael: And the chorus is really loud.
Daniel: And some people will call it redundant or unnecessary.
Michael: I think we have a few of those.
That was the gist of the onstage banter last night. When Idiot Pilot plays, there is a lot of onstage banter. There are jokes and calls for the audience to clap regardless of whether or not friends are clapping, which you know is a problem in LA. Then there are the antics, like Michael swinging from the rail of the balcony and climbing up the light pole in front of the stage at the Troubadour only to jump off like either a bona fide rockstar or anyone of us at any park before we lost our inhibitions.
I thought a lot about age during the show, mostly because Michael and Daniel of Idiot Pilot are old enough to vote, but still too young to drink and I think that might have been the writer's unstated criticism in that review (link in the previous entry). As Kid C. pointed, anytime any person hears rock and electronic music together in the same song, Kid A will be mentioned because that was The Big Album, but it sort of does the music and the band a disservice. It assumes that the members are too young to understand that there are bands outside of the mainstream, that it is completely impossible to fathom that someone so young might know about Aphex Twin or Squarepusher or, perhaps, even heard FSOL's "Papua New Guinea" once or twice. Listening to Radiohead might encourage people to seek other artists, in the same way The Cure introduced me to Nick Drake or The Smiths introduced me to New York Dolls.
I feel at odds with music these days, as though turning twenty-eight means that I can no longer relate to the teenage music fan that I once was. I go to shows and see people my own age plunder the decade of our childhood. There are Goth Princes and Gangs of Three (or Five or Six) and Tributes to L'Trimm all over Los Angeles. Virtually every song from every edition of Living in Oblivion has been covered. When I go out, I start to lose faith in music. When I saw Idiot Pilot last night though, I felt a bit of hope. This is a band at the very beginning of what will hopefully be a long career. These guys are green, but that does not mean that they are lacking in the sort of vision and ability that will help them go far.