What's Up

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Whats+Up (1)

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Ever since the first Advantage album featured covers of classic Nintendo tunes with the grit and muscle of underground rock, I’ve been hoping they might attempt a record of original compositions in the same vein. Yet for some time now, mirroring the rise of stylized recording techniques, highly melodic contrapuntal works have been out of fashion. There’s a sense in the rock world that, harmonically and melodically at least, everything’s been done; many bands react with musical simplicity alongside textural overload. The newly formed Portland-based group What’s Up?, despite their unfortunate name, succeed in channeling overtly composed songs through a bare, distorted sound, and the results end up relatively fresh by comparison.

Founded by The Advantage’s Robby Moncrieff (who helped produce Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca), What’s Up? obviously understand the impact of melodic constructions and seem focused on abstracting notions about complicated rock music through their raw recording style. At various times titled prog, art, and math rock, What’s Up?’s “genre” has gone through many makeovers, but its broader definition is always based on two general elements: composition and quality of sound. While a wide variety of composition styles have importantly mingled together during the last century, an album’s production has only recently risen to equal prominence. If Content Imagination had been recorded by some slick neo-prog band’s engineer, it would probably never get past our editor’s mailbox.
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