For artists who make such uncomplicated, easily apprehensible music, there are many lenses through which to view The Chainsmokers. Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall represent a multitude of things to many people: They're adept pop songwriters who have nailed a winning formula that has kept their music on constant rotation for what feels like eons now; they're dopey, edible-gobbling, retrograde chauvinists who represent the nadir of bro culture; they're a two-headed quote machine that makes pure candy for music journalists and rancid chum for the outrage machine; they're spartan producers whose antiseptic aesthetic signals the latest death knell for the EDM boom-and-bust that swept every corner of pop music imaginable over the last decade.Or: They're the logical and most visible extension to date of the minimalistic, genre-blending electronic pop that British singer-songwriter James Blake made instantly popular upon the release of his eponymous 2010 debut. "This James Blake Bon iver track makes me hate everything I've ever produced," Taggart Tweeted last May, with a frown-y emoji that signaled performative defeatism by way of aspiration. Shortly after the release of Blake's third full-length, The Colour in Anything, Taggart Tweeted that he listened to it "22 times through," declaring himself "officially a hipster" as a result; he later shouted out Winnipeg's airport for playing Blake and Brit pop-rock aesthetes the 1975 over their soundsystem, giving his official "Respect" to the soundtracking choices. "Lol this is how I write down song ideas for myself when I don't have my laptop," he Tweeted last July along with a screenshot of notes that began with the phrase "High James Blake sound."Continue reading on Noisey.
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