u/mikwee

In the 2000s, as indie rock was starting to gain steam, a weird trend emerged: Bands that claimed a large number of members, played all sorts of instruments, and more often than not featured blindly optimistic lyricism. They all played various strands of indie pop, each with their own inspirations and quirks. I'm just gonna go over the main examples:

The Polyphonic Spree: No band took the concept further than these Texans. After Tim DeLaughter's previous band Tripping Daisy ended in his bandmate's death, he gathered up a bunch of people, gave them robes so they would look like a unified collective and their clothes wouldn't clash badly (not because they're a cult), and thus started a wild, wonderful journey that includes a constantly rotating ensemble of musicians (including one St. Vincent!), an original hit in "Light and Day", an unoriginal hit in their cover of Nirvana's "Lithium", a performance at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and most recently, a whole dome theater film adaptation of their most recent album called "Resolution: A Cinephonic Rhapsody For The Soul", playing now in Fort Worth.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros: Who would've thought these guys would become not just the most infamous of these bands, but the scapegoats for millennial optimism and indie earnesty. Just like Tim DeLaughter, Alexander Ebert came off of a previous band that ended traumatically, Ima Robot, except his trauma was keeping up a tough persona and drugs. His way of coping was buying a bus off Craigslist, dating a young musician named Jade Castrinos, and together they recruited The Magnetic Zeros, with Alex adopting Edward Sharpe as an alter ego. They took the concept in a more folk-country-americana direction, presenting themselves as fulfillers of Jesus's gospel and even working on a series of music videos titled SALVO! that showed their backstory, which was unfortunately never completed. This collective generated one big smash, and "Home" became the ultimate "Live Laugh Love" anthem of the 2010s... and then their following three albums failed to make much of an impression on the mainstream. By 2016 Jade was out of the band, and Alex killed Edward Sharpe as he felt he had no need for him anymore. The band played sporadic concerts in the following years until COVID. Alex has since opened a philosophical Substack newsletter and recently started warming up to Ima Robot again, regretting how quickly he threw it away, while still keeping the door open for the return of the Magnetic Zeros.

I'm from Barcelona: Contrary to what their name suggests, this band is actually made of Swedes. 29 of them, in fact. Emanuel Lundgren wrote a couple of songs in 2005, and invited friends to record them with him. It ended up being a lot of friends, and by the end they realized they could be a band, and what was meant to be a one-time show generated enough online buzz to get them signed by EMI. Taking themselves far less seriously than the above two bands, I'm from Barcelona's debut album is titled "Let Me Introduce My Friends", and goes all in on twee pop. It's a de-facto children's album, with songs about building a treehouse, being amazed at the places on postcards being real countries you can actually visit, and never giving up on your dreams. Just the most precious thing. Their next album tried to take itself more seriously and made far less of a splash, which probably prompted a course correction back to the brighter, quirkier sound. In 2016 the band went dormant, but last October, 27 of the Swedes reunited for one last show in their home country.

Arcade Fire: A list like this would not be complete without Arcade Fire, who reinvigorated chamber pop and became the poster child of the 2000s indie rock movement. While the official lineup itself isn't that extraordinary in its size and their lyrics aren't all sunshine and rainbows, their live band is larger, and just the constant comparisons Edward Sharpe got to this band tells me they belong here.

Sufjan Stevens: I'm mentioning him here because while he is a solo artist (with some very dour lyrics by the way), his live band in the Illinois tour could go toe-to-toe with any of the above, and he was the second artist responsible for bringing chamber pop to millennials, alongside Arcade Fire.

Last August, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros received intense retroactive backlash for "Home", and I think it reflects on this whole trend and why we don't see it much anymore: My generation is incredibly cynical and ironic, and cringes at this painfully sincere optimism. But personally, as someone who was born when Emanuel was writing his songs, I love this! I think it has to do with my loneliness: if I don't have a community, The Polyphonic Spree can be that for at least a few minutes. The other reason this isn't seen much anymore is that these bands are economic nightmares and incredibly hard to tour with. Just for context, The Polyphonic Spree were dropped from eight labels before establishing their own, and this was spoken about in an interview with an Israeli journalist whom Tim asked to help The Polyphonic Spree come to Israel, because flying 17 people plus a soundman to the Middle East and then getting them all hotel rooms takes a lot of money and extreme dedication, not to mention an audience. Sadly, the Israel show has yet to happen.

I noticed this trend a few months ago and called it "cult pop", but as I learned more about these bands I realized it was far wider than the first two (which are the only ones with cult vibes), so I think I would call this "collective pop". It's indie pop that embraces the collective, what we have in common, and evoking peace and love in a very earnest way - yes, even Edward Sharpe.

When I open preexisting projects, Kdenlive crashes with this log.

I can create a new project and it works. Previously doing that and immediately restarting Kdenlive would temporarily fix the issue (I think), but it doesn't work this time.

Diagnostic info:

• Kdenlive version: 26.04.1
• Platform (Windows, Ubuntu 20.04, Arch, etc): Fedora Linux 44
• Install method (Official installer, Package repository, AppImage, Flatpak, etc): AppImage (doesn't launch on its own because /tmp/.mount_kdenlioiEHLn/AppRun.wrapped: /lib64/libQt6Qml.so.6: versionQt_6_PRIVATE_API' not found (required by /tmp/.mount_kdenlioiEHLn/AppRun.wrapped) , but does launch when you unsetLD_LIBRARY_PATH` and Qt plugin paths); Flatpak as well

I have three examples today:

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) - The film was an okay success, nothing special commercially speaking, but the soundtrack won the Grammy for Best Album.

Curious George (2006) - Unlike the previous movie this film was an actual box-office bomb, but yielded the first animated film soundtrack to top the Billboard 200 since Pocahontas, and its lead single "Upside Down" has 115 million views on YouTube.

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! (2017) - A bit more obscure example that doesn't really count, but it's just too weird not to mention. Did you know Morgan made a sequel? Either way, after it came out, Morgan went on Twitter and reached out to, of all bands, AJR and asked them to make a song based on it. The result was "Burn the House Down", their biggest hit up to that point… and somehow, an anthem for gun control.