What My Weekend Sounded Like, Sorta
Dum Dum Girls- Bhang Bhang, I'm A Burnout
Oh my I love a summer jam.
Ivory sans Merchant: So What? Let’s Talk Sumo Buns and Hiiiiigh Collars.
We need to talk.
What'd You Call Me?
We need to talk about gorgeous films that make you want to stab their main characters, and leave the most fabulous foils in the dust. We need to talk about how great Sir Anthony Hopkins is as an aging gay bohemian. We need to talk about how Charlotte Gainsbourg is the most recent graduate of the Tom Hanks Academy of Eyebrow Imploring as Acting Method. We need to talk about the pathetic and pathetic and depressing and horrible and can we please stop promoting this(?) phenomenon of the beta male in media. But we won't. Why? Because Laura Linney says we have other things to do.
In the first Ivory sans Merchant film, The City of Your Final Destination, there's some plot about some jerkbag scholar guy intruding on the lives of the estate-holders of a departed writer. He is eager and naive and undermotivated and dumb and most of the time I wanted to punch him and/or take away his bachelor's degree. Oh, of course he has a girlfriend who makes sure he wipes his bum and plans his dissertation and walks right-left-right-left down the hall (there was apparently some event where he was confused about if the right foot should follow the right foot for consistency and he found himself tramping down the roads of Florida doing the cha-cha and then his castrating-but-efficient girlfriend picked him up before they took him to the loony bin for loonies. It's not in the film. But it should be.), and it's her job to be a horrible shrill awful woman who actually has her shit together. PS Women who have their shit together are the new serial killers. True story. They will get you in the middle of the night! By doing things like succeeding t life! And asking that you be passably competent at life! OBVS THEY MUST BE KILLED. (see also: Spanglish, Junebug, any romcom with the words "female executive" in the summary.)
What do you mean they don't serve the fruit compote on Wednesdays?
BLAH! Sorry, Laura. You're right, I was going to talk about you now. So there's Anthony the gay brother of the dead literary icon- fantastic. THEN there's Charlotte Gainsbourg the mistress of the dead writer and the mother of his child. SCANDAL. Then there's Laura Linney's char, the actual widow. They all live on the same humongous estate in Uruguay. DOUBLE SCANDAL. Apparently, because life is miserable and the only person she liked is dead, this Linney character wears these fantastic high collars and chunky jewels while spitting out one liners and rolling her eyes at the naivete of the younger, dumber, ridiculous scholar-whippersnappers who are supposed to be falling in love but are actually making the audience rather pukey.
Oh yes, I HAVE heard that about Democrats. Sad, really.
Look, all I'm saying is, LLinney usually plays roles I can't identify with and she does those roles exceptionally well. I am so glad that instead of playing the complex scheming wife/underachieving sibling/ domestic abuse survivor, she's got a role as an independent and fabulous bitch with a wardrobe I'll probably be sampling for the next 20-30 years. I can't recommend the film because the characters are a bit half baked and I'm not sure I actually enjoyed anything about the ride. I would love to have the Hopkins/Linney characters in some short film, but I suppose that's not very interesting to anybody else. Well, everybody else is a moron. I need another collar. Holla atcher gurl, Vic, Rolf, Kris.
I feel much better now.
Robyn, marry me.
I care about nothing else except this video right now. There will be time for analysis later. Today is Friday and Friday is for dancing.
Robyn 'Dancing On My Own' (Official Video) from Robyn on Vimeo.
Fuck Lilith Fair, Again
OK, that's a little bit harsh. But seriously, Sarah McLaughlin? You and your lovesick wailing and your sad abused puppies and your really weird and self-serving girl-unity message? Get out.
I was a riot grrrl AND a part time lesbian in the 90's and I still didn't go to Lilith. Why bother? All the cool chicks had their own shows. Think about it: the 90's were rad! It was all kinds of Sleater-Kinney and Tori Amos and Liz Phair (v1) and Bikini Kill and PJ Harvey and Bjork and Ruby and (sorry) Ani Difranco and jesus, like, everything else. Lilith Fair was, to me, this weird and unnecessary festival for ladies who wrote songs about their vaginas and heartbreak that was created because there's usually only enough room on the radio or in anyone's brain for a few vagina-heartbreak songs at a time. Tori Amos had that space for a while and Sarah McLaughlin was all "BUT I DO THAT TOO! THAT'S NOT FAAAAIIIIIR!!!" and threw a party about it for a bunch of girls with barrettes in their hair.
I mean, in a way I thank Sarah McLaughlin for this. Lilith Fair helped a lot of ladies get in touch with their vaginas, and that is how I managed to survive my early 20's, the era that I would like to call: Straight Girl Serial. I won so many toaster ovens. If I could get that on a beauty-pageant body ribbon, I would like that very much. Work, minions, work.
I thought it was over. I mean, no one listens to the radio and everyone can accept that mainstream music is crap (really for no fault of its own, it's all part of a numbers game, and a lot of it is incredibly enjoyable crap), and for crying out loud, there's enough people whining about their vaginas everywhere, somewhere between Scott Pilgrim and Death Cab For Cutie. That should have its own festival, like: the Beta Male festival. Everyone could all apathetically nod, revert to their childhoods, and quote from The Office together. Maybe they could borrow some barrettes.
Back to Lilith: It's not over. Apparently there's still vaginas to sing about, and people are willing to pay for a stadium show for it. Good for them. So I asked myself a few questions:
#1. Why does this piss you off so much? Well, I want to go to a show this summer, somewhere outside and massive with overpriced beers and expensive parking. This is a personal definition of "what summer is" and I'm bummed that there's a lot of stuff touring that is either skipping Boston altogether or not anything I could justify paying more than $10 for. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't think so, since as I get older I seem to be open to more and more music, not less and less.
#2. But what REALLY pisses you off about it? This is complicated. On the surface, I'm all about ladies getting together to rock, but that's the problem: Lilith Fair embodies everything that's narrow and stereotypical about women playing music together: It's a huggy, feelgood, piano-snoozefest for ladies only. There's so much music that women make- so much goddamn fierceness that I think we can now express without really lame definitions of femininity and "female rock." Adia, I do believe you failed us. With yawning and songs about boys. Drag.
#3 Hrm, so, if you could magically wave your wand and have a festival of your own, what would it look like?
First off, let's remove this whole "woman frontwoman" thing and create a diverse festival with women and men who fucking rock out. Sure, it can be female-heavy, cause I like chicks, but I like dudes just as much and I want them to be in the audience. Part of the problem in an all-women's festival is that it encourages only ladies to hang out there, and there's enough problems with getting dudes to hear our stories, though our stories are just as awesome and as valid as theirs. No need to ghettoize any further, ok? Second, there has to be a serious limit on slow songs, emo piano jazz, and songs that have appeared in any movie that Katherine Hegl has appeared in. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Admittedly, I've had a problem over the past year with the piano for various ridiculous and personal reasons but if I had the money, I would make a guitar out of a chainsaw and personally attack any number of bands with, say, one chick on piano and a bunch of under-talented studio musicians who write the same adorable pop song over and over and over again. Oh, you're not going to write me a love song? OK COOL, LEARN HOW TO ROCK, CRAZY CATCHY SONG THAT ONLY EXISTS IN SUPERMARKETS AND PROBABLY ALSO TJ MAXX.
I don't have issues. Also, I believe in Peaches, bitch.
Do I have to say anything? How about just: Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you, Peaches.
You know who else I really like? These hot Warpaint ladies. They remind me of about 5 things at once. Psychedelic rock of the 70's and post-punk and shoegaze and some metaly stuff and not any of those things at all.
Of course I would allow SOME acoustic guitars. Maybe two. Martha Wainwright would hold one of them. "Poetry is no place for a heart that's a whore?" Are you kidding me? You put that under 2 chords and call it love, gurl. This is exactly how I'm feeling, right at this very minute. It's rageful and unapologetic and fantastic.
Everyone's got wood for the xx right now, yes? Let's see that video again. I love the hipshakey dancers.
I just saw Bettye LaVette a few weeks ago, and her voice is one of these treasures that makes old tunes sound brand new. She sang something from Pink Floyd that made me think I had never heard a word of the lyrics before. Love this voice. SHE WOULD COME TO THE DICHOTOPUSSYFEST. Yes.
See? I'm already bored with this- I want to have a ladies-who-rave section to this festival, for after dark: I'd bring in Lady Gaga and RuPaul and Ellen Allien and Ladytron and Barbara Morganstern and Misstress Barbara and DJ Storm and I don't know, about a million more folks. It's booooring to put people in categories like this, though, and it's not even something I can get too snarky about. I understand why we put together a Lilith Fair now, and I am psyched that Cat Power and the Gossip and that band with the cute lesbiotwins are playing larger venues. I know that in a shit world where feminism is such a bad word that we're supposed to ignore sexism outright when it's staring us right in the face (and I would argue, straight-up killing us), we need safe zones. I get that these spaces need to exist, and I'm sure lots of otherwise-rational people will enjoy this festival and have a great time and hook up and feel Revolution Girl Style Now in a valid and awesome way. But here's the thing: At the end of the day, Sarah McLaughlin gets on a stage somewhere and continues to sing incredibly lame songs in the name of sisterhood. That's one $60-$100 ticket that I refuse to take for free.
Miley, Christina, Ke$ha: The Shrinking Female Pop Star and the Damaging Repercussions of Faking It
Ladies, ladies, ladies. Can we talk? It seems like you want to talk.
Christina, you're first. Now, in the early aughts, you caught my-way-too-punk-and-way-too-rave-for-you ear with a piano counter-melody that would have tickled Elton John in that "Genie In A Bottle" choon. Gurl, you know I rolled up the windows of my Nissan Sentra and sang the hell out of that song with you while I drove up 24 to the big city every week. (In terms of this blog, "big" means, "sorta tiny and depressed"; and "city" means "Boston," which I know is confusing to anyone who lives in any other city.)
And then you made that "Dirrty" video, which made me cringe. Slathered in dirt and writing around for the camera (and black folk!), awkwardly, this was supposed to indicate some kind of maturity, some entry into womanhood and woman-sexuality. Can I stop here? You know the history.
OK, argument START! So one of the best things about the feminist movement was the focus on ladies and their ladyparts. We got the pill, we got to say we liked having sex and we got to prance about in our underwear if we damn well wanted to, Our Bodies Ourselves made us sit on a full length mirror and um, there was Madonna? I guess? I still stand by the idea that Madonna was the promised land of this new land of third-wave feminism in a way, when she was all "I want to rule the world AND wear a cone bra," and less "Om Shanti Malawi Yoga Butt." NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. I believed, wholeheartedly, that this was her choice, and that she was attempting to, shall we say, subvert the dominant paradigm of what it meant to be a sexy lady, because the roles were flipped: Madonna got to say what was sexy, not the male gaze in and of itself (and yes, I appreciate that this is limited, but I still thank the universe we got Madonna in my lifetime). I don't buy that from most anyone who came afterward. Certainly not Britney, not Christina, not anyone who has appeared on the cover of Maxim or Blender since. (Also, have we seen the new Madonna spread for Interview yet? Do you think this woman isn't in control of her sexuality AT FIFTY? God bless you and your Om Shanti Malawi Yoga Butt.)
It's not like it doesn't translate to real-women's lives. Having an orgasm is FANTASTIC, ladies, and I am happy that we have found a place in the world where we can tout it. HOWEVER, doing so in front of a camera merely for attention and because it appeases the male gaze (ignoring the important reasoning: do III, independently of all other things, want this thing RIGHT NOW?), is tantamount to FAKING IT. And do you know what FAKING IT does for everyone in the whole world? It ruins lives and it kills puppies and it pops all the red balloons. Which is why this:
IS HORRIFYING. Anyone watching it is horrified. Christina, you look fantastic. What the hell is this song? Who the hell is your producer? Why the hell won't you just look good and sing some fantastic retro-jazz? Someone has to fill Amy Winehouse's shoes since she's probably been dead for 5 years now. You can do that and still dance. Dance your goddamn Jimmy Choos off. Just leave the bedazzled ball-gags to the masters, sweetheart, and do what God and the president of Uganda have always wanted you to do: play tented summer jazz festivals. We don't need to see your vageen to prove to us that you have sex, like, all the time. You have a baby. There's PROOF.
Moving on before I get too old and crotchety over here. There's a new virgin in town who just let the genie out of the bottle and her name is Miley Cyrus. Maybe you've heard of her? She's one of these poor girls who was THRUST into the spotlight right before she got all those funny feelings in her special places and then was contracted by Disney to NEVER EVER EVER discuss the thing that was probably on her mind the most for the past, say, 6-7 years. Now the girl is all grown up (ish?). She wants to show us how much! Shall we watch? We should, we really really should.
Mother. Of. Pearl. Where to start? This is Miley's "Dirty"; her "Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman," if you will. She's been bottling in all the teenagedom of her teenage years and it just all female ejaculated all over you...with feathers. In a video. If you're over 25 and you feel uncomfortable, as I do, then we can assume she's in a fairly healthy state of female sexual development. How do I know this? I live on the B Line.
The B Line, for those lucky folk who are not in the 617 area code, is the subway line that runs through both Boston University and Boston College. Every Labor Day weekend I am bombarded, suddenly and without warning, with an assault on my senses: 18-year old girls, on their own in the wilderness, finally. Some will cry FOWL (ha!) on their wardrobe choices, but as a woman who pays good money to have my cellulite beaten out of me with iron and French machinery, I say: wear those miniskirts while everything is smooth for as long as you can. (Being objectified isn't going to stop if you lower your hemline. That's like treating cancer with Airborne.) No, it's not wardrobe, it's insecurity: WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DOING THAT SIDEWAYS THING WITH YOUR NECK, par example. Yes, he likes you, a little bit, probably, but not for much longer. It's OK. Eventually you'll realize that you have the deck of cards and you can shuffle them any way you damn well please. But for now, for the eighteen-year-old now, you have to do the little submissive/porny/body-cant dance and learn how to be yourself later (if lucky, healthy, and wise, which most eighteen-year-old girls are- much much more than we give them credit for).
It's fine, it's natural, everyone gets VD and learns and graduates and moves on. I have no idea why we hold Miley to any other standard except that it makes a good headline on E! News Weekend: GIRL, FORMERLY FALSELY CHASTE AND WE LIKED HER THAT WAY, NO LONGER THAT WAY, AND IT IS BOTHERSOME! The fact that the "chasteness" or lack thereof is the topic of conversation about this woman's video, and not the fact that THIS SONG IS HORRENDOUS, bothers and disturbs me.
P.S. Everyone knows that Justin Bieber is totally banging 14-year-olds like, every night, right? If he's not, I'll personally, PERSONALLY slap him, on behalf of all boys his age, everywhere. If there's outrage to be had, it's that these impossibly blessed human beings aren't getting it on at all times for the sake of the rest of us, who are relegated to speed dating, raw food diets, OKCupid and interval training (NOT THAT I AM TAKING IT PERSONALLY), while these kids get slapped on the wrist for writhing a little bit on stage. Jesus.
AND THEN THERE'S KE$HA. WTF. I think Jezebel said everything I want to say about this, but I want to make a couple extra points. #1. I love this song. I don't know why. Don't judge me. I'll 12-tone-row you out of this hipster kayak. #2. This is the worst kind of faking it. This is faking it like you're a weird girl. As queen of the weird girls, I would like to ask you to stop. You know what weird girls don't have? A fan club of non-weird-girls. Ask all the weird girls who came before: Cindi, Madge, Grace, Kathleen, Courtney, Wendy O, Joan, and yes, Gaga. Oh, just watch this: the girl is faking it and she wants encouragement that she is faking it JUST RIGHT. Watch.
This one isn't so much about sexuality as it is about selling what you're actually selling. I get that. For all the pandering of Christina and Miley, Ke$ha's performance reminds me of something else: If you want to be an "It Girl," you'd best have "It Factor." Otherwise, please go back to singing alt-country songs in pubs and leave the sparkly things to the masters.
Finally, I would like to point everyone in the direction of a video that makes me REALLY REALLY happy, from a woman who I think may be over her pandering-to-the-male-gaze phase (god, I hope so...).
"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.
I don't believe that Beyoncé is faking it here at all. First, this is a weird song. There's not a whiff of current-pop sound in it. It's all 90's dance drums (actually, all I hear is Nine Inch Nails...) and 60's soul pleading. These are two things I like very much, so please more please. Secondly, the styling and the jokey-jokey of the video is weighted by the darker elements (love = self-destruction?) and sadnes of the lyrics. You know what that is, children? That is DEPTH, and depth implies that someone has done some actual legwork, and doing legwork means that something is probably worth doing legwork for, and USUALLY you don't fake it if it's more effort than it's worth, amirite?
So yes, though about 10 years ago, if you told me that I would be writing extensively about pop divas and faking metaphorical orgasms, 21 year old me would probably have thrown myself out of my 2nd floor apartment, injuring both legs but not causing permanent damage and therefore perpetuating the idea that I fail at everything. So really nothing much would have changed. Nevertheless, it's troubling. I want everyone to be sex-positive and empowered at all times, K? And I want that to mean more than putting a ball gag in your mouth and asking your audience, "AM I EDGY NOW? AM I SEXY YET? DO YOU LOVE ME AGAIN PLEASE?"
The problem with faked chastity and the problem with faked orgasms and the problem with fake-freakishness is that it demoralizes those of us who are chaste, who have real orgasms (or those who DON'T!), or are really freaks without having to spangle up an American flag and dance in it. Pop music isn't supposed to break down old paradigms anymore, sure, but it's disturbing to have it be a part of the problem rather than just a part of the soundtrack.
Exit Through The Gift Shop and The New Style
First, let me start off with a third-grade-book-report statement. For context! *** 
<3 *** (@). "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a documentary about "street art."
Sort of.
It is also a documentary about the film's maker, or makers, plural*: both Banksy my (and everyone else who isn't on Fairey's jock's) favorite street artist, and ****OMG, YOU IDIOT, SPOILER ALERT**** the documentarian-turned-street artist Terry Guetta, this impossibly-flawed, fascinating flaneur-hack. At some point during the filming of the doc, Banksy himself takes over the production, and like his art, a seemingly simple narrative explodes into a twisted, philosophically saturated, self-questioning, self-mocking tale.
Second, let me say that I have a love/hate relationship with Cambridge, where I saw the film. At the same time, the place, where I call home, is progressive and cliché, intelligent but trite, privileged in ways most people on the planet salivate over and yet complacent about basic community care, hyperconscious and naive, infused with youth and filled with old, dying hippies, driving their (biodiesel!) BMW to vote Democrat at the nearest public school that they don't send their grandchildren to. It's populated with both Harvard and the hood, which I love, but there is nary another brown face in Kendall Square cinema. This is important because this is a film about "street art," n'est pas? A film about a movement that comes from the graffiti of a much blacker NYC, and is informed not only by canonical (read: European/Euro-American) art, but also the commodified pop cultures of "hip-hop" and "urban life."** Oh, that means black folk. So, it's weird, if not surprising, that there's no black folk in the audience of this film besides me (black in the Obama's census form" usage of the term, of course). In Cambridge.
Some black folk, in case you don't know. HOT PANTS. We all wear these pants now.
To continue on this diatribe would take away from the review but it's an important point to make: For all of the questions of class, race, oppression, and the power of the dollar, Shep Fairey and Banksy (who is faceless, and therefore raceless- we see hands but hands can mean anything. [Someone has since pointed me to a picture of his face and I'm blocking it out forever.] The absence of a face means he's effectively gamed this system. Who knows and who cares about Banksy's race? Well played, and good for you, sir.) may do well to ask questions about why their "street art" is revered, sold, popularized, gallerized, and taught, while a "graffiti" movement 30+ years old, with a different complexion remains illicit, and on the streets.*** Not that I think there's a simple answer to that question...
But who can ask ANY of these questions better than Banksy? And who has the balls to? Just showing the balls and the brains of his work fills me with such joy (not to mention feeling like the film is and of itself, one of the biggest questions of all, about truth and purpose and what a documentary is) -not unlike the quasi-orgasmic feeling I get when hearing the last movement of part 1 of The Rite of Spring, trying on a La Perla bra, or staring at Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, etc. (or, if I can bougie-balance a bit here, listening to Unknown Pleasures, trying on the perfect pair of jeans, and seeing a significant other pimp out one's karaoke skills on Twitter.). Seeing Banksy actually risk his life (and the lives of his assistants) to paint the wall separating Israel and Palestine with stuff that looks like this:
Well, heart explosions, on multiple levels. That's not even the most brilliant of his work- it's merely the most ballsy. Artists- ask yourself if the piece you're working on would be finished if someone was shooting warning shots at your head to stop. No? Good. If yes, kindly apologize to your parents. Your haircut is enough to make them disown you.
Here's the kicker- all of these works are (mostly) temporary. They're made with the knowledge that they'll be taken down. Through the grandeur of cell phone technology and the Motherfucking Internet™, there's some record of the illicit art (which, my mother would like to remind you, is made on someone else's property without their permission).
However, in "reality," the second it is deemed unwanted by the owner, it goes under a usually-much-uglier single-coat of mismatched paint...or advertisement. And the artist knows this. In fact, that's part of the thrill of it, yeah? The need to share this image, and the need to get it out there by any means necessary, and the rejection of admittedly ridiculous institutions like galleries and art museums--- NOT the promise of eternal life and fame through the forever-viewing of being entered into the bullshit canon which seems to plague most artists of all stripes. (Certainly writers, whose work is now becoming more and more disposable like everyone else, and who seem to be fighting this transition so hard they threaten to eat their own industry. Does anyone remember Napster anymore?) These folks aren't naive wannabe art school hacks on the longest road to a doctorate in dental arts. They breathe this shit not so it can live on forever, but, like any good parent...or artist...so that it can feel its own temporality.
In this sense, street art satisfies my amateur Buddhism (even calling it amateur is a mark of how much of an amateur I am at it): it's a reinterpreted sand mandala. (Albeit on someone else's property, which might sorta screw up some Buddhist tenets. Work with me here.) Non-attachment FTW.
With that said, the OMG SPOILER ALERT YOU GUYS purported original filmmaker and the obsequious and ubiquitous Obey/Shepard Fairey cult make fame a key talking point. I'll leave it at that because anyone who sees the film will get the point banged into their head with a bit of whimsy and a ton of cringey.
(While I type this to you I have just received an email from an online retailer hawking discounted Obey t-shirts and such. Meta-tastic!)
In the end, the elliptical, twisting, and ultimately really, really tight narrative has a specific (perhaps self-serving) point. Art isn't for everyone. You can't pick up a spray can and become Banksy, no matter how much you may want to. You can't make a stencil, no matter how accurate and "cool," and have it be art. And importantly to add to the themes of classism and capitalism that permeates lots of the work of the artists portrayed: no matter how much education you may have in the field and no matter how much money you may throw at your chosen genre, you can't simply put on SAMO's crown.
(Last aside. In fact, an aside to close the review: There is a scene where some of the artists tag Basquiat's tag somewhere in Europe, and as it is almost a cliché, it shouldn't have tickled me as much as it did. But it did. The Blench girl in me was tickled. Can't wait to see the new documentary about him when it comes to town.)
AND ABOUT THE NEW STYLE.
OK, so yes. This is or was a music blog. I don't think it can be that anymore, for a number of reasons. First off, there's a million places that you can find out about music. Secondly, I am starting to have professional and ethical concerns about sharing MP3s in space until we figure out what music actually costs. Third, I am feeling limited by only sticking to one of the passions of my life, only one of the many things that inspires and titillates me and makes me want to create. Really, here are those things: Fashion, music, literature, art, architecture, video games, fitness, elegant machinery, grace, cocktails and food and delicious wine- did I say music? let me say music again: music. Oh, and love. Love in all its many stages- from big bang to sad, sad entropy. It's "aesthetics", but I am "awkward." Where does a girl like me fit in analyzing these things? That's the new dichotomy.
Go see the film, you'll enjoy the hell out of it, lest you hate THINGS. All the hip white Cantabrigians left the theater with massive smiles on their faces, and I did, too.
Official Site
* Every time I say the words "______, plural" I am hearing Tim Roth in Four Rooms in my head. Am I alone? Did anyone else see this film? I had no choice; Madonna was in it.
** Not to discredit at all the influence of punk, which is also in the blood of every street artist, yeah? Though hip-hop and punk are only a drum machine and a shade of different. In energy, and in birth, they are merely twins exiled by the Atlantic.
*** This may be best illustrated by Fairey's current mural, being hacked up and tagged in NYC as we speak. Example (one of many, methinks) here
My Cabal
Of all of the Rocktober shows that I'm excited about (I swear to you, I will eventually clean up the upcoming shows list), School of Seven Bells ranks high on my zomgz list. I'm probably too old to zomgz. I'm not exactly sure what the Z's are for. The Z is to the aughts what the X was to the 90's, n'est pas?
My Cabal is probably my favoritest song on 2008's Alpinisms, which is one of the CDs that I purchased too too late in 2008 to truly appreciate. I'm also too old to rhyme that much in one sentence.
Enjoy the video, which is also a zillion years old, but whatever.
School of Seven Bells - "My Cabal" from Ghostly International on Vimeo.
Boston folks, School of Seven Bells is coming to town on October 17th at the Paradise. There's more fun tour dates here if you're not in our fair city.
How 2009 Rules: Viva Voce
Last year, music did not move me at all. New releases disappointed, new acts were flaky, dance music went to a place that wasn't all that dancey, and I survived on In Rainbows and In Rainbows alone.
This year, thank the heavens, everything is exciting me. I remember how great it is to look at the list of new releases and feel endless anticipation waiting to open my new, shiny CD case or download the full album (how many seconds left??!!).
The live shows have also not disappointed. Viva Voce came correct when they played the tiny room at Great Scott, marrying both great musicianship with a live presence of warmth and "man, these folks I play with are awesome" vibes. Their 2009 album, Rose City, has been a companion for me since its release, accompanying me while I read, write, teach my dog new tricks, cook, clean, garden, and fuck. It is lovely all around.
In the video for Octavio, you don't get to see Anita Robinson do her amazing guitar tricks, but you do get a glimpse of her hot pink Les Paul. Live, her tone is beautiful and she has the kind of subtle confidence that is the mark of someone who is almost embarrassed that they are talented, yet knows they are talented. Watching her husband, bassist Kevin Robinson, defer to her when she does her (awesome) thing, and watching them play nice together, makes me hope that there's a chance for all of us. How about that?
Viva Voce "Octavio" from Alicia J. Rose on Vimeo.
"Octavio" has the sound I love about Viva Voce- the dual vocals, the classic slide guitar in a perfectly structured ROCK SONG (all caps on purpose for a reason) that is pretty and soft and loud and dynamic all at once. Balance is key. To underscore, the chorus is a whisper, the couple singing one line sotto voce: "Light hell on fire."
OK, only cause you said so.
Download the mp3 from Barsuk's site directly and legally and freely here. Then, check out their charming blog: vivavoce.com
The Early Boards Get The Worm
So being released in 1999, the song in question is not exactly "early Boards" and the title of this post is admittedly ridiculous. However, the content is not. I found it quite intriguing to hear how the boys from Boards of Canada would rework a 1980's pop song with their ethereal, anything-but-pop analog layering.
Here's the original, "The Midas Touch" by Midnight Star...
...and BoC's reworking under their Hell Interface moniker:
The meat of the original track is still there, but this otherworldly electro revamping completely changes the invocation of mood. Deity bless those two brothers. They're too good at what they do.