I won’t call this list the “Best Metal Albums of 2011″ because I haven’t listened to every single metal album released this year. But I have listened to a lot of them. These are the ones I liked the best.
1. Generation Why? – Diamond Plate
2. Invernal – Black Cobra
3. Lulu – Lou Reed and Metallica
4. Sasquanaut (Remixed & Remastered from 2009 release) – Lo-Pan
I’ve been informally defending the Lulu album since its release on October 31. After a recent Twitter debate and an in-car discussion en route to see Alice Cooper play Bridgeport, CT (where I was the only Lulu champion amongst our cadre of five), I feel it’s time to finally, formally craft my defense.
I’ve been reluctant to do this because it’s kind of like trying to defend, oh, I don’t know, the movie Glitter, or something. It’s essentially a losing battle because so many critics have already scoffed at it. But on the other hand, it’s a great challenge. I’m thinking of the 33 ½ series, in which in one installment Carl Wilson examines Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love. The moral of that story is that of course there’s value to be found in almost any work of art (pop or otherwise) created in earnest by artists with talent, that popular songs are popular for a reason, and that even a dubious, condescending critic can end up teary-eyed in Las Vegas at what Kathy Griffin calls “Cirque du Celine”.
The case of Lulu is a bit different, however, in that, generally speaking, the parties responsible for its existence—Lou Reed and Metallica—are relatively respected by their peers, by their fans, and by music journalists. There will always be a few snide snickers over some of their more self-indulgent moments (Exhibit A: Metal Machine Music. Exhibit B: Some Kind of Monster.), but by and large, these guys are revered. They are not the butts of jokes in the way that Celine Dion has been—until now, that is. Consequently, the task of advocating in favor of an almost universally hated album by musicians who are otherwise well-regarded becomes all the more daunting due to the bar having been set so high by the artists’ prior bodies of work.
Nevertheless, armed with Carl R. Mueller’s translation of Frank Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box—the plays that are the source material for the Lulu album—and a cup of yesterdays’ coffee, reheated and flavored with immune-boosting Ensure (and I’m now officially coining the term “grandma latte”), I put this procrastination in personal narrative aside to attempt the impossible.
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Introduction: Rubrics
A work inspired by/derived from a preexisting work should be evaluated both on how it interprets the source material and on its own merit. These two rubrics should be applied separately because either aspect of a work can be carried off successfully or ineffectively without affecting the other. That is to say, a work can honor the source material while being itself a miserable piece of crap (Exhibit C: most Frank Wildhorn musicals); conversely, it can be inconsistent with the source material and still be strong in its own right (Exhibit D: the Garbo film Camille).
Reviewing Lulu positively based solely on the former rubric—whether the record rings true to its source—is the easier position to defend. It’s a matter of drawing comparisons. Reviewing Lulu positively based on the latter rubric—whether the record triumphs as an autonomous work of art—is more difficult, as it’s hard not to be swayed by one’s opinion developed via the previous measure. But we’ll begin with the first rubric and then forget about it temporarily when we attempt the second.
1. Portraying the Plays
Lulu, the character of Wedekind’s creation, is ingeniously drawn; she is both victim and villain. Her unapologetic enjoyment of sex is out of place in the mid-1890s, and it overwhelms her male partners—all three of her husbands die after marrying her. She will not be made a whore (as proposed by the Marquis Casti-Piani, who attempts to blackmail her and sell her to a brothel), but she eventually resorts to prostitution of her own volition when she and her ailing third husband have no other source of income. (Wedekind brings judgment on this, Lulu’s ultimate compromise of her sovereignty, through Jack the Ripper, who is perhaps the only inevitable Grim Reaper of a deus ex machina worthy of ending Lulu’s life.) That Lulu’s very nature, in contrast with her beauty, incites ambivalence in all who encounter her, including the plays’ audiences, is a literary feat—to create a character that inspires both loathing and sympathy—and, remarkably, it is not unlike listeners’ polarized responses to Lulu the album.
The Lyrics
On Songs for Drella and The Blue Mask, Reed writes from the point of view of fictionalized posthumous personalities based on actual people (Andy Warhol and Delmore Schwartz, respectively), often constructing an internal monologue of speculative psychology. For The Raven, Reed takes liberties with Edgar Allen Poe’s stories with prose that alternates between verbatim Poe and deviations into Reed’s own exploration of the characters’ psyches. Similarly, for Lulu, Reed adopts the role of narrator, and, more frequently, the voice of Lulu and of the supporting characters whose lives she destroys; his lyrics also reference plot points in non-linear succession.
In “Frustration”, Reed seems to channel the thoughts of Dr. Ludwig Schön, the middle-aged Svengali character who rescued Lulu as a child from the streets of Berlin and raised her as a pet project—molding her into a performer and an insatiable lover—rather than as a daughter. The lyrics,
I want so much to hurt you
Marry me
I want you as my wife
capture Schön’s conflicted feelings over the nature of his and Lulu’s relationship, which is fraught with mutually unrequited lust and resentment. The tension between them climaxes in Act III of Earth Spirit, wherein Lulu verbally torments Schön to the brink of despair, finally persuading him to call off his engagement to the virginal Adelaide and to marry Lulu instead. Schön confesses to Lulu, “I have never in my life cursed anyone as deeply as I curse you”, and Reed’s lyrics mirror this sentiment.
The final track, “Junior Dad”, alludes to Schön’s son, Alwa, who becomes Lulu’s lover after she kills his father. Reed’s lyrics,
The greatest disappointment
Age withered him and changed him
Into junior dad
depict Alwa’s declining physical condition at the end of Pandora’s Box. He has assumed his father’s role—that of Lulu’s husband—but she is dissatisfied with him. Lulu regrets having shot Schön, saying to Alwa, “I see you lying there, and I want to cut off my hands for committing such a crime against reason!” Indeed, in Lulu’s life, Alwa has proven to be “the greatest disappointment”.
The third track “Pumping Blood” depicts the character Lulu’s grisly murder by Jack the Ripper:
“Oh Jack I beseech you”
Supreme violation
Blood in the foyer
The bathroom
The tearoom
The kitchen, with her knives splayed
In Pandora’s Box, this scene is the last of the play:
(Sweat drips from JACK’s hair. His hands are bloody. He pants as though his lungs were bursting and stares with bulging eyes at the ground. LULU, trembling, grabs the bottle, breaks it against the table, and rushes at JACK with the broken end. With his right foot he hurtles LULU onto her back, then lifts her from the floor.)
LULU: No, no!—Mercy—Murderer!—Police!—Police!
JACK: Shut up! You’re not getting away this time!
This is the most obvious parallel between the lyrics and the plays’ dialogue. Reed’s best lyric of the album also appears in “Pumping Blood”, when he observes, “In the end it was an ordinary heart.” Lulu’s heart, fickle and never fully given to the lovers who longed to have it, succumbs at last to a serial killer’s blade.
In short, lyrically, the album is rich with moments that embody the plays’ moods, action, and characters.
The Music
Part two of the question of whether Lulu does justice to the plays has to do with whether Metallica and Reed have composed a score that suits its theatrical inspiration. Again, the answer is yes.
Lulu herself is a collection of contractions, and so are the tones of the plays. They are at once cold, coarse, yet sensual. In keeping with the Expressionist trends of his day, Wedekind shows no mercy toward his characters, whose lives devolve into suicide, prostitution, murder. Even so, he allows them moments of twisted beauty, such as the love scene between Lulu and Alwa after she has shot his father. Alwa, a playwright, muses, “In my case, sensuality and creativity go hand in hand.” He adds, “Which means I could either exploit you creatively or love you.” His inner conflict is consistent with the plays’ most dominant theme—that of turmoil caused by repressed sexual aggression.
Likewise, Lulu reveals a somewhat suppressed Metallica. Whiplash speed, complex song structures, and showy soloing typical of their work are sparse here. Instead, they adopt a slower, more deliberate, doom-driven sound, in which rage brims beneath the surface rather than boiling over. Given what we know Metallica to be capable of, this music represents a subdued intensity.
Reed is a forceful musical personality, and it’s fair to say that his is really the prevailing voice in these songs, as their relative simplicity and unhurried pace is more characteristic of his work than of Metallica’s. To put it bluntly, it feels as though Reed has made Metallica his bitch. Appropriately, this recalls the perverse prelude of Earth Spirit, when an animal trainer presents Lulu to the audience as a ringmaster would a circus sideshow act:
Man will fight beast in a narrow cage:
One swings his whip with high disdain,
The other roars and with murderous rage
Leaps at his trainer’s throat—but in vain.
Cleverness first, then strength wins the day;
Beast rears high; man falls low.
But at its master’s steely gaze,
Beast backs down, pretends to play,
Affirming thus his master’s sway.
In the scene, Lulu is depicted as a willing submissive. (Schön later suggests that Lulu’s ravenous libido can only be tamed by a whip.) If Metallica have bent over for Reed, they have done so either willingly or because Reed’s strength of influence left them no choice.
The stylistic clash of Reed vs. Metallica—of abstract, droning distortion vs. dexterous precision; of measured delivery vs. frenetic velocity (e.g., “Mistress Dread”)—serves well the oppositional energies of the subject matter. The same is true of the songs’ repetitive musical statements (e.g., “The View”), as Wedekind’s characters are motivated by sexual urges. (Is not sex in essence an act of repetition?)
2. The Album on Its Own
Lulu is not a Metallica album. All those seeking a Metallica album will be disappointed. Neither is Lulu a Lou Reed album. It is a Lou Reed and Metallica album.
It’s not entirely fair to evaluate Lulu by Metallica standards or by Lou Reed standards because the record claims to be neither of those things individually. Rather, it claims to be the sum of those things. Disparaging “Loutallica” for not sounding like Metallica is almost as absurd as criticizing the quantity 3 for not being more like the quantity 2. Three contains 2, but it’s not exactly 2.*
Emotionally, Lulu’s most stunning qualities are its darkness, its brutal honesty, and its rage. (“This has so much rage it’s thrilling,” Reed told The Guardian in October.)
Musically, it’s refreshing to hear Metallica playing outside their own box. For all the technical complexity and the expansion of the boundaries of metal that Metallica have accomplished in their career, there’s never been an album where they pushed as drastically beyond their safety zone as they do on Lulu. They seem to aspire to be more than—or at least other than—Metallica. And, with Reed at the helm (his lyrics were written prior to the studio sessions), the group becomes a collective charged by, rather than hindered by, the dissonance in and disparity of musical styles for which it’s been unduly criticized.
In other words, it is the NOT-Metallica and the NOT-Lou Reed qualities that make the album great. It is this otherness, heretofore unheard from Metallica or Reed separately, that comprises Loutallica (for lack of a better term). And it is this creation of a new entity with its own sound that renders the album worthy of praise.
Now, whether or not you like that sound is a different matter. Likeability has no bearing on the sound’s uniqueness and experimental courage, which are the measures of success I’ve chosen for evaluating the work independently of the source material. Is the album aesthetically pleasing? That depends on the ears listening. Lulu is like a Rothko painting. It expresses what the artist set out to express; whether or not you enjoy looking at it or listening to it is irrelevant to its purpose.
To return to Wedekind, “Art should be self-evident.”
In Conclusion
One of the chief aims of Expressionism in German theatre was to challenge established societal norms. If Lulu is denigrated for being something other than what we’re accustomed to hearing, it is at least upholding one artistic value of the era in which its theatrical inspiration was born.
Id unleashed is not a pretty thing; in the Wedekind plays, Lulu’s beauty is only external. From within her spring primal impulses with no conscience, and in her wake lies only death.
And if that’s not metal, I don’t know what is.
***
*If, in some obscure academic corner of the universe, 3 is exactly 2, I ask anyone who resides there to please pardon my error.
If you haven’t heard already on a music blog or in your tweet stream, allow me to break the days-old news: Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman have raised over $95K (and counting) on Kickstarter for a five-city West Coast “tour”, the contents of which have yet to be determined. Except that it will involve the happy couple Amanda and Neil doing…whatever it is they do together onstage.
Here’s the explanatory video, in which AFP confesses she doesn’t know what the fuck they’ll be doing in the show, but that, even if they’re not coming to your city, you should still give them your money.
Within hours of the start of this campaign, the highest donation option of $500 had been capped. This means that the max amount of fans possible paid $500 for a ticket to the show (whatever it turns out to be), a grab bag of merch, and an “intimate” meet-and-greet with Amanda and Neil. The ironic thing is that you can usually meet Amanda after any of her shows. For free. One can only assume that meeting Neil Gaiman is more expensive. But $500? Really?
Here’s the kicker: the project is already 475% funded; it has 22 days to go; and people are STILL DONATING. It’s like this cult of followers can’t stop themselves from giving, even when the “tour” has been funded four times over.
What peeves me the most is that Amanda’s songwriting has been less than her best since about 2006. Yes, Virginia was the last strong album she wrote. No, Virginia was essentially a bunch of B-sides. WKAP was an incoherent collection mostly of self-indulgent ballads with an online fantasy game accompanying it and a commemorative coffee table book made collaboratively with none other than Neil Himself. (So it came as no surprise when AFP and Neil announced they were dating around 2009.) Now they’re married, and apparently they believe that their simultaneous presence onstage is worth anywhere from $30-$500. My question is, where is the music to back up this ticket price? Is Radiohead on ukulele worth that? Is a live album in Australia worth that–or is it just a way to avoid going into the studio?
It seems like Amanda has realized that she can sell anything on the Internet and that people will buy it–four or five times over; so quality no longer matters. She can announce a show on the beach while her husband eats a banana, and people will give her $95,000. She doesn’t have to write good songs anymore. (Maybe Neil won’t have to write books anymore.) They make more money standing on the beach than most people make in two years. This is not art. This is a musician-turned-megalomaniac e-personality run amok. It’s crowdsourcing at its worst, flippantly inviting people to pay for concerts that probably won’t come to their city or for an opportunity backstage that thousands of people have previously gotten for free.
I was a huge fan of The Dresden Dolls. They worked hard, toured incessantly, and made great music. And I never had to pay more than $40 to hear it. Granted, I may have Roadrunner Records to thank for that. According to AFP, being indie is more profitable for her than was having a record deal. When it’s profitable to the tune of $95K for a uke, a half-formed idea, and a banana, I guess she’s right. The fans have spoken: do little, and we’ll pay you a lot.
At SXSW, in a week of strong if mostly homogenous indie rock-lite bands, and at a showcase for a genre of music (metal) that’s dominated more by screaming than by singing, Lo-Pan was a welcome deviation from the norm. I’m glad I skipped The Strokes.
At their performance at Barbarella, the Columbus-based band first caught my attention with their physical arrangement onstage. Bassist Skot Thompson stood downstage-right; guitarist Brian Fristoe was downstage-left; and drummer JBartz sat upstage center. Nothing atypical about any of that.
The unusual thing was that vocalist Jeff Martin (who writes all the song lyrics) was almost hidden from view. He stood upstage-right, kind of in a corner between the bass and drums. And there he stayed, for the entire set. None of those all-too-common singer/screamer-who’s-not-playing-an-instrument running around downstage with neck veins bulging and spit and sweat flying onto the audience type antics.
In a word: no diva.
But there was singing. Yes, actual singing. Strong tenor vocals, on pitch. No screams.
I’m not sure I’d call Lo-Pan 100% metal—and that’s not just because of the singing. I can’t quite put my finger on what the classification should be. Their myspace page says “Classic Rock/Crunk/Psychedelic”, but I’m not convinced that’s right. For one thing, the songs are virtually crunk-less. The music is rock, without a doubt. The hard-hitting forward propulsion of JBartz’s drums bears some resemblance to Motörhead. There’s also some Baroness-esque sludge going on in the thickness of the bass and guitar riffs. So, score two for the metal category. But there are hints of a ballsier Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in there, as well. Score one for rock/psychedelic. (Baroness, as well, visits trippy territory.) The Chris Cornell-quality vox and dirty guitars recall early Soundgarden, but Lo-Pan isn’t grunge. Alternative rock is a useless term, and this band is tougher than that, anyway.
So, what are they? The question keeps me listening. That, and their live presence: the amount heart in their playing is visceral—collectively, and from Thompson in particular. It’s not often that the bass player stands out in a metal band; more commonly the focus is on rip-roaring guitar heroics or speed-demon drumming. (Or screams.) Again, at the risk of over-relying on this comparison, Motörhead seems an appropriate reference, Lemmy being one of the few bass players whose unmistakable style has defined a band. Similarly, Thompson brings high-caliber chops and a cool intensity that go beyond grounding the root notes of the song; in many cases he’s carrying the rhythm and sustaining the heavy mood simultaneously. This is not to say that the other players aren’t pulling their weight—they certainly are. But just listen to how Thompson matches Fristoe’s guitar note for note on bass from about the 4:45 mark of “Dragline” (from the newly remastered 2009 album Sasquanaut), nearly to the end of the song. It’s an almost Priest-like double axe attack, with the bass standing in for a second guitar. Subtle, yet powerful.
Lo-Pan’s third record, Salvador, to be released this month, maintains this power trio + power singer formula with even tighter (read: potentially commercially appealing) arrangements. Lyrically, Martin presents an inner apocalypse that seems to manifest itself in physical metaphors. Even if violent images like “blood on the snow” and “rivers run red with the blood of the greedy” are a bit overwrought and lines about “all my paranoid fantasies” a tad vague, Martin does achieve an overall atmosphere of honest despair. These may not be the most sophisticated lyrics, but their earnestness is relatively believable.
I have a feeling that some people will dismiss Lo-Pan due to the accessibility—as in, listen-ability—of their music compared to that of indie metal bands who seem to trade on the fact that you have to suffer through serious aural abrasion in order to hear the actual music. (Agalloch, for example, who headlined the SXSW showcase at Barbarella that featured Lo-Pan, drew a packed crowd. While Agalloch is a terrific band, their death metal is not “easy” to listen to, per se.) If nothing else, I’d like to make a case for Lo-Pan with the idea that indie metal doesn’t have to be avant-garde or “difficult” in order to be good, or at least enjoyable.
Before you make up your mind about Lo-Pan, see them live. They’re touring and gaining momentum. I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard them on the radio within a year or two. The possibility of their finding a broad fanbase seems likely.
You may have noticed that this blog has been dormant since Brian Viglione and Vikka Yermolevya kicked its ass with awesomeness at the end of January. For almost a month now, I’ve been wondering what could possibly top those interviews or at least come close to their level of cool. The bar for this blog seems to have been raised tenfold.
But I have finally arrived at a satisfactory answer: at present, nothing. Nothing comes close to the creativity of conception and excellence of execution of Viggie & Vikka’s concert in Iceland. And fortunately, that’s not my fault. It’s just the state of the music culture at the moment.
With this realization that I’m not to blame for February’s having been a blah month, happening-wise, I feel relieved of the responsibility to write something that equals or surpasses the last three posts. On that note, here is my February recap of what’s been in my ears lately.
Was anyone not a teeny bit excited to hear this song? Was anyone not a teeny bit disappointed by it? The verse is almost note-for-note “Waterfalls”, by TLC, and the chorus can literally be replaced by that of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” because the key and the chord changes are the same. As the Good Book says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Lady GaGa has proven the point.
Catchy tune, lame video. Product placement much? Black Star perfume. Abbey Dawn clothes. Avril’s mom even makes a cameo appearance. Is the princess of pop/punk running out of sassy ideas? (No complaints about the lingerie, however.)
The Wisconsin metal band’s debut, The Onslaught, was the closest thing to a perfect thrash album that the 2000s have produced so far. For Lazarus A.D.’s sophomore effort, the band adopts a slightly more mainstream sound — not quite as furiously fast and featuring (gasp) singing (!). The band admits to having consciously gone in a new direction for this record, which is far from a dismal failure. It’s decent. Solid, even. But it doesn’t capture the same raw purity of its predecessor.
Someone give this girl a Grammy. After hearing her soulful Beatles covers, I knew she could sing. Like, really sing, with a rare combination of deep sincerity and impeccable vocal control. Quite an instrument she has. But when I saw her perform at Webster Hall with her band Firehorse…frankly, she blew my mind. The whole band is outstanding. It’s electro-pop meets rock ‘n’ roll. Fresh and different. And Siegel is one hell of a frontwoman. Like a much, much sexier Barbra Streisand (Siegel’s voice packs that much power and expression) — with a guitar. Go see her. And support the music.
The Beatles – 2009 Remasters
It’s happened. I like the Beatles. I even went so far as to “Like” their Facebook page. But this fact has nothing to do with iTunes and its recently released Beatles collection. It has everything to do with my very latent discovery of the 2009 remastered versions of the Beatles albums, which of course I did not download from iTunes.
Not long ago, I was dutifully listening to Abbey Road for the first time, and I was flabbergasted by how great it sounded. Not only were the songs good (this I already knew, even as a Beatles non-fan), but the sound quality was good, too! A Beatles fanatic friend (and superstar guitarist) Juliana Brown brought to my attention that I was probably listening to a remastered version of the album. Sure enough, she was right. (She usually is, when it comes to Beatles things.)
So, this month, I gave the Beatles a true chance at redemption by downloading the ’09 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band — which had been the first and last Beatles CD I had ever owned, circa 1997. I sold that album, which I had found totally obnoxious and unlistenable, back to the music store within weeks of having received it for Christmas. Until about two days ago, I had remained stubbornly, ignorantly certain that something was wrong with the rest of the world that thought Sgt. Pepper was great. Everyone who believed that had to have been on acid. Or just really gullible. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Emperor’s New Clothes was more like it. The people on the album cover should have been naked. I thought.
I’m sure you can guess where this is going. The difference between the ’97 POS CD Sgt. Pepper and the ’09 remastered Sgt. Pepper is absurd. So drastic that it’s not even worth describing. I no longer hate the album. Matter of fact, I like it.
One of the only beefs I’ll ever have with Michael Jackson (R.I.P.), since I really can’t comment on his private life, is that it took so fucking long to get the Beatles catalog out of his half-gloved hands so that it could be converted into a digital format that does it justice.
Yes, it’s that time of year again. Your presents have been opened. Your waistline has been expanded. Your Christmas has been thoroughly celebrated. Unless you’re me, in which case your presents remain unopened, halfway across the country; your waistline is shrinking as you prove the effectiveness of The Poverty Diet; your Christmas was celebrated with two Jewish guys at a bar. And now you’re snowed in.
What better time to commence that all-important year-end activity — the listing of the Top 10 Best Albums of the year? In fact, there is no better time. The time is now.
Please join me in toasting with a half-drunk mug of this morning’s coffee the following albums:
10. The Black Keys — Brothers (notwithstanding the T. Rex ripoff that is the opening riff)
9. Massive Attack — Heligoland
8. Gorillaz — Plastic Beach
7. Robyn — Body Talk (Pt. 1, 2, and 3)
6. The Dead Weather — Sea of Cowards
5. Kanye West — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4. Big Boi — Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
First, I have to apologize for the belatedness of this post. Life happens, blogs get neglected, etc.
Anyhow. Last Friday July 30, I attended a show at South Paw, a great Park Slope venue full of rock memorabilia posters, from Johnny Cash to The Kills. The lineup was as follows:
Openers Gamble House hail from Los Angeles. Throwing self-censorship to the wayside, I’ll describe their music as your standard aesthetically inoffensive indie rock, which nowadays is another way of saying easy-listening music for 20-somethings. Still, I appreciate the fact that all band members were wearing relatively loose-fitting jeans. It’s nice to see guitar-wielding young men who don’t look like they’ve tried to squeeze into their girlfriends’ pants.
According to their bio, Gamble House seems to be a vehicle for lead singer Ben Becker, who began writing the band’s songs while he was still living in Brooklyn (a fact that also seems to explain why this California band has that all-too-common “Williamsburg sound” of sensitivity mixed with pop songs played by a four-piece). I heard a bit of a Beatles influence in their tunes, and I do have to give significant props to the smoothness of Becker’s and guitarist Ben Cassorla’s almost-falsetto harmonies. Their voices blend well, producing a less-fey-sounding Wild Beasts effect.
Shortwave Society, from Knoxville, TN, couldn’t have been more different from the opening act. Other than brass horns, there is hardly a type instrument that the five band members don’t play. Simultaneously, they employ a cello, an acoustic guitar, a synth keyboard, a violin, a laptop, drums, and an amped and distorted old telephone receiver. There’s also a xylophone, an electric guitar, and vocals. And on Friday night, the whole shebang ended with a segway into “Science Fiction Double Feature”–the closing credits version–from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Now, I’m all in favor of avant-garde music. It can be thrilling to hear unexpected combinations of instruments, styles, or techniques come together in a way that challenges the listener and stretches the boundaries of what we normally consider to be music. However, making the avant-garde or the experimental make sense is not an easy thing to do–not that sense is a requirement; it is, however, a means of helping the listener understand the musical ideas behind a song.
My point is that, with so much happening in their music at once, Shortwave Society have taken on the hugely complicated task of attempting to organize all of these sounds, all of these dissonant notes, all of these individual parts into a cohesive whole. And, for me, the myriad parts never quite…gel. While there is structure to each song, the motifs change so quixotically that the mind never gets to relax into a groove. Often, I couldn’t figure out why the individual players’ lines of music were happening, except that there was, for example, a cello onstage, so it might as well be made use of during the entire song. Although the band members appear to be listening to each other, the separate parts played by each musician frequently sound as though they have nothing to do with what anyone else is playing. I don’t mean that there are occasional clashing moments like those that occur in jazz improvisation; I mean that it sounds like someone determined the key of the song, outlined the structure, and handed each person a metronome set to the same tempo; then everyone went into separate, sound-proofed rooms and came up with their respective parts.
I hate to be excessively critical of a band that’s new on the scene, but I feel that the obviously high technical skill level of the members of Shortwave Society merits my respect in the form of an honest response, with my reasons for not entirely “getting” what they’re about articulated to the best of my ability. I have nothing but high praise for the band’s dexterity–especially that of violinist Sarah Hurd and cellist Alexia Pantanizopoulos, the latter performing with a gusto that is wonderful to watch. Maybe my ear lacks the sophistication required to fully understand their music. Or maybe “not understanding” is exactly their point. I have no idea. To me, that indicates that, despite the prowess, passion, and intelligence of the players, the thrust of the music remains unclear.
…Stay tuned for my recap of Adam Matta‘s performance…
Update 9/7/10: Please see Original Hipster’s interview with Adam Matta in lieu of part 2 of this blog post.
Anyone following me on Twitter or Facebook may have noticed that lately I’ve been commenting to excess on Lady GaGa. This is not because I’m a super fan (or really a full-fledged fan, per se). Rather, inspired by a Houston Press blog post by Craig Hlavaty, I’ve been sort of studying GaGa–what she says about herself, how the media have latched onto her like an alien curiosity, how her little monster minions rapturously attend her shows and public appearances. I’ve inundated my waking life with GaGa info–archival YouTube footage, early performances, interviews, and music videos, this month’s Rolling Stone feature, Barbara Walters’ pre-Oscar interview, the recent interview on Larry King Live. I’ve even toyed with a couple of her songs on the piano (like Method acting: Method researching). It was while watching GaGa’s exchange with Larry King just now that I finally realized why I’ve become so fascinated by this whole GaGa trend: we’re witnessing a major cultural moment. If it’s not as significant as Beatlemania, it’s probably as significant as grunge.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that Lady GaGa has spawned the most socially important development in music since Nirvana.
When I say “socially important,” I don’t mean that there’s necessarily something profound–emotionally, spiritually, politically, aesthetically, or intellectually–about the music or about the performer (although her lyrics are often so open-ended and her showmanship so bizarre that you could easily project onto it any level of depth that you wanted. In this sense, GaGa is the consummate narcissistic mirror for anyone who would identify with her). What I mean is that a sociological serendipity has occurred, and no matter where you look, you can’t avoid catching a glimpse of it. Trust me–I’ve tried.
GaGa is the least likely person since Kurt Cobain to have become an overnight international superstar. Just as a heroin-addicted, manic-depressive slacker from Aberdeen was an unlikely GenX revolutionary, so in an inverse correlation is an upper-middle-class, Upper East Side Catholic School girl usually not apt to become the idol of social outcasts–particularly not through disco/pop music that caters to mainstream audiences. Since when do “freaks” and misfits proclaim loyalty to candy-coated, digitally engineered pop? It’s as though the next generation of would-be Marilyn Manson fans have turned instead to a sensational young woman.
A primarily self-made star of GaGa’s origins is a first-time anomaly in this country. We’ve grown accustomed to rags-to-riches stories of hardship, divorce, abuse–take your pick–to the extent that, when someone from a relatively stable upbringing emerges, we doubt her authenticity. GaGa grew up comfortably, if not privileged. She attended the same school as Paris Hilton. She began waiting tables at 15 in order to supplement her relatively conservative allowance of $20 a week. She dropped out of Tisch at NYU to live in an allegedly roach-ridden apartment where she snorted coke, dated a metal drummer, and wrote music; at night she set hairspray ablaze as a stripper. Whether she sought out this lifestyle as a rebellion against her family’s economic background, as an idealized starving artist scenario, out of necessity, or out of self-expression, we can only speculate. She eventually worked her way up through East Village/Lower East Side music venues before blasting into supernova success within about three years. Had the self-professed freak always existed beneath the veneer of a completely normal-looking, reportedly studious girl, or did the girl cultivate her inner freak in downtown Manhattan nightclubs until the alter-personality took on a life of its own, and the normal girl found her true self in a long-lost, far more interesting Doppelgänger?
Have you noticed how she kind of crumples her left hand periodically during interviews, as though it’s seizing up on itself? Perhaps that’s her inner monster clawing to get out. Or perhaps it’s a bit of performance that’s meant to perpetuate the monster theme. Is it intentional? With GaGa, I find myself constantly asking that question. Really, how smart is she? Is she truly so self-aware, calculating, and brazen as to have manufactured a mini-Madonna with no shame of some of the borderline plagiarisms* that she commits? If the answer is yes, then she deserves credit for being precociously strategic at 24 years old. If the answer is no–if she is unaware of those elements of her work that seem copied, contrived–then she must be the most oblivious, self-absorbed 24-year-old in the music industry.x
Or maybe she’s a bit of both.
The fact that I’m even devoting thoughts and words to these questions means that GaGa has effectively hooked me and held my attention. If she’s selling a line of bullshit via her increasingly intellectual explanations of her work–in other words, if this is pseudo-intellectualism in eye-gauging high heels–she’s selling it very convincingly. But what if she really is as smart as she’s starting to seem? What if she really is as enigmatic as her incomprehensible outfits? She’d be like the second coming of Warhol. A genuine pop artist, if there ever was such a thing.
I believe that, 20 years from now, we will look back on 2009-2010–the GaGa Moment, if you will–in the same way that we remember the pivotal influence of 1991′s “Smells Like Teen Spirit“. That the current phenomenon came from well-to-do beginnings makes GaGa’s artistic success harder to swallow; how much slyer the music seems for going down like a spoonful of sugar.
*Watch Madonna’s music videos for “Vogue“ and “Justify My Love” and then watch Lady GaGa’s “Alejandro“. Visually there are so many similarities that I lost count. Also note the Catholic imagery in “Alejandro” and then recall that Madonna first raised eyebrows by turning religious ideas into double entendres with “Like a Virgin” and “Like a Prayer”.
Just read Rob Harvilla’s review of the Sleigh Bells show at the Ridgewood Masonic Temple Monday night. Review was well-written, but that’s per usual from Harvilla. I wasn’t at the show.
I’ll also openly admit that the first time I listened to any tracks by Sleigh Bells was this morning (before reading the Voice review) after seeing them mentioned on Brooklyn Vegan. I’d heard of the band before. Just hadn’t bothered to check out their music. The music is fine.
And I basically don’t care.
Now, I’m trying to wrap my head around this. According to Harvilla, people were screaming in worship of these new hipster gods. But to me, Sleigh Bells sound like bits and pieces of NIN, The Kills, Amanda Blank, and all those female pop singers on the radio whose names I don’t know because they all sound alike–sampled, stirred around a bit, and (per Harvilla) played at an excruciatingly loud volume. Frankly, I’m bored.
This blend of sonic components we’ve already heard in other contexts does not juxtapose genres that are disparate enough to be interesting when combined, and the combination is not cohesive enough to sound to me like anything more original than a Girl Talk mashup. (To be fair, Girl Talk has a heck of a lot of skill–arguably more than Sleigh Bells.)
My point is, if you put carrots, onions, kidney beans, and potatoes into a pot with some water, you haven’t created a new food in the way that you do when you turn flour (and other ingredients) into a pastry via a chemical reaction in your oven. When you make a stew, you chop stuff up and mix it together, but it all pretty much retains its original character, just in smaller pieces and in a different, randomized array. But when you take something as basic and mostly flavorless as flour, yeast, eggs, etc., and turn them into a wedding cake that looks like a Japanese pagoda–well then you’ve done something magnificent.
The year is almost over. 2012 is just a few minutes away. Time for a fast and furious 2011 retrospective!
