Art In Macro is back with a minor redesign (a template) and some new content. Some of the old content has been axed too. Yes, because it was rubbish. There will be more frequent updates that are shorter as well as an approximately quarterly piece that threatens to stretch beneath the southern boundary of you screen
Today’s review is of the performance of 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. What immediately follows is a brief interpolation about why, in spite of minimal theatre-going experience, Art In Macro is reviewing plays. Skip the next bit text to get to the review.
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In sentient adult life I have been to fewer than a dozen plays. Why? I am exactly the sort of person who should go to the theatre. It plays to my respective enjoyment of acting, literature, immediacy, and art. So why is the sum total of my theatre-going experience as an undergraduate a performance of Waiting For Godot with Coronation Street’s Roy Cropper (David Neilson) as Lucky?
Primarily it is about expense. The days of subsidized troupes and theatres are disappearing. You have to be a particularly hardened and embattled soul if you are to regularly stump up £10+ to see something that you can’t own later, that might not be good, that could potentially offend and challenge your understanding of previously cherished text. At least the similarly-priced record and DVD have a repeatability clause built-in. And at least the large touring rock band allows the opportunity for the audience member to come alive, be semi-interactive, and to consume several flagons of draught.
There were never any regrets about those few times I did pay the requisite for a play. And whilst I don’t have the experience to fully separate what makes a production first-rate from one to hate, the weary cynicism of the post-modern/late-capitalist voracious culture-consumer with a mouthpiece (e.g. this blog) is a transposable mode. I am writing as a dilettante to speed my passage into understanding; trying to make sense of things I do not fully understand without recourse to textbooks, theoreticians, and naysayers. Anyway: on with the show.
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4.48 Psychosis – Cambridge ADC Theatre
23rd October 2010
Pitched somewhere between Beckett (formal abstraction, the decomposition of semantics, an almost percussive dialogue) and Plath (despair expressed through snakish – almost primal – monologuing, depression as anger) is 4.48 Psychosis. The director’s notes claim it is not ‘a play purely about depression’ but ‘a cry for love and human connection’. All very well and noble, but ultimately begging a question about why the protagonist (The Lover) hates everyone, including those who attempt to love her?
The Lover is depressed beyond tears, a tiger set loose to live with humans, occasionally benign and self-concerned but mostly filled with incomprehension and an inability to communicate terms which might assuage her. Nothing is ever good enough. The Partner tries anger, calmness, aping The Lover’s rhetorical devices, and just about everything he understands within his power but comes up short. The Doctor attempts to retain a professional impassivity, treating The Lover like a problem rather than a human. The Lover sees this as impersonal and dehumanizing, herself as vehicle for pharmaceutical neutralizing. The Doctor does care; when she takes off the professional mask to reveal herself, The Lover understands the necessity of the object/subject relationship, how social and professional boundaries cannot be transcended. It kills her.
The acting is good throughout. Hannah Wildsmith is perhaps too young, unravaged, and restrained to be The Lover, giving some of the angrier moments the same kind of forearm-to-forehead tendency of the period drama rather than the modernist nerve-jangler. Nonetheless, her smooth, clear-headed soliloquies highlight the patterns that repeat and fold in on themselves later, crushing her under her own rhetoric (appropriate, considering her fate). Archie Preston is similarly fine as The Partner, requiring the greatest range, attempting a light (“RSVP? ASAP?”) that contrasts jarringly with the near treacle-black of the denouement. Best of all, or at least the most convincing, is Nikki Moss as The Doctor. She is a blank page, phlegmatic in that way doctors have to be to preserve their own sanity (irony probably unintentional from Kane). Clipped and distant, yet her notes grant her omnipresence.
The direction is surefooted throughout, with minimal stage set-up to let the actors act and the words breathe. Sound and lights offer subtle tonal shifts; the overriding impression leaves you with no doubt that all concerned have extracted all they can from this play.
All said, it is the play itself that is the most problematic aspect of the production. Endless debate could be devoted to this topic, though to cut a long story short, it appears to valorize the plight of the depressed and somewhat elevate their status to nihilist-visionary. The Lover (difficult not to read as an allegory for Sarah Kane herself, in light of her suicide before this play reached the stage) laments pills and medication as curtailing the higher functions of her brain, when it is pretty clear to see that the higher functions of her brain are misfiring, her synapses prone to influencing angry, awkward bursts of dialogue that make living and supporting a person in that state totally fucking impossible to deal with. Of course, Kane attempts to pre-empt such readings, but these are the moments that feel the most forced.
10.6.10
Funny People and the rise of the insider film
There are films about love written and produced by some of the most loveless people you could ever hope to meet. There are films about death written by people who have never experienced it in the family or friends. There are films about racial tension written by some of the most privileged around. But when it comes to films which mock the pretensions and politics of entertainment industry insiders, I tend to believe those the most. You write what you know, and in some cases, this is all some people know.
One such film is Funny People, which depicts the life of struggling and successful people in and around Hollywood's comedy scene. This is not a bad film, so please do not read on if you are expecting a humorous panning. It is frequently funny (though notably not-so-much in the stand-up comedy scenes which deign to give the film some kind of authoritative voice) and contains a good half-dozen memorable characters engaging in a not-too-unrealistic series of events. If that isn't praise, I don't know what is.
What it absolutely is is a mess. A confused hurricane of ideas that don't all quite pay off. For instance: I like a lot of music, so when I have a band, there's not this idea of 'oh, we will sound like this or that'. We will begin as a style (let's say energetic post-punk) and then I will bring a song that sounds slow and sad and perhaps a little bit country. This may be a contributing factor toward none of my bands being successful and quite jarring. It doesn't all quite fit – but that's ok, because all I ever was was some dude in a bar. Judd Apatow was 41 with a lot of money at his disposal. There are moments in this work that are pure Curb Your Enthusiasm-style improv. That will sit next to a glossy hi-def/tightly-scripted scene of emotional outpouring. The cinematography is similarly disjointed, as is its observation of certain maxims such as the 30-degree rule, moral consistency of characters and their ability to flip between sincerity and joking.
Adam Sandler plays the version of himself his detractors hold true: a decent comic, inexplicably likeable, who has made a barrel of money playing the kook in increasingly inane and flimsy comedy films – who is now Sad and Alone (and dying). It's a believable premise. RZA, he of Wu-Tang fame, plays a man who works in a salad bar and is happy with it. It is not a believable premise. It is not a believable premise because it is OBVIOUSLY RZA and this film wants you to recognise this as much as it wants you to be familiar with Adam Sandler and his personal story. Somewhere in the middle is Jason Schwartzmann, who is believable as a smug, shallow bedder of the opposite sex, but is not believable as an actor of a desperately uncool sitcom, being the man in Hollywood who has landed on his feet the most times ever.
And as a brief aside, looking for a good female character? Well, there aren't any. There's a pretty lazy “fuck-this-chick omg-i-wanted-to-fuck-that-chick-how-could-YOU-fuck-that-chick-dude-hey-man-if-you-don't-fuck-this-chick-then-i'm-gonna” going on that is gross and weird and the more I think about it could bring the whole film down. Of the five women I can remember with speaking parts, two are 'starfuckers', one is Sarah Silverman (playing herself as comedy insider), and two are main characters – one that Schwartzmann & Rogen have the aforementioned 'dialogue' about, who fulfils the indie-film sex object du jour role well – and the girl that is the object of a tug of love between Sandler and a hilarious Eric Bana that the film can't decide whether she's dreadful and only in love with someone because of mitigating factor X – or whether she's The Woman We All Secretly Want. Ugh.
And maybe this confusion in characterisation is deliberate, a comment – but I can't see it – not when the film contains sage advice spoken by Eminem, playing a version of himself as sage giver of advice caught in the role of celebrity he never wanted. All these scenes do, with moments where we are intimate with some of the world's most recognisable people, whether they are 'real' or 'comic', is add weight to the film's status as 'insider'. That's why it contains so many men of status.
The classic touchstone for such movies would be Robert Altman's The Player, the king of insider movies, not only apes industry mores and dialogue, but pays homage to movies and directors of the past. But recent years have seen television and films that also attempt to show the inside world of 'the industry'; Entourage, Action, The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, Moving Wallpaper, Boogie Nights, Lost in La Mancha, Man Bites Dog. A whole series of Seinfeld is given over to this; we can even stretch back farther to Dziga Vertov, Michael Powell, Hitchcock and Fellini. Even now, as I write, the episode of Glee quipped “you need to do a real investigation. I'm taking CSI-real.”
Which kind of throws contemporary television into a series of post-modern conundra – about the way that they are contained by and almost cannot exist without reference to the issues they comment on. Film is eating itself. We're not just talking simulacrum and versions of reality. We're talking about the future of art as a landscape whose entire series of reference points is simply other art.
That is exactly what Funny People is. Every scene does not simply stand for itself or its place in a narrative – but for its place outside the film as well, about its relationship to what you know about the actors and their lives, the conventions of plot, etc. And you might say “well, nothing new there, asshole – musicals are totally knowing and people just dance and know routines.” The inherent post-modernism of musical-theatrical performance at least serves to propel the plot. The post-modernism of Funny People serves to say 'Hey. We're being post-modern. We know what this is.” And it's kind of boring. And smug. And massively self-serving.
Fortunately there's enough of a film hanging out in close proximity to these instances (it's long enough) to make it worth a watch. And it's nowhere near as problematic for reality as The Hills – and it's pretty funny. But post-modern looks at the inside of things have sidelined music, movies and TV for long enough. It's time to get back to talking about things.
One such film is Funny People, which depicts the life of struggling and successful people in and around Hollywood's comedy scene. This is not a bad film, so please do not read on if you are expecting a humorous panning. It is frequently funny (though notably not-so-much in the stand-up comedy scenes which deign to give the film some kind of authoritative voice) and contains a good half-dozen memorable characters engaging in a not-too-unrealistic series of events. If that isn't praise, I don't know what is.
What it absolutely is is a mess. A confused hurricane of ideas that don't all quite pay off. For instance: I like a lot of music, so when I have a band, there's not this idea of 'oh, we will sound like this or that'. We will begin as a style (let's say energetic post-punk) and then I will bring a song that sounds slow and sad and perhaps a little bit country. This may be a contributing factor toward none of my bands being successful and quite jarring. It doesn't all quite fit – but that's ok, because all I ever was was some dude in a bar. Judd Apatow was 41 with a lot of money at his disposal. There are moments in this work that are pure Curb Your Enthusiasm-style improv. That will sit next to a glossy hi-def/tightly-scripted scene of emotional outpouring. The cinematography is similarly disjointed, as is its observation of certain maxims such as the 30-degree rule, moral consistency of characters and their ability to flip between sincerity and joking.
Adam Sandler plays the version of himself his detractors hold true: a decent comic, inexplicably likeable, who has made a barrel of money playing the kook in increasingly inane and flimsy comedy films – who is now Sad and Alone (and dying). It's a believable premise. RZA, he of Wu-Tang fame, plays a man who works in a salad bar and is happy with it. It is not a believable premise. It is not a believable premise because it is OBVIOUSLY RZA and this film wants you to recognise this as much as it wants you to be familiar with Adam Sandler and his personal story. Somewhere in the middle is Jason Schwartzmann, who is believable as a smug, shallow bedder of the opposite sex, but is not believable as an actor of a desperately uncool sitcom, being the man in Hollywood who has landed on his feet the most times ever.
And as a brief aside, looking for a good female character? Well, there aren't any. There's a pretty lazy “fuck-this-chick omg-i-wanted-to-fuck-that-chick-how-could-YOU-fuck-that-chick-dude-hey-man-if-you-don't-fuck-this-chick-then-i'm-gonna” going on that is gross and weird and the more I think about it could bring the whole film down. Of the five women I can remember with speaking parts, two are 'starfuckers', one is Sarah Silverman (playing herself as comedy insider), and two are main characters – one that Schwartzmann & Rogen have the aforementioned 'dialogue' about, who fulfils the indie-film sex object du jour role well – and the girl that is the object of a tug of love between Sandler and a hilarious Eric Bana that the film can't decide whether she's dreadful and only in love with someone because of mitigating factor X – or whether she's The Woman We All Secretly Want. Ugh.
And maybe this confusion in characterisation is deliberate, a comment – but I can't see it – not when the film contains sage advice spoken by Eminem, playing a version of himself as sage giver of advice caught in the role of celebrity he never wanted. All these scenes do, with moments where we are intimate with some of the world's most recognisable people, whether they are 'real' or 'comic', is add weight to the film's status as 'insider'. That's why it contains so many men of status.
The classic touchstone for such movies would be Robert Altman's The Player, the king of insider movies, not only apes industry mores and dialogue, but pays homage to movies and directors of the past. But recent years have seen television and films that also attempt to show the inside world of 'the industry'; Entourage, Action, The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, Moving Wallpaper, Boogie Nights, Lost in La Mancha, Man Bites Dog. A whole series of Seinfeld is given over to this; we can even stretch back farther to Dziga Vertov, Michael Powell, Hitchcock and Fellini. Even now, as I write, the episode of Glee quipped “you need to do a real investigation. I'm taking CSI-real.”
Which kind of throws contemporary television into a series of post-modern conundra – about the way that they are contained by and almost cannot exist without reference to the issues they comment on. Film is eating itself. We're not just talking simulacrum and versions of reality. We're talking about the future of art as a landscape whose entire series of reference points is simply other art.
That is exactly what Funny People is. Every scene does not simply stand for itself or its place in a narrative – but for its place outside the film as well, about its relationship to what you know about the actors and their lives, the conventions of plot, etc. And you might say “well, nothing new there, asshole – musicals are totally knowing and people just dance and know routines.” The inherent post-modernism of musical-theatrical performance at least serves to propel the plot. The post-modernism of Funny People serves to say 'Hey. We're being post-modern. We know what this is.” And it's kind of boring. And smug. And massively self-serving.
Fortunately there's enough of a film hanging out in close proximity to these instances (it's long enough) to make it worth a watch. And it's nowhere near as problematic for reality as The Hills – and it's pretty funny. But post-modern looks at the inside of things have sidelined music, movies and TV for long enough. It's time to get back to talking about things.
28.4.10
Crystal Antlers / Mt. Eerie live
Not together. That would be weird, right? First update for a while, this coincides with the first gigs I've been to in a while and the first tumblr posts I made in a while and the first time I stepped outside to breathe oxygen that did curl back to my face and say "do your fucking dissertation you fuck". So I did. I make no apologies. Sorry.
In reverse chronological order, Crystal Antlers. Saw these dudes at Retro Bar about a year and a half ago early in their hype cycle. Lot of thin kids, pouters, fake glasses, the weird child-like dress sense. Blog readers, basically, hypists. Second time they played I couldn't afford it - £14! OK, you get Ariel Pink and Ponytail thrown in...still, doesn't mean I had the dollar. Heard that place was rammed.
It's pretty clear the hype and memory-purge has done for CA's momentum a bit. There were about as many people there as there were as the first time, and my friend and I were the only repeat offenders. Still, can't keep a good band down. Before the review, a picture that makes them look like just another bunch of dudes spanking their planks.
Mt. Eerie then. This was a few weeks ago, I am afraid I cannot recall the date. Last time I saw Phil, he was cross-legged playing fey acoustic stuff, at a time when I didn't really want that kind of stuff. His fans aren't really my kind of people either; there's always this ultra-reverential atmosphere that I can barely resist farting throughout.
His last couple of releases have certainly been interesting, and I think I recognise in him what he's trying to do: get in touch with that 'wood spirit' that lies at the heart of 'black metal', rather than the corpse-paint and spikes and the blasphemy. There are certain chords that are deep and true and quite primal and it would be interesting to see if Mr. Elvrum, famed maker of melancholic acoustic albums, could successfully find his inner metal without resorting to hideous riffola and elven lore.
In reverse chronological order, Crystal Antlers. Saw these dudes at Retro Bar about a year and a half ago early in their hype cycle. Lot of thin kids, pouters, fake glasses, the weird child-like dress sense. Blog readers, basically, hypists. Second time they played I couldn't afford it - £14! OK, you get Ariel Pink and Ponytail thrown in...still, doesn't mean I had the dollar. Heard that place was rammed.
It's pretty clear the hype and memory-purge has done for CA's momentum a bit. There were about as many people there as there were as the first time, and my friend and I were the only repeat offenders. Still, can't keep a good band down. Before the review, a picture that makes them look like just another bunch of dudes spanking their planks.
Shirtless drummer! Singing bass player! Incongruously hot keyboardist! Even a Bez figure! Lesser bands would embody these terrible clichés, even revel in them. Fortunately for Crystal Antlers, their talent is so high that they completely transcend these semiotic nightmares.
So, young rock fan, pick a decade and Crystal Antlers will pay homage. '50s? They have the blue-eyed pop nouse. '60s? Chaotic garage mayhem. '70s? A double-helping of California slack and Grand Funk bass. These guys obviously have heard the Dischord roster from the '80s, and throw the whole fat lot in with the healthy post-modernism of the '90s to now.
The sum of these influences is a brave band, willing to put three-minute reverb-crazy ballads like 'Andrew' next to the depraved psych trawl of 'Parting Song for the Torn Sky'. They largely ignore their own debut LP Tentacles, which was entirely brilliant, but got insulted on blogs owned by people with no taste anyway. Assholes.
It doesn't matter, because Crystal Antlers are survivors. The new stuff pops, the old stuff rocks, and even if Sound Control this evening is doomier and whiter than Edward Scissorhands' hiding place, you can't stop a band from doing it, not when they're this good.
Mt. Eerie then. This was a few weeks ago, I am afraid I cannot recall the date. Last time I saw Phil, he was cross-legged playing fey acoustic stuff, at a time when I didn't really want that kind of stuff. His fans aren't really my kind of people either; there's always this ultra-reverential atmosphere that I can barely resist farting throughout.
His last couple of releases have certainly been interesting, and I think I recognise in him what he's trying to do: get in touch with that 'wood spirit' that lies at the heart of 'black metal', rather than the corpse-paint and spikes and the blasphemy. There are certain chords that are deep and true and quite primal and it would be interesting to see if Mr. Elvrum, famed maker of melancholic acoustic albums, could successfully find his inner metal without resorting to hideous riffola and elven lore.
Not enough rock shows are funny. They're all ultra-serious, this-is-my-art kind of events, which is wholly appropriate for some, but some dudes could just do with treading on a rake once in a while.
Mt. Eerie are funny. Not in a way that makes them novelty, or silly, or make their music less pure, maaaaaan - but funny in a way that makes lead Eerie Phil Elvrum seem like more of a human and less of a phallus-toting rock bloke.
Before we discuss Mt. Eerie's humour, let us discuss No Kids, the support band AND backing band for Mt. Eerie. Sassy blue-eyed pop nuggets played by Games Workshop nerds, a twinkle in their eyes, they create the irresistible urge to dance. They're fun and sexy, but safe for pre-teens.
In their guise as axe-wielders for Mt. Eerie, they are transformed. Phil corpses. "We're going to play 10 to 11 rock songs. Have fun." Then the first chord hits. BAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM. It's like being sideswiped by a Ford Cortina. The half-dozen or so cute, vegan, PETA-friendly, expensively dishevelled humans on stage launch into a skewed version of metal culled from the darkest forest in Norway. I laugh. My friend laughs. Many people look disheartened. Kaufman is alive! They keep this shtick up. It's brilliant. I want to mosh but there are people typing VERY HARD into their Blackberries.
They ease off the MetalZone pedals to play some gorgeous stuff, some from the Microphones days and some just as effortlessly good as he's always been, whatever the band name. This pleases all until one last ride to Valhalla, guitar raised uncynically aloft, crashing through the enchanted night. Hilarious, man. Brilliant.
19.2.10
TWO BITS OF SPOON
First the album, the only record thus far that I have reviewed by listening to it on Spotify. It's probably the future of record-sending; a resource to stream music. Add in some codes and some threats about recording and the industry probably save a ton on promos.
I've been a fan of the band since I saw them in 2005, and even though I am conscious of their status as an indie vanguard band du jour, I can't help but feel they're the one band whose imminent acceptance by FM radio would be a totally welcome and ideal thing.
First, their new LP...
...and then live on the tour to support it.
I've been a fan of the band since I saw them in 2005, and even though I am conscious of their status as an indie vanguard band du jour, I can't help but feel they're the one band whose imminent acceptance by FM radio would be a totally welcome and ideal thing.
First, their new LP...
Spoon, Transference
That's the problem with the kids these days: no consistency. The Strokes lost their magic formula as soon as they found it. The Libertines might have done it had they not irritated Her Majesty's finest so much. Oasis and Blur; familiar stories of fighting and drugs. Thank ye gods for Spoon, as dependable and upright as the utensil they're named for, provided Uri Geller is safely outside a 50 mile radius.
Transference, the Austin quartet's seventh, continues in the mutual quest to be the best band that nobody will ever hear. Initially appearing to be their signature mix of loping, sarcastic funk, songwriting that would shame the Brill Building's finest and dubby production tricks, Spoon have subterfuge on their agenda. They invert the symbols that made previous long-players such romps; the repetition seems threatening rather than a call to party. The flickers of echo sound like madness in the dark rather than intimate or loving. There's something of the night about the whole affair.
Closest to the Spoon of old are the singles; 'Written in Reverse' struts along unimpeded, 'Got Nuffin' stomps like Northern Soul and 'The Mystery Zone' manages to leave you demanding more from a one-note bassline. Even the stuff that is a progression or a deconstruction of the previous tropes are delivered with the same cocksure confidence as ever. Even Britt Daniel's pen is refusing to fail him (“I've seen it in your eyes / there's nothing there.”).
If you've ever sat around thinking 'why isn't there some kind of mid-point between the best of indie-rock, soul music and pop, preferably something timeless-sounding without any overplaying or grandstanding emotional outpourings' then you should probably check out Spoon. They're on a helluva run, they put on a great rock show and on form like this, they don't know how to make a bad record. Transference isn't the best starting point (2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is), but it's a great place to wash up.
...and then live on the tour to support it.
Spoon / White Rabbits @ Academy 3
15th February 2010
Five years ago, the Spoon live experience was all about economy. Stripped back, no effects, they pumped out hit after hit after hit without as much as a by-your-leave. They still do the latter, make no mistake. Except now, they're more ambitous; they stretch things out, add and take away, entirely confident that at the core of each number is a Fundamentally Good Thing. And they'd be right.
Seven albums in, they're armed to the teeth with savvy indie-pop-soul-rock nuggets. Their secret? Don't do too much. No one in Spoon ever overplays. A keyboard line could be one or two notes, but they make all the difference. The bassline to 'The Mystery Zone' is one single note, repeatedly jabbed, and it's absolutely fantastic.
It'd be unfair to pick highlights, so to arbitraily pick songtitles off the setlist: 'I Saw The Light' has two parts: great and greater. 'Rhythm and Soul' is the best pop song you didn't hear in the '00s. 'Written In Reverse' will probably be the best pop song you didn't hear this decade. 'The Ghost of You Lingers' recasts German titans Neu! minus their cerebral tendencies in a fairly heartstopping performance. There are no clunkers. It's home run after touchdown after goal after slam dunk all around.
Support act White Rabbits are something of a Spoon Jr; their recent LP was produced by head Spooner Britt Daniel, and they share some of the collar-popping sang froid of their mentors. Still, it's a head-turning performance, refreshingly quirk-free, taking the spirit of the headline act more than their actual tunes.
11.2.10
TV GHOST INTERVIEW
Since hearing Cold Fish by TV Ghost, I've been pretty hooked. Thought I'd landed a real scoop only to find out that the NME had pipped me by giving them a brief mention. I'm still pretty sure this is their first UK publication interview though. Interesting for the wrong reasons, perhaps?
The Germans have a saying: “do not make monuments to the living, for they can still disgrace the stone.” It's a bit like our 'don't meet your heroes' line, but cleverer. Having met two heroes previously (British Bulldog: warm, solid handshake, enthusiasm. Dynamite Kid: called me a 'poof'' and yelled dubious obscenities from his knackered wheelchair), your hack opted for the side of generosity and chased up an interview with TV Ghost.
Stricken with love, according to last.fm, yr. corresp spun their recent LP Cold Fish seventeen times, most of which were consecutive. That's not including physical plays and ripping the whole thing to an MP3 player, deleting everything else in turn. Then buying the thing on import, alongside their rare-as-rocking-horse-shit debut self-titled 12”.
People call their genre 'shitgaze'. It's a stupid term, based on a joke. Now people are talking about this whole 'shitgaze' revolution. It's enough to make you vomit up a lung. How does singer/guitarist Timothy Conrad Glick feel about this?
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I dunno.”
At the time, it seems like an infuriating answer. Looking back, it was a dumb question. When has a band ever graciously accepted a genre tag? Even if the genre tag came from the dude who recorded their first 12” record?
So how would you describe what TV Ghost did to some dude or lady dude who had never heard you? “Uhhhhhhhhh. [silence].”
Looks like I'm going to have to do it for him. The Ghosters came a-creepin' outta Lafayette, IN, a “pretty crappy” rustbelt town that one W. Axl Rose used to call home. It's not riven with the crack and crime of East Coast no-fly zones like Trenton and Camden. Instead it's decaying in that mundane, late-capitalistic way, all rusted gates and abandoned lots.
The band themselves are four skinny kids on drugs and a nihilistic kick to match those dudes from The Big Lebowski. Thousand-yard stares. Remorseless stances. Nary a smile between them. You'd mistake them for complete dorks if they weren't playing some of the most vital music of the century.
There's something for everyone who hates most things. TV Ghost stick their necks up above the garage-rock parapet to incorporate telekinetic spasms of no wave, the icy-technological paranoia of Chrome and their early industrial ilk and wiry, worried post-punk. Glick howls like his bowels are being extracted through his gluteals and the rest of the band pummel away in noisy ecstacy.
Back to the interview. What's going down in Lafayette? “Oh, nothing.” It's the spiritual home of Guns'n'Roses, I tell him. Stone silence. Like his album suggests, cold fish. “There's not much of a scene here at all.”
But a lot of the recent garage/lo-fi stuff has had a lot of press coverage. Even MTV did a little feature on groups like Tyvek, Kurt Vile and Psychedelic Horseshit. “I don't know about that.” You've even played some pretty awesome stuff, like the recent WFMU festival with legends such as Teenage Jesus and Faust. “Mmmm.”
Mmmm? Mmmmm???!!! Just as rage is about to find voice, he finds enough to tell Student Direct, a propos of nothing, that Lydia Lunch thought their drummer, the improbably named Jackson Van Horn, was “pretty hot.” And then he laughs a lot, like a man who does not laugh a lot. Like this: “Ha. Ha ha. Ha. Ha.” Stop.
Which sends your writer into an inexplicable fit of laughter, capped with a pretty obvious ephiphany: those Germans were right. Whaddya expect this guy to do, come out with a Beckett play? He's a singer in a band tipped for success, not Ban Ki Moon. His defensiveness and lack of expurgation don't mean much at all when you crank the record up high.
Whatever their future status (hint: they're tipped to act as poster boys in the new US arm of the next big NME wave) they've managed to sew up a couple of high-quality releases along the way. 2010 should see them coming over here to show us what they've got. What can we expect? “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Oh just go and see them. Far less infuriating.
10.1.10
"I know they were poor but those gaberdine trousers were just divine."
Class fetishism in popular music is probably worse than ever.
Joe Lean. Chirpy chirrupy cockernee barrelboy songsmith. Knees up mavver braaaahn. It's just a stage name, he raffishly admits under his artfully corkscrewed haircut; his real name is Joe van Moyland. He won't hide his middle-class background. Fact is the guy was christened Joseph Antony Bernays Beaumont. The guy is so confused about class and self-identity that I wouldn't be surprised if he auditioned for the role of Winston Smith in 1984 wearing a top hat and a silver-topped cane.
Banal caterwauling and awful poetry aside, the pout of his lips leave the exact amount of space to poke a silver spoon into. The sub-Corbijn photography, the chasing after a vacantly doe-eyed nonentity who points her feet inward and walks like a 25-year old version of a 5-year old...these tropes are so hackneyed that they're artless and weird, like a dish with a photograph of a cat on it.
It's not the fault of Lean/van Moyland/Bernays Beaumont. Rock and roll continuously and ignorantly self-mythologises so heavily as the working-class artform that I'm surprised i. that the irony hasn't been sucked out of the universe and ii. that a band hasn't yet taken to the stage in miner's lamps and pith helmets.
A few months ago I reviewed the NME compilation album of 2009 and complained that it contained a whole lot of black signifiers despite the lack of black musicians. The basic nub of the argument was not specifically that the record was racist; it was that the group of people involved in musical manufacture and receipt (i.e. artists and audience) were so scared of what constituted their own authenticity, that they stole the authenticity of others. In as far as such a thing exists anyway.
This is Esser. His song 'Headlock' is track 17 on disc one of said compilation. If you really need to hear it, it's here. I wouldn't though. Take a look at that picture. I mean, a really good look at it. Does anything strike you as incongruous?
An ersatz teddy-boy haircut with mod dress? Making music with undeniable connections to dance, hip-hop and pop? People can talk about post-modernism and the delineation of the pop-culture tribes but these only occur in groups with no discernible means of individuality. Their 'individuality' is to fetishise and magpie other vibrant forms.
I read a great line in an article in Philadelphia Weekly; it stated that 'hybridity is the new authenticity'. I believe that. There's no sense in pining for a fictional Britain/world. We're better than that. We are multi-cultural now and wiser for it.
What class fetishism and tribal fetishism in fashion and music amounts to is a form of cultural and historical tourism. So, when you spot someone who is wearing a keffiyah, NHS-of-1984 glasses (with no glass/plain glass - even worse) and a trilby, it is morally correct to thrash them within an inch of their lives. Coincidentally, it'll be the first authentic experience of their lives.
That said, it happens in higher arts too. Cormac McCarthy was born Charles McCarthy - Charles presumably no earthy enough for McCarthy's blood and thunder Americana. Playing on your own unglamourousness is funny, and it didn't harm David Mitchell, did it? The English middle-class is riven with internal conflicts. What's inauthentic about that?
Joe Lean. Chirpy chirrupy cockernee barrelboy songsmith. Knees up mavver braaaahn. It's just a stage name, he raffishly admits under his artfully corkscrewed haircut; his real name is Joe van Moyland. He won't hide his middle-class background. Fact is the guy was christened Joseph Antony Bernays Beaumont. The guy is so confused about class and self-identity that I wouldn't be surprised if he auditioned for the role of Winston Smith in 1984 wearing a top hat and a silver-topped cane.
Banal caterwauling and awful poetry aside, the pout of his lips leave the exact amount of space to poke a silver spoon into. The sub-Corbijn photography, the chasing after a vacantly doe-eyed nonentity who points her feet inward and walks like a 25-year old version of a 5-year old...these tropes are so hackneyed that they're artless and weird, like a dish with a photograph of a cat on it.
It's not the fault of Lean/van Moyland/Bernays Beaumont. Rock and roll continuously and ignorantly self-mythologises so heavily as the working-class artform that I'm surprised i. that the irony hasn't been sucked out of the universe and ii. that a band hasn't yet taken to the stage in miner's lamps and pith helmets.
A few months ago I reviewed the NME compilation album of 2009 and complained that it contained a whole lot of black signifiers despite the lack of black musicians. The basic nub of the argument was not specifically that the record was racist; it was that the group of people involved in musical manufacture and receipt (i.e. artists and audience) were so scared of what constituted their own authenticity, that they stole the authenticity of others. In as far as such a thing exists anyway.
This is Esser. His song 'Headlock' is track 17 on disc one of said compilation. If you really need to hear it, it's here. I wouldn't though. Take a look at that picture. I mean, a really good look at it. Does anything strike you as incongruous?
An ersatz teddy-boy haircut with mod dress? Making music with undeniable connections to dance, hip-hop and pop? People can talk about post-modernism and the delineation of the pop-culture tribes but these only occur in groups with no discernible means of individuality. Their 'individuality' is to fetishise and magpie other vibrant forms.
I read a great line in an article in Philadelphia Weekly; it stated that 'hybridity is the new authenticity'. I believe that. There's no sense in pining for a fictional Britain/world. We're better than that. We are multi-cultural now and wiser for it.
What class fetishism and tribal fetishism in fashion and music amounts to is a form of cultural and historical tourism. So, when you spot someone who is wearing a keffiyah, NHS-of-1984 glasses (with no glass/plain glass - even worse) and a trilby, it is morally correct to thrash them within an inch of their lives. Coincidentally, it'll be the first authentic experience of their lives.
That said, it happens in higher arts too. Cormac McCarthy was born Charles McCarthy - Charles presumably no earthy enough for McCarthy's blood and thunder Americana. Playing on your own unglamourousness is funny, and it didn't harm David Mitchell, did it? The English middle-class is riven with internal conflicts. What's inauthentic about that?
3.12.09
What do you want to read?
More second guessing and self-examination at the flaccid end of the music press
I've just been going through my outbox and a pile of reviews written a while ago when I came across this. I'd been asked to review this single:
At the time, if I remember rightly, I was on a total noise fix: Whitehouse, Masonna, Yellow Swans, Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle - anything that just abandoned technique for brutal jolts of whipping velocity and decibels. I'd lost touch with 'the song'; its capability to hold nuance and shape and a predictability that was somehow cheery and comforting, rather than anaesthetising. Here's what I wrote.
Have to admit; two and a half years on, I'm still pretty pleased with that. What have we learned? It's 'different' - markedly so. There's a high voice. It's weird, daring and 'pop music'. In case you don't 'get' the reference to 'hack-and-slash', it's just an onomatopaeic phrase I invented for 'guitar music'. There's enough there to merit a curious look-see at YouTube.
It wasn't enough. The editor wrote back.
So you want me to drop sentence three? The key line? Just because the song was different to how you expected?
Describing sound is simply just utilising social orthodoxy to explain something that in reality is unique and only really 'explainable' on its own terms (ie. by listening to it). I'd rather read 'this is fucking amazing' and have no idea what it is than say 'this is rock music' and how no idea how good it is.
The finest piece of music writing, for my money, is Lester Bangs' John Coltrane Lives, in which John Coltrane is mentioned in passing and is an unnamed character who appears in a first-person narrative which ends in Bangs blowing a saxophone in his landlady's face.
What Bangs does, better than me - better than any writer on the topic bar perhaps Ralph Ellison - is get straight to the heart of the matter. Sonic detail is for hacks and chumps and fuckshits and dumbbells. OK, I exaggerate, but it's not something to go on about. Bangs and Ellison and even Christgau's little summaries tell you about the world it relates to, rather than the insular jargon a piece or song is formed of.
A record has to exist in a real life populated by a few heroes and a whole lot of plain old shitbags. To exist, to be noticed, it has to justify itself in moments and reactions. It's not enough to rehash the plot and structure: what does it do? Why does it do? Is what and why it does worth anything?
But as a young writer, I acquiesced and wrote three progressively worse versions.
Not bad. The next one was specifically as the editor requested.
The final one is terrible. That whole 'think of a place, you think of this: well here is this' complete fucking BULLSHIT.
By which time I'm so racked with doubts about my own ability that I don't write anything else fit for print for a year and a half. Which probably says more about my ego, confidence and level of expectancy than it does about anything else.
Now I'm in the same position as that editor (who is a basically decent chap with whom I just happen to disagree fundamentally), I find myself being able to push my viewpoint - that it's the essence and not the facts that count - across. Often with venom and barely concealed rage, but hey, my prerogative.
With a level of provocation imbued into the fabric of every article, you run the risk of exposure to complaint and the necessity to justify oneself. Such a thing recently happened in response to the print publication of this review.
This response felt good to receive. That the writing wasn't being passively consumed, but had inflamed a contest of ideas. That said, I completely disagreed. Here is my response in return.
Removed from all this, I need to ask the question: what do people want to read? Fire and brimstone and forthright idea-mapping, or passive descriptives?
Perhaps it is me that is wrong. I read press releases and reviews daily that lean toward the latter, but feel ultimately bored and cold by them - though their unceasing existence gives credence to their existence.
I've just been going through my outbox and a pile of reviews written a while ago when I came across this. I'd been asked to review this single:
At the time, if I remember rightly, I was on a total noise fix: Whitehouse, Masonna, Yellow Swans, Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle - anything that just abandoned technique for brutal jolts of whipping velocity and decibels. I'd lost touch with 'the song'; its capability to hold nuance and shape and a predictability that was somehow cheery and comforting, rather than anaesthetising. Here's what I wrote.
And now for something COMPLETELY different. Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
Have to admit; two and a half years on, I'm still pretty pleased with that. What have we learned? It's 'different' - markedly so. There's a high voice. It's weird, daring and 'pop music'. In case you don't 'get' the reference to 'hack-and-slash', it's just an onomatopaeic phrase I invented for 'guitar music'. There's enough there to merit a curious look-see at YouTube.
It wasn't enough. The editor wrote back.
Hi man.
Really like your single review, very much want to cover it in the paper, just had one issue.. it'd just be nice if you could jig a little more description of the music into your third sentence. Listening to them, it was very different to what I expected from your review. I really like your second and fourth sentences, maybe cut out your thid sentence "This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years." and replace with something a little more definitive of the sound. Or maybe get rid of the first to make some space. Your current second sentence would be pretty punchy as first. Is that ok? Play around with how you like, but I would appreciate a little more feel for the song.
So you want me to drop sentence three? The key line? Just because the song was different to how you expected?
Describing sound is simply just utilising social orthodoxy to explain something that in reality is unique and only really 'explainable' on its own terms (ie. by listening to it). I'd rather read 'this is fucking amazing' and have no idea what it is than say 'this is rock music' and how no idea how good it is.
The finest piece of music writing, for my money, is Lester Bangs' John Coltrane Lives, in which John Coltrane is mentioned in passing and is an unnamed character who appears in a first-person narrative which ends in Bangs blowing a saxophone in his landlady's face.
What Bangs does, better than me - better than any writer on the topic bar perhaps Ralph Ellison - is get straight to the heart of the matter. Sonic detail is for hacks and chumps and fuckshits and dumbbells. OK, I exaggerate, but it's not something to go on about. Bangs and Ellison and even Christgau's little summaries tell you about the world it relates to, rather than the insular jargon a piece or song is formed of.
A record has to exist in a real life populated by a few heroes and a whole lot of plain old shitbags. To exist, to be noticed, it has to justify itself in moments and reactions. It's not enough to rehash the plot and structure: what does it do? Why does it do? Is what and why it does worth anything?
But as a young writer, I acquiesced and wrote three progressively worse versions.
And now for something COMPLETELY different. Romantic baroque wailings attached to vaudeville prog-pop sensibility straight outta Kendal. Not your average 'single' material, but it is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
Not bad. The next one was specifically as the editor requested.
Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. Combining vaudeville prog-pop and indie ghetto approval, this is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
The final one is terrible. That whole 'think of a place, you think of this: well here is this' complete fucking BULLSHIT.
Think of Kendal, Cumbria, you get mint cakes and Alfred Wainwright. Not exactly a hotbed of 30s musichall stylings and angular guitarisms, but that's what we have combined here and it's gosh darn tasty. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this is some of the finest British pop alchemy at present – hooks, idiosyncratic eardrum shattering vocals and a tidy resolution inside three minutes. At the conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.
By which time I'm so racked with doubts about my own ability that I don't write anything else fit for print for a year and a half. Which probably says more about my ego, confidence and level of expectancy than it does about anything else.
Now I'm in the same position as that editor (who is a basically decent chap with whom I just happen to disagree fundamentally), I find myself being able to push my viewpoint - that it's the essence and not the facts that count - across. Often with venom and barely concealed rage, but hey, my prerogative.
With a level of provocation imbued into the fabric of every article, you run the risk of exposure to complaint and the necessity to justify oneself. Such a thing recently happened in response to the print publication of this review.
Dear Sir/Madam
Would somebody please redirect Daniel Brookes to the Opinion section? A music review is supposed to review the music on the CD in question, rather than the supposed class backgrounds of the artists involved. The only thing his review of NME: The Album 2009 told us about the actual music on the CD (y’know, what people would actually buy the CD for…) was that it was ‘identikit sewage’; while the reviewer may feel both Enter Shikari and Little Boots lack his level of musical; sophistication, only the tone-deaf could accuse them of being ‘identikit’. The author seemed much more perturbed by white people daring to be influenced by the music of other cultures, rather than locking themselves into some kind of aural apartheid, as well as musicians refusing to co-opt themselves into a wider class struggle that only exists in the wet dreams of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Most readers would expect a review in the music section to review the music of the artist(s) involved, rather than a review of the (irrelevant) political opinions of the author; if Daniel Brookes could in future remember this, then perhaps he could write an article relevant to the section he is supposed to edit.
Yours sincerely,
Name withheld
This response felt good to receive. That the writing wasn't being passively consumed, but had inflamed a contest of ideas. That said, I completely disagreed. Here is my response in return.
Just writing to say thanks for writing in to the paper re: my review of the NME album. It's totally cool that you chose to take your time to engage with our work; we wish there were more of you. Conversely, have you thought of writing for the music section, or indeed any sections of the paper?
Whilst you may feel the point of reviewing CDs for their content only is the way ahead, I feel that some issues supercede this and that indeed, talking only content in constructive terms about music is insipid hackwork at best. This record serves as an overview of the year, as a constructed entity of what 2009 was; I feel it's something of a right to challenge this.
What I felt I was trying to address here (and I won't accuse you of missing the point; you take what you like from these articles) is the banalisation of a vibrant culture. I'm not saying that there isn't good independent music, it's just that this version of 'indie' is an indie of signifiers.
It's nothing to do with 'aural apartheid' - that's the last thing I'm after. It's just that - in a year of music of the early 21st century - are we really supposed to believe that there were no significant black contributions to independent or guitar music? The one black musician on the 2 discs; Maxim Reality of The Prodigy - doesn't actually play on the included track. Doesn't this trouble you at all?
Also: music IS an opinion section. That's EXACTLY what it is. Please tell me what these objective terms I'm supposed to engage with art are, because I've never seen them before. My political opinions are entirely relevant, as are yours implicitly included in your response.
I'll finish as I began; it's great you wrote. And we'd love to have a passionate voice writing for us (though I don't know how you'd manage to express that seeing as you'd contradict yourself if you ever expressed a subjective opinion) if you can make yourself free on a Monday at 5pm (MR1, upstairs in the Union).
Dan Brookes,
Music Editor
Removed from all this, I need to ask the question: what do people want to read? Fire and brimstone and forthright idea-mapping, or passive descriptives?
Perhaps it is me that is wrong. I read press releases and reviews daily that lean toward the latter, but feel ultimately bored and cold by them - though their unceasing existence gives credence to their existence.
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