Simon Reynolds gone Green

Simon Reynolds raves about Scritti Politti's White Bread Black Beer:

The new album weaves together elements of everything [Green] Gartside has ever loved and revisits every stage of his nearly five decades-long journey through music. The Beatles are here, there and everywhere on the record; T. Rex and the Plastic Ono Band meld on the deliciously stompy anti-Jesus ditty After Six; Gartside's pre-punk passion for folk-rock and traditional English music is audible in his guitar playing; and there is hip-hop in the beats and R&B in the production's gloss

Which makes me suspicious. The last time Green flirted with the banality of commerical pop he made pap (1988's Provision). Not only is it too easy for a music journalist to follow a meme issued by a notoriously fickle artist (Green Gartside's married! He stopped drinking! Now he'll write REAL tunes!), but it's ever so slightly dismaying for Reynolds to discard his own ambivalences about Green's meta-music, especially when Rip It Up & Start Again was so eloquent about fleshing them out (about 1985's Cupid & Psyche '85 Reynolds writes that Green's "oddly depthless lyrics" established "the lover's discourse maze, a chain of foolishness along which desire travels endlessly, looking to heal the primal wound of lack at the heart of being," after which he expresses muted dismay that Green's sudden careerism matched the narcissism telegraphed by Cupid's syndrum beats).

Now I will play "Perfect Way" and "Absolute" at earsplitting volume.

R.I.P.

Paul Gleason has died. Breakfast Club fans always knew Judd Nelson would outlive him.

Good news: Whit Stillman finished the script for his next film yesterday -- only eight years after The Last Days of Disco was released. The Jamaican setting represents a real change for the director of Metropolitan and Barcelona. And he's got other ambitions: to write and direct a movie about the Revolutionary War. The hyperliterate Stillman (who once said his five favorite books are Pope's Essay on Man, Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, S N Behrman's book about Max Beerbohm and an edition of previously uncollected stories by F Scott Fitzgerald) isn't interested in a Hugh Hudson-Al Pacino schlockadrama:

"An inspiration was an interesting remark from one of our generals, Nathaniel Greene. As it was defined then, it was a civil war between Whigs and Tories. They [Greene's side, the revolutionaries] were the Whig army, and they were fighting the Tories. It was reflected by the politics of Britain: Edmund Burke and others were articulating the Whig cause. Greene said that by the end of the war it was an American army with British soldiers fighting a British army with American soldiers. There had been so much side-switching, and sociological internecine warfare. This could be really fascinating."

Oh, and if you haven't seen Metropolitan (1990), you should.

I've been telling friends for a couple of weeks that I almost wish Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped isn't as good as I think it is. Fucking bastards -- releasing two great albums in as many years. With Jim O'Rourke they recorded Sonic Nurse, an unexpected recapitulation of their strengths, recalibrating gnarly guitar as concise pop noise (not to mention as vague but never obscure political pop noise) much better than Goo or Dirty managed. It was my favorite album of 2004.

I don't know what O'Rourke did for them. Maybe he was Brian Eno. Maybe he was Lol Tolhurst. Clearly his departure was necessary insofar as he accomplished his goal: get SY to write/jam intelligibly again. If they've long since exchanged the danger of "Death Valley '69" or "Catholic Block" for the cool-by-the-pool distance their celebrity affords them (think "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream"), maybe they weren't too intimate with the danger either, and thus closer to rock's greatest chameleons than we thought (the Chameleon's Dictum: simulate, don't create). On Rather Ripped Thurston and Kim are my kind of John and Yoko; their version of domesticity allows Thurston occasional jerk-off time in the bathroom ("Sleepin' Around"), and permits Kim to flirt with an indifferent hot young thing, to whom she growls "What a waste/you're so chaste" with no loss of savoir faire on either side. The aptly named "Incinerate" might be a hit if alternative radio stations still existed. "Pink Stream" glistens as brightly as A Thousand Leaves' "Hits of Sunshine" (and it's mercifully shorter). Contrary to what John says, "Do You Believe in Rapture" fucks with the opening salvo in all the right ways and is heartstopping in its own right.

Like their sometime idol Neil Young, Sonic Youth are taken for granted until the moment we realize that not only are they more prolific than they ever were, but that mass production has liberated them from the perils of creating product which tries to live up to some image of Sonic Youth-ness.

Of "American Idol" and its discontents

Scott Woods dismisses Jody Rosen's claim that "American Idol" has been "good for popular music -- an assertion that forced me to blink blankly like the "South Park" kids at school. Sure, you get classic flukes like Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone"; the trouble is, none of the ballads she wraps those bold pipes around aren't even pasable Bacharach-Sager (And don't get me started on Toni Braxton and Prince's appearances last night. Performing on TV's most popular variety show gives your sales a kick in the ass). AI winners are as carefully scripted as extras in a musical. But is there room for anything weird? Nay, Hicks writes:

I can't imagine Missy Elliott even getting through the first round of "American Idol." I can't imagine Madonna in 1982 getting through the first round ("You clearly have no ability to sing--and that wardrobe is hideous"). Or M.I.A. Or Pink. Or Courtney Love. Or Annie Lennox. Or (heh) Neil Tennant. (The equation becomes beyond absurd, of course, if you start predating MTV: "Sorry, Mr. Fagen, you'll need to comb your hair and wipe that permanent scowl off your face.")

Of course, inquiring minds want to know how well this Taylor Hicks cat did.

On potatoes, frozen saints, and Sam Cooke

Mike Powell cites Stephen Malkmus and Donna Summer as examples of how being "open-minded" about music allows you to experience the pleasures of their "emotional disconnect." But do Malkmus and Summer project emotional disconnection? It's more a distrust of emotion, or better, a distrust of the modes of discourse available to musicians for the expression of emotion. The key Pavement lyric (there are certainly reams from which I can cite) for me is in 1999's "Major Leagues," a ballad which uncurls with the limpid grace of koi in a pond, the pigtailed little sister to Public Image Ltd's "This Is Not a Love Song": "You kiss like a rock/But you know I need it anyway." This distrust (if not disgust) is a trope most canonical figures have used in some form; think of all the idiot winds Dylan has blown since "Love Minus Zero" or "It Ain't Me Babe"; or the contempt Mick Jagger shows his factory girl; or the narrator of a certain Pet Shop Boys tune admitting "I love you/you pay my rent."

When I was 18 I wanted to be Bryan Ferry. There is a sense in which loving Bryan Ferry meant attempting to become the Love God that Ferry himself couldn't hope to be (a lot like loving Cary Grant, I'd argue). Liking Ferry also meant noting the abyss between himself and the guilelessness of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke. Mike notes this phenomenon in Donna Summer's "I Feel Love":

Donna Summer didn’t pretend to be cool, she sort of pretended to be hot. And she was hot. But she was more like Kim Gordon, in that sense: sounding so unbelievably passionate that you, well, didn’t exactly believe her

Before Ferry discarded irony as one more mode of discourse he distrusted – when on songs like 1980's "Over You" he sort of pretended to be cool – his insincerity signified his willingness to believe in the emotion behind the expression while maintaining a wary distance from both. I don't know how else to describe what he does on 1972's "If There is Something," in which he declaims lines "I'll put roses 'round your door, sleep in the garden/growing potatoes by the score" like The Count in "Sesame Street." I suspect he wrote and sang like this because he couldn't hope to match Otis and Sam; but so what, right? In wanting to have it every which way he confused the hell out of me, and it was wonderful, especially for the gay man I wasn't quite yet. As an ineffectual heterosexual I emulated Ferry's sincere insincerity in my relations with women, but especially with men; it worked as an ideal subterfuge, acting camp to defuse growing suspicions among the guys about my real tastes.

I crushed on Malkmus almost as hard as I did Ferry, but for all his syntactical games and abstruse Ashberyian wordplay he was a lot more human – if by "human" we mean willing to discard said games when your audience blinks confusedly. I've known plenty of guys like him: cute in a scruffy way, his heterosexuality as comfortably rumpled as the argyles he probably wears to prove he's suburban prep underneath it all. It helped that he was a better singer and guitarist than Ferry was a singer and keyboardist. Moreover, he was always more comfortable playing the Love God than Ferry was in 1972; note his skill at crafting slowies like 1992's "Here" or last year's "Freeze the Saints," which for direct expression are at least as good as the protracted ambivalences of "Gold Soundz."

Emotional disconnection/distrust works in art, less so in life.

Thanks to You Tube, you too can appreciate the marvels of Grace Jones. It's the video for 1986's "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect for You") [love the title, Grace!]. Andy Warhol and Nile Rodgers offer effusive testimonials.

All the windmills in Holland

I'm ambivalent about lots of Frank Kogan's ideas (I hope to explain why when I finally get around to writing the review) but he's a damn fine miniaturist, and such an active listener that even a seemingly coruscating review reads like praise because his attention to surface is almost ascetic in its intensity. My oatmeal went out my nose upon reading this review of Whitney's "I Will Always Love You" found in Real Punks Don't Wear Black (apologies to Whitney fan Thomas:

I talked in Radio On #2 about her animal competence,' but really thre's no animal in it, it's more lke a jet engine preening and showing its pats. Which can be powerful enough. She kind of loses control about two-thirds of the way through this song, however – it's the section in the video where the camera moves in close and she smiles bright and meaninglessly and opens her mouth and lets loose while the camera pulls back again and you can see her now sitting in a chair in the snow (?) wearing noting but a thin suit jacket. And from there on she's just blaring away, trying to power all the windmills in Holland, and the song disappears in the whoosh.

"A loose affiliation of millionaires..."

Brian Eno confirms that he did reunite with Roxy Music, and he did contribute songs, thank you very much. He also offers insight into collaborating with Paul Simon, including his thoughts on Graceland, an album whose Western-African hybrid initially rankled the co-creator of Talking Heads' Remain in Light:

"I realise now that what I was feeling was envy," he says, briefly collapsing with laughter. "It was like I'd found this wonderful private beach, and suddenly Paul Simon moved in and brought all these people along with him. I was sort of annoyed, but whenever I happened to hear something from Graceland, I found myself liking it. And I found out from one of the percussionists who'd worked with him that, contrary to my initial suspicions, he hadn't exploited the musicians at all. In fact, he'd treated them extremely well."

To prepare myself to listen to the new Simon I played Graceland a lot; it holds up marvelously well, despite a patchy second side (I want to be repulsed by "Under African Skies," in which Bwana Paul notes Joseph's face "black as night," but the melody -- thank you guitarist Ray Phiri -- is too beguiling). The sinuousity of the rhythm tracks mitigates Simon's irritating preciousness, producing unexpectated permutations: the joke's on Simon-the-wannabe hipster ("I Know What I Know"); or else both rhythm and lyrics elevate him into something perilously close to shamanship ("The Boy in the Bubble" -- the best song he's ever written?). Christgau was so right: "[Graceland] gives up a groove so buoyant it could float a loan to Zimbabwe."

I'll also defend The Rhythm of the Saints (not as sinuous, nor as beguiling) against all comers.

Random Thought Inspired In Part By Frank Kogan's Real Punks Don't Wear Black: the first 20 seconds of the Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud" – those drums, how Keith Richards and Brian Jones' guitars grind, how Jagger's vocal turns the most mealy-mouthed of protests into an imprecation of indescribable malevolence – convey more danger than the entire recorded output of the Velvet Underground. Discuss.

I only started reading the book last night but I heard the song at a Mother's Day party, after which the euphoria at said party faltered, then vanished (quickly restored by a sudden dose of Sade).

Reading Republican and right-wing websites the day after President Bush's immigration speech has just been a barrel of roffles. The faithful can't decide whether to dab at their eyes with lace hankerchiefs (American made, of course) or hurl cries of "Apostate!" up 1600 Pennysylvania Avenue. NRO's The Corner should be renamed Lachrymose Lane. Here's John Derbyshire, the newest Jeremiah:

I am sunk in gloom. Our politics is, and apparently can only be, reactive. Nobody will do anything about our borders, or about our rules for residency and citizenship. Soon — I'd say in the 5 to 10 years ahead window — we'll lose a couple of cities to terrorist nukes. Then something will be done, fast and fierce and probably not very nice. Until then nothing will be done. The President is clueless; the Senate is a joke; the House has some stalwarts, but it will have fewer after November.

We can always count on Michelle Malkin for deft commentary too: "They should send Bush out in the helicopters with a super hi-def scope so he could peer into their souls and see if they were gonna be hard-workin or no."

No Surprise

My review of the Paul Simon album. I'm struck by the number of people these days who tell me they own Hearts & Bones.

Two final Grant McLennan obits, one by the Go-Betweens' most ardent American fan Robert Christgau, and one by Popmatters writer and Stylus colleague Justin Cober-Lake, the latter of which has a particularly salient insight into McLennan's genius ("McLennan doesn't need to describe the street you've been on, because you're invariably on the street he's describing"). Meanwhile Christgau reports that on the night of his death McLennan was going to celebrate a housewarming party, at which he planned to propose to his girlfriend Emma.

Listening to "Put You Down" off his 1995 solo album Horsebreaker Star, I kept thinking, "Shit, shit, shit."

Finally: a Slate music piece that doesn't allude to EMP or rockism

No one's written much about this quiet Hua Hsu essay on New Order, which is a pity; the rockcrit world needs another attempt to define rockism like it needs another Village Voice Corporation purge of editors. Near the essay's conclusion we find a succint, perfect description of what made New Order sui generis:

New Order's music described new feelings, new possibilities of experience: lost in thought at a club, Godlike (or bored) on drugs, anxious about nothing in particular, hesitant to say anything too direct, alone but unafraid of modern life.

Among other points: NO's obsession with packaging and compiling their catalogue, as if they themselves recognize that they're "a set of signifiers" in need of frequent recontexualization. Watch for: "Age of Consent" played over the trailer for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.

Righteous anger vs rhetoric

Regarding Pearl Jam's new eponymous album, my usual objections apply: Mike McCready can't distinguish between liquid transparency ("Parachutes") and power-chord testosteronama ("Big Wave"); when it's not content to thud the rhythm section just sits. But most of these songs are anthemic in all the right ways, and if Eddie Vedder's righteous anger is more convincing than his rhetoric maybe that's enough (well, no: it bothers me that he still enunciates like he's gargling pebbles instead of weighing the syllables of his never-better lyrics).

It all comes together in "Unemployable," in which Vedder allows the W.M.A. stereotype with the Jesus Saves ring (I'll let you guess whether he lives in a red or blue state) an admission of fear. As a patient non-fan who thinks their post-1996 work is consistent enough to rival their live shows, I think this is their best since at least Yield if not Vitalogy. And "Come Back" might be their best ballad, period (overwrought can be good).

Love goes on anyway

My Grant McLennan obit. A few challenges. It was difficult to avoid sentimentality, and I wanted to describe for the uninitiated what McLennan's music sounded like.

Robert Forster on the Go-Betweens' official message board:

Today I went to the website and read some of the magnificent tributes that have flown in for Grant. People for some days have been telling me of the beautiful things written there. And today I felt well enough and strong enough to go in and read. I thank you all. In time I shall read every one of them. I see familiar names scattered from our past. The vast majority I don't know. All of you Grant and I have met through our music. Your words and thoughts I find very, very moving. I sense the love and understanding for Grant and his music, and I take the support you send to me to my heart.

These last days I have Grant in my head. He talks to me in odd moments. I hear him... and I always will.

"Maybe I think too much for my own sake"

Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of the new Brian Eno-helmed Paul Simon record Surprise (sorry: the credits read, "Produced by Paul Simon, Sonic Awareness by Brian Eno") has got me intrigued. Simon's always been the kind of singer-songwriter maligned for being what he isn't, by which I mean: people would admit to liking him if he was more like James Taylor or Jackson Browne, instead of being uncategorizable. Anyway, as someone who hates Simon & Garfunkel almost as much as the Eagles and the Doors and adores Graceland, I'd love to know if Surprise is aptly named. He even plays lots of guitar, which is always a treat.

"Whatever I have is yours, and it's right here"

I remember when I first heard "Bachelor Kisses." In the spring of 2000 I was visiting Manhattan for a journalism convention. I bought the Go-Betweens' Spring Hill Fair, after years of Robert Christgau encomia and memorizing Eric Weisbard's entry in The SPIN Alternative Record Guide. Like all the best McLennan, "Bachelor Kisses" tugged at the memory: specific yet avoiding the literal. I hadn't yet experienced what the beautiful vernacular of his bridge spelled out ("Don't believe what you've heard/`Faithful''s not a bad word"), but he convinced me that I could, and the inexorable tug of McLennan's voice and guitar did the rest. I fell in love.

Here's an ILM thread, filled with reminiscences of critics who interviewed him and fans who loved him.

The official ABC News obit.

A list of the songs you should download, like, now:

"Your Turn, My Turn"
"Two Steps, Step Out"
"Cattle & Cane"
"Slow Slow Music"
"In the Core of a Flame"
"Right Here"
"Bye Bye Pride"
"Streets of Your Town"
"Easy Come, Easy Go"
"Put You Down"
"Lighting Fires"
"Stones For You"

Finally, Steve Kilbey, late of The Church and McLennan's collaborator (Jack Frost), has written the most touching obit to date, going to the heart of Grant's singularity:

grant seemed to have a way of opening up his mouth
and singing instant choruses
hed plucked outta the ether
words flew to him
he walk with melodies at his beck n call

R.I.P.

Grant McLennan - R.I.P.

I just heard. Apparently he died in his sleep. As soon as I find out more information I'll edit and update. Likewise if anyone has learned anything else, drop me a line.

Anyone who knows me knows how much The Go-Betweens' catalogue has meant to me over the years, so I'm not sure what to write just yet.

See ya

One more domino falls. With Porter Goss gone, speculation mounts: conflicts with Director of National Intelligence John Negraponte? the President got wind of the burgeoning Randy Cunningham-Brent Wilkes imbroglio (which I am only now trying to understand)? If there's anything else I'm missing, let me know.

Adolescence: the disease for which there is no cure

Keep your eye on Mallory O'Donnell; he's got the goods. In this reevaluation of The Cure's rather forgotten 1990 remix album Mixed Up, Mallory evokes without condescension the adolescence mindset for which Robert Smith's miserabilism serves as the ideal soundtrack. The essay is too long, and its diffuseness makes certain ideas hard to parse (Mixed Up representing "the exact moment at which profound self-reflection commingles with pure sensuality" sounds right, even though I'm not sure what he means), but, of course, so is adolescence; and for many of us in high school Robert Smith's so-smooth-it-even-feels-like-skin fantasias conveyed the erotic languor which sure smelled great when we were bored of Morrissey's strained attempts at distance. Conveyed it too well, perhaps: these days The Cure remind me of earnest conversations in vacant lots, watching the video of "High" after mediating a frigid confrontation between two best friends, and my own strained attempts at heterosexual courtship.

(As for Mixed Up: the place to go for the super remixes of "Lullaby" and "Hot! Hot! Hot!!" and one of the best singles, "Never Enough." The mild heresy of a "rock" band issuing a remix album in 1990 now looks like a shrewd hipster move -- now looks like orthodoxy).