I love you too, Lovefoxxx. Because you’re adorable. Especially the accent. I know the sound isn’t great in that video, but it does show how much fun a CSS show can be. Although I don’t recall any stage diving at the gig I went to. Still, I highly recommend seeing them live. Failing at that, I just highly recommend CSS in general. Not to sound cheezy, but their music has such a positive energy. In the sense of being upbeat and easy for dancing, and also in having a palpable sense of the musicians having a good time together. A lot of great music has been made by people who can’t stand each other, true. But there’s something to be said for good camaraderie as well. It’s a sense of fun that comes across.
What a pretty song, Superheavy. A quiet moment, perfect for a cool autumn day. Because when else is better for being wistful and romantic? Now, ‘wistful and romantic’ is far from my default setting, but neither do I have a heart of stone. Beautiful singing really gets me. If maybe Mick Jagger isn’t the first person who springs to mind when you think of pretty singing, plainly you don’t know Mick. He is one of the most versatile singers I know of, and when he’s being pretty, he’s very very pretty (and his singing is too). Let’s give a hand to Joss Stone, too. I never paid much attention to her before, but if Mick Jagger has picked her for a collaborator, she must be something, right? And she’s held her own. She sounds lovely. Maybe one day I’ll listen to one of her records. Damian Marley’s third verse doesn’t quite fit the mood, but he does offer a bit of humor, and shakes it up a little. All in all, a wonderful song, and again, I can’t recommend Superheavy enough times.
Well, it looks like SuperHeavy might be a one-off. I was really hoping they might get it together and do some shows or make more music at least. I might be waiting a while for that. Mick Jagger is going to be kept very busy celebrating that other band of his for at least the next year. The others surely have projects of their own to attend to. I hear Joss Stone has a part on The Tudors, for one. Oh well, supergroups aren’t designed to last, not when everyone involved already has a day job. They got together and did something great, be grateful for that. This song is their second single and there’s supposed to be a video in the pipeline. It rocks and Mick Jagger sounds great. He sounds great on the new Stones single too. It was a hard thing to imagine in 1965, how energized the singer sounds at 69. It sounds like blasphemy to say, but Jagger has become an even better singer than he was back then. And it sounds like he knows and relishes it.
Did I say something sometime about Death Cab for Cutie’s Codes and Keys being a trifle disappointing? I don’t recall what I said about that album at the time. It was 2011! A long-ass time ago. I can’t remember back that far. I think the general consensus on the most recent Death Cab was that it was too Death Cab. It was just like the previous Death Cab album and also the ones before that one. That’s not exactly fair, though. Not everybody can become an entirely new person every time the go to make an album. Not everybody has David Bowie magic powers like that. Most groups are considered daring if they make one change of style in their career. So, yeah, it’s perfectly ok that Death Cab for Cutie has made a career out of making Death Cab for Cutie albums. What I’m saying is, when I revisited Codes and Keys, I found I quite liked it and it was just as good as the previous one. Death Cab is hard not to like; they’re broadly appealing without being overtly mass-market, they’re easy to listen to as background music yet rewardingly intelligent and lyrical upon closer inspection. I also think you will be very charmed by the video, which finds beauty in the ordinary street life of America and features a glimpse of Shepard Fairey at work. It’s a case of image suiting sound, matching the mood of the music and maybe adding a little extra dimension. Which is exactly the job of videos, but somehow an unfortunately rare thing.
CSS is one of my favorite modern-day funtime party bands. Although they haven’t quite matched their debut for cheer chutzpah, they’ve continued producing sparkly electro/punk/pop dance songs with both heart and wit. It’s a good feeling to know that such a thing still exists. I could say that in a just and fair world CSS would be hugely popular and Lovefoxxx would be a massive rock star, but do we really need that? The best artists are the ones who flourish outside the harsh confines of mass market appeal. Lovefoxxx is appealing and adorable because she isn’t a major rock star. She’s herself. She’s cute, she’s a little kooky, she’s got style. She doesn’t need to be transformed into a glossy automaton. When I saw CSS play last year, they didn’t have the attitude of highly paid professionals. And that’s a good thing. They had the spirit of a group of friends having a great time just playing together, not people obligated to do a job. There’s nothing wrong with being professional (and highly paid for it!) but sometimes in the focus of doing the most impeccable job you can do, the fun goes missing. Was CSS the most impeccable group of musicians I’ve ever seen? No, I’ve seen much better musicianship, showmanship, and polish. But they were plainly having fun and it was a great show.
It takes a serious load of conviction to unironically adopt the unicorn as your personal symbol. And then write a song about it that equates unicorns with motorcycles. All without looking foolish. Lady Gaga pulls it off because she’s way beyond being concerned about looking foolish. She’s looked ridiculous so many times in so many ways that she’s completely transcended all our normal human standards. Because if there’s one things she’s got loads of, it’s the courage of her convictions. Therefore, when she makes a mixed metaphor of unicorns and motorcycles and the liberation of the open road, it totally works and we believe her. Even people who claim not to like Gaga eventually have to admit her songs are genuinely empowering.
You know those times when some rock star way over the hill is putting out a new album and it’s disappointing and mediocre, but you kind of have to congratulate them on not sucking as much as they could have? You give them a little gold star and an ‘A for effort’, and quietly go back to listening to their early stuff. Yeah, that happens a lot. Elder statesmen put out records that are alright, but you never listen to them more than once. It’s pretty rare when someone comes out with a record thirtysome years into their career and suddenly it’s your new favorite. There you have Tom Waits. He’s never been bad or boring, but it did seem he’d kind of settled into his niche and wasn’t going anywhere. So it was a little surprising when Bad As Me - his record from last year - hit the nail on the head so hard. Not only did it hit it for me, it hit with a lot of people. He’d never sold more records. Maybe it’s serendipity, or maybe it’s the times and folks are in the mood for some hard luck stories. Tom Waits hasn’t exactly been associated with political relevance in the past, but listen to this. He rants about the waste of war – this war, that war, our war, any war – with a rage peaceniks half his age can’t muster. You’ll remember it as one of the all time classic anti-war songs.
“I want your whiskey mouth all over my blonde south” – one of the single sexiest lines ever in a pop song! You can take it as a trashy vulgarity, or you can take it as an example of new-model female sexual empowerment. I’ve bitched a-plenty about Lady Gaga’s lyrical shortcomings, but I’ll give it to her, this song has some great lines. You could say she’s trying too hard with the whole empowerment thing, but I say, she’s the only pop star of her caliber who thinks and cares about the impact she has on people’s lives. A lot of pop stars pretend to have a message, but it’s only a marketing gimmick. Gaga’s love for her fans is unique. She kind of reminds me of older-generation rock stars, who had the freedom to move about and interact with people as they wished, whereas today stars are so trapped by the endless circle of tabloids and paparazzi that they’ve begun to see fans almost as a threat. I loved reading Keith Richards’ recollections of just driving cross country, going into bars, meeting fans and jamming in the middle of nowhere. Most big stars don’t have the freedom to do that now, and certainly Gaga is too well known to make such a journey. But the important thing is, she sees her fans as more than a million sentient little cash machines, and that’s an attitude that has become very rare in the music industry.
This is a very stripped-down version of Heartlines - Florence Welch usually aims for maximum epic. The acoustics aren’t great either. There’s audible talking on all sides. But the shortcomings of an amateur video job can’t dull the impact of Florence + the Machine. There’s a lot to be said for her; her style, her red hair, her dark sensibility. Lots of things to love, but it’s all about one thing: that voice. A gift like that is rare enough, and to do something interesting with it is even rarer. Florence Welch is one of those once in a blue moon characters who come along complete with amazing talent, style, image, originality – someone with a vision. It’s always very sad to hear someone who is technically a good singer who allows themselves to be molded into a generic pop star shape and has no concept of themselves as an artist. Then there’s Flo, who sings about reading fortunes in animal entrails, among many other morbid and occultish things. ‘Witchy woman’ is a pretty flaccid label, regularly applied to hippies of all shapes and Stevie Nicks, and hopefully Flo won’t fall headfirst into that stereotype. But there’s something witchy about her alright; a little witchy, a little Romantic, a little Bohemian, and just by virtue of denying contemporary reference points, contrarily modern.
I’ve been listening to The Kills a lot lately. Well, not just lately but for probably like a year. Their music makes me feel liberated. I have a lot of heroes, from many walks of music, and they all have their special place. Alison Mosshart is my hero for this time in my life. There’s something in her voice that relates to exactly how I feel right now. It’s hard to put into words. I like Alison because she’s not angry or sad, or a pretty-princess, or any kind of cheap female stereotype. She’s full of energy and emotion, and confidence. And what I really like is how, in her songs, she addresses her lover as a worthy opponent, a sparring partner. No ‘baby please come home’. Cause she’s a fucking modern woman who wants what she wants and isn’t shy about it. It makes me so happy that there’s more and more women in music today who are operating outside the traditional virgin/whore dichotomy. That mentality still dominates, unfortunately, but we’re beginning to realize how obsolete and stone-age it is. I was just thinking the other day about how I couldn’t think of very many literary heroines who were neither damsels in distress to be rescued or sinful seductresses to be punished. Or in movies or in music, either. But there’s a deep thirst for stand-up strong female role models. Hollywood is completely assbackwards as usual, and will probably write off the success of female-powered hits like The Hunger Games and GwtDT as weird random flukes, but music operates with more freedom and an ear to ground, Zeitgeist-wise. It’s big news if a movie with a female lead gets the greenlight, but in music, girls have been playing beside the boys for years now, and it’s become standard, as it should. Which is why I’ve come to believe that movies are an inferior art medium, at least as far as reflecting actual society. Because it takes the participation of hundreds of people working with millions of dollars to make a movie, it’s a risky investment, and the business is controlled by the same bunch old men as 50 years ago. Of course creativity and honest expression are going to get the backseat. On the other hand, anyone can make music and share it for nearly zero money. Music is where you find real personalities, real self-expression, and the real pulse of what’s going on in people’s minds, artists being themselves without focus groups telling them how to look and what to say. The awfulness of the Top 40 might make you feel depressed about the state of music, but it’s an illusion. Just outside those bought-and-paid-for airwaves is an ocean of independent artists who use the free technology of the internet to find audiences who appreciate them. I may not like all of them, but I’m glad they’re out there.
Recent Comments