Damn guys. I side with the director. I didn't know it was Ed Shereen and my only thought was, "That guy can sing real good." Now that I know it was Ed Shereen, I still think he sang real good.
Wow man, I clicked reply and it said, "Reply to Robin Pecknold" and that is fucking awesome all by itself. In case you ever read this: I've had Crack-Up on repeat since it came out. My truth is that I loved Sun Giant and Fleet Foxes because they had this just throw-away brilliance. Like it was the easiest thing in the world for you to make brilliant music, and that made it all the more brilliant to me. And I was let down by Helplessness Blues because it seemed like I could hear you trying. I hope that's not off the mark, and if it is please forgive me saying it. So my first response to Crack-Up was that it is another album that tries so hard, where I was really hoping for another throw-away brilliant album. I was wrong. If Sun Giant and Fleet Foxes were throw-away brilliant, Crack-Up just is brilliant. If Helplessness Blues sounds like trying, Crack-Up sounds like succeeding. The song structures, the loud-soft dynamics, the pacing of the album, the overdubs of overdubs...all the technical craft that put me off Helplessness Blues, it all works SO SO well on Crack-Up. And as much as I love the music, I love seeing any person commit to a vision, make an attempt, learn from that attempt, and do better the next time. Your music means a lot to me. Thank you for being true to yourself.
PS: See you at Red Rocks in a couple months! yayayayaya
Haha I gave you an upvote. Was just going to say that Radiohead have truly mastered that perfect balance between writing songs disparaging commercialism while also profiting from commercialism. Downvote me if you like. I'll still have my 1997 CD copy of OK Computer that I purchased with my allowance when I was 11 and signed with an orange sharpie so that no one would steal it.
Close. If your point is that we should expect the court of public opinion to be an important and useful tool for meting out justice. Then. You. Are. Wrong. And my rebuttal is that we all collectively decided hundreds of years ago that the court of public opinion should certainly NOT be responsible for carrying out justice, that the court of public opinion is NOT CAPABLE of justice, and that this is nowhere more true than when it comes to accusations involving sex. So much so that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a book about the dangers of exactly that, and lesson of The Scarlet Letter is something that has become idiomatic and that we teach our Children about...
First, agree with Matt Chylak: They've already been blacklisted; there's not going to be a public decision period. Second, I'd find your post less objectionable except the comments on this very article have been generally in the vein of, "Wow, didn't realize there might be two sides to this story. I'm so conflicted now that the band has spoken out." I saw a bunch of people immediately jump on the Burn The Witch verdict last week, and a I see a bunch of those same people feeling conflicted this week. To me, that doesn't seem like a thoughtful, non-toxic approach to an important issue.
Respectfully, I disagree. Specifically, I disagree with the notion that they "shouldn't have waited...to get this posted." And what I'm about to say definitely assumes that their response is genuine, so if that turns out a week from now not to be true, well obviously that will change things. But right now, I'm imagining how I would react to being publicly and falsely accused of being a rapist. What would my priorities be? What would it say if my day one reaction was, "Well. Better call the publicist..." How long would it take me to respond publicly to something like that? And again: I'm assuming that they are being genuine in their response. Because if the allegations were true, if they are a rapist, then I imagine they'd be on the phone with the publicist day one. But if I'd been falsely called a rapist? How long would it take me to stuff my guts back inside my body? How long would it take me to face the legions of people who'd turned their back on me? To muster a public response? Yeah. I think a week would do it.
Anybody ever listen to First Rays of the New Rising Sun? If you're not familiar: It was the album Hendrix was almost done with when he passed. The execs chopped it up into pieces and released a track here and there, packaged on albums of otherwise b-sides, live takes, and rarities...to keep the Hendrix $$$ train going. But in the 90's the Hendrix family regained control of his estate and released First Rays of the New Rising Sun in the state it was meant to be released (or as near as they could get)...and WOW. Jimi was just about to release an album that was a huge step forward from even his own previous work, let alone anything else happening at the time. And instead he died, they chopped it up, and it almost never was. I always think, "What might have been?"
Really interesting. I had assumed the "You keep your name" line was about marriage, or technically the fact that they were breaking up when Dave had thought maybe they'd get married. Never crossed my mind that it could be Amber telling him, "Go fuck off, I don't want to be a part of Dirty Projectors any more."
See, I don't disagree with you on a lot of your key takes on the lyrics, that a lot of them do seem immature etc. But at the same time, a lot of the lyrics you cite are actually some of my favorite lyrics and are deeply resonant to me. Your review reads like you haven't had the specific set of life experiences that would give you an emotional connection to those lyrics. And that is great! Everyone has different life experiences, and so everyone is receptive to different messages. I think that an artist takes a risk when he/she creates art that is plainly about specific details in his/her life--the artist risks alienating people who don't relate to those experiences, but the reward is the some subset of the artist's patrons will deeply connect over the shared experiences. I do deeply connect with this album. So I wanted to respond to a couple of the lyrics you cite, with the hope of giving new perspective that maybe affirms the emotional validity and depth of these lyrics that you see as shallow or immature.
"We both had girl and boyfriends too..." I can absolutely see how this would rub someone the wrong way. Maybe it almost sounds like gloating. I had a relationship where she and I met while we both had girl and boyfriends, and we ended up ditching the girl and boyfriends to be together. In that situation, one thing to keep in mind is that ditching the girl and boyfriends is hurtful to the girl and boyfriends. But staying with them is unfair too. The girl and boyfriends know that something is up. They know that their partner has a friend who is likely to turn out to be more than a friend. And so for me, staying with that girlfriend when I was clearly falling deeply in love with someone else, that was hurtful. More hurtful than breaking up with the girlfriend? I think so. I think breaking up with her to be with this other person was right. And at the same time, imagine being in that situation: You're taking a big risk leaving a relationship for someone else, who is also leaving their relationship. For me, I felt like, "This new relationship is going to last forever. It has to. I'm breaking someone's heart to be with this new person. This new relationship had better be everything I imagine." So to me, the lyric about girl and boyfriends isn't a petty or shallow thing. I imagine that Dave (and probably Amber) felt like, "This is it. This is THE relationship." This is supported by the next lyric, "Felt like it bore the impress of destiny." And when I was in a situation like that, that's definitly how I felt, like I had to leave my then-current girlfriend and break her heart because I was destined to be with this other person. And now, that's the emotion that lyric evokes for me!
"You were out on in echo park, blasting tupac, and drinking a fifth for my ass." So, in the same way that the hook describes, "Love will burn out. Love will just fade away." That happened to me too. I had left a relationship to be with this girl. She had left a relationship to be with me. It had to feel IMPORTANT for us to take that risk. For several years, it was amazing, and easy, and it continued to feel fated. And then over time that feeling just faded away. The lyric, "drinking a fifth for my ass," evokes this emotion I felt in that time of reflecting fondly on the relationship, and also trying to forget it because of the many mistakes I made. And I don't think it is an unreasonable thing to assume that an ex is off doing the same thing. Especially since it's perfectly possible that Dave and Amber may literally have had this experience. "I was driving today, listening to Kanye, thinking about you." "Holy shit, I was listening to tupac today, thinking about you." I mean I don't know. But this lyric is one of my favorite on the album because the imagery of these two people off doing nearly the same thing, something they probably did together when they were together, but now they're doing it apart...that is powerful. To me, this lyric is about more than just an accounting of events. It's about two people who took a big risk to be together, who shared a deep connection with each other, who still share the same interests as each other, but who are now separated, wondering what the hell went wrong, reflecting fondly while also trying to forget.
So anyway, I am absolutely projecting (pun! get it?) my experiences onto this Dirty Projectors album. I think that's the point of art. And because of my own experiences I definitely read a lot of depth into some of the same lyrics that you see as shallow. So my whole goal here is only to hopefully give you some appreciation of another person's experience of this album. Because I listened to it for the first time last night, and Dave describing his experience of love fading away put me right back on that carosal of emotions I felt when I experienced something similar.
WOW this is dumb. (1) How does refusing to take travelers home from the airport do anything other than inconvenience already harried travelers? (2) Surge pricing isn't a penalty against the consumer for trying to travel during busy times. It's an incentive to attract drivers to help customers during busy times. Like, say, when cab drivers misguidedly decide to stop driving people home from the fucking airport. (3) Elon Musk is also on Trump's economic advisory board and was sharply critical of Trump's actions. Being on Trump's board doesn't automatically make you a crony capitalist. BTW, fuck Trump every way possible. I dislike everything about him and fundamentally disagree with his travel ban. But that's all the more reason for us RATIONAL people to think critically, instead of responding with knee jerk social media half movements like #DeleteUber
Agree entirely about creating products that are clearly labelled and regulated. Here in CO, that's exactly how it works, and it's very clear how much THC you're getting with each edible. In fact, taking that a step further, as a result of all the clear labeling, I know my exact "dose" when trying a new product, I know exactly what will make for a "heavy dose", what will be too much. It's very nice. In short: Legalize marijuana :)
This seems like a very reasonable reply. Maybe Radiohead, so enamored by the idea that no one will take pictures of them while they perform, will come to your local venue, and you'll be forced to reconsider. But then again, given that Thom just stares down people with cameras until it's more awkward for them than it is for him, I'd say bands are already adapting to the "new world" of cell phone cameras, much more rapidly than is Apple. The point is: Apple, your local concert venue, your favorite band....they might be taking away your luxury of filming a show. But one one is taking away your right to choose how you spend your money (and by proxy, how you spend your life, since you'll spend most of it earning that money). This is right. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. And if enough of you agree with Mr. byers here, then problem solved. Apple will back down.
This is irresponsible reporting. But even worse, these comments are irresponsible readership. I'm usually a pretty affable guy, but sometimes a man has to speak his mind. And I say shame on all of you who react to this irresponsible article by fretting over the consequences the article's author has imagined. As some commentors have already pointed out: If this technology is a bad decision on Apple's part, then you each can simply switch to a different phone. But long before that decision, this article's reporter had a responsibility to report on this news objectively. And, failing that, you all have a responsibility to call out the author of this article for using hyperbole to sell a news story, rather than reporting objectively. The worst thing that would ever happen in a world where Apple takes action on a patent to turn off cameras at concerts is that Apple would lose market share. Please, your duty to society here is to shut down tabloid journalism, not to be snookered by it.
Disagree entirely. This isn't a societal problem. You're going to a show put on by a band who wants to make money, in a venue that wants to make money, and you're filming it with a phone made by a tech company that wants to make money, then you're uploading it to a social media site that wants to make money, using a data plan from a phone company that wants to make money. No where in that entire transaction does there exist the smell of a fart from your basic human rights.
Nothing is stopping the hypothetical oppressive government from mounting this infrared tech on tanks and shutting down peoples' smart phone cameras. Good thing we have: Real cameras. Journalists. Word of mouth. Twitter. Facebook. Emails. Actual mail. The goddamn telephone capacity of the actual smart phone itself.
I mean, either you believe your government isn't currently shooting you with tanks because (1) they're worried about the news getting out or (2) your iPhone camera has anti-tank properties. If it's the second one, then we're screwed. But it's not the second one.
I've thought a lot about this in the last few days since I read the victim's statement, and I'm prepared to be downvoted all to hell and told what a terrible person I am. I just hope that if there is negativity to follow this post, it is mitigated by the fact that I am honestly trying to wrap my head around the facts and my gut reaction to those facts. So if someone can help me understand, then any other amount of negativity directed my way will be worth it to me. But the statement, "rape on campuses isn't always because people are rapists," makes perfect sense to me. I'm not saying that what Brock Turner did was defensible, or forgivable. But that the act, the way it was handled, the resulting judgement, and the outrage over the case reflect a lack of nuance in our language surrounding the word "rape". You might say, "Rape is rape is rape, and people who rape are rapists; there isn't any nuance in the act, it's just plain one of the worst things you can do to a person, and it should be punished accordingly." So by way of analogy: If rape is one of the worst things you can do to a person, killing them certainly is THE worst thing. And yet, our legal system has taken the act of killing and imbued it with nuance. We have literally "degrees" of murder. And our court system believes that plotting to kill someone and then killing them is worse than killing them in the heat of the moment, which is worse than killing them out of mercy, which is worse than killing them out of self defense, which is worse than killing them completely by accident. It's not a perfect analogy because no one was ever sexually assaulted out of mercy or out of self defense. But the point stands: If we can take the most heinous act, killing someone, and treat the question of "degrees of severity" seriously with that act, why can we not do the same with sexual assault?
That said, in the case of Brock Turner, much of the outrage has been around the fact that his sentence was so lenient. I am outraged by that fact too. I read that he may get out of prison in THREE MONTHS and that is even more outrageous. But in these reactions of outrage, I often see cited the maximum penalty for sexual assault, which is 14 years. And my gut reaction is that Brock Turner does NOT deserve the maximum penalty for sexual assault. I have a friend who was drugged in a gay bar and who, fortunately, was rescued by his friends before anything bad could happen. Had he completed the act, the man who drugged my friend's drink would be a rapist who deserves 14 years. I have a friend who was violently assaulted, held down, and forced to have sex with a man while she tried to fight him off, and the man who did that deserves 14 years. From what I've read of this case, Brock Turner and the victim were both drunk, both at a party, had interacted (possibly flirtatiously), he was in the process of walking her back to his dorm, and they started to engage in sexual behavior while the victim was still conscious. I completely agree that a drunk person cannot give consent. I completely agree that the fact that she was willingly going back to his dorm was not an act of consent, especially because she was black-out drunk. I completely agree that Brock Turner had no right to do what he did, and was in violation of the law surrounding sexual assault. And I completely agree that the statement "People who rape are rapists" is tautologically true, in the same way that "People who kill are killers," is tautologically true.
Where I disagree is with the notion that Brock Turner should be lumped in with the man who purchases drugs in advance of going to a club so that he can render his victim incapable of fighting back, or the man who held my friend down and forced himself on her while she fought violently to stop him. I think that's what the drummer in Good English was implying: She used the word "rapists" because our society doesn't have a single word that provides more nuance than "rapist". But with a little more nuance of language, I think what she is saying is, "Rape on campus isn't always perpetrated by mentally disturbed, violent, premeditating sexual predators; sometimes rape is perpetrated by good people, with good morals, who make bad decisions in the moment." But we don't have different words for those two things and, as the conversation around Brock Turner seems to indicate to me, we aren't even willing as a society to recognize that those two kinds of people and those two kinds of situation are different at all. The original LilGravyBoat post, and the many up-thumbs it's gotten, indicates to me that we're happy to say, "Rape is rape. End of story."
Finally, I suggest that by dismissing the notion that nuance matters that we are actually hurting men and especially women. I wasn't there the night that Brock Turner sexually assaulted that young woman. So I might be wrong. He might have planned as he was leaving his house to feed some girl so many shots that she couldn't fight back, or to find an unconscious girl laying around (they exist on college campuses) and to sexually assault her. But it sounds a lot more like he went out, got drunk, and thought he was "hooking up" with an also drunk young girl. It sounds a lot more like he didn't know there is a point of intoxication beyond which a person cannot capably say "yes" or "no". Again, I might be wrong in the case of Brock Turner, but I don't think I'm wrong if I say that this sort of sexual assault happens literally every day. Thousands of young women are sexually assaulted this way every year, by men who don't recognize that having sex with a black out drunk girl is assault. I think the young men in those cases reason, "What I'm doing isn't the same as drugging a woman, or stalking her, or breaking into her apartment, or threatening her with a weapon. Those things are rape." And because we live in a society that refuses to accept nuance, that steadfastly holds the opinion that sex acts are either "rape" or "not rape", those young men reason that what they're doing is "not rape". In those thousands of instances a year, I think that if we lived in a society that allowed for nuance in the conversation about sexual assault, if we lived in a society where the word "rapist" meant something more severe than "perpetrator of sexual assault", where the statement, "Not all sexual assault on college campuses is perpetrated by rapists" was a logical thing to say....I think then we could more effectively send the message that, "No, having sex with a black out drunk girl is NOT the worst kind of rape. It is morally, linguistically, and legally less severe. But it is still a crime. It is still illegal. And if there is any gray area in your mind, then let's clear that up: The only acceptable thing to do with a drunk girl is to get her home safely. Anything else is a crime."
In summary, I think that Brock Turner's case exemplifies a kind of sexual assault that is morally different from the kind of sexual assault most people think of when they hear the words "rape" and "rapist". I am in no way insinuating that what Brock Turner did was acceptable. My point is that bundling the Brock Turner kind of sexual assault in with the terms "rape" and "rapist" makes it harder for young men to accept that preying on drunk girls at parties is still assault, is still illegal, and is still morally wrong.
Probably because I'm not 'ye, ya'll misinterpret my rhymes: My point is that Kanye has a very distinctive rhythm (ah 1 e & ah 2, and ah 3, ah 4) that he highlights at some point in a great many of his tracks and which make his flows instantly identifiable. It's like saying, "Hendrix' repeated use of his thumb to anchor the bass note on the guitar makes his guitar technique instantly identifiable." In this track for example, there is the moment when the beat drops out and Kanye raps, "I wasn't s'posed to make it past twenty five." He uses some slight variation of the rhythm almost every time he drops the beat and gets that "sing-songy" quality in a line. For a second specific citation, going all the way back to his first major single, Through The Wire, the second lyric is a slight variation on that rhythm, "Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp", which is only a variation on the rhythm because the word, "sizzurp" adds an extra syllable to the fourth beat. So my point is: From his very first single to his most recent single today, Kanye has been spitting that rhythm over and over and over, and it's part of what makes his rhymes immediately "Kanye".
If your name is kanye west then you always have,
the very same rhythm in all your tracks.
ah 1 e & ah 2, and ah 3, ah foouuur
the rhythm is ubiquitous, why ask for more?
NOOOOOO!!! Until yesterday, I lived where this took place! I go to that festival every year! They trot out some 90s relic every year. I saw Third Eye Blind there last year. I wondered who it would be this year. And I picked YESTERDAY to move to California and MISSED THIS?!? FML
Improvement! ALMOST made it through a whole article about Mark Kozelek without mentioning the War on Drugs! It's like trying to hold your breath for a whole minute and you just didn't quite make it.
And gas station sunglasses. Oh my GOD how could you get literally every other middle age stereotype into one post and forget gas station sunglasses? You'll need to try harder next time.
Agree w/ #1. Fell in love with Amber the first time I heard that ridiculous vocal lick and high note at the end. List definitely lacks Impregnable Question, which, on my list, would make up for missing the top spot by instead occupying spots #'s 2-4. And then: You want to hear Dave Longstreth finally, after *years* of trying, FINALLY perfect his white-guy Beyonce impression?? While You Are Here.
That graph shows the royalty payout to an artist's publisher currently (light green), and what the payout would be for a similarly popular song if Spotify were to hit its own company goal of 40m paid subscribers (dark green).
"Of course, there's something romantic about that tortured genius archetype, and I think there's something inherent to American culture that draws us to a visionary. It's only later, when the products diminish but the ego doesn't, when we turn on them, and that's happened with Corgan over the years, when his arrogance seemed wholly out of touch with how uneven his legacy has become. You know what, though? I don't even care."
^This, exactly this. The Pumpkins were my first "oh my god favorite band!", gushing teenage fanboy implications and all, and this is the most perfect retrospective statement about them I've ever read.
So I also cut my teeth on 90's alt rock, and I appreciate a lot of what you said. But I'd echo the point others have made here and say that music is reactionary. You say a lot of synthetic music is soulless, poorly produced, and lacks talent from experience--I agree; but I'd also point to Daft Punk's album this year as a (phenomenal) reaction against that trend. And it's worth pointing out that the current wave of intentionally poorly produced electronic music coming from inexperienced musicians is itself a reaction, in the same way that the wave of intentionally poorly produced grunge music from inexperienced 90s musicians was a reaction. The way I look at it: I was just a bit too young to really get what was happening the last time we saw a major sea change in music (I was 8 when Nirvana hit). Now, I think we've got another major sea change occurring--I don't want to be too old for this one!
"For a band so many try to write off as harmless, talking about Coldplay comes with a surprising amount of baggage."
Here's to hitting the nail right on the head!
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