The verses give me some "Breakdown" energy. I can accept the mellower take on Sleater-Kinney - all of these songs have been pretty solid - but the one TCWH trend they seem to be sticking with is just sticking to their own songs. And more than any of the other sound/image switch-ups, that was my biggest gripe with the album.
Yes and given that, is it wrong to wish the vocals were just a little... better? I know I planted my flag in the "rock-singer-don't-need-to-be-good-singers" camp recently, and it's still there, but to me George's crooning sounds really thin and dependent on the reverb, and like he's sort of just mumbling to himself. Can't his clean singing have some of the dynamism of his shrieking? IDK. I should also say I'm a huge wimp with extreme metal vox and I always appreciate heavy music with a decent amount of clean singing, so I'm here for it on principle. It just doesn't grab me on this track.
Deafheaven has always been a band that asks you to accept their music on its own terms. And I respect that. But on its own terms, I am also kind of ambivalent about this song. I love me some swirly shoegaze, and Deafheaven does it reasonably well, but outside the context of "woah, this is the new Deafheaven?" I really don't think this song would impress me that much coming from, like, Slowdive. I mean it would be wild if a Slowdive song ended with a screaming fit, but the rest of it, yeah, it's just kind of... congrats boys, that is shoegaze. I wasn't even wild about all of OCHL but I'd take any of the first three tracks on that album over this.
I'm cautiously optimistic. Based on the two singles I think it will be good but its pretty much the opposite of TCWH in that it seems like they are doing everything they can to NOT make an event out of it. Which is maybe what they need right now.
Truly their best content, by a mile. IDK if the labor dispute is keeping some of the better freelancers away from Pitchfork or what but the reviews are such a mess these days. Honestly, I wish people would just take their good recs and ignore the rest. But its so annoying when an album like Jubilee gets nearly unanimous raves but then Pitchfork damns with faint praise and that has to be the baseline for the conversation. Pitchfork has *never* given JBrekkie a BNM! So... fuck'em!
The album is great. As for the BNM - who cares? I had to scroll past two different “21 Bluetooth speakers” advertorials to get to the review. Garbage site these days.
A strictly by-the-numbers "Butter" write-up and glowing comments for all of the Pop 5. Either Chris had a really great vacation or Stereogum has learned the danger of rattling the stanbases.
The editing was NOT the problem. Tom packaged a well deserved critique in the classic shit sandwich with plenty of acknowledgement for what BTS does well (which is basically exist and be popular in a way that only incidentally involves music but he said it more nicely than that). You can’t negotiate with terrorists.
I missed the BTS drama sadly as I was moving into a new apartment this week, something that obviously only leaves time for VERY important internet things like discussing Grimes’ political theory. But I found Tom like way overly deferential to BTS in that piece. “Dynamite” is trash and so is “Butter,” I don’t care how good they are live, that’s just true. Some of their other stuff I can get down with but these attempted (and I guess technically you have to say successful) stateside crossover singles are just franchise building material that can barely be called pop music. It’s like the music version of the Marvel movies where everything is just setting up the next Marvel movie.
For those who don’t keep up with Gaga b-sides and remixes etcetera, the Country Road Version of BTW is something Gaga herself did way back when and that is what Orville is covering
https://youtube.com/watch?v=jmR5Aat11P8
You're right that people often use "leftist" for a weird mish mash of social liberalism, progressive reformism, economic socialism, plus issues that don't really map easily onto the left-right spectrum but have found homes on the left such as environmentalism, anti-war movements, feminism, etc. But I would argue that its that usage that is problematic and not using leftism to mean something more like socialism. Truthfully the left-right distinction has its origins in the French Revolution, so it does predate socialism, but in its essence its a distinction between people who want a more egalitarian society and people who want to defend existing hierarchies. In the US, we have a long stretch of liberal acquiescence from Reagan through Bush and arguably up to and including the Obama admin (which I'd say was kind of a partial pivot away from the neoliberal consensus, but only a partial one). So during that time period it made more sense to use left and liberal/progressive/"Democrats and everyone to their left" somewhat interchangeably. Only in the post-Obama landscape do we have a strong left reasserting its independence from Reagan/Clinton style neoliberalism. Which is why today people really do mean something more like socialism, or at least social democracy / social liberalism, when they talk about the left.
But that's really a deeper conversation that we need to have here. There's just no meaningful sense in which Elon Musk is a leftist. You might think some of his ideas are moving society forward in a way you can appreciate, and in some very limited instances I would even agree, but nobody who is as anti-taxation and anti-union as Musk can plausibly be called a leftist.
I also agree with all of your points about how Grimes really can love Musk. It's fucking unfathomable to me, but also endearing in a weird/gross way. I still love her music. But when she starts trying to do PR for him like he's some kind of benevolent oligarch that we should all just vibe with, I'm gonna have to agree with the folks calling bullshit.
I don't really care what your personal opinion on Paypal is and I'm not trying to convince you to adopt a different one. But hopefully you can understand that there is a difference between an idea being in some sense useful and it being "leftist." You're the one trying to make the case that Musk made his money off "leftist ideas" and I'm just trying to help you understand why literally nobody buys that.
None of the things you mentioned are actually leftist ideas even if they are in some construal progressive (I don't think they are even that, necessarily, but I also don't really care to argue about it). They are at best, a kind of tinkering at the margins of the economic system, but they don't directly redistribute wealth or emancipate labor, which are the core goals of the left. And when it comes to those points, Musk is a total reactionary.
The author of FALC will tell you the idea is straight out of Marx. Grimes is just saying about AI what Marxists have said about automation broadly for close to a century now.
I was really floored by a few tracks off of Schlagenheim (953, Speedway, bmbmbm) but I found the album hard to connect with. Initially, Cavalcade comes across as much more listenable while still packing in in plenty of "oh shit did they just.... ?" moments.
Chris the link is eluding me now but there is absolutely a St. Justin sitar mashup floating around out there and it kinda works. Look forward to me posting that on something completely unrelated later this week.
I think its supposed to be a play on hardcore? But yeah, I went to several Warped Tours in my youth, and I have never heard or seen that word before today.
As someone who was also hoping for a do-over, I regret to report that this (and the Chili Peppers) is exactly what the people want. On Boston Calling's Facebook, every update for the past year has been met with folks *begging* for the 2020 headliners to come back. This thing has just become another unwieldy cash cow and that's sad because just a few years ago it was one of the better curated festival out there.
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