I Want To Show My Mad Love

Spank Rock – Excerpt from Fabriclive 33 including: CSS “Let’s Make Love and Listen To Death From Above (Spank Rock Remix),” Chicks on Speed “Wordy Rappinghood (Playgroup Mix),” Mr. Oizo “Nazis (Justice Mix),” and Dominatrix “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” – The album-length mixes in the Fabric series are very hit or miss, and the quality largely depends on the character and genre affiliations of the DJ on any given disc. A good number of them do their job well, but feel anonymous and aesthetically flat, and though I appreciate them in a distanced sort of way and a strong argument can be made that I simply lack a nuanced taste for certain dance subgenres, I just can’t connect with a record that never strays from a limited palette of textures and one monotonous beat for 80 minutes. Spank Rock’s mix is characteristically restless, rowdy, and fun as it cycles through bits of recent crowd-pleasers, electro cuts, and tweaked oldies. The mix is fluid and intuitive, but not overworked, lending the set a loose feeling that implies that they are whimsically skipping around through their record bins.

I’m not sure why, but I’d never really paid much attention to Spank Rock’s remix of CSS’ “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” before acquiring this Fabric mix. Interestingly, Spank Rock’s version modifies the arrangement so that it is easier to mix seamlessly into one of their sets, but the by-product of that pragmatism is that the mood darkens considerably and it contrasts with the raunchy cheer common to the rest of the mix. The lyrics are foregrounded by the newly spare arrangement, and the alternate vocal take by Lovefoxxx emphasizes the sadness just barely obscured by her “live for the moment” optimism as she tries to make the most of her time with a long distance love that she’s finally just met in person. The excitement and open-hearted lust is still there, but her doubt, frustration, and nervousness isn’t nearly as well concealed as it is on the original recording. The shift isn’t all that drastic, but it’s enough to to reinforce my estimation that its words fall into the highest percentile of quality pop lyrics from the past ten years, and make the song sound fresh to me all over again after having heard it soooooooo many times throughout 2006.

Edit:

I’d like to address this comment left in the box below, which more or less echoes what I was railing against the last time I wrote about CSS at length:

I’m sure Lovefoxxx is not emoting that much. She’s in a dance band for crying out loud and not a very good one. – Anon

To a certain extent this (obviously quite brave!) anonymous poster is entitled to their opinion, and since it is apparent that they haven’t given this a great deal of thought, it’s not really worth arguing with them, at least not in the interest of trying to change their mind. But honestly, there’s no way I can read this sort of comment without assuming some pretty harsh things — mainly, that they seem to have extremely rigid and unimaginative ideas about what signifies intelligent and emotionally moving art.

I think that a lot of the problem that some people run into with CSS is that their record is very much a product of the present tense, and though I believe that accounts for a great deal of its beauty, art that is so tied into a moment that will inevitably pass tends to freak out a certain type of insecure fan who demands permanence and timelessness, often because they are terrified of ever having to admit that they enjoyed something that has since become dated. If you want to cling to the notion of having an imagined aesthetic upper hand, you will most likely become allergic to this sort of music, and find refuge in safe bets. If you’ve conditioned yourself to think of contemporary culture (especially internet culture) as being an endless stream of vulgar novelty — a notion that is not entirely inaccurate, by the way — you’ve most likely blinded yourself to any art that speaks to the humanity and emotional truth of experiences within that culture.

This particular CSS song is about an increasingly common experience that was quite rare less than a decade ago, and there are very few songs that explore it, especially not in a way that so articulately expresses the mixed emotions, expectations, and awkwardness of the situation without getting all emo about it. Like the rest of their album, “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” is dealing with both the positive and negative aspects of living in a world that seems small on the internet, but is still quite vast — physically and culturally. They do this while being playful, while sounding fun, and without making grand pronouncements or diving into the deep end of angst. I can’t see how that isn’t a totally remarkable achievement. (Click here to pre-order it from Fabric.)

Elsewhere: Chris Conroy on false authority and the nature of the modern backlash.