This is the conclusion of my interview with Rob Sheffield, author of the excellent new book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. In this segment, we discuss the value of famous artists and famous songs, Lady Gaga’s indifference to the straight dude’s gaze, pro-girl songs, and Rob’s eternal love for Stacey Q and Scritti Politti.
My interview with Rob Sheffield, author of the new book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, continues here. In this segment, we talk about the incredible cultural power of MTV in the 80s and 90s, the importance of pop stars, and the tacky brilliance of the cassingle.
My interview with Rob Sheffield, author of the new book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, continues here. In this part of our conversation, we discuss the “First-Week One-Listen Piffle” school of music criticism, buying albums on the day of release, and the way drugs ruined the rock stars of the ’90s.
My interview with Rob Sheffield, author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, continues here. This is the point where things start to get very fun, as we talk about Michael Jackson, Prince, “hey DJ!” songs, Sonic Youth, and Thurston Moore’s brilliant song “Psychic Hearts.”
The last time I interviewed music critic Rob Sheffield on this site, he had just released his excellent and heartbreaking memoir Love Is a Mix Tape. That book told the story of loving and eventually losing his first wife in the context of the music and mix tapes they shared. His second memoir, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, has just recently been released. Over the course of this week, I’ll be running a long discussion we had last week that touches on — among many other things! — the value of pop stars, “pro-girl” songs, the cultural power of MTV in the 80s and 90s, and what Rob calls the “First-Week One-Listen Piffle” school of music criticism. Here’s the first part of our talk. Enjoy, and stay tuned!
The title is lewd, but not quite as lewd as the synthesizers sound. The synths writhe and thrust with the beat, essentially abstract but leaving very little to the imagination. The lyrics are mostly intentionally flimsy double-entendres, to the point that it’s almost sort of cute that he’s even trying to be polite about this. I like that the voice is a deep, breathy, garbled thing — not quite natural, it’s like putting on a costume: “I’m going to be this man tonight.” To a large extent, this song is about making a conscious decision to get sleazy. It’s about saying, “Yes, I am going to get out there and live this night like it’s a goth version of Prince’s “Erotic City.”” Or, failing that, a better version of Squarepusher’s “My Red Hot Car.”
Buy it from Amazon.
As you almost certainly know by now, Edgar Wright’s film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comic is about to open in movie theaters this weekend. To celebrate this, I’m rerunning an interview with Bryan that I conducted June of 2006, right around the time the third book in the series came out.
Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series of digest-sized graphic novels have quickly become some of my favorite comics of all time, and that’s saying quite a lot given my lifelong history with the medium. O’Malley’s series is a giddy rush of comedy, romance, and absurd action, with a brilliant high concept — charismatic layabout Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers’ seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to stay with her — that warps a classic video game convention into an offbeat metaphor about learning how to cope with the romantic past of both your partner and yourself. Though comics are often associated with wish fulfillment, it’s actually quite rare to find many contemporary books (mainstream, indie, or otherwise) that bother with that sort of thing, much less embrace it as O’Malley does in the series. If you don’t find yourself wanting to be Scott Pilgrim (Super cute girls love him! He’s in a band! He’s got cool friends! He’s a hero!), you’ll probably develop a crush on Kim Pine, want a cool roommate like Wallace Wells, or wish that you could have a nemesis half as fabulous as Envy Adams.
In this interview, Bryan Lee O’Malley discusses the origins of the series, his background in music, the potential film adaptation of the comic, and his tendency to conflate video games that he has played with actual lived experience.
On the surface, “Turn Me Away (Get Munny)” sounds light and affectionate, flirty and uncomplicated. This is the image the character in the song wants to project as she attempts to insinuate herself into a rich man’s life, doing anything necessary to stake a claim to his economic stability. Badu’s words aren’t flattering or particularly empathetic — it’s more of a caricature than a character study — so the emphasis is mainly on this woman’s calculation and desperation. It’s a cynical song about a cynical person, but the bitterness is cut by the wicked humor in Badu’s lyrics and the sweetness of its melodies. It’s a musical honey trap.
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“Dark Place” starts out swooning, and then just gets swoonier from there on out, rolling out in gentle waves of harmony and synthetic texture over a stiff metronomic beat. The singer promises to someday take you to their dark place, but it doesn’t sound like such a scary thing — it comes out sounding romantic, sweet, generous, intimate. How bad could that dark place be when the song sounds so pretty, gentle, and thoughtful? It all feels a bit tentative, but in a hopeful way: He wants that trust to be earned, because love is most true when you can open up and reveal yourself and all your flaws and still feel accepted for who you are.
Get it for free from Raindeer’s Bandcamp site.
Joanna Newsom is a wordy type, and although she writes with great precision, you can often pull out a line or two that gets to the heart of what she is singing so that all the rest is just detail and elaboration. In the case of “Esme,” it’s just two words: “Kindness prevails!” That declaration comes nearly five minutes into the composition, a moment of climactic epiphany in its gorgeous, slowly unfolding hymn-like melody. Newsom is singing to a young girl, marveling at her beauty and recalling the joy and generosity that met her arrival to this world. It’s an optimistic song in the face of great hardship, a piece of music that reminds both the subject and the listener that humanity is capable of incredible innate kindness and love. The tune is fragile and elegant, arranged only for Newsom’s voice and her harp, and it perfectly conveys its sentiment of thoughtful, intense sweetness. In lesser hands, “Esme” would be a sugary, simplistic Hallmark card; Newsom’s song is like a carefully considered, highly poetic long form letter.
Buy it from Amazon.
Robyn @ Webster Hall 8/5/2010
Fembot / Cry When You Get Older / Cobra Style / Dancing On My Own / Who’s That Girl? / Dancehall Queen / The Girl And The Robot / Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do / Be Mine! // Dream On / With Every Heartbeat
I saw Robyn perform a few weeks ago at the Pitchfork festival in Chicago, and it was nice. But it was nothing like this. This show was intense, the response to the music was exactly what you’d hope for when you imagine a Robyn concert in your mind. Aside from one show being a festival gig and the other being a club show, the major difference is that the audience at Webster Hall was about 80% gay men. Gay men are pretty much the best audience ever — passionate, devoted, eager to dance, sing along, and show the artist love. You might think I am overrating this, but if you’re thinking that you probably haven’t seen a show under similar conditions. Anyway, the emotional and physical energy hit its peak with “Dancing On My Own.” Feelings of insecurity and sorrow for unrequited love were channeled into this beautiful, absolutely perfect dance pop song, making a lie of the title phrase — we may all have been in our heads, but we definitely weren’t dancing on our own.
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Kelis @ Webster Hall 8/5/2010
Emancipate / Scream / Trick Me / Holiday – Milkshake / 4th Of July / Lil Star / Brave / 22nd Century / Millionaire / Get Along With You / Acapella
I want to like Kelis’ dance diva make-over more than I do. “Acapella” is amazing and undeniable, but the rest of her new album is just shy of her mark. A lot of it comes down to the hooks — they are there, but aside from the best bits of “Acapella,” they’re sorta vague and overly repetitive, and don’t have quite enough emotional resonance. Kelis is trying hard though, and I give her a lot of credit, even if it seems like a pretty blatant grab for a gay audience now that she doesn’t have much of a place in R&B or mainstream pop. She’s a good performer, or at least a flashy one — she looked kinda like a black version of Dazzler from the X-Men — and older songs like “Millionaire” and a mash-up of Madonna’s “Holiday” and her hit “Milkshake” came off well. She’s not totally there just yet, but I can see her growing into this new act over time.
Buy it from Amazon.
Arcade Fire @ Madison Square Garden 8/4/2010
Ready To Start / Laika / No Cars Go / Haiti / No Celebration / Rococo / The Suburbs / Crown Of Love / Intervention / We Used To Wait / Power Out / Rebellion (Lies) / Month Of May / Tunnels // Keep The Car Running / Mountains Beyond Mountains / Wake Up
As can be expected, the Arcade Fire did great at their first Madison Square Garden show. I mean, duh, right? They’ve always been an arena band, and playing this show was basically them living out their destiny. I’m not really sure where they could go from here, actually, other than decline. They’re probably not going to get any bigger, and if you look at the albums, Win Butler has basically gone through his story arc in reverse: grew up in the suburbs, got alienated and decided that he doesn’t wanna live in America anymore, moved to Montreal and had meaningful experiences in the city. Unless he wants to go further back the next time around — Arcade Fire’s The Babies? — they’re going to have to dream it all up again. Or not! This show made it perfectly clear that they can dine out on Funeral for the rest of their lives.
The strange thing about this concert is that whenever the band played oldies, particularly the tracks from Funeral, the non-Win members would all be super energetic and animated. You know, they’d be doing their Arcade Fire thing, jumping around and banging on things and everyone singing and playing and moving at once. This plays very well in an arena, and that energy is reflected by the audience. However, with the exception of “Month of May,” whenever they would do songs from their new album, they all just kinda played their parts and didn’t put on much of a show. I’m not sure why they did this. Maybe they’re not confident enough in playing the new songs to indulge in theater while performing them? Maybe they don’t like those songs as much as Win does? I have no idea. I get the feeling that they’re misdirecting their energies, though — the audience doesn’t need to get more amped up for the Funeral hits, they respond to those with an intensely passionate fervor. They do, however, need to get led on the new songs, and aside from Win, the group doesn’t seem invested in doing that.
I’ve read some very harsh criticism of the new Arcade Fire album that basically makes it out to be this big blinking sign reading SUBURBS BAD, CITY GOOD. I feel like that misses the point somewhat. There’s not a lot of ambiguity on the album, but it’s not quite as reductive as that. “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” the album’s best and most aesthetically surprising song, essentially summarizes the entire record, and it’s basically the same song we’ve heard hundreds of times in rock music: “I’m bored with my life! I want to express myself! I want escape! I want excitement! I want salvation!” When I was a teenager living in the suburbs, this song was “Silent Kid,” it was “1979,” it was “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.” This is just an essential part of rock and pop music; it’s a major part of the human condition. Does the record overstate the promise of the artsy city life? Yes, of course. Does it over-romanticize the purity of youth, and state a distrust for the institutions of adult life? Sure. But this is rock music, and that’s par for the course.
“Mountains Beyond Mountains” is beautiful and effective in part because it is fairly nuanced — you get the desire to leave, the dissatisfaction with the sprawl and the malls and the endless nothing-much that characterizes so much of the space in North America, but more than anything, you hear this excitement for possibility and change. The album starts out in an idyllic rut, but it ends with this song which looks off to the future, hoping for something better. The singer is still stuck in the same old place, but she’s got a destination in mind, and suddenly the world just has more of a sparkle to it.
Buy it from Amazon.
Spoon @ Madison Square Garden 8/4/2010
Me And The Bean (Britt solo) / Nobody Gets Me But You / The Underdog / Stay Don’t Go / Trouble Comes Running / The Ghost Of You Lingers / Written In Reverse / Don’t You Evah / I Turn My Camera On / Don’t Make Me A Target / I Summon You / Jonathon Fisk / You Got Yr Cherry Bomb / Got Nuffin / Black Like Me
I wasn’t sure how Spoon would translate in an arena, but I think that they did pretty great. This is mostly thanks to the presence of Britt Daniel, whose swagger and charisma comes across very well without having to do anything in the way of Bono-ish antics. A horn section added oomph to a few of the songs, but they didn’t really need it — in fact, the songs that relied the most on groove were the ones that went over the best. They are ultimately more of a club and large theater band, but they play with enough style and authority that I think they could do well in most any venue. When this set ended, I was totally satisfied, and the imminent Arcade Fire set was like a bonus round.
Buy it from Amazon.
Owen Pallett @ Madison Square Garden 8/4/2010
This Lamb Sells Condos / This Is The Dream Of Win & Regine / Midnight Directives / Lewis Takes Action / The Butcher / The Great Elsewhere / Lewis Takes Off His Shirt
Owen Pallett is a one-man string ensemble with a pretty, delicate voice and arty. Needless to say, his music is not exactly built for arenas. Nevertheless, I think he came off well, especially given that he was playing in the “people slowly trickle into the room” time slot. I think his singing is more impressive live than on record — there’s a reedy quality to his voice that has a more appealing resonance in a big room than transmitting through small speakers. He was very charming too, which helped a lot. I find it easy to get on this guy’s side.
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“Cheaters” is built around the a cappella track of the Love Committee’s “Cheaters Never Win” to such an extent that it’s probably more accurately considered to be a remix than an entirely new song. Teengirl Fantasy use pretty much the entire vocal, but they completely alter the tone of the piece, stripping away the cheeriness of the original tune and placing a far greater emphasis on the drama of the lyrics. Contrasted with a steady, emotionally neutral house track, the vocals take on a hysterical, frenzied quality. It’s a simple hot/cold dynamic, but it has a poetic quality, as though you’re slowly fading out of a numb state and coming back to an intense reality that seems a bit too absurd to be true.
Buy it from True Panther Sounds.
St. Vincent @ Central Park Summerstage 8/1/2010
The Strangers / Save Me From What I Want / Actor Out Of Work / Jesus Saves, I Spend / Just The Same But Brand New / The Neighbors / Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood / The Bed / Black Rainbow / Marrow / Your Lips Are Red // The Party
Ahhh, the ruthless perfection of St. Vincent. This was a remarkable set — technically astonishing, yet with enough deviations from recorded arrangements and small moments of improvisation to keep things fresh and in the moment. This was a special show. In addition to her usual quintet, she added a three man horn section and a five-piece mini-orchestra, all without ever bogging down the sound. I was most excited for “The Neighbors,” a seldom-performed favorite of mine, but “Black Rainbow” may have been the highlight as the additional players added richness and detail to the sound without doing anything to compromise Clark’s light, delicate melodies.
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Tune-Yards @ Central Park Summerstage 8/31/2010
Do You Wanna Live? / What’s That About? / Powa / My Hood / Fiya / Real Live Flesh / Sunlight / Hatari / Don’t Take My Life Away
The second Tune-Yards album can’t come quickly enough. The existing recordings are very good, but don’t do enough to showcase exactly how jaw-dropping Merrill Garbus has become as a live performer. I would go so far to say that she may be one of the greatest singers in the world today. The raw quality of her voice is phenomenal, but the originality of her style is what gets you — very controlled, but raw, playful, sexy, commanding, masculine, feminine. About half the songs were performed as usual, as either a duo or Garbus by herself, but the rest included a seven-piece band assembled for the occasion. This was incredible, and I can only hope that she does more of this in the future. Maybe she doesn’t need the extra percussion or the guitarist, but oh man, the horn section? Brilliant, perfect, wonderful. If you are on the fence about this band, you need to see them live and you will become a very big fan. It’s that simple.
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Basia Bulat is adorable. She can seem a bit solemn on record — her voice somewhat resembles that of the wholesome, dour Natalie Merchant — but in person, she is very friendly and smiley, which helps put over her performance. It’s just nice to see someone have fun up there, you know? Her set was low-key but dynamic, with several shifts in arrangement — acoustic guitar, mandolin, autoharp — that kept the sound lively and fresh. Her songs are small, gentle things with subtle charms that can flattened a bit in the studio, but in concert they open up and breathe. Loose and casual is the way to go with this music.
Buy it from Amazon.
Sonic Youth @ Prospect Park Bandshell 7/31/2010
Candle / Brother James / Catholic Block / Stereo Sanctity / Hey Joni / The Sprawl / Cross The Breeze / The Wonder / Hyperstation / White Cross / Mote / Shaking Hell // Shadow Of A Doubt / Silver Rocket / Expressway To Yr Skull
Mark Ibold was not available for this performance, and so the band performed a set in which the most recent song was released in 1990. This was very cool, but also sort of odd, in that I feel somewhat uncomfortable with them totally ignoring twenty years of their career in choosing what to play. Granted, songs from A Thousand Leaves on through Sonic Nurse have been cut from the live repertoire for some time now and pretty much everything from NYC Ghosts and Flowers onward is arranged for a quintet, but still. This was a fine show, but it was bogged down a bit by the simple fact that I am still burned out on much of the Daydream Nation material and would’ve much preferred that they played more from Evol and Sister — how about “Schizophrenia,” “Cotton Crown,” and “Tom Violence” instead of “The Wonder”, “Hyperstation”, and “Silver Rocket”? — but that’s my own problem I guess. I’ve seen Sonic Youth so many times now that I’m afraid I take this stuff for granted. It was awesome to finally get to see them do “Stereo Sanctity” though. That was totally awesome. Also, there is no way that I will ever be bored with “Candle,” “Brother James,” “White Cross,” “Shadow of a Doubt” or “Expressway To Yr Skull.”
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Candy Claws are a duo from Colorado who make music to evoke the power and mystery of nature. Their previous album attempted to mimic the sound of the ocean floor; their latest is inspired by a 1970 book titled The Secret Life of the Forest. If you only just listen casually, you may not get exactly what they’re going for — it mostly just sounds like an extremely ethereal take on Brian Wilson, and the lyrics are almost entirely obscure by the softness of their voices — but in the context of their stated project, it’s easy to imagine this as an abstracted impression of the forest. Sometimes it feels like we’re zooming in on a detail, other parts express a widescreen grandeur. Beyond the soft-focus surface, the arrangements are surprisingly nuanced, full of interesting textures, subtle melodies, and unexpected rhythms. The quality of the album is similar to that of its subject matter — pretty but matter-of-fact at first, but intriguing upon closer investigation.
Buy it from Amazon. I recommend holding out for a physical copy, though, as the packaging of this album is lovely and highly informative.
Mirah’s first few versions of “Gone Are All The Days” were stark and simple, with her voice and rhythm suggesting something bigger and deeper without filling in much space. There’s a charm to that sort of minimalism, but I feel like in the case of this song, the full-on punk-disco approach is far more effective. Even still, as much as the song has been filled-out, it’s still tight and spare, with a clear aesthetic debt to the Gossip in their tense-yet-danceable mode. They could go further — I could definitely hear this with disco strings and a bit of piano for color — but that would lighten it up, and I think the sweetness and smoothness of Mirah’s voice is flattered by the contrast of this rigid yet pulsing arrangement.
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Magic Kids aren’t the type of band to reinvent the wheel of sunshine pop. Think of them more like artisans invested in crafting very fine wheels of sunshine pop. They’re a deliberate and welcome anachronism; if this was food you’d probably find them at a nice farmer’s market or upscale specialty grocery. “Phone Song” is immediately familiar, and there are probably dozens of oldies that sound almost the same, but there’s a charm in their adaptation of an old timey songwriting recipe, and a quality in how they put it all together. It’s cute and lovely, and though that’s not always enough, it’s fine enough here.
Buy it from Amazon.
Curren$y has one of those voices that seems as though it could’ve been genetically engineered for the purposes of rap — he need not even work too hard on rhymes to make his words come out sounding smooth, seductive, and musical. You can hear echoes of Snoop Dogg and Pusha T in his delivery, but he’s certainly his own man. I quite like the way his verses have this sticky quality, as though every line coats the beat like a slow drip of honey. The music for “Audio Dope II” suits this quality perfectly — the resonance of his voice seems to slick up this rhythmic loop that grinds like gears, and the bright tonality complements his dark, nearly monochromatic cadences.
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There’s been a long tradition in Christian pop of songs with lyrics that could just as easily be about God/Jesus or some wonderful boyfriend. Bradford Cox seems to be toying with that ambiguity in “Revival,” a brief, tightly composed yet gentle tune about being saved that mostly conveys a sense of hard-earned relief. As usual, Cox plays the passive character — he’s been through some horrible times, but he’s found someone who sets him at ease. At the end, Cox sings “darkness always, it doesn’t make much sense,” and that’s the point really. It doesn’t matter how he found his way out, only that he knows enough to let go of his misery and loneliness.
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“September” is the kind of song that I had known pretty much my entire life but could never place. It wasn’t identified for me until just recently, and even that didn’t really stick with me. Oh, that’s Earth, Wind & Fire? Okay. It’s actually called “September”? Huh. Now it’s stuck in my head forever. There are two reasons: Most obviously, this is one of the most ridiculously catchy songs ever penned. Every moment of it is a glee-inducing earworm; each part of the composition has a legitimate claim for being the best bit. (My favorite could be the horn fanfare that punctuates the chorus. But please, don’t make me choose.) More personally, I’m just not ever going to forget Vicky’s face as this song — one of her favorites ever, more or less her personal anthem, the thing she blasts to counter the noise of her “DJ” neighbor — played on a jukebox, a total surprise to her. She looked so totally happy that her expression was cartoonish in its cheeriness. Dancing in her seat, smiling and mouthing the words, completely within the song. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, with her and others, but there’s just something so profound to me about witnessing someone love a piece of art so intensely, so purely, so fully. It’s one of the most beautiful things I can think of, and now it’s what I picture when I hear this song: Perfect adorable totally unselfconscious ecstasy.
Buy it from Amazon.
