For today’s entry, I consider two scenes from Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, her second feature and an adaptation of Alan Warner’s 1995 novel of same name. I wanted to see it for these reasons.
1. My friend Kevin’s birthday was last week, and as he studies Scottish media culture and hipped me to Ramsay when we were in school together, it seemed a fitting tribute.
2. My friend Curran thinks highly enough of this film and its titular protagonist that he named his cat after her.
3. The AV Club put this one in the New Cult Canon. In fact, they regarded lead actress Samantha Morton’s work here so much that they considered it one of the last decade’s best screen performances.
4. I haven’t seen Morton in much past a few music videos (ex: U2′s “Electrical Storm“) and movies I didn’t like (Minority Report) or felt torn about (Synecdoche, New York). But I like her and thinks she possesses one of the most interesting faces.
Samantha Morton as Morvern Callar; image courtesy of daily.greencine.com
As this is Ramsay’s sophomore feature, it is also the second movie of her’s that I’ve seen. I saw Ratcatcher, a surprising and assured debut about working-class Scots trying to endure 1973′s particularly hellish summer. It’s great and I highly recommend seeing it, along with reading Caitlin at Dark Room’s entry on it. But Morvern Callar meant more to me. I had little expectation or preconception going into this movie, but was left haunted and dazzled by it. A wonderful surprise.
Without giving too much away, the movie is about a young woman who is coping with her boyfriend James’s recent suicide. Clearly shellshocked but ambivalent about his death, Callar spends much of the movie figuring out how she feels and what she should do. The caliber of Morton’s performance is evident in how successfully she conveys much of Callar’s conflicting feelings without words. Callar disposes of the body, empties his bank account, and takes her co-worker friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) on a trip to Spain. She uses travel as an attempt to clear her head. She’s particularly haunted by two souvenirs James left her: a novel Callar successfully passes off as her own to an interested publishing house, and a mix tape he made for her called “Music For You.”
As we never meet the deceased James Gillespie and thus never learn of his motives, I’ll give the selfish fucker this: he put together a good mix tape. The movie boasts songs by Can, Stereolab, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Broadcast, musical acts that could easily be on a young person’s mix tape (mine, for example). Yet we don’t know whose taste the mix is reflecting. They seem to be songs that reminded James of his relationship with Morvern, but we never learn who influenced who. As one of the last scenes in the movie shows Callar packing a bunch of CDs into a suitcase and leaving the apartment she presumably shared with James, I like to think they shared similar musical taste.
There are several scenes in the movie that show Callar listening to his mix tape. I have selected two particularly arresting ones that work wonderfully with the visuals. It might be easy to read these scenes as James serving as narrator through popular music, but the subjectivity is solely his girlfriend’s.
The first scene is Callar reporting to work at a non-descript supermarket. The accompanying music is Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s “Some Velvet Morning.” Shortly after this scene, Callar and her friend leave town.
The next scene is the last one in the movie, accompanied by The Mamas and the Papas’ poignant “Dedicated to the One I Love.” Callar is alone at a rave in some unnamed part of the world. She’s away from her hometown and presumably living on the novel’s advance. She’s alone, though I’m not convinced she’s lonely. Grief is complex, and may not feel like grief at times. However she might be feeling, she can always press rewind and play and start the tape back over again.
Girls are the best. And I’m not talking about that of-the-moment indie rock outfit called Girls that features two dudes. I mean actual girls. I especially mean girl instrumentalists, like my neighbors or GRC participants or the surly 14-year-old in some bedroom or garage or rehearsal room somewhere picking up a guitar or a clarinet or a juice harp or a set of turntables for the first time and making music. You are my heroines today and always. If any of you are getting involved with the new chapter that just started up in Houston, my hometown, you have a special place in my heart in the Grrrl Justice League.
Girls inspire my friends Emily and Kristen too. Emily was good enough to send us footage today of two girls who played guitar and a steel picker on what looks to be a 50s-era episode of The Mickey Mouse Club. Some folks have reported the featured instrumentalist to be Jeannie Fealious, but I can’t confirm for certain. If some good-natured archival sort can pick out names and dates and share them in the comments section, that’d be great. For now, let’s all honor these awesome musicians who hopefully time won’t forget.
Today’s entry focuses on author Maria Raha’s book Cinderella’s Big Score which focuses on female contributions to American and British punk, alternative, and independent music from the mid-1970s to, at its 2005 release, the present. It is to be the first title read by the rock n’ roll book club some Girls Rock Camp Austin peeps have put together. As we haven’t yet met to discuss the book, I’m using my blog to formulate my thoughts on it.
Cover of Maria Raha's "Cinderella's Big Score" (Seal Press, 2005); image courtesy of flickr.com
I picked up Raha’s book back in early 2006 (local business plug: I bought it at MonkeyWrench Books). I read it in between getting my wisdom teeth pulled and taking time off work to engage in a battle with my sinuses. In short, I devoured it while bed-ridden and pissy. This didn’t bode well for the reading process, as I did not like the book. But I wanted to give it another chance, so this was an opportunity to re-read it.
At the time, my problems were two-fold.
1. The scope is too broad. 30-plus years of rock history, broken down into tiny chapters about 38 different female artists? Yikes! It felt like I was reading overviews with little more insight than All Music Guide entries. Either narrow it down or write a bigger book! And I already knew most of these artists before I picked up the book, so I didn’t feel like I was getting any new information.
2. Raha is very much of the “indie rock, good; pop, bad” persuasion and does little to challenge her biases or problematize the book’s subjects. As many of the rock artists she holds in high esteem are white women and many of the pop artists she dislikes are women of color, this creates an unintentional yet unfortunate gendered racial tension.
I think about this a lot. When I co-teach music history workshops with Kristen at Act Your Age, we notice that the reception of certain musical subgenres is divided along racial lines. Participants of color tend to get excited about hip hop, R&B, and pop and check out during discussions of punk and riot grrrl. It might be that riot grrrl means a great deal to white girls and white women, but doesn’t speak to many girls and women of color.
(Note: This isn’t to say girls and women of color can’t relate to or be inspired by riot grrrl; I just wonder how many do.)
In addition to the dicey racial implications of the “indie rock, good; pop, bad” binary, I found — and still find — Raha’s reading of pop music to be shallow and essentializing. While I too find The Spice Girls’ (soda) watered-down brand of girl power feminism troubling, along with the advent of millennial teen-pop jailbait like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, I think there’s much more going on here than Raha does. For one, there’s no discussion of fans’ complex relationships with their teen idols (for a closer reading on the subject, I’d recommend scholar Dafna Lemish’s article “Spice Girls’ talk: A case study in the development of gendered identity”). There’s also scant consideration of how image-making is a complex process for female stars — save for Madonna, a person Raha seems to approve of save for her headline grabbing VMA kiss with Spears — and how this is true for both underground and mainstream female artists.
As people forget that Aguilera was in on “the kiss” or that her vocals were live, Raha puts little value in mainstream vocalists’ singing ability, which can involve considerable musical technique and craft. This also absents girl groups like En Vogue and Destiny’s Child or solo artists like Beyoncé from discussion. I also find it insulting that she assumes all of these women are pop dollies Svengalied by men.
This doesn’t even get into how hip hop, both mainstream and independent, is all but ignored in this book.
Oh, and please don’t hate on Janet Jackson.
It may be easy to configure her as a dancer who let Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis create her career for her, or crack wise about plastic surgery, weight fluctuations, and wardrobe malfunctions. But let’s not forget that her songs tackle complex issues like racial injustice, AIDS, homophobia, domestic violence, masturbation, sexual agency, and female autonomy. She’s the woman behind “The Pleasure Principle,” “Nasty,” “Control,” “Together Again,” “What About?,” “Free Zone,” “What Have You Done For Me Lately?,” “Rhythm Nation,” and the black feminist anthem “New Agenda.” She may be the artist responsible for many fans’ entrance into feminism.
These feelings still spike up, though I liked this book more the second time. I took for granted that Raha contextualizes each section of her book with an overview of what was going on in popular music at the time. I do bristle at her open, unchecked animosity for pop’s artificiality (as if indie rock is an exemplar of authenticity; it’s a myth that still gets perpetuated and results in many backlashes against bands like Vampire Weekend, a band I’d be happy to argue on behalf of elsewhere). But I also appreciate how Raha takes hardcore, grunge, nu metal, and the male output of much punk and indie rock to task for practicing misogyny and abiding by patriarchy. And I like that she does champion some female pop stars, particularly Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner. I also like her efforts to discuss female musicians like Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in mixed-gender bands, and bring up issues women had working with one another.
Bassist Tina Weymouth; image courtesy of washingtoncitypaper.com
Raha also discusses bands and artists I didn’t know much about. Thanks for shining a light on Lunachicks, Crass’ Joy De Vivre and Eve Libertine, Avengers’ Penelope Houston, Fastbacks’ Lulu Gargiulo and Kim Warnick. Thanks for bringing Germs’ manager Nicole Panter, Tsunami’s Jenny Toomey and queercore legends Tribe 8 and Team Dretsch into the discussion, as they often get overlooked.
There are of course some artists I wish were discussed, but know Raha had limited space to cover the artists she did, which was already a considerable aggregate. Because this is my blog, I’ll list some ladies, most of whom I’ve discussed here: Delta 5, Au Pairs, Bush Tetras, Y Pants, Pylon, Cibo Matto, Jean Grae, Joanna Newsom, Ponytail, Explode Into Colors, M.I.A., Karen O, Santigold, Yo Majesty, St. Vincent, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Bat for Lashes, Fever Ray, Finally Punk, and Follow That Bird. As some of the artists she discusses are or were on major labels, I will also include Kate Bush, Björk, Liz Phair, Tori Amos, and Erykah Badu.
As Raha’s book came out just as indie and mainstream were melding in ways similar yet far more pervasive than the alternative rock boom of a pre-bust American music industry, I wonder what she makes of Solange covering Dirty Projectors or joining Of Montreal on stage. What does she make of M.I.A. or Santigold, two indie artists who court mainstream success? She wrote her book just as download culture forever altered listeners’ exposure to music and their resulting consumer habits.
Isn't Santigold a pop star too?; image courtesy of brooklynvegan.com
When I first read this book, I questioned the usefulness of it. A noble effort, to be sure. But how valuable is an overview on obscure or underground female artists when the majority of its potential readers can probably follow blogs and download tracks? While I know the book is geared toward younger women — and I certainly would have valued the book at this age — most of the girls I’ve met or worked with at Girls Rock Camp Austin already knew just about everyone mentioned here.
That said, I do think the book is a good primer for young girls and women just starting to navigate the indie rock’s craggy terrain. But if you’re gifting it, make sure to include a mix CD and a set of discussion questions. Maybe it’ll start a book club.
I’m all for simple today, folks. I’ve got choir practice this evening and spent a lot of energy writing about boys yesterday.
I also have a list of texts I want to write about, but need to see first. I want to discuss Juliette Lewis covering PJ Harvey songs in Katheryn Bigelow’s Strange Days and L7′s appearance in John Waters’s Serial Mom, but I haven’t seen either movie yet. Gilmore Girls‘ resident music geek Lane Kim will assuredly get an entry, but I’m wrapping up season two and have five more 22-episode seasons to go. And if that damn St. Vincent/Thunderant clip I heard about back in September would ever come to light, we’d be in business. Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar and Alex Steyermark’s Prey for Rock N’ Roll are waiting for me at home, so maybe they’ll generate some fodder.
But let’s keep it simple for now. And since I’ve been prepping my GRE vocabulary lately, let’s keep it austere — meaning ascetic, severely simple, unadorned, bare. Let’s look at two recent music videos from The xx and Fever Ray and consider how the visuals compliment the music. Enjoy!
The xx
“VCR” xx
Directed by Marcus Söderlund
Fever Ray
“Keep the Streets Empty for Me” Fever Ray
Directed by Jens Klevje and Fabian Svensson
I read two books from the 33 1/3 book series last weekend, in an on-going effort to think about its approach to canon formation. Since reading the two titles in question, I’ve been sitting on my hands thinking about how to write a post about them. They were two interesting, disparate pieces written by Gillian Gaar and Daphne Brooks on albums that somehow seem linked. Gaar documents the recording process of a band’s follow-up to an album that resulted in their meteoric rise. Brooks weaves her personal history as an African American woman growing up as a member of Generation X, who was a graduate student when another artist’s only proper full-length was released.
Cover of Gillian G. Gaar's "In Utero" (Continuum Books, 2006); image courtesy of infibeam.com
Cover for Daphne Brooks's "Grace" (Continuum Books, 2005); image courtesy of funboring.com
Too bad dudes made ‘em, right? Dudes who died young and didn’t release any more albums. Dudes who were dreamy, sensitive alternative pin-ups. They probably showed up on some teenage bedroom walls. I never harbored a crush on Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, but I get the appeal. However, in the 7th grade I taped a picture of Jeff Buckley in my notebook. The crush continues.
Jeff Buckley may have hated this photo in People's 1995 Most Beautiful People issue, but it stayed in my notebook during junior high; image courtesy of people.com
The heartthrob factor has been what has kept me from writing a post. I consider this blog to be a space where issues of gender, among a multitude of oft-intersecting identity categories, are critical to how we understand music culture. As a feminist, I wanted that space to focus on female contributions. I made this decision not because I’m a misandrist but because, so often, our work is denounced or ignored. Plus, I find the efforts some feminist publications take toward acknowledging the good guys is really a way to affirm that “feminism” isn’t a euphemism for “She-Woman Man-Haters Club.” This perception is misinformed and antiquated, and I feel like we enervate feminism when magazines like Bust run a cisgender “Men We Love” issue. Do we really need to give guys the focus in our own feminist projects just to prove that we aren’t all man-haters, lesbians, or man-hating lesbians? Can’t we have anything to ourselves?
That said, I wondered if by thinking about how women view these particular male artists and considering how these men complicated issues of gender and sexuality in their own work, I could write a thoughtful entry.
I’ll address Gaar’s book first. Though her entry came out a year after Brooks’s, she’s discussing an album that predates Grace‘s arrival in the market by several months, and a band who effectively dissolved a few months after its release. We know why Nirvana disbanded, though opinion differs as to how Cobain died at 27 (most abide by his death being a suicide; there’s a faction of people, Kim Gordon among them, who believe he was murdered). Refreshingly, Gaar takes all of this as a given and decides not to dwell on the band’s superstardom or the lead singer’s untimely end. She also doesn’t comb In Utero for clues as to the lead singer’s mental state, acknowledging that a number of fans and critics have already done the forensic work to determine for themselves whether or not Nirvana’s last album is its lead singer’s suicide note.
Instead, Gaar primarily focuses on the recording and mixing of the album, and a bit of the aftermath. I really appreciate this approach. She walks the reader through the players, the jargon, and the studio process with a journalist’s eye for detail and uncluttered prose. She also weaves first-person accounts from bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Dave Grohl, recording engineer Steve Albini, and others. In doing so, she stresses Albini’s reticence toward working with a band of such commercial stature, his dismissal of the credit “producer,” Cobain’s deliberate pace as a lyric writer, how quickly the band worked in the studio, the struggle the band faced in attempting to distance themselves from the radio-ready slickness of the Butch Vig-produced Nevermind, song selection, album art, video production, and how much of the album ended up being remixed so as to be more commercially palatable.
BTW, Albini also recorded PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Electrelane’s Axes. The latter will get further consideration in a future “Records That Made Me a Feminist” entry. Albini will probably record your band for a nominal fee. I looked into it when I thought I was going to Northwestern. All you need is a way to Chicago, a little bit of money, and a thick skin.
But Gaar doesn’t just talk about gear. One of In Utero‘s major themes is gestation, and Cobain’s preoccupation with pregnancy, abortion, umbilical cords, and the abject pleasures and terrors of motherhood and womanhood is of critical importance to both Gaar and myself. This was the man who wished he could be a seahorse because its the only species where male members can carry its progeny to term, even as he mocked the co-dependent relationship he had with his wife.
A young father to Frances Bean, Cobain often dressed in women’s clothing, was a supporter of riot grrrl, counted Gordon and Kathleen Hanna as close friends, believed in his wife Courtney Love’s artistic capabilities, felt empathy for troubled women like Frances Farmer, and was responsible for DGC reissuing The Raincoats’ first two albums. He also identified as bisexual at a time when grunge proved to be just another guise for rock’s machismo. If only he had lived to see his daughter grow up. I think they could have learned a lot from each other. But at least he never saw Fred Durst’s chest tattoo. In tribute, my ass. I’ll leave you to Google. I can’t in good conscience put up so grody an image. Instead, let’s look at the cover photo Cobain and Love took for Sassy.
Cobain and Love in happier times; image courtesy of huffingtonpost.com
I’ll admit that save for In Utero, Unplugged In New York, and portions of Incesticide, I was never a Nirvana devotee. Nirvana’s sound was just a bit too of its time for me: sludgy guitar, shredded vocals, marked dynamics. It also sounded too traditionally masculine to me, though songs like “Very Ape” and music videos like “In Bloom” call this reading into question.
I enjoyed Nirvana more when they alienated people with noise. Give me “Scentless Apprentice” or “tourette’s” any day. The band also worked for me when they went acoustic, as on “Something In the Way,” “All Apologies,” and the Unplugged performance of “Pennyroyal Tea.” That said, I know what the band meant and continues to mean for people. I hope Cobain’s belief in gender and sexual fluidity is an essential component to some folks’ fandom.
As Cobain left behind a wife and child, Buckley probably understood his father’s legacy from a vantage point akin to Frances Bean’s. Raised by a single mother after his singer-songwriter father Tim ran out and later died of an overdose, Buckley stressed throughout his brief career that he had no real connection to the man whose familial and musical lineage he inherited. I get what he meant, but always questioned the argument. While Tim had more of a conventionally masculine vocal register, both dudes had an affinity for atonal blends of jazz, folk, and rock music and shared a spectral falsetto. And high cheekbones.
You might gather that I have a deeper investment for one artist over the other. Cobain died before I turned 11, so I was just slightly behind the curve with Nirvana. But somehow I was right with Buckley. It helped that I had cable at the time. MTV started playing the music video for “Last Goodbye” as Houston’s alternative station put the single in rotation. The hours I spent thinking about sucking his bottom lip red and raw must have been considerable.
But imagine my surprise when I spent my allowance on Grace and discovered that instead of eight other versions of “Last Goodbye,” the album was far more complex. I devoted hours to understanding the elliptical song structures, the ornate production quality, and the vocalist’s operatic singing style. I was particularly struck by how similar our vocal ranges were.
After a little research, I noticed that Buckley covered many female artists. People can and should continue to talk about his readings of Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But Nina Simone’s “Lilac Wine” and Janet Baker’s interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s ”Corpus Christi Carol” are my favorite covers on Grace. In addition, Mahalia Jackson’s “A Satisfied Mind” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” were in his repertoire. I also found out about Édith Piaf after reading somewhere that he covered “Je n’en connais pas la fin,” whereupon I asked my mother who this French lady was. He had a deep admiration for women like Björk and Elizabeth Fraser from The Cocteau Twins. The latter recorded a duet with him called “All Flowers In Time Bend Towards the Sun” and wrote “Rilkean Heart” for him and their relationship.
Buckley also valued the work of women like Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, and Penny Arcade. He carried these feelings into his relationships with his mother Mary Guibert and partners like musicians Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser. And while a lot of white boys, mysterious or otherwise, appropriate the work of other artists, I never felt like I was listening to someone trying something on, whether it be another person’s race, gender, or both. With Buckley, it always sounded like his voice was guiding him into a process, however brief, of personal transformation because of his musical heroes, many of whom were heroines. It never felt like thievery so much as tribute.
Many have singled Buckley out as a diva. He wanted to be considered as a chanteuse. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher scribed an argument for his transgendered vocal quality in her essay for the anthology Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music. And while he has since been lauded by rocker dudes like Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach, many people were put off by the musician’s histrionics and how they offended traditional notions of rock’s paradigmatic heterosexual masculinity. I’ve even heard an acquaintance unfavorably compare him to Mariah Carey. But upon reflection, I’m faced with a startling realization: I might celebrate Buckley’s alignment with the feminine for reasons similar to why I’ve dismissed Patti Smith’s kinship with the masculine.
Too much?; image courtesy of last.fm
Thus with Buckley, there’s a lot of contradictions. This is something that Brooks confronts in understanding her fandom and what it might suggest of her status as a black woman in the academy, growing up during the 70s and 80s and completing her graduate studies during the first half of the 1990s — a time marked by hybridization, multiculturalism, political correctness, and third-wave feminism’s embrace of conflicting gender, sexual, and racial politics. Brooks constantly dialogues her own interest with Buckley around an exhaustively researched narrative of the artist’s trajectory, spending most of her time unpacking the one album he completed before drowning at the age of 30 in the Wolf River while working on his follow-up in Memphis.
Of course, we’d do well not to overpraise musicians like Cobain and Buckley, who were imperfect and mortal despite their musical legacies. Cobain constantly had to battle stomach ailments, heroin addiction, and record executives. Buckley may have sung many women’s songs, but the argument could be made that he did it to fuck women through their own music. Of course, doing so risks presumption that women are passive and dominated in the act of fucking, which I take issue with. But unlike Patti Smith, Buckley made sure his pronouns suggested he was the man in a heterosexual relationship. Buckley may sound a bit like fellow Simone fan (and Wasser colleague) Antony Hegarty, but Hegarty kept the pronouns pure when covering “Be My Husband.” Also, Buckley’s heterosexual masculinity allowed him to hover betwixt gender’s poles in song. Hegarty lives there.
But both Cobain and Buckley also suffered loss, confusion, and mental duress. Sometimes, they put those feelings, and many others, into their music. That they identified with women is important, though in greater need of complication. It doesn’t always make them men we love, but it does make their contention with gender and sexuality worthy of feminist inquiry.
Ladytron's Softcore Jukebox (Emperor Norton, 2003); image courtesy of pitchfork.com
Alyx, seriously? Today’s post is about an album cover that features the women of Ladytron in bathing suits? Pin-ups for folks who wear cardigans, make library puns, and like skinny girls? Great. I’ll go back to poring over my Tegan and Sarah albums. They look similarly gamine and like streaky make-up but aren’t scantily clad in repose on the grass being shot from above like an American Apparel ad. You keep fighting that fight.
I bring up the cover of Ladytron’s 2003 mix CD entitled Softcore Jukeboxfor these reasons:
1) The cover is eye-catching, though obviously in a problematic way. It objectifies vocalists Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo, respectively wearing a sky blue tank and shiny black skull string bikini that I hope came from their own closets (but probably didn’t — do people swim in Liverpool?). In addition, it doesn’t even show the rest of the band, which is also comprised of dudes Reuben Wu and Daniel Hunt.
2) The title seems leering and provocative, but is also jibberish. What the eff is a “softcore jukebox”? Is it different from a “hardcore jukebox” in that it works with a crotch patch and doesn’t do penetration? Or would a cadre of queercore jukeboxes have to create a scene for themselves in response to the homophobic, homoerotic hardcore jukebox scene?
3) The cover is a modest revision of Roxy Music’s Country Life cover, which features Amazonian models in see-through underwear boasting serious 70s ladygarden. Country Life was so controversial upon its release that a revised cover had to be printed with the women taken out of the image.
Roxy Music's Country Life (Atco, Reprise/Island, Polydor; 1974); image courtesy of avclub.com
4) Apparently a German artist named Pia Dehne reconfigured Country Life to address the gendered aspects of camouflage and mimicry.
5) Softcore Jukebox came out during a wave of mix CDs that featured dance songs with electronic instrumentation alongside rockier fare. Critics like citing Kings of Convenience leader Erlend Øye‘s DJ-Kicks compilation, but he was hardly the first to do this, as compilations like the Back to Mine series suggest. Hell, he wasn’t even the first person to make a DJ-Kicks compilation. I’d also like to put in a plug for Annie’s DJ-Kicks compilation, which features ESG’s “My Love For You.” Hot Chip’s gets my approval as well, along with any mix that has songs from both New Order and Positive K.
6) A cover that references an iconic album cover seems relevant, especially because the women in the band are the cover subjects and said band created a mix CD of pre-existing dance songs. Seems camouflage and mimicry may apply here, along with reference. This might be characteristic of the band. After all, Ladytron didn’t just swipe the cover of Country Life for their mix CD. They took their name from a Roxy Music song.
Much of my interest in Ladytron is in Marnie and Aroyo. I like how they try to sound like robots (or ladytrons), mimicking their coldness and just-out-of-date technological make-up while singing songs about the inherent datedness and fickleness of fashion, beauty, and youth (see: “Seventeen,” “Blue Jeans,” and “Beauty No. 2″). This juxtaposes nicely with the band’s reliance on electronic instrumentation.
In their later work — particularly the brooding Witching Hour — more traditionally rock instrumentation like electric guitars spike up their sound on songs like “amTV,” suggesting that Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees were as much of an influence on the band as Kraftwerk. Also, I can’t help but point out that TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me” features a fuzzed-out bass line very similar to Ladytron’s “International Dateline,” though my hunch is that both bands probably got it from Bauhaus.
This brings me to the mix CD itself, which smashes dance music and rock music against one another, suggesting the band’s influences and approaches. It also unearths a long-obscured truth: dance music has always co-mingled with rock and, later, hip hop. And I’m not talking about The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” as their interrelation has a much deeper, storied history. I always hate it when detractors say things like “not another synth pop track” or “I hate disco,” as if rock music and its studied authenticity doesn’t rely on rhythm sections and repetitive passages of catchy melodies too. As if rock is about the truth and dance music is just piffle. C’mon now.
As for the album’s content? Meh. Some songs work better than others, and some of it is fairly forgettable. Oddly enough, the most effective offerings for me are the rock songs that I didn’t know you could dance to. I’ll stand by The Fall, Wire, Shocking Blue, and Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s classic “Some Velvet Morning,” which is the compilation’s haunting closer. I already knew you could dance to !!!, Fannypack, and Cristina, so they get a pass. You can kind of jig to My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon,” the intro from which Garbage stole for “My Lover’s Box.” I liked that I also like Ladytron’s cover of Tweet’s “Oops (Oh My)” — an ode to masturbation, a premonition for me that Tweet and producer Missy Elliott might be more than friends, Missy’s first “ping!” on my gaydar, and a cherished memory as the “poem” one of my classmates read aloud with deadpan faux seriousness in a college English class. I like the original much more, but I appreciate the band’s effort to suggest that hip hop and R&B influence them. Let’s listen and compare, shall we?
Thus the cover, like song selection and reinterpretation, becomes a messy process for both band and listener that is guaranteed to leave grass stains.
Ya’ll, the Lilith Fair is getting a reboot this summer. I missed the festival during its original run in the late-90s. Honestly, I wasn’t too invested in it. I was happy that founder Sarah McLachlan was putting it together, but the majority of the bill offerings were pretty nice white lady adult contemporary at the time.
But co-founder Terry McBride has resurrected the festival and it’s coming to Austin some time next summer. I gotta say that this summer’s roster looks good: Loretta Lynn, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Cat Power, Gossip, Metric, Norah Jones, Jill Scott, Beth Orton, Emmylou Harris, Janelle Monáe, Teagan and Sara, Corrine Bailey Ray, fuckin’ Heart. Of course, we’ve still got plenty of nice white lady music, but it seems as if there was some effort to mix up the genres a little bit so it isn’t only about ladies strumming acoustic guitars (ex: Mary fuckin’ J!). On that tack, I’m pretty uninterested in Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, Sara Bareilles, and Colbie Caillat’s involvement, but I understand that the festival’s gotta draw in some big MOR names. That said, I like that there’s some rad queer ladies and women of color on the bill.
As I don’t think the bill is 100% finalized, I’m hoping Thao and the Get Down Stay Down gets a spot on the bill. I’d also support additions like Jean Grae, Bat for Lashes, Neko Case, Marnie Stern, Shunda K, and Ponytail. I think it’d be cool if a stage was set up for local acts so folks like Follow That Bird, Yellow Fever, and Schmillion could get some more exposure — or even cooler if said bands formed their own counterfestival. Oooh, and if only they could get Sleater-Kinney to reunite. Can’t wait to see how this shapes up. For more up-to-date information, keep an eye on the festival’s Web site.
Despite the aims of this blog, there exists an impossibility: I can’t keep up with everything that goes on in popular music. I try to winnow down the aggregate by focusing on women and girls (and sometimes some relevant men and boys, but usually in the periphery). But some things get lost in the proverbial mix. Tonight I thought I’d focus on two artists I’m starting to get into, thanks to my neighbor David and Kristen at Act Your Age.
First up, tUnE-yArDs. When I saw the cover for BiRd-BrAiNs, I dismissed the act out of hand. Surely this is some kind of indie white boy band who is too in love with their sense own irony. Maybe they do dance music, but in quotes. Ho hum. I dance for real.
But actually, Merrill Garbus is the woman behind a solo project called tUnE-yArDs and specifically picked the name to be annoying. You can listen to old fogey rock critic Greil Marcus espouse his opinions on her work here. You can also play the clip below, which shows the singer performing “Hatari.”
I have some thoughts of my own. I think it’s interesting that Garbus is being lumped in with a spate of new artists who embrace lo-fi (note: a lot of people approach the term as a subgenre; I think of it more as a recording philosophy that eschews state-of-the-art technology for outdated, often analog equipment and favors using domestic spaces to double as studios).
But, I have trouble with a white woman weaving African music (specifically from Kenya and the Congo) into her sound after studying abroad during college. I don’t know much about the Garbus family’s social standing, but there’s definitely the risk of world music’s cultural poaching here. Some folks, like my partner, might find her race more troubling when hearing her voice, which seems to betray both her race and age. I feel a bit weird about it too, but I also like the richness of her tonal quality. This might help me come around to the prospect of a live puppet show, which I’m also on the fence about. The grooves and her ear for unexpected melodies along with intersting harmonic and rhythmic shifts help. I’d like to see her in a live setting to see how all of this comes together. SXSW?
Also: Beach House. Man, have people talked them up. Dudes, mainly — some of whom seemed a little too preoccupied with vocalist Victoria Legrand’s Nico-esque vocals, making The Velvet Underground’s influence a bit too obvious. So I’ve more or less avoided them, confident that they aren’t going anywhere and I’ll get to them eventually. That said, I do really love the music video for “Master of None” off their self-titled debut, and like the song as well.
Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand of Beach House; image courtesy of opbmusic.org
Their third release, Teen Dream, comes out next week. Kristen gave it a thumbs-up, which was enough for me. As Michael Katzif points out, the new album has a lighter, dreamier sound. At times, the album reminds me of Kate Bush and 80s-era Fleetwood Mac (“Norway” boasts a guitar line that sounds quite a bit like “Gypsy”). I’ve taken for granted the number of times Beach House have made it down to Austin. I hope I get to check them out real soon.
The Knife's Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson, wearing masks and blowing minds; image courtesy of seattleweekly.com
Hopefully, we all know by now that Swedish sibling electro duo The Knife have written a opera for Danish ensemble Hotel Pro Forma. The opera, entitled Tomorrow, In a Year, boasts Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as its source material (you can watch segments from the stage production here). A piece from it, entitled “Colouring of Pigeons” was released earlier this month and features Mt. Sims and Planningtorock. I heard it after Jessica Hopper tipped her Twitter followers of its existence. I listened to the track while doing a bit of work-related research on actress Merle Oberon. The piece floored me. In addition to the fascinating source material, the beguiling lyrics, Karin Dreijer Andersson’s gloriously brittle but strong voice, and the intricate production, I also like the inclusion of Mt. Sims on the track (largely because my college roommate clued me in on his fun 2002 debut Ultra Sex). If you haven’t heard all eleven minutes of this song, you can do it here. I’ll wait.
Pretty awesome, right? Like Ryan Dombal, I’m left wondering what the work in full will sound like and bite my nails in excitement over whether there are better songs than this one on it.
I’m also struck by using opera in this way. Growing up, I acquired some knowledge of opera. My mom took me to see a production ofGiacomo Puccini’s La Bohème that a family friend was in when I was two. I’ve seen Puccini’s Turandot and Tosca, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Giusseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, as well as a gnarly production of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele that featured Faust in limbo with an aggregate of naked people with exaggerated prosthetics. And I’ve actually performed ”L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,” an aria from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, on two separate occasions. But my knowledge is pretty canonical, which we all know is code for long-dead white dudes. I’ve only recently discovered Beth Anderson’s Queen Christina and Meredith Monk’s Atlas.
While it’s right to note the campy elements of opera, particularly the high drama, doomed romance, and frothy story lines about sex and death, there are plenty of problems with it. For one, entertaining the prospect of attending an opera is very classed. While many of the major works in the 19th century were populist fare at the time, they’ve since become an exclusive enterprise that requires you to understand a foreign language and be able to pay for a ticket (and usually appropriate formal attire). While there could be something interesting about female protagonists often living as bohemians or working in the oldest profession, they tend to be relegated to the tragic victim of a real love that can never be. These women are rendered more tragic by dying young, getting sold off into sham marriages, or growing old and bitter. Just ask Rufus Wainwright, who may have back and forth about opera with his recently deceased mother, Kate McGarrigle.
Also, the breakdown of roles available to singers based on their registers is pretty troublesome. Sopranos, who possess the most traditionally feminine of vocal ranges, tend to be leading ladies. They’re often accompanied by tenors or baritones as their romantic counterparts. Basses tend to be the villains. And altos, if we exist at all, are working-class whores, wenches, and maids. Occasionally we’re the mothers, but we’re usually shrews. Thanks, bros.
Thus, The Knife have helped opened up opera by attempting to make it at once accessible to a wider audience who lack the fluency or means or interest in traditional opera, iconoclastic in their approach to challenging gender roles and speciation within generic constraints, and decidely strange in terms of composition and subject matter. Because they know that there’s no higher, weirder drama to be found than in the evolution of our own biology.
Paradise Titty (from left to right): Bassist Deb Norris, guitarist Beth Puorro, guitarist Emily Marks, vocalist Kitty Shearer, drummer Lori Glidden; image courtesy of myspace.com/paradise titty
I went to go see Paradise Titty at Stubbs’ last night. I went because a) the all-female Guns N’ Roses cover band is comprised of some Girls Rock Camp Austin personnel — including co-ordinator Emily Marks womanning Slash’s duties, b) I’ve missed their first few shows, and c) I’m fascinated by women performing in cock rock cover bands (see also Lez Zeppelin and AC/DShe). There seems to be a spirit of reclamation behind it, there’s a lot of inherent gender drag and play, and the bands tend to cultivate considerable followings with feminists and/or queer folks (particularly lesbians), which tends to be a reflection on the band members. Also it’s nice to have it affirmed that some of the ladies you know have killer chops.
(Note: After reading this post, Kristen at Act Your Age asked the “yeah, but what about the show” question. Ah, right. I shall answer here. The band sounded great and were really in sync, though I singled out drummer Lori Glidden’s command of her kit. I was surprised that lead singer Kitty Shearer, who possesses a rich tonal quality, sounded very little like Axl Rose. Likewise, save for Marks’s dexterous and faithfully Slash-like guitar playing, Paradise Titty sounded less like a cover band and more like a rock band covering Guns N’ Roses — even when covering GNR’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” While I know the outfit’s M.O. is to cover another band’s material, the show made me wonder what their original material might sound like.)
I’m not particularly familiar with Guns N’ Roses’ music. I have a cursory awareness of the singles, some of the music videos, and Chinese Democracy. I know that one of their songs contains racial epithets and homophobic language and that they were fond of heroin and alcohol. Much of my low opinion of Rose is informed by his Charles Manson obsession and violent behavior toward former partners like Stephanie Seymour and Erin Everly (the daughter of musician Don Everly and muse behind ”Sweet Child O’ Mine”). Oh, and that Slash is an awesome guitarist. Beyond that, I have spent much of my life abiding by the gendered belief that Guns N’ Roses were a band my stepbrothers liked (specifically a band Darren liked; Daniel has long been more of a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan).
So I was really interested in how a group of women would approach the band’s repertoire. I became especially curious after attending a Wax Fax trivia night and finding out that a) the original cover for GNR’s debut Appetite for Destruction was artist Robert Williams’s disturbing piece of same name and b) that said album contains the closing number “Rocket Queen,” which incorporates the recorded sounds of some girl getting fucked by Rose in the studio.
Robert Williams's "Appetite for Destruction," later to be the rejected cover for Guns N' Roses' debut album; image courtesy of arrestedmotion.com
Now, I’m not entirely clear of the situation or Adriana Smith, the pseudo-credited instrumentalist in question. Apparently she dated drummer Steve Adler and had sex with Rose to make him jealous. I’ve also heard that Smith was brought in to dance for a harmonica player that the band worked with. Regardless, this is all very icky to me. If fucking Rose is the prize or a means to an end, it’s icky. If this woman was getting passed around, it’s icky. If she was proud of being passed around and becoming studio spectacle, it’s icky. And if she didn’t know her impromptu “performance” would turn her voiced pleasure into a disembodied instrument, that’s all kinds of icky.
Having not seen Paradise Titty before, I was very pleased with how the ladies handle the song. They basically play it straight-ahead without the fuck sounds, though I’m sure we’d all oblige if the band wanted to take the song to a Vagina Monologues place during performance.
But what really makes their version work for me is that powerhouse Shearer seems to turn herself into the rocket queen, (note: she could also be singing to her rocket queen like Rose did; in doing so, she takes the song to a new, queerly sexy place). It also seems to honor the subject of the song, as Axl wrote it for a female acquaintance who wanted to start a band called Rocket Queen. Remember that a key reason why Heart are so beloved by generations of women and girls is because Ann Wilson was all about taking the subject position. I’ll take a deep-throated belter claiming her space in rock over just about anything else any day. So much the better when she’s got a great band backing her. I can’t wait to see and hear this one develop.
