memorized breaths

even when i was seventeen

When Matador Records and Pavement teamed up to release the tenth anniversary edition of Slanted and Enchanted in 2001, I had high hopes that they would do the same for Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville in 2003, unaware of the fact that she had been basically sold by them to Capitol after 1998's merge release of Whitechocolatespaceegg (this was also before her wildly maligned 2003 self-titled disc on Capitol, which I'll get to later). 2003 passed without a reissue and with much hand-wringing over Phair's new musical direction, leaving me with only the promise of a 2004 reissue of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which I never ended up buying mainly because I'd reverted back to my 14 year-old assessment that Pavement was kinda bullshit. Well it took another five years, but I got my wish, kind of: a reissue of Exile In Guyville (the remastering of which basically comes down to "um, you can kind of hear the drums better?"), though without much of the goodies I was expecting, namely a full-on collection of all her pre-Guyville recordings under the name Girly Sound (which are all available on the internet anyway). But the unexpected, sweet surprise: an extremely abbreviated concert tour wherein Phair would perform Guyville from start-to-finish. How prog.

Emily, Caitlin and I went to last night's show at the Hiro Ballroom and experienced a collective orgasm. At one point I drunkenly exclaimed, "This is catharsis!" And may have wept. Ahem. But first things first: we met up beforehand at Hogs and Heifers, one of the more aptly named bars I've ever visited, considering it is apparently some kind of biker bar with scantily clad female bartenders, oodles of bras and some construction worker hardhats comprising much of the decor, along with various road signs. They also almost exclusively had country music on their jukebox, which only reinforced the previous week's remembrance of the jokily sincere country band I tried to start in college, and how I kinda wanted to start it up again (so, dear reader, of which I think there are four: if you or anyone you know is a guitarist/fiddler/banjoist/jug player who would like to write over-the-top melodramatic country songs wherein the protagonist finds his wife cheating on him with his best friend and then--heartbroken--drives into a telephone pole while slugging a fifth of whiskey, as well as cover insanely beautiful old Americana and c&w standards, please get in touch. I cannot play guitar without taking five minutes in between chords and am "not that good a singer," according to my lovely roommate, but I've got heart!). Basically, Hogs and Heifers was an experience that mixed hilarity, oddness, skewed sexuality, and an undercurrent of terror, which was a perfect way to start an evening with Exile In Guyville.

I got drunk at Hogs and Heifers. And then got more drunk at Hiro. I am one to not drink at shows, because I find it lessens my perspective of the performance. But there I was, getting drunk and reliving my past, much of which is entwined with Phair's 1993 debut. This would bite me in the ass later, as I left Emily and Caitlin after the show because I could barely see or stand, and then they ended up meeting Phair and getting a picture. Emily, who saw Courtney Love last year at the same venue (which led me to dub Hiro as the "premier venue for aging alternaqueens"), gave this description:

i told liz phair she was better than courtney love and she jumped up into the air and did a "yes" move yanking her first/arm down (both arms in succession, actually).

Awesome.

Phair came on stage and it was like some strange homecoming, the crowd showering her with applause and love and offers to have her children. Early in the evening, she commented, "I knew this was gonna be my favorite show," and we confirmed it for her with our enthusiasm. From note one, it was an intense drunken singalong. Something nutty happens with people and this album; it's so personal, an important benchmark for so many people, especially when you were there from the get-go. I remember being twelve and hearing it for the first time, taped by a friend's older sister. I was just beginning to realize my complicated feelings towards men, and here came songs like I'd never heard, songs like "6'1"" and "Fuck and Run" and "Divorce Song" and "Flower" that shocked me to the core and basically provided an emotional template I'd yet to experience but knew would come. Earlier today, in a completely unrelated conversation, I remarked to my friend George that the only way I could have sex with anyone anymore was that "I have to kind of dislike them. I think this is all Liz Phair's fault."

I once read an astute critique of Guyville as some kind of, and I'm paraphrasing here, "smart person's report back from sexual warfare." A fucking report. It certainly does sound vaguely academic and collegial, Phair herself likening it to a thesis, what with its supposed track-by-track response to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (I can at least hear it on "6'1""). Aside from that, there's the sound, which to my ears is the perfect distillation of 90s indie rock. As Tom Breihan so wonderfully elucidated today:

A few years back, when she was working with Avril Lavigne song-doctors the Matrix, Phair was claiming in interviews that she'd never given a damn about that whole indie/underground willfully-obscure aesthetic, that she'd always wanted to make widescreen pop music. That's a claim I'd be inclined to believe from anyone else, but Exile in Guyville is too perfect a realization of that whole indie aesthetic. In fact, for me, it's possibly the most perfect realization, the one that goes a million miles toward at least explaining the existence of every godawful Pavement-clone still sending ironic noodles out into the world. Guyville
had classic-rock slither and serious hooks, but it also had every last tenant of that aesthetic: muffled and pillowy production, flatly conversational vocals, lyrics that artfully but directly depicted very specific tangled-up feelings, jangly riffs, the vague sense that the singer was having a laugh at the listener's expense at least part of the time. For somebody who never gave a fuck about indie, Phair sure knew how to bring the pseudo-genre to its absolute platonic ideal.

Which gets to an idea fervent on Guyville and much-discussed on the reissue's included documentary: this is a record about being in a scene. Of course it's about neurosis, and of course it's about the horrendous sexual landscape, and these were things my naive twelve year-old self gravitated towards. But after being involved in a "scene" when I went to school in San Diego, I realized how perfectly the social politics and the lust/disgust dynamics one experiences towards the personae of your specific scene are etched on Guyville. It's a post-college, pre-adult world of drunken stumblings into already-doomed relationships with disinterested denizens. It's the sound of a privileged suburban kid slumming it to feel cool. It's about the yearning for acceptance and stature amongst a world you find loathsome. Is that not (a facet of) indie rock in a nutshell?

In the documentary, titled Guyville Redux, Phair remarks to Matador labelheads Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi that she made the record so that she could be "famous in the neighborhood." Little did she know the firestorm she'd set off, the Pazz & Jop poll-topping, the Rolling Stone cover, the intense backlash she'd receive in the neighborhood of indie rock Chicago as well as the greater neighborhood of pop culture. She'd release four more records in twelve years: the underrated follow-up Whip-Smart, which suffered from expectation and comparison to the debut even if it was basically Guyville Pt 2; the "adult contemporary" Whitechocolatespaceegg, fraught with domestic drama and a prevailing sense of "is that all there is?"; the aforementioned self-titled pop move, wildly trashed by circles both hip and mainstream, even as I now find it an interesting and bold--if certainly flawed--record; and Somebody's Miracle, which I have never heard in its entirety as it sounded to me full of subpar Sheryl Crowisms. None of these records received half of the acclaim of the first, and the great consensus is that Phair's musical output was one of diminishing returns, a betrayal of her talent far worse even than Weezer, because who the hell expected all that much out of Weezer in the first place? In a review of Phair's self-titled record, Joshua Clover once wrote in the Village Voice:

As with early Meat Puppets, Phair once didn't seem to know how songs worked; tracking their unpredictable advance was sweet as watching baby's first steps. If they pitched down the stairs, well, that was kind of fun; they weren't real babies with tender fontanels after all...I'll always leave the light on for Liz; listen, Neil Young's made about 20 bad records, and we still love him. But it's grievous to be confronted so abjectly with the fragility of art-making—how all the elements can still be there, all the signs of genius, but no amount of calculation can render them vivid and compelling.

Which to me seems right on the money. Phair may never write a song as ghostly, sad, and thrilling as "Canary" again, but she's still too talented a songwriter to not craft something on the level of "I come when called; I come, that's all." Her dossier of one-liners are full of these kind of gems. And relistening to Guyville recently only hammered that home. I used to call it "my favorite record not written by Bob Dylan." But not even Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks connects with me on the same level, gets the same amount of airplay, as Exile In Guyville nowadays. That can certainly change, but if I'm being honest with myself, I should now admit that I've known all along that somehow, someway, Guyville sits at that lofty perch in my memory and mind. I knew it today, yesterday, five years ago, fifteen years ago, even when I was twelve.

the temperature in webster hall was certainly not as cool as kim deal

Tickets for last night's Breeders show went on sale in February; George and I, being the huge dorks that we are, bought tickets the day they became available and have been waiting and waiting and waiting for four months to finally see Kim and Kelley and Mando and Jose and "Cheryl from Florida" rip through a catalog that makes up a good chunk of our life soundtrack (George and I seem to have went through the same obsessions, from the Breeders to Fiona Apple to Fleetwood Mac, though I suppose his Guided by Voices is my X, given his Ohioness vs. my LAness).

We almost didn't go.

After hunkering ourselves away from the heat in my now thankfully air-conditioned room, we drank beer and scarfed down dinner from the new delicious Mexican restaurant in our neighborhoood (me: flautas, him: enchiladas, shared: nachos), which immediately seemed to sap our energy. Also the prospect of standing inside a hot and sweaty Webster Hall. George said, as he was sprawled on my bed in listlessness, "If it wasn't the Breeders, I wouldn't go." We then talked about how maybe we're just getting too old for shows (me: "Luckily the people we want to see only tour every five years. Or have sitdown shows"). But it was the Breeders, so off we went.

The hottest concert of my life was roughly two years ago, when Sleater-Kinney played their last ever New York show. It was baking in New York that night, and being in Webster Hall was an oven inside that oven. My clothes were plastered onto my skin, and my sweat commingled with that of everyone in attendance, jumping up and down and screaming and paying tribute to those rock heroines saying farewell. I'd never been so hot and exhausted in my life, but it was worth it: it had all the fire and passion that a rock show is supposed to have, and I don't think I'll ever see anything like it as long as I live.

That show was on my mind as we headed to see the Breeders. Not that I thought they'd create anywhere near the frenzy that Sleater-Kinney whipped up (for sure, the emotion in knowing that was the last time I'd ever see them had something to do with it, and certainly had something to do with the performance as well, though on seven occasions I'd never seen S-K give a less-than-phenomenal performance), but that maybe the actual temperature inside Webster Hall would match.

Not quite, but close. And you could say the same thing for the Breeders themselves.

I'd seen the Breeders on their comeback tour, as they were playing shows in and around LA far before the release of 2002's Title TK. I saw them in December 2001 or so at the Glass House in Pomona, giving a rousing performance of their old tunes; the joy that night was intense, nostalgia holding up a "Welcome back" sign. It was one of the best shows I'd ever attended.

Last night was probably better. Because once again, they'd been away too long, and once again we were ready to welcome them. And they are also probably a better band than they were in December 2001; they interact and cohere in a more organic way, although when you get to play a drum part like the one in "Divine Hammer" or a bassline like "Cannonball," I bet organic comes easy.

There's something not quite right about the Breeders. They are typically indie rock in many ways (at least, how it used to sound, emphasis on rock, and not the nancyboy bedwetting that's become so prevalent over the past four years): haphazard, sloppy, alternately muscular and slight. The Deal sisters are by no stretch great singers; Kelley seems to overcompensate with a clipped, almost robotic delivery, whereas Kim, well...Kim's smoked a few too many cigarettes in her day. You can almost hear her throat dissolving in shards at times. And yet there's something intangible and unexplainable about how right Kim's voice sounds, despite her technical deficiency. She stole the spotlight in many a Pixies song, she manages to completely own songs by Hank Williams and the Beatles and the Who, and then writes songs that seem impossible for anyone else to sing but her. And in full disclosure, the name of this blog is taken from what is easily my favorite ever Deal performance, from the Amps' "Bragging Party": "You are what I need to hear, so fill the air with memorized breaths," as great a tribute to the power of a voice as I've ever heard.

The Breeders are great when you're drunk. Just about everything is better when you're drunk, but for the Breeders it makes sense. Maybe it's Dayton (hello, Bob Pollard). Kim Deal writes songs that sound like intoxication. There's the surfy siesta that turns into a jackhammering in "No Aloha." The lovely, sleepy buzz of much of their recent output, most notably "Night of Joy," but also in older tracks like "Glorious" or "Mad Lucas." The disjointed mood shifts and shouts in "Cannonball" are obviously the work of somebody on something. And then there's "Iris," whose opening guitar line + following riff conveys complete punch-drunk, woozy wobbling. One of my favorite memories is of hanging out at a friend's house one night while his parents were away, a cooler of Budweisers at our feet as we sat in the gazebo in his backyard, passing a joint around while listening to Last Splash.

And then there's their stage presence. Again: something not quite right. The Deals celebrated their 47th birthday last night, Kelley still looking like a soccer mom, Kim still looking like a truck driver. As they entered the stage, the crowd serenaded them with a "Happy Birthday" that was aborted when Kim said "Thanks" and immediately began making assorted noises on her guitar to drown out our singing. Kim does not stop smiling. And when she ceded the stage to Kelley during their cover of the Tasties' "It's The Love," she laughed uproariously as Kelley smiled, playing the guitar solo while paying intense attention to her fingers' positioning. And then our resuscitation of "Happy Birthday" at the end of the show, as Cheryl from Florida brought out a cake, all the while Kim flipping everyone off and calling them/us "motherfuckers."

From Pod to Last Splash to the Amps' Pacer (of which Kim once said, "I should've just called that a Breeders record") to Title TK to Mountain Battles, last night, every song was a hit. So much so that by the end of the first encore, I didn't realize they hadn't played one of my favorite Breeders songs, "Saints," until that opening riff came buzzing into my ears.

"Thanks for joining us on this hot motherfucking day," Kim said afterwards.

Summer is ready when you are.

Setlist:
Tipp City (the Amps)
Huffer
Bang On
Shocker in Gloomtown (Guided by Voices)
Divine Hammer
Night of Joy
No Aloha
Pacer (the Amps)
We're Gonna Rise
It's The Love (the Tasties)
Walk It Off
New Year
Cannonball
I Just Wanna Get Along
Happiness Is A Warm Gun (the Beatles)
Safari
Iris
German Studies
Empty Glasses (the Amps)

first encore:
Overglazed
Drivin' on 9 (Ed's Redeeming Qualities)
Here No More
Saints

second encore:
Fortunately Gone

darlene love

I'm prepared to go out on a limb and say that there has never been a greater pop singer than Darlene Love. In my first real post for this blog I explained my idea of "effortless resonance," which is a term exceptionally suited to Ms. Love. What I feel elevates Love as a pop singer is this sense of ease, that she can belt out an inhuman note while still sounding like she's practicing restraint. Like that insane noise coming out of her mouth is what happens when she sighs. A while ago I actually asked, "Is there a better singer than Darlene Love?" and got responses like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Excuse me--and sure, they have technically great voices--but these ladies sound like hernia-busters in comparison to Darlene Love. About the only singer I can think of who sounds almost as effortless is Neko Case. And though I love her, she's nowhere close to Darlene Love's stratosphere.

And sure, Love can belt (see: the estimable "Christmas [Baby Please Come Home]"). But what I'm mainly impressed with is when she isn't belting, when she's giving the absolute appropriate reading of a vocal line, and yet how still powerful, how blow-back-your-hair awesome it can sound. The languor present throughout the majority of her performance in tracks like "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" or the Blossoms' "Good, Good Lovin'" are in many ways more impressive than the glory notes she eventually aces. Or check out how she eases her way into Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Not Too Young To Get Married" or the Crystals' "He's A Rebel" before tearing into the frantic, potentially phrasing-damaging tempo of the choruses. Other singers would fall flat in moments such as these; Darlene Love doesn't even break her stride.

Enjoy but a sampling of her brilliance.

random music thoughts i had while in southern california, part 2

So my parents joined the 21st century not only by getting wireless internet but also DVR! One of the things I DVR'd was VH1's Top 100 Songs of the 90s, a list that had earlier been emailed to me and fellow 90s karaoke enthusiasts Kate, Brolene, and Stan by The Snark. Here is the full list:

01 Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
02 U2 - "One"
03 Backstreet Boys - "I Want It That Way"
04 Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You"
05 Madonna - "Vogue"
06 Sir Mix-A-Lot - "Baby Got Back"
07 Britney Spears - "...Baby One More Time"
08 TLC - "Waterfalls"
09 R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion"
10 Sinéad O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U"
11 Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"
12 Alanis Morissette - "You Oughta Know"
13 Dr. Dre (Feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg) - "Nuthin' but a "G" Thang"
14 Mariah Carey - "Vision of Love"
15 Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge"
16 MC Hammer - "U Can't Touch This"
17 Destiny's Child - "Say My Name"
18 Metallica - "Enter Sandman"
19 Beastie Boys - "Sabotage"
20 Hanson - "MMMBop"
21 Celine Dion - "My Heart Will Go On"
22 Beck - "Loser"
23 Salt-N-Pepa with En Vogue - "Whatta Man"
24 House of Pain - "Jump Around"
25 Soundgarden - "Black Hole Sun"
26 Eminem - "My Name Is"
27 Counting Crows - "Mr. Jones"
28 Ricky Martin - "Livin' la Vida Loca"
29 Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby"
30 *NSYNC - "Tearin' Up My Heart"
31 Radiohead - "Creep"
32 BLACKstreet - "No Diggity"
33 Spice Girls - "Wannabe"
34 Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life"
35 Oasis - "Wonderwall"
36 C+C Music Factory - "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"
37 Green Day - "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"
38 Christina Aguilera - "Genie In A Bottle"
39 Goo Goo Dolls - "Iris"
40 Color Me Badd - "I Wanna Sex You Up"
41 Spin Doctors - "Two Princes"
42 Collective Soul - "Shine"
43 En Vogue - "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)"
44 The Fugees - "Killing Me Softly With His Song"
45 Hootie & the Blowfish - "Only Wanna Be With You"
46 Shania Twain - "You're Still the One"
47 Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch - "Good Vibrations"
48 Matchbox Twenty - "3 AM"
49 Jewel - "Who Will Save Your Soul"
50 Alice in Chains - "Man in the Box"
51 Tupac (Feat. Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman) - "California Love"
52 Sugar Ray - "Fly"
53 Naughty by Nature - "O.P.P."
54 Joan Osborne - "One of Us"
55 Fiona Apple - "Criminal"
56 L.L. Cool J - "Mama Said Knock You Out"
57 Jay-Z featuring Amil and Ja Rule - "Can I Get A..."
58 Sophie B. Hawkins - "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover"
59 Weezer - "Buddy Holly"
60 Bell Biv DeVoe - "Poison"
61 Sheryl Crow - "All I Wanna Do"
62 Live - "I Alone"
63 The Notorious B.I.G. (Feat. Mase & Puff Daddy) - "Mo Money Mo Problems"
64 The Presidents of the United States of America - "Peaches"
65 Digital Underground - "The Humpty Dance"
66 Edwin McCain - "I'll Be"
67 Deee-Lite - "Groove Is In The Heart"
68 Will Smith - "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It"
69 Korn - "Freak on a Leash"
70 Jamiroquai - "Virtual Insanity"
71 Arrested Development - "Tennessee"
72 Barenaked Ladies - "One Week"
73 Marcy Playground - "Sex and Candy"
74 Cher - "Believe"
75 Kris Kross - "Jump"
76 Blues Traveler - "Run-Around"
77 Ice Cube - "It Was a Good Day"
78 Lenny Kravitz - "Are You Gonna Go My Way"
79 Meredith Brooks - "Bitch"
80 Right Said Fred - "I'm Too Sexy"
81 Paula Cole - "I Don't Want to Wait"
82 Geto Boys - "Mind Playing Tricks on Me"
83 The Breeders - "Cannonball"
84 Snow - "Informer"
85 Cypress Hill - "Insane In The Brain"
86 The Cranberries - "Linger"
87 Billy Ray Cyrus - "Achy Breaky Heart"
88 Duncan Sheik - "Barely Breathing"
89 Liz Phair - "Never Said"
90 New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
91 Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"
92 Public Enemy - "911 Is A Joke"
93 Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - "Stay"
94 Fastball - "The Way"
95 Montell Jordan - "This is How We Do It"
96 Nelson - "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection"
97 Prince & The New Power Generation - "Gett Off"
98 EMF - "Unbelievable"
99 Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott - "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)"
100 Gerardo - "Rico Suave"

My initial response via email was such:

"never said"? what?!

also when will people realize that teen spirit isn't even a top 5 nirvana song, god.

also: i want it that way > one.

lastly: no aaliyah = NULL.

And then:

WAIT A SECOND THERE IS NO JANET JACKSON ON HERE EITHER HELLOOOOOOOOO

And after talking about the many singles off of Rhythm Nation 1814:

p.s. i have never been gayer

Which I think is true.

While the show itself was full of the usual grating VH1 talking head personalities who mug for the camera and tell bad jokes and then think that singing along to a song is sufficient commentary (as well as a bunch of the same sad has-been 90s stars that are on this list), I have to say that the list isn't all that bad for something that was chosen by regular viewers of the channel.

There are certain songs that sound better now than I ever thought they were at the height of their popularity: Sugar Ray (it just sounds really OC or something, so I guess I think it's charming rather than annoying now), Collective Soul (my "controversial" opinion is that I think this song has aged better than "Teen Spirit"! But I've never been a big proponent of Cobain aside from a few songs here and there, so whatever), Spice Girls (which bugged the shit outta me when it came out). Some are still stone-cold classics: the Breeders, Bell Biv Devoe, Dee-Lite, Sophie B. Hawkins, most of the hip-hop and r&b selections. Some are still painfully mediocre: Duncan Sheik (not a terrible lyric though and a decent enough melody), Sarah McLachlan (has there ever been a more boring voice? On the show, Jewel says that McLachlan's voice is like butter or a blanket, I forget which one, but to me it's a bottle of Melatonin). And some are just so bad they're kinda funny: Billy Ray Cyrus, Snow, Gerardo.

There are a few on here that I actively dislike but can see some kind of merit: Will Smith (I think I just don't like him at all probably because I'M A JOYLESS FUCK), Jay-Z (I think he's stellar, I just despise the voices of Amil and Ja Rule...thank fucking God Amil never had more of a career), Alanis Morissette (for being so "full" of "hurt," the arrangement is pretty wimpy and Alanis sounds like a titmouse but I guess she allowed, as the eminently quotable Courtney Love once said, "a safer version of female rage," so props I guess), Matchbox Twenty ("Push" at least has the balls to make him a dick!), Korn (merit? Uh...the drummer is kind of hot and is a pretty good drummer at that), Eminem (really cloying production which I know is the point, but he'd have far better songs than this one), Paula Cole (guh! I guess she can sing though; also Dawson's Creek which is terrible but at least definitive). Also I still don't get the love for that Jamiroquai song. Does anyone care about this without the (fantastic) video?

There are, however, a few I find almost irredeemable. There should be some kind of cagematch between Edwin McCain, Meredith Brooks, Spin Doctors, and Celine Dion. Let's take a close (but not too close) look at each of our candidates for Will's Most Hated Song on VH1's Top 100 Songs of the 90s.

Edwin McCain - I'll Be
pros: It's got a nice sweeping chorus. Actually a pretty memorable melody. And now it's in my head.
cons: It's in my head. And for being some kind of love devotion song, he sounds pretty dire and miserable. Also "crying shoulder" has always stuck out to me as a horrible image and terrible lyric--maybe my least favorite of the decade.

Meredith Brooks - Bitch
pros: safer even than Alanis!
cons: I didn't really think this was all that bad when it came out, but when I heard it again on the show I was stunned by how horrific this sounded.  Really trite lyrics, a riff that sounds like it was composed on the whitest computer imaginable, and awful awful pseudo-snarly voice. Also, worst look in any of these videos, including Justin Timberlake's hair at the time.

Spin Doctors - Two Princes
pros: ...I guess maybe the "Just go ahead now"s seem like he's nonchalant about winning the girl, but God do those still sound annoying.
cons: Have you heard this shit?! The lead singer dude's fucking attempt at scatting I MEAN HONESTLY. That dude supposedly almost lost his voice. The fact that he didn't is a crime against humanity.

Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On
pros: ...I mean, I guess Celine really knows how to sell a song, don't she?
cons: I don't know if it's the ubiquity and its ties to Titanic that makes this seem worse than it actually is, but it just sounds so bombastic and overblown and--much like the McCain song--makes love sound really dire. And actually kind of threatening. Also that Irish flute or whatever at the beginning is really obnoxious.

Which one's worse? I really can't tell. I think I'll go for Spin Doctors for the win. Barely.

random music thoughts i had while in southern california, part 1

On Christmas Eve, my little sister and I drove from Walnut to Culver City to pick up our grandparents and drive them to our parents' house, where the family's Christmas celebration was to occur. We divvied up the responsibilities: she agreed to drive to Culver City and I agreed to drive back. This means that the driver controlled the music, as the CD that was playing in our father's Toyota was a Celine Dion one (and not even the one with the big singles! WTF Dad).

My sister inserted a mix CD that had a mix of things I had never before heard (at one point I asked "Is this Maroon 5?" and she scoffed and said the name of the band, which completely escaped me then and now) and some crossover indie stuff (re: Modest Mouse's "Float On" I said "I can't believe this band is big now." My sister responded, "Really?" and I said, "Yeah! They were so weird and ugly!" Though I guess they're still ugly).

One song I would come to know as "that white girl on those Rhapsody commercials," which I had no idea existed, and I had no idea who this girl was. Apparently her name is Sara Bareilles and her song is entitled "Love Song." I believe the main thrust of the song has to do with Bareilles declaring that she would not write someone a love song because that is precisely what he/she/it would want, accompanied by plonking piano and a big sweeping chorus. My first thought was "What has Vanessa Carlton wrought?!"

Lo and behold a few days later, and we were riding in the back of our parents' car and Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" comes on the radio. I remembered thinking about my initial reaction to the song whenever the hell it was released: that Fiona Apple needn't lose any sleep, and that it seemed like some kind of volley in the Battle for the Souls of Teen Girls that included Carlton, Avril Lavigne, and Michelle Branch. Being that I loathed Lavigne's persona, I felt more comfortable with the bland stylings of Carlton and Branch, and hey at least they played instruments (ugh).

As "A Thousand Miles" played, I was struck by the quite lovely and classic piano line, as good if not better than anything I've heard come outta Alicia Keys' fingertips (I am admittedly not a connoisseur of either). But as the song continued, I came to realize that the piano was the only redeeming factor: the lyrics are trite bullshit delivered in a maudlin tone, especially in comparison to the similar sentiment of that Proclaimers Benny & Joon song, which is instead a joyous delivery of nicely simple lyrics. The melody isn't terrible exactly, but it seems absolutely flat thanks to the non-presence of Carlton's voice, which sounds nasal and monotone, ill-fitting the necessary grandiosity of the song's sweeping sentiment. Also, she has no sense of phrasing whatsoever.

I came to the conclusion that while Lavigne is problematic, she at least has a personality to her voice and can therefore carry a tune in a way that Carlton, at least in this song (as I have never heard another one of hers), is incapable of. I have not reevaluated--nor care to--Michelle Branch as I have not had the (mis)fortune of hearing a song of hers on the radio, but I recall her having more of a Morrissettian bite to her voice than Lavigne. And this Bareilles song which I am now acquainted with thanks to that commercial I've now seen 1395010981 times: the girl at least has a (fairly dull) lushness to her voice in a way that I imagine what people must like about Feist.

So, lastly, in regards to every artist mentioned above: Apple >>>>>>>>>>> Lavigne > Modest Mouse > Morrissette > Dion > "Love Song" > Feist > Branch > Keys > Maroon 5 > Carlton.

Just FYI: when I drove back, my mix CD (which I found in some drawer in my parents house) began with Badly Drawn Boy's "The Shining," followed by "The Weather" by Built To Spill. And then "God Only Knows." :-/ But the Breeders' "Divine Hammer" and Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" did follow, so there's that at least.

songs about los angeles part 2

As I get ready to head off to the homeland for nine glorious days, I thought it'd be nice to do a small addendum to this list. Because I'm sentimental and nostalgic and solipsistic!

"California Sun" - the Rivieras
For the longest time I only knew this because of Mohegan Sun adverts. That surfy guitar line! That surfy drumbeat! That surfy keyboard riff! Lyrics about how carefree and fun California is, and how that's where you belong. Yes it is!

You should maybe skip to 0:40 where the real bulk of this video starts. Dopey-cute Cali dudes walking around L.A. and being dopey as the song plays. Cute! (Though the blond one looks like an ex-boyfriend, but that's probably just cos all SoCal boys look like that)

"California Girls" - the Magnetic Fields
Apparently you can, um, listen to this here. It's an anti-California song! What is it doing here, you say? Well, part of the fun of being from California (and, even more so, Southern California, which basically means "Los Angeles") is dealing with people who hate you just because of where you're from. Yeah, we grew up with sun all the time and beaches whenever we wanted. This inspires a lot of hatred and condescension. I mean, just yesterday a Jersey kid and a NorCal kid ganged up on me to tell me that Los Angelenos are stupid! (Fair, sure, but I wouldn't say we're any stupider than any other big city) There's a kind of jealousy that becomes ugly, which this song so hilariously exposes, while also sounding beautiful and menacing--which, come to think of it, perfectly describes the California girls that the narrator wants to destroy in this song. Instant classic and totally vintage, and off the Magnetic Fields' forthcoming beaut Distortion.

"After The Glitter Fades" - Stevie Nicks
I pretty much can't top this description, which I will reproduce here:

Hell yeah to doing fat rails at some record producer's party up the canyon in Studio City, or maybe it was a real estate guy, and finding yourself alone on a balcony at four in the morning, the has-beens long retired to the bedrooms with the wannabes, and maybe a few stragglers sprawled on living room shag, too wasted or too desperate to know that for them the party ended weeks ago, with the Valley twinkling everywhere below, and knowing that love is only one fine star away. Hell yeah.

"All I Wanna Do" - Sheryl Crow
Oh come the fuck on now, really. She likes a good beer buzz in the morning. How are you gonna hate on a girl like that?!

"Late Night, Early Town" - Lloyd Cole
Leave it to Lloyd Cole to write some kinda didactic joyless song about staying up all night and partying. Although it can get depressing (see: "After The Glitter Fades" description!), so he has a point. This sounds almost like a parody of your classic OMG L.A. DEBAUCHERY LEAVES US SO EMPTY BUT INSPIRED. Who knows, it might be one! I guess we really are dumb! Still really pretty though. (If you want this song, holla)

"California Man" - Cheap Trick
Wherein, apparently, California men feel immortal and sadistic and unable to stop dancing when rock and roll is playing. Cool! Like The Red Shoes!

"California Sunset" - Neil Young
The great Canadian tradition of leaving frozen tundra and being in awe of the colors of the sky and the warmth and the vast openness of the West, which is really what America has always been about if you think about it. Bonus point for "Kiss another day goodbye," which is basically how it feels like there: time passes by so quickly, and what the hell have you done? Gotten stoned on the beach, duh. Ah, freshman year.

"California Here I Come" - Shocking Blue
Why do the foreigners get the mystique and mythos of California more than our fellow Americans? Mariska Veres just sounds fucking desperately entitled to make it hers. Oh hm, maybe that's why--conquering and taking anything in your path in order to achieve your bloodthirsty goals. Get outta the way, red/brown people!

"California Here I Come" - Al Jolson
This is pretty much the whole thing, isn't it? It's snowing, what the hell am I doing not in California? I've been lousy since leaving. So I'm coming back, get ready. It's also inspired one of my favorite dorky kid TV-watching moments:

And as a bonus, here's ABBA, being as drunk as I intend to be in the next nine days:

liveblogging the worst idea in the world

SERIOUSLY MY OFFICE HAS COME UP WITH THE BRIGHT IDEA THAT ANYONE WITH AN IPOD CAN CREATE A PLAYLIST OF THREE SONGS TO PLAY WHILE AT WORK. THAT WE ALL HAVE TO LISTEN TO. OMG R U SRS THIS IS HORRIBLE.

Hot Blooded - Foreigner
me: What is happening why is this playing?
coworker: [explains above without caps]
me: IS THIS GONNA HAPPEN ALL DAY EVERY DAY

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
THANK YOU BECAUSE I TOTALLY FEEL LIKE HANGING MYSELF RIGHT ABOUT NOW

Little Ghost - the White Stripes
Listening to Jack White's voice is like the opposite of keeping me calm while having to deal with shitty customers.

One Headlight - the Wallflowers
HOLY SHIT WHAT AM I LAUGHING OR CRYING

Wild Thing - the Troggs
Okay. I mean sure this is a good song and all and whatever but do we really need to do this? This is such a horrible idea and here is why:

SOME GOOGLING TELLS ME THAT THIS IS A TAKING BACK SUNDAY SONG. WHAT. WHY?!!#$!!#$%!#%

I can't even deal right now. If my Ipod weren't dead, I would play the following three songs to ensure that people would realize how terrible this idea is:

Only Skin - Joanna Newsom
Sister Ray - the Velvet Underground
anything off Scott Walker's The Drift

SERIOUSLY KILL ME.

Update: Just in case you didn't realize how bad this is, "Kryptonite" by Three Doors Down" just came on. :(

avril lavigne and identity

Avril Lavigne's 2002 explosion into pop youlth culture's consciousness drew an immediate line in the sand in terms of music listeners who elevated her as an authentic anti-pop savior and those with Discerning Tastes who questioned that authenticity. On a musical level (at least on "Sk8er Boi," and being only familiar with her big singles, this post will not delve into album tracks, which may be short-sighted, though singles generally are the basis of public perception anyway), Lavigne certainly has the propulsion of punk, if not the brevity--someone needs to tell her that punk doesn't have much need for bridges. (Attitudinally-speaking, Lavigne has punk down, because "punk" now seems a meaningless concept/construct, entirely aesthetic, and wasn't part of punk always a fashion statement anyway? Ties on tanks punk rawk!) Judged purely on a production level, Lavigne's use of pop songwriting/production team The Matrix sands down any edges of "punkness" that Lavigne so obviously (some would say desperately) trots out as a prop and crutch, considering her presentation as A Real Artist, "the anti-Britney." This itself is an ironic piece of rockism on Lavigne's part, and gets to a core issue at work on her singles: a struggle with identity.

In many ways, Lavigne's three most iconic singles are specifically teenage in that they are concerned with ideas of Realness, and part of what plagues the melodic charms of these songs is that they are bogged down by the absolutism of teenagerdom, this dogmatic idea of identity as severely dichotomous: real vs. fake, cool vs. uncool.

"Complicated," first of all, is much more faux-country than faux-punk, right down to the odd pronunciation and poor phrasing/breath control that makes her sound vaguely like a yodeling Jewel in certain sections. She does a nicely sarcastic posh accent on "Strike a pose," though I'm not sure that's intentional. The real lyrical assault on identity comes in the next line when Lavigne implores to her complicated beau, "Take off all your preppy clothes," which would sound like an incredible invitation were it not for the lyric setting up her disgust with his inauthentic posturing. Also: Lavigne's sneer on this line, which manages to sound both bitchy and chaste at the same time.

The best part of the song comes at the end of the chorus when Lavigne, like the know-it-all teen she was, sings in a lovely melodic rush "Life's like this: you/you fall and you crawl/and you break and you take/what you get/and you turn it into/Honesty/Promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it" (unless she sings "fakin'," which makes more linguistic sense--what is "it"?--or "vacant"--which would be a nice homage to the Sex Pistols, but that's too assumptive--or oddly, "Vegas," which is what it sounds like at the end, and Vegas certainly is fake but that symbolism is a too-outré lyrical flourish for Lavigne, who is generally a straight-shooter), which is difficult to parse and even doing so, doesn't make a lick of sense. What is problematic is both the reductiveness of the characterization as well as the assumption that the boy is faking--maybe he was faking being a "punk" (or whatever) because his girlfriend was so snotty about upholding stereotypes and creating boundaries amongst different sectors of society. The song's fascism is off-putting, which is a shame, because the melody is quite pretty. "Complicated" seems really petty in the wake of Liz Phair's "Why Can't I," another Matrix production which recalls the melody but serves it well with a simpler teenage sentiment of You're-so-beautiful-I'm-in-love-it's-scary. And better singing, which is almost never something you can say about Phair.

"Sk8er Boi" followed, and cemented her anti-(whatever it is) stance. As a piece of music it's giddy and effervescent, possibly her purest sonic playground and the melody comes fun and fast. Lyrically, however, Lavigne combines the identity fascism of "Complicated" with a positively catty and wholly unnecessary attack on another girl. The song again concerns punk vs. prep, wherein a punk skater boy (whatever) is in love with a ballet girl (which, in Lavigne's world automatically makes her a prep and The Enemy) who loves him back, but in secret, because Society Will Not Stand It! Or something. All her friends laugh at him so she caves to societal pressure and lets him go, or doesn't do anything in the first place (the songwriting is unclear). This is straight up Shakespearean tragedy and Lavigne treats at as an opportunity to go Nyah-nyah. The chorus's ire seems misdirected at Ballet Girl, as "He wasn't good enough for her...She needed to come back down to earth" is a little dishonest; the blame is on her friends, not her! She caved, which makes her weak, but it does not make her a snob.

It only gets cattier and more wrong-headed from there. The narrative flashes forward five years where Ballet Girl is now a pathetic single mother (hey, way to mock her situation, Avril!) watching TV when Skater Boy comes on with his band. She calls up all her friends and they all go watch him as she laments ever turning him down (wait--so all the friends who were laughing at him because of his "punk" appearance are now "punk" fans? Okay.) And then Lavigne brags that the boy--or man--is hers, and together they write a song about a stupid girl who once dismissed him (meta!). It's a perfectly teenage sentiment--and beautiful in its way, but entirely wish-fulfillment--to parade your success in front of those who mocked you, but if forgiveness and compassion (she became a single mother for Chrissake!) are better than spite and vengeance, I'd say Lavigne errs on the side of immaturity here, especially considering Ballet Girl didn't even do anything wrong aside from not paying heed to her own feelings due to societal concerns (in this case this really makes her a Sirkian heroine if anything). If you can manage to not be offended by the braggadocious mockery of others less fortunate than yourself and your super awesome rock star boyfriend, there are some great moments to be had, especially how she ecstatically sings "Rockin' up MTV!" and "We rock each other's world!" ("world" again starts to sound like a Jewel yodel).

Lavigne's recent single "Girlfriend" is five years and a marriage removed from the opening one-two punch of "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi," but Lavigne's maturity level is still firmly entrenched in vengeful teenagerisms. Lyrically, Lavigne plays down the punk vs. preppy identity struggle (though it is in fine display in the nearly intolerable video) but amps up the misogyny of "Sk8er Boi." The chutzpah is admirable; if "Sk8er Boi" could be described in any manner as subtle, then "Girlfriend" is a full-scale attack with it's rah-rah "Hey hey you you I don't like your girlfriend." It may be perfectly archetypal teenage girl, and yaya sisterhoodism is probably pretty tired, but the idea that desire for a boy should make another girl an automatic enemy seems ludicrous and sad, as well as incredibly stereotypical.

It seems impossible to divorce the song from the video, because there is a remarkable tension that arises when the two clash. In the video, Punk Girl manages to steal Totally Average-Looking Boy from Preppy Girl by basically disrupting TALB and Prep's perfectly innocent date of Go-Kart and mini-golf, and in the end Punk and TALB get together while Prep quite literally has gone to shit (a howlingly offensive piece of slapstick). The hubris of the video is interesting because it matches the persona of the song, but not the song itself. The song itself is nearly vulnerable, because the protagonist actually has not stolen away the boy, and is nearly begging for the chance ("I think about you all the time," "I want to be your girlfriend") while the second verse is kind of sadly delusional ("I see the way you look at me"), and somehow sounds even more dishonest than the rest of the song, which is inherently dishonest and cynical.

It is a beautifully constructed pop song that is also amazingly vapid, and completely at-odds with Lavigne's Anti-Everything Rebel Punk persona. She even does a choreographed dance in the video! Which is what makes the persona--which bleeds into the song's lyrics and narrative and consumption--disagreeable and ruinous to the actual songs, because in the quest for truth and authenticity it reveals itself as fake and pose. At the very least, pop music that portrays itself as pop music doesn't lie, and the pleasures of that honesty are far greater than the deceit that comes from masking your true intent and character under rhetoric that isn't even built on a solid foundation to begin with (and yes I realize the dismissive use of "rhetoric" is ironic, considering my dissection of a pop song). If Courtney Love's immortal line was "I fake it so real I am beyond fake," then Lavigne's should be the inverse except she lacks the self-awareness to even attempt such an impossible lyric.

The persona is a shame because it gets in the way of the generally well-crafted tunes, and also because there is a hint of vulnerability when she isn't swaggering about for no good reason. Her two great mushy ballads are far more honest statements and therefore are more effective songs in the long run, even if the sonic pleasures aren't as high. As video and song, "I'm With You" manages to steal from Fiona Apple's "Never Is A Promise" as well as the pilot episode of My So-Called Life wherein Angela Chase gets knocked into mud while at some terrible show in someone's backyard, as well as the same series's use of Juliana Hatfield as a guardian angel. Even better is "My Happy Ending," which takes Bushwickian locales as the backdrop for deserted isolation, and with a twinkly piano and bombastic melodramatic chorus, Lavigne comes across less like "You Oughta Know"-era Alanis and more Steinman-singing Celine (with some bite), and is served far better for it. Dropping the sneer--which is inherently exclusive--allows a semblance of humanity in Lavigne, and is far more welcoming for it. And lo and behold! At the end of the "My Happy Ending" video, Lavigne, having nothing more to do with the boy, ends up walking down the street, propped up by some supportive girlfriends. Nice to see the "one of the boys" attitude forsaken at least once, even if it is for reactionary purposes. Canadian maternalism never felt so good.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ON FIRE! (or, an excuse to blog about hole's "celebrity skin")

Brushfires are common in Southern California. Due to the inherent dryness of the climate coupled with the Santa Anas, I grew up generally unimpressed by minor conflagrations; expected them as the norm. Just the price you pay for living here, I thought. Even when one came within a few miles from my house, and another one that flared up just down the hill, it was never all that unsurprising or disturbing, and there was always the expectation that it would be quickly snuffed.

This cavalier attitude is one of the great, amazing, deluded character traits of Southern California. We make this ingrained pact with the environment to accept potential disaster in exchange for living in such a beautiful part of the world.

I'll live on a faultline if it means I get a nice view!

The rest of the world hates us and relishes our every foible, but have you seen the backyard? Yes, that's the ocean!

The fires just destroyed my home. Guess I'll rebuild it! [months later] Oh no! Mudslides!

What I love about Los Angeles is its inherent fakeness, its insincerity, its complete lack of authenticity and the attendant lack of pretense about history. As such, it does not suffer the burden of its past like, say, the South or New England, and is seemingly free to constant change without much zealotry. It is, for better or worse, the perfect theoretical American city. If America was founded by Brits yearning for religious and social freedom, then Los Angeles was founded by these early Americans and their indignant, righteous hubris that the West was theirs. And what better signpost for religious and social freedom than Los Angeles, with its Scientology and cults and the free-for-all that is Sunset Blvd? You asked for it, America. We stole water and imported palm trees to build a fake paradise as a shrine to your dreams and visions of What We Could Become, so we shouldn't be surprised when nature rebels.

This is not to make light of the current situation, which is ghastly and terrifying. Speaking as someone who lived through the fires of 2003--four years later and the similarities are striking--there is nothing quite like the continual ash fall; the thick cloud of reddish brown obscuring the sky day and night; the smell and tactility of the air seemingly frying; and the fear of spontaneity, that your home will be next.

This is, however, a music blog, and this disaster feels like as perfect time as any to discuss Hole's seminal Southern California epic, Celebrity Skin (Everclear's "Santa Monica," what with its tailor-made "Leave the fire behind/Swim out past the breakers/Watch the world die" sentiment, seems most apropos--but what is there to analytically unpack when it already speaks for itself?).

What impresses, first and foremost, about Celebrity Skin is how it is able to lyrically, sonically, tonally represent the spirit of Los Angeles in all its beauty and vapidity and decay and paradoxes. It sounds, for one, like driving around the Greater L.A. Area: at first you're bombarded by flash and glitz, by the ocean and vistas, but you start noticing unsettling things--the trash on Hollywood Blvd, the deep race-class divide, or the rats living in the palm trees, let's say. And then you drive further out, into strip malls and tract housing and industrial landscapes. It gets pretty ugly out there, no matter that you're still, technically, in glam L.A.

It also sounds like a smart person's reaction to/critique of the city. There is a strong ambivalence to Los Angeles' hollow/depth dichotomy that runs as a seeming theoretical stance throughout the album's songs, its content and sonics. Which mirrors the city's inhabitants as well: even the smart Los Angelenos are concerned with shallow ephemera, with surface pleasure, hedonism, and aesthetics. And, trainwreck personality she may be, there is certainly no rock intellect quite like Courtney Love.

"Oh make me over," she snarls to begin the record, following feedback that recalls the vacuum of liposuction and a glam-metal cockrock riff (supplied by Billy Corgan), and as an opening statement of declarative intent this word+sonic combo might as well be L.A.'s rock Preamble. "Oh make me over/I'm all I wanna be": what better manifesto for a transplant looking for re-invention/suscitation/juvenation in this City of No History? Here, you can become everything you want, granted you're willing to pay every price. Lyrically, Love sets up all the archetypes: "wilted and faded, somewhere in Hollywood," the "hooker-waitress-model-actress" is "a star now" but also might as well "go nameless" in such a cruel, corrupt social system as this, where you can easily go from "might-have-been" to "never-was" to "forgotten." By the end, you know your worth, and aren't "selling cheap." This "selling cheap" epilogue is both hilarious and poignant in its acceptance of compromise that you've already undertaken ("Oh make me over"), and obviously you have to sell yourself for notice/recognition/acclaim, but you've set a price. In spite of the compromises, you still have some semblance of dignity.

And that's just track one. "Awful" bounces along like those great punk-to-pop Los Angelenos the Go-Gos while deriding the music industry that corrupts the "sweet cherry" of "little girls," and with it's "royalty rate[s]," turning "perfect" punk into something awful, like you (meaning Courtney or our Courtney-like L.A. protagonist), you compromised sell-out whore. "Hit So Hard" is an odd, debatably postmodern rewrite of the Crystals' "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)," except without all the archly cynical production and distant singing, and with empathic lyrics like "He's cold/Give him a candy coat," it becomes more of a Lifetime TV movie than the winkingly stoic original, replete with perverse religious awakening. Out-ironied by Carole King? Who would have thought. Unless Courtney's sincerity is all irony, which I wouldn't put past her.

With the glossy confectionary production of opening triptych "Celebrity Skin"/"Awful"/"Hit So Hard" hiding some knotty lyrical content, one would think that, with a title like "Malibu," the next song would follow suit. It is, instead, the glorious turning point of the record. The production certainly follows in line with the preceding trio, but only up to a point. While it is probably the lushest sounding recording on the album, it is at this point where the record begins its irreversible rot. The guitars begin by ringing and crashing like the Pacific onto the vaunted shoreline of Malibu, Courtney cooing at the top of her register like the savior angel she intends to be for the song's "desperate" You, with the help of Melissa Auf der Maur's glorious backing harmonies. But then it begins to sound like undertow, with the onset of the chorus, where the guitars drive darker and the drums crash heavily, destroying the verse's optimistic flutter. Courtney tries to keep it Hopeful and Pop and Wish-Fulfillment, but altogether abandons it when she snarls "And I knew," followed by a Joy Division reference, which is all the necessary defeatism you need to get the point across. By the end's "I can't be near you/The light just radiates," producer Michael Beinhorn adds a filter that makes Courtney's voice sound like water in your ears. Are you drowning? Is she in heaven, whispering the words to you from on high? Or are you, and she screaming upwards into the clouds and sky? At any rate, no trip to Malibu--no matter how damned beautiful it is--is gonna save you. Especially not when it's all on fire.

The following quartet is what happens when paradise proves less spectacular than you'd originally thought. When all the compromise comes back to haunt you, or when history--even that which you thought you'd escaped, or thought was nonexistent--catches up to you. You may also be going to the Valley, which is why things are getting ugly.

For Courtney, Kurt starts rearing his head. In "Reasons To Be Beautiful," she sneers at his famous suicide note. "Dying" rewrites his "I think I'm dumb" as an affirmative. The City of Industrial "Use Once & Destroy" lifts its title from "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter," or a syringe. And then there's the Pumpkins-string death dirge of "Northern Star," running "to the pines," alluding to Cobain's own final death rattle at the end of MTV Unplugged.

The damage has been done at this point. Hole attempts to shoo away the storm clouds with the general upbeatness of "Boys on the Radio," the greatest song Fleetwood Mac never recorded, but it's "endless summer night"s are more elegiac and wistful than celebratory. "Heaven Tonight" seems like a slap-in-the-face parody after all the preceding gravitas, but when you think of it as equestrian daydreams of a Torrance girl, then it continues the depressiveness. We're headfirst in the Valley now, as "Playing Your Song" regresses to suburban grunge angst, yelling about how "they built a mall." This town will co-opt everything it can.

Which brings us to the big, (melo)dramatic conclusion of "Petals." In it, the flowers that have "bloomed and blossomed" have also quickly wilted, and Courtney decides that our earlier protagonist--that "walking study in demonology," that "hooker-waitress-model-actress," that sellout--is "too pure for this world," and it is instead the world that is the whore, not the girl. In effect, she's right. She has played the game according to its rules for the sake of status hunger, only to find that the game is corrupt, and has made her corrupt herself. "Tear the petals off of you/Make you tell the truth," she implores, but what truth is there to find when it's all dishonest? When it's all fake? Didn't you tear off everything that was true about you--the body fat, the bad hair, the big nose, your too-ethnic name--to discover the truth of the lie? What petals are left, and what more truth is there? The hedonism of earlier has given way to a near-pious longing for salvation. Another re-invention/surrection/juvenation. No wonder this city has so many religions. And even those are fake. It's heaven and hell on the coast. And after these fires, the landscape will be reborn again. Until the rains come, and the flashfloods enable mudslides in the next apocalypse. Los Angeles: used more than once, never destroyed. It keeps rising from death. I am at its altar, and pray for its safety.

What a self-centered demigod.

And just to prove that she knows what she's talking about:

all photos courtesy of latimes.com

pj harvey is a real poser

And thank God for that. If we take a look back at her catalogue, one wonders why it wasn't made clear earlier. Through a 15-year career with seven proper albums (not counting 4-Track Demos or her Dance Hall at Louse Point collaboration with John Parish), Polly Jean Harvey has created a new persona and jumped through myriad musical landscapes with each successive record, often in direct reaction to each respective predecessor. Not many artists have had so varied an oeuvre. Maybe Dylan, perhaps Tom Waits, the Beatles if you want to be generous, surely Madonna (kind of).

In the realm of "90s alt-rock," Harvey is possibly only competitive with Radiohead in terms of artistic overhaul, though Radiohead has certainly not had the same consistency, nor the same kind of sonic experimentation--a chameleonic challenge with each album. Oddly, while Radiohead has seemed to move more and more inward and seemingly create their own musical language (possibly a knee-jerk reaction to "Creep," their one true world-beating hit), Harvey--who was never had that one hit--has tried different masks in an attempt to escape her Self, shattering audience-imposed notions of her art as autobiography, but in effect has managed to expose more of herself as an artist than an insular band such as Radiohead.

And it all begins with the pose, which seemingly dis-"authenticates" Harvey as an artist, if one is to subscribe to such notions of artistic authenticity/integrity. However, another tack one might take is that all art is itself a pose, itself a manipulation with the intent of arising response. And each of Harvey's poses has been successful to varying degrees, and each record begins this with an image, declaring intent:

Dry (1992): The debut, its blurred lips signifying desire and lust in messy erotics, with a nearly shamanistic meld of blues and clumsy punk churning the gut as a sonic interpretation of the erotic, reaching back to fertility gods and the Bible while also worrying about what to wear.

Rid of Me (1993): Toplessness promises sex; hair makes you contemplatively wary, seeing as it resembles a whip while wet with water and thrashed, foreshadowing brutal near-dominatrix gender-ambiguous aggression. Or maybe it's worse than water: "Silence my lady head/Get girl out of my head/Douse hair with gasoline/Set it light and set it free." Run.

To Bring You My Love (1995): A gothic/blues/cabaret vamp that verges on the operatic and the drag, what with its over-exaggerated femininity--murderous mothers, husbandless mothers, desperate mothers, desperate lovers, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and one problematic metaphorical snake, causing this nonsense in the first place, "this nonsense" being lust/desire in the human condition or just that damn doomed child.

Is This Desire? (1998): The previous theatrical grandeur has given way to fractured--possibly schizophrenic--tales, Harvey embodying many different women in various states of tumult. The mostly small-scale electronics frustrate fans, who answer the title question with "Probably not." To longtime sufferers of the unrequited, it most certainly is a resounding yes, up until...

Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2000): Everything is finally, for once, fulfilled. The adolescent preoccupation with desire is done away with, favoring instead the enjoyment of same. It just is. Not without some terror--because isn't part of desire's thrill in how scary it is, how it could all go wrong at any second?--but the guitars ring with force and major chords for the first time, signaling no doubt, and the lush melodics of the ballads drip with moony-eyed romance. Older, smarter, with a modern haircut and good posture. Even Thom Yorke plays along. Somehow, though, it falls apart somewhere and doesn't recover, in spite of its promise. Nothing's built to last.

Uh Huh Her (2004): Scowling again. After the expansiveness and openness of its predecessor, a return to ugly punkisms, except it is less a homecoming than a regression. Harvey plays all instruments except for drums, possibly a manifest of major trust issues sprung forth from the previous openness. I've been burned, I will retreat. Her one true dud.

And now, finally, we get to this:

White Chalk (2007): Harvey's Bronte record, a full-scale retreat from modernity, all ethereal ghostliness.

White Chalk is possibly Harvey's most defiantly feminine record yet, and will certainly draw most of its ire from males yearning for her to pick up the electric guitar and retreat from the piano. If the posturing of the guitar is decidedly phallic, and enables one to wander the stage in a signifier of peripatetic promiscuity--i.e. "sowing wild oats"--then such same gender essentialist reduction (which it is hopefully clear that this author does not subscribe to) would indicate the piano as distinctly vaginal: passive, stationary, receptive. This itself is a theoretical pose, and Harvey dives headfirst into the instrument and its subsequent persona, harkening back to an almost grotesque interpretation of parlor music and mores/moors centuries old.

It is artistically and conceptually triumphant while also managing to be remarkably uncomfortable (and, to these ears, the most depressing album ever recorded). Her lack of technical proficiency on the piano is accentuated by the nearly-strangled, tortured feminine vocal inflection that has Harvey eschewing the deep-bellied growls of previous works for something closer to the top of her throat as situations and their attendant emotions close in on her: "The words are tightening around my throat, and/And/'Round the throat of the one I love." ("Dear Darkness")

The record's narrative seems to detail archaic feminine social transgression ("As soon as I'm left alone/The Devil wanders into my soul" from "The Devil") that leads our protagonist into pining and doomed lust. Harvey rewrites Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight" twice, without the optimism of the original. "I go out to the old milestone/Insanely expecting you to come there, knowing/That I wait for you there," she grimaces before imploring, "Come here at once! Because all of my being is now in pining," in "The Devil." She nearly repeats the same line/sentiment later in "Silence," "Somehow expect you'll find me there/That by some miracle, you'd be aware." This occurs after several narrative twists, which gives the repetitiveness of "Silence" a particular heft, near-catharsis and acceptance of the absent lover as opposed to the yearning wanderlust of "The Devil."

The narrative twists occur after the enveloping retreat of "Dear Darkness." The opening stanza of "Grow Grow Grow" has Harvey alternately sowing a seed and then destroying it, though it sure does not seem anything vegetal, as she ends the song imploring her mother to teach her "how to catch someone's fancy underneath the twisted oak grove," where she had stated she sowed that original seed. And in spite of this imploring, in spite of the moaning/hoping "chorus" of "Grow!"--the one time Harvey seems to bellow--there seems no intention of really wanting the seed. And certainly, if it is either the demon's spawn or merely one out of wedlock, the societal mores cause pressure and stress to rid herself of it.

Which Harvey-as-protagonist does in "When Under Ether," describing hallucinations while undergoing an abortion. She flashbacks in the next song, "White Chalk," walking around the white cliffs of her home in Dorset, "our unborn child in me." The subsequent "Broken Harp" elucidates "something metal tearing my stomach out...Can you forgive me?" She does not receive an answer, of course.

The aforementioned "Silence" follows, and her search for her lover has taken a different shade from the earlier "The Devil." Whereas "The Devil" indicates transgression, "Silence" seems to elucidate the prior need for forgiveness in the form of the body, consummated or not. Maybe just the vision. And then her hard-bit acceptance in his absence: "You never wanted me anyway. Silence."

"To Talk To You," the most excruciating track, occurs next, wherein Harvey writes a dirge waltz letter to her dead grandmother, clearly bereft of hope or ideas: "Under the earth/Wish I was with you." She vaguely mentions the desultory love affair and explicates how much she is missed, how much she needed advice. This matriarchal connection, along with the reference in "Grow Grow Grow" to her mother and the nurse in "When Under Ether," is a striking bit of gender essentialism on the part of Harvey. This, clearly, is about Women's Problems, and the need for guidance from other women mirrors the need for love from men, due to this need for love from men.

"The Piano" flashbacks to the destruction of the titular instrument, her one conduit for release. "Oh God I miss you," Harvey wails--when your method of catharsis is gone and no one is there to listen, where to turn? According to this record, with its next song, "Before Depature": suicide.

Which brings us to the final song, "The Mountain." It begins as pastoral notice of a mountain, an eagle, then the eagle notices a fallen soldier below him, and Harvey recalls the broken trees that exist in her heart. Is the soldier the absent lover? Is his (assumed) death the cause of her torment? Is the soldier herself? At any rate, Harvey climbs the mountain and ends the record with her only real allusion to her previous records' vocal wildness: ungodly squeals that seem like the last earthly release of one's sound; alternately sounding like the terror of throwing oneself off these white chalk hills, like the sound that will forever haunt these cliffs, like the sound of your spirit finally, gloriously released from all earthly concerns.

White Chalk is a disturbing, tremendous, and terrifying record. After a glorious opening salvo (Dry), two masterpieces (Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love), a minor triumph (Is This Desire?), a glorious near-miss (Stories...), and a mess (Uh Huh Her)--all records that, diverse though they may be in terms of sonics and persona, have the same common thread: documenting the differing effects of desire on one's psyche, reflected in her choice of musical backing and personal/artistic pose--Harvey has created a minimalist, miserablist account of what happens when that desire has been proven futile, and how its steady draining from one's self leads to a feeling of nothingness. Desire may be many things--frustrating, moving, horrible, unrequited, enervating, joyful--but its presence allows oneself to recognize passion, livelihood. When it's gone, as it gradually becomes in White Chalk, it seems to take away with it one's reason to live.

Album of the year.