Cool!
Kranky likes me, they really like me. How unexpected.
(If I now say that when I saw Lichens opening for Alasdair Roberts in Chicago, it was really excellent, am I compromised? It really was—the guitar that marred the first performance I saw was gone and replaced by an unknown-to-me collaborator playing violin drones and loops. And I can't remember if this was the case before, but that time he was using two mics, of different sorts, presumably treated differently. It really was quite awesome.—I also saw Roberts two days ago, and he did "A Lyke Wake Dirge", one of my favorite songs from his albums. An oddness: here, he was preceded by Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice; in Chicago, by The MV & EE Medicine Show. And yet both those bands are transcendentally terrible. Jack Rose also played. If, in the resurgence of Americana-based and folk-derived music, and dronishness (and any number of other things, I guess), we can detect a parallel to some good things that we associate with the 60s, then surely such acts as the above two are a potent warning that hippies suck. (There was also the guy who opened for Sir Richard Bishop, sitting cross-legged on the stage plucking at a sitar, but he was actually ok.) I recall the Wire article about, or called, "New Weird America" (surely one of the most idiotic musical terms of recent years, along with the pitchfork-promulgated "freakfolk" and "hyper-prog"), all the pictures of the bands pretty explicitly invoked hippie-istic imagery (like LENS FLARE!).
Comments
on 2005-09-17 14:47:32.0, Matt Weiner commented:
That is cool. And unexpected. And a bit disturbing--can they really treat us like real Reviews of Obscure Music?
"New, Weird America" comes (I'm morally certain) from "The Old, Weird America," Greil Marcus's essay about the Anthology of American Folk Music. I sort of see wanting a term for people who are into all that weird old folk music because it's so weird, but, well, whatever. Beatles was a sucky band name when you think it over. Pretty much agreed about hippies, though, although living in the Red makes me nostalgic for all sorts of freaks.
and, further, on 2005-09-17 18:43:41.0, ben wolfson commented:
Unclosed parenthesis alert!
and, further, on 2005-09-19 8:10:09.0, Kriston commented:
Good work! I had a psychically traumatic moment the other night at a gallery when the gallerist showed me a printout of a post I wrote about one of the artists included with the press packet. I must, must, must remove my giant head from the top of my blog.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 8:12:12.0, Standpipe Bridgeplate commented:
If you were a band name, would you be "Godspeed You Black Emperor" or "Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs"? Explain.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 10:39:05.0, Joe O commented:
"Old Weird America" is a stupid enough phrase as it is. That music was popular, or at least trying to be popular. They weren't aiming for the unheimlich.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 0:33:20.0, Matt Weiner commented:
That's the interesting/pretentious/annoying thing about the new stuff--they are aiming for the unheimlich. Filtering out the popular elements of the old stuff.
I would be When People Were Shorter And Lived Near The Water.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 13:32:51.0, Standpipe Bridgeplate commented:
Hey, that scans. Neat.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 14:46:11.0, ben wolfson commented:
Given the plenitude of feet, anything scans if you select your meter right.
and, further, on 2005-09-19 14:55:01.0, Standpipe Bridgeplate commented:
Construe a scanner, vacuously?
and, further, on 2005-09-19 16:50:05.0, dave zacuto commented:
It's a dactyl'c invasion
and, further, on 2005-09-20 7:33:28.0, Standpipe Bridgeplate commented:
Often I'll find that I'm writing in dactyls without even meaning to.
and, further, on 2006-01-21 20:34:53.0, ben wolfson commented:
As if to prove that MV&EE and Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice and their ilk are nothing but hippies rehippied, Alan Sondheim & Ritual All 770's The Songs contains in nuce all the former bands have ever accomplished, and will ever accomplish, done forty years ago.