seriously, here’s hoping this one goes the way of Beach House

I actually agree – I meant something more like: it is fun to imagine this as an attempt to be a Die Antwoord video

“Rubberjohnny” sounds like a (feat. Jasper & Taco) song

I hate this band. Zoo is a shapeless, entry level punk album. Mediocre songwriting. Banal lyrics.

They take it down to bass and drums after the second chorus, like Green Day. Every lyric is delivered with the vocal filter that pops up for the spoken word section in “Holiday,” the Green Day song. Right down to the crisp studio production, this band might as well just be Green Day.

Defend Skrillex’s music whatever I don’t give a shit

Defend his hair…what the fuck that shit is indefensible

I have been wondering this myself…

Before Derrida, the word deconstruction meant undoing construction.

Saying “Deconstruction: a textual analysis following the tenets of deconstruction as developed by Derrida” is like saying “Playing a major scale: playing a major scale as developed by the tenets of western music theory.” It is redundant: the word deconstruction, when used in an analytical sense, MEANS applying a method stemming from Derrida’s theory. The only other possible meaning of deconstruction is to take a building or machine etc. apart.

By saying “Deconstructing: Sleigh Bells” and meaning anything other than applying Derrida’s theory of deconstruction to the music or physically tearing apart the band members, this column is simply misapplying the term. The word is either being knowingly abused or simply being used without the knowledge of what the word even means.

If this wasn’t an intentionally analytical column, I would say that this is a minor nitpick – but this column is continuing to push hollow intellectualism on us, so… Greg nailed it, and LeMonjello nailed not knowing what he or she is talking about.

Saying that this article “wasn’t a review of the album or her music” is kind misleading. Comparable to saying a burrito “wasn’t a bunch of cheese.” Technically true, but cheese was definitely in there. Technically this is not a review of the album or her music, but, besides a couple of unnecessarily meandering and explicitly derisive descriptions of various aspects of the music (“fairly rudimentary beat”), we have things like:

“Rife with pastiche and a requisite analog vibe, her album’s as Tumblrfied as Jeremy Scott’s A/W 2012 line”

or

“I don’t like the music” (my personal favorite)

So there’s definitely some sort of a review of both the album and the music in there. And, I think the fact that this is actually quite easily mistakable for a music review (because, in part, it is) only highlights how convoluted yet undeveloped the treatment of what the author thinks are the talking points. And anyways, the introduction seems to think it is a treatment of the “gender aesthetic” of Grimes. This article tries to do a lot of things. (and achieves none of them)

This I must admit upfront: Grimes, having been a blog darling for a while, is subject to malignant compartmentalization. Much like how some publications treated Games and Toro y Moi as if they are adequately summarized by a number of generic descriptors (1980s, faded memory, vintage, nostalgia, VHS, etc.) strung together in any order, media discussion about Grimes can be, to put it gently, limited to a specific form. Shepherd comments that Grimes is “a product of her own environment – all of our environments.” I will assume it is self-evident that Ms. Shepherd is also a product of her environment; this article consists of familiar socio-musical observations given form by haphazardly observed commonalities in the popular understanding of the idea that is Grimes. Shepherd ostensibly enters this discussion with a fully-formed idea that Clare Boucher dreams of being a machine. And, in a seemingly intentionally insulting manner, tries to tell us that we do too.

The argument falls apart once we give it careful observation. In the first paragraph, Shepherd expects the “gestural narrative behind Boucher’s project” and “the actual sound of the music” to compute – and of course she finds that they come up short. Let us first observe that most music criticism is nonsense (which is not to say that there is no merit in it). The idea that music can “sound like” something like Wikipedia mysticism (there are tons of possible examples, I only use Shepherd’s words because they are on hand) is akin to think something along the lines of “my hat sounds like 2.” Discussion of music and even more so our relation to it inherently lies outside of logical space; things do not and cannot “compute” when it comes to music. Still, technicalities aside, the fatal flaw of this article is that it is unable to adequately identify Boucher’s artistic intentions or the even generally adopted shorthand used to discuss Boucher’s work.
So, back to where I started: Shepherd ostensibly believes that Boucher’s only intention for Grimes is to wind up digitized and asexual. Shepherd claims that Bjork addresses tension between humanity and the internet while Boucher does not. I believe that Boucher does present such tension, mostly in the lyrics. Shepherd’s reading and commentary is remarkably selective: Shepherd makes absolutely no mention or reference to any lyric on the album, in fact I do not think it unreasonable that a reader unfamiliar with Grimes’ music might be led to assume it relies on glossolalia. I will employ the most frequently quoted lyrics off of Visions: “soft skin, you touch me with it and so I know I can be human again.” There is indeed the presence of, to quote Shepherd, “computer-ether” – but it is grounded and contrasted with some profoundly corporeal (and, more specifically, human) concerns. Song titles like “Be a Body” and “Skin” alone are enough to suggest this. I found it telling that Shepherd chose to render the song I know as “Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment (intro)” as “Infinite Love Without Fulfillment” – as if removing the anatomical reference negates the emotion. Perhaps it seems, while all I seek to do is evoke contrast, that I am perhaps positing “emotional” as the polar opposite of “digital.” I do find that there is tension and contrast between the two adjectives, and it is this tension that Shepherd either misses or choose to ignore.
Shepherd goes on to postulate that Grimes pursues asexuality. However, we have (from the same Pitchfork interview that Shepherd quoted) the following from Boucher herself: “But music is an inherently sexual thing. If something sexual is going to be expressed, it’s going to be in my music.” I find that it is expressed, in various ways, in Grimes. Shepherd posits a few female artists that “tap into their womanhood and sexuality as a source of power, what some might say THE DARK ARTS OF WOMANNESS.” I am completely bewildered as to whether the unanimously-capitalized phrase is a jab at what Shepherd assumes is a predominantly male audience or a call to arms or a glorified typo. Regardless, while it is hard to call Grimes overtly sexual, the music (and words!) comes from a person who clearly has an understanding and comfort with their own sexuality. Boucher even explicitly bemoans indie asexuality (again in the same Pitchfork article that Shepherd quotes), the institution that Shepherd files Grimes under. “Music is an inherently sexual thing.”
At one point in the article, Shepherd accuses Grimes of following a “strange binary of robot vs. person, of good vs. evil.” This binary is a construct of Shepherd’s. The words taken as pairs contrast with each other, but the pairs taken as analogies show Shepherd’s error. For Shepherd, there is no middle ground. You are either Bjork fondling Story of the Eye-inspired eggs while extolling Venus as a boy, or you are Clare Boucher with a chastity ring on every finger and toe. You are either Mariah Carey being Mariah Carey, or Clare Boucher aspiring to “unattainable purity that doesn’t register on an emotional level.” You are either Julianne Shepherd or a white dude on the internet clamoring over the newest musical fad of thinly represented ideas. Because remember: the purpose of this article is to tell us that we do not know what to look for in music, that Grimes’ popularity is because of pedophiliac obsession over her “naive” or “elf-like” qualities.
If the purpose of this article is to comment on Grimes’ reception, then it fails because of its willing ignorance of how Grimes has been received.
If the purpose of this article is to comment on Grimes’ music, then it fails because of its willing ignorance of what Grimes’ music represents and how it was accomplished.
If the purpose of this article is to do both of the above, then it fails because the simultaneous presentation of both comments does not somehow validate the entire presentation while both comments are failures.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

yeah… except it was definitely an accident…you just didn’t notice until 13 minutes later

Pretty indifferent to Kendrick Lamar and Willis Earl Beal, and while I like all the other acts quite a bit, I still feel this is kind of an underwhelming lineup. There’s no chance I will be able to go, anyways, though haha

what the fuck just noticed they are sharing shoes???