Which, you know, pretty much dazzles me. I don't think that Bethany doesn't know how to read or that she is illiterate. She really fucked up on this one.
"So, baby, when I wake you up / Just let me ride, fuck you back to sleep, girl".
I'm sorry, but this quote proves that this song has nothing to do with rape.
These motherfuckers are not only having the time of their lives, travelling, eating, smoking and ladying as they are producing some really great music and web series. Fuck, that's delicious!
Ah, way to early to make such a bold statement. The first time I heard Honey Locust Honky Tonk it sounded like a subdued Automatic For The People and now it sounds as good as that classic records and pretty close in greatness to the GBV circa 92-95.
I couldn't disagree more. The classic reunion LPs are all fabulous and even the weaker ones (English Little League and Cool Planet) have each two handfuls of great tunes. Factory, UFO, Bears and Jumpsuit are Top 10 GBV records in my book. Plus, there's the AMAZING Down by the Racetrack EP that is top-notch.
I love both TLOP and uu. - two mesmerising works and I even find myself with the urge of listening to one when I finish listening to the other. And I feel that I keep discovering new stuff in both of them. Can't really imagina my life without these two monsters quite honestly.
First listen and I'm really enjoying it. "Zodiac Companion" is an instant classic and there's a Let's All Eat the Factory vibe throughout all tracks, which is great in my book.
"There’s the joy that comes with having this amazing ability, but then there’s also the knowledge that you need to use it for good, and the uncertainty of what “good” might even be."
Wow, that's deep.
Dan solo, chill out. Don't pay too much attention to either up voted and down voted comments: you make some interesting points and I wrote my comment in a hurry (I have a 6 month baby and that's why I can only answer to you now).
In my opinion, PJ album is about how the new digital media landscape affects the way we relate to reality. When I was in college, being socially engaged meant to give free language lessons to immigrants, feed homeless people in the winter, help somebody to rebuilt his house damaged by a storm, pick up trash in the streets, etc. Nowadays, it is very easy to feel engaged simply by signing an online petition: you click it, put your name on it and feel pretty great about yourself instantly (hey, I've signed my share of petitions as well, so this is not a generation thing, I think it affects pretty much everyone of us who have access to the web).
Social media tends to create an approaching effect that is absolutely opposite to the Brecht distancing effect, i.e. we create an emotional bound to reality that is a considerable obstacle to understanding it intellectually. That’s why I think any protest art produced nowadays can hardly ignore this important contemporary phenomenon. And I think that PJ Harvey did that brilliantly in this album.
Let me give you an example with “The Community of Hope” song. The central part of the lyric is included in the book The Hollow of The Hand (Bloomsbury, 2015, p. 179) under the title "Sight-Seeing, South of the River" – the whole text appears in italic and in quotes and we know nowadays that this is a transcription of what Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzmann said during a guided tour. This is very interesting because this post-produced lyric (a verbal sample if you prefer) has been generating fascinating discussions: can someone still say this is poverty tourism when the source happens to be somebody who has worked and written about this community for so many years? How can emotional detachment help one to understand reality in an age in which people has such short attention span?
Plus, this is a multimedia project (as was Let England Shake). I’m pretty sure Seamus Murphy remaining videos will enlighten us even more. He seems to be dealing with the same challenge felt by French poets from the end of the nineteenth century: how can we create poetry with the same language that we use to ask for a cup of coffee? How can someone create engaging visual art in an era where social media is overstuffed with an endless plethora of viral images? Media can alienate, but art should liberate. This seems to be what’s at stake in this record, book and videos.
PJ is far beyond the vision of protest art as realism. What she questions in this album is precisely how to trigger agency through aesthetic communication, particularly in the case of the pop song format. Protest art works perfectly when, for instance, it shows how popular culture writers can write about music as demagogue politicians.
Good Lord, that was a painful read, Tom. When did your personal moral values started to overshadow your fabulous ability to write about music? Lazy assumptions, preachy observations and outrageous moral judgements. Have you ever hear of Brecht distancing effect? Or anything about the intimate correlation between aesthetics and politics? This is too sad to be true, Tom. Honestly, how disappointing it is to read such an half-baked thing from you.
The record is marvellous: a perfect companion piece to The Hollow of The Land, the poetry / photographic volume by PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy. Can't wait to watch all the remaining videos.
Morality over art? No, thanks.
"(...)the new album Fallen Angels will be a collection of Dylan’s interpretations of songs that Frank Sinatra made famous, which remains a perfectly perverse thing for Bob Dylan to make."
That's perfectly right, Tom, but in the Freudian sense of the word "perverse", i.e. the absence of self-censorship - which is, by the way one of the most admirable dimensions of Dylan's supreme career in the last six decades.
This is one is gorgeous. Fascinating how this old songbook rejuvenated this voice.
I absolutely A-DORE both. Parquet Courts only found a way to my heart when I started to listen to them casually, with random songs from them thrown on some playlists while I ride my bike.
I just wish that these Soundcloud exclusives (i.e., reader gets an embedded player but no access to source URL) would always backfire. I love Fujita & Miyagi AND Stereogum, but when both of them engage in these ridiculous shenanigans (give us / here's an exclusive so that we / you publish 300 words about it), I just feel that the world gets a little bit darker.
I find it VERY DIFFICULT it to be better than 10,000 Hz Legend (which is fabulous), but I'll wait to listen it with my ears.
What do you mean about their self-titled album? I also love it. It's their Kevin Ayers meets Syd Barrett record, it's really great!
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