I considered In Your Honor but to me that structure seems like more of a gimmick than a huge ambitious leap, whereas the first album was a work of pretty fearless ambition, and the second one is such an enormous advancement on that. I feel like everything since The Colour And The Shape has actually been a little conservative and almost un-ambitious, musically speaking.
Whoops, Sad Reminders commenter DonaldDuckKooKim pointed out an error in my text above: Mark Kozelek refers to the Sad Reminders commenters as "Sad Whiners," not "Sad Bastards." Sorry!
http://forum.sadreminders.com/discussion/comment/7438/#Comment_7438
Oh no worries, I didn't mean to get all pedantic on you, I just have this whole complicated idea about Burzum that I've never written out anywhere but at its essence is the belief that all his shit is tangled up with all his other shit.
That might be something Brandon wrote. I've never really written anything on Burzum here (outside of discussing his place and role in history). My feelings about the intersection of Burzum's music and Varg's extramusical life are a little different, and I don't think I've ever really written about them anywhere. (I'd be happy to do so, there just hasn't been an opportunity/news peg/demand for such a piece.)
Well he clarified to say that for him Satan was a symbol for "freedom." Gaahl also spent nine months in prison for "assaulting and torturing a man for six hours while collecting his blood into a cup and threatening to make him drink it." He's not just playing the part.
Guys, a lot of you had nice things to say about this story, and I want you to know I really appreciate your kind words. Thanks!
Since I'm here, I'll add a couple footnote-y type things:
1. I probably should have included this in the piece, but it totally slipped my mind till this morning: I don't know if you'd say Koz has a history of smacking down other artists from the stage, but I've seen him do it before. First time I saw him, spring/summer 1995 at NYC's Fez Under Time Cafe, he said some nasty stuff about the band Spain (who played a style of music similar -- and vastly inferior, IMO -- to Red House Painters back then; the two bands were routinely name-checked together in reviews). At that same show, he also kind of dismissed the English depressive folk singer Nick Drake, who was often assumed to be an influence on Koz. I remember this one verbatim (because it rattled around my head for so long): "Fuck Nick Drake. I fuckin' hate Nick Drake." (I don't know if he'd ever heard Nick Drake, I think he just hated the comparison.)
2. I mentioned that Spin review of "Rollercoaster," written by Jim Greer, and while this is a total tangent, I wanted to give a shout to Greer. In the early-mid '90s, he was one of the stars of Spin Magazine, and his work there pretty much singlehandedly changed the course of my life and convinced me to pursue this line of work. At the time, he was engaged to Kim Deal, playing bass with Guided By Voices, and doing all sorts of awesome writing about music, including a really cool series called "A Year In The Life Of Rock & Roll," which I read devotionally every month. So the dude not only introduced me to my favorite band, but my career. And I totally love my job but I gotta say it has NEVER ONCE been as sexy or exciting as he made it seem. After college I got an internship at Rolling Stone, and I was telling my editor/supervisor about all my favorite music writers. I went down the list of 6 or 7 obvious names (Xgau, Ellen Willis, etc.) and included Greer among them. My editor/supervisor was like, "Those are all great critics! Except Jim Greer. He's terrible." I still disagree.
Well, I would say this piece is fundamentally different from the others. Like, compare it to traditional mainstream news coverage: The other posts you're referring to are news items, pretty much just reporting the facts of a thing that happened; this piece is more like an op-ed, offering an opinion on a thing that happened, or in this case, a series of things that happened. They're just different ways of telling the story.
Well I should point out, in case it wasn't clear, that the quote you're referencing was actually from a review written by the former Spin critic Jim Greer, not Mark Kozelek.
Yeah he focused pretty hard on the thing about Koz doing marathon sets of severely altered material -- I mean, I hate the way he distorts the melodies to his old songs, what can I say? It sounds fucking bad to my ear! That wasn't really the crux of my piece, though, just my explanation for ME not going to the guy's shows anymore. I totally appreciate that other people love that experience.
Maybe it's just because they're fused so intimately in my memory but Mark Kozelek and Pete Steele seem to me like mirror images of one another: the deep, beautiful voices, the roiling anger and self-loathing, the issues with women, the blue-collar beginnings, the dark senses of humor, the epic-length songs, the love for Neil Young ... I don't know if they would have gotten along (I don't know if they ever met each other?) but I feel like they were cut from the same cloth.
I've considered it but if I were gonna do something I'd want it to be with Koz's endorsement and involvement, and I'd want it to cover his whole life/career.
In my defense, when I fell for him, he was writing lyrics like:
Sad reminders of what seems years ago.
Warm southern sun shines through
station-wagon windows
like solar energy.
And when in the night, your brother turned to me
and said, "God, do you look evil in the dark,"
that made me feel good.
Sad reminders of midwest winter snow.
Cold Catholic church heaven in stained glass windows
like rock candy.
And when on Sunday their daughter turned at me
and said, "Mom and dad, is it a boy or a girl?
Mom and dad, is it a he or a she?,"
that made me feel good.
(from "Evil")
It's funny you mention Morrissey because I thought a lot about Moz while writing this. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because early in his career, Kozelek's music was often compared to Morrissey's, and Kozelek always dismissed it out of hand: His guys were Neil Young and Led Zeppelin and John Denver, and he was nothing like Morrissey. Kind of ironic to think about that now!
It's not impossible AFAIK but it would require incorporating some service or other that we're not currently using, so in short, it might happen in the future but we can't do it now. Sorry!
Jorge Elbrecht (from Lansing-Dreiden most notably, I guess) did a really cool, REALLY weird metal-based 7" this year under the name Coral Cross. http://www.stereogum.com/tag/coral-cross/
This, for me, is the essence of MY problem with the whole thing:
“And in defense of her if it came out that she was one of the members of precious indie pop band Ex Cops I think the metal community would dismissed her out of hand.”
If she was real concerned about that, she should have done a much better job concealing her “civilian” identity. How? Don’t release your first album on the biggest metal label in the country! BUILD that alias, nurture it, spend YEARS creating it. No one on earth believed Relapse just stumbled upon some wood nymph who made records that sounded like Ulver but had never released a single demo. OF COURSE it only took like an hour for the entire internet to find out the “truth.”
That’s the other thing: Her “real” identity DID come out, and you know what? NO ONE CARED. People who dismissed her out of hand would have done so anyway (her bio says RIYL: Deafheaven and Wolves In The Throne Room, which is shorthand for “hipster metal”), everyone else assessed the music on its merits.
On that note, I am with you Blochead, it is an excellent record. I hope she continues to make music as Myrkur because I think she might produce something MASSIVE in the future.
Also, in case it's not clear, the Captain Murphy thing was ALWAYS a gag, which makes it seem to me a little less insidious. Complex knew as much when they did the interview (I strongly suspect they did anyway). The way they phrased the question is intentionally revealing: "What can you tell us about this Captain Murphy CHARACTER?"
I can't compare the two because I never saw the press materials that went out with Burial's first release. That said, the primary difference in my eyes is that William Emmanuel Bevan wasn't both an established model and an established musician (working in another genre) when Burial emerged.
Here, a better example is Captain Murphy. Would I say that FlyLo deceived his fans by not initially revealing he was Captain Murphy? Yeah, I would. Consider this 2012 exchange with Complex:
Q: Getting back to your recent collaborations, what can you tell us about this Captain Murphy character?
A: He's a young dude from L.A. He's really really shy. I met him through hanging out in the scene and shit. He's a young dude not giving a fuck about being famous and shit. He didn't even want to release the music he'd been passing to me and just did the shit for fun but I convinced the dude to start pushing himself and getting the music out.
http://www.complex.com/music/2012/08/interview-flying-lotus-talks-until-the-quiet-comes-working-with-odd-future-and-getting-inspired/page/2
I'm not saying it's SINISTER but yes I would consider that deception. It's deception! By definition, that is deception.
It's still not a perfect parallel -- that is an ABJECT lie, whereas Myrkur's statements at least contain a tiny kernel of truth shrouded in a whole fog of non-truth. That said, FlyLo was associated with Captain Murphy from the outset, where Bruun has (still) never publicly claimed ownership of or connection to Myrkur.
Look, I firmly agree with you on this point: Artists have every right to claim whatever identity they choose. But I didn't out Amalie Bruun as Myrkur! And I would not have done so! Had she not chosen to out herself, I would not have written anything at all about her again until/unless necessity demanded it. And if she NEVER outed herself and at some point necessity demanded I cover Myrkur, I would have played along. "The mysterious black metal act called Myrkur..."
I guess it depends on how you define "lie" and/or "cheat." Because this is a public forum and not a court of law, I'm only gonna cite examples that were published, rather than disclose details of any one-on-one correspondences.
1. The bio that initially went out to press with her record said only this re: her identity:
"Emerging from the darkness of Scandinavia comes the debut EP by one-woman black metal band MYRKUR."
That's definitely not forthcoming. Are there any abject lies in there? I suppose not. Bruun was born and raised in Copenhagen and she allegedly still lives in Denmark some months of the year (and also allegedly recorded the Mykur EP there). She's really publicly identified with NYC though, as indicated by the thousands of pieces written about her modeling career, her solo work, and Ex Cops, not least among them that Elle profile in which she takes the writer on a "tour of her artist-beloved Brooklyn shopping scene."
http://www.elle.com/life-love/personal-style/amalie-bruun-profile
There are couple other at least questionable claims in that bio: It's technically her "debut EP" under the Myrkur handle, but Bruun has four releases under her own name, two with Ex Cops, one with Minks, and a bunch of other ancillary stuff (she was in a Lonely Island video, guested on a R.A. The Rugged Man track). Myrkur is nominally a "one-woman black metal band," although in more recent interviews Bruun has revealed that somebody named "Rex Mynur" did all the drums. Again, are these abject lies? Not really, but they do seem like omissions-of-truth, to me.
2. The first interview she did (on 8/7, more than a month in advance of the album's release: http://halifaxcollect.blogspot.com/2014/08/interview-myrkur-is-upon-us-i-like-to.html) included the following exchanges:
Q: I'm curious to know how a one man band with no other releases managed to sign with such a big label as Relapse Records?
A: They heard me sing in the forest and offered to sign me.
NOPE. That didn't happen. Benefit of the doubt: Maybe they heard a demo she recorded in a studio located in a forest-y area? Still, it was presumably a demo she shopped to Relapse (and other labels). That's fine! That's what you do! But this account is pretty much, at best, a severe re-working of the details and it comes PRETTY CLOSE to a lie. I'd actually respect it more if it were an outright lie, but based on everything else, I kinda get the feeling there's enough of a fleck of truth in there to keep it from being a pure fabrication.
Q: Is Myrkur your first band?
A: It is not a band, it is just me, I am Myrkur.
EHHH. I mean, you really wouldn't call that deception? She totally dodged the question and then, in her non-answering evasion, implied that she was solely responsible for music on the EP (" it is just me"), which is patently false (the existence of her drummer was revealed to the public only later).
I don't mean to condemn Amalie Bruun or the Myrkur project -- I like the music very much and I think she's pretty respectful of black metal's traditions and history. I don't question for a second her seriousness, her talent, or her commitment. And if you can think of a better word than "deception," I'll happily acquiesce. To me, "deception" applied.
Honestly, I just think this was a PR approach that was fucked from the start. Within 30 minutes of posting that first Myrkur track, I was getting emails from NUMEROUS people filling me in on the details (off the record). If it's gonna fall apart that soon, why bother with the ruse in the first place?
Aaron can verify this but if I remember correctly, Tompa Lindberg was in the crowd for Sacrifice at MDF and just LOSING HIS SHIT. That dude's love for metal is legitimately inspirational.
One's an essay from the Awl about how messed-up the lyrics to "No One Else" are when you actually consider what the song is suggesting, and the other is an essay by Rivers Cuomo about how he sort of dehumanized and sexually exploited his female fans (which led to him becoming celibate for years).
Red Album has some jams! But Pork And Beans is not one of them. I can't back a song whose first verse reads:
They say I need some Rogaine to put in my hair/
Work it out at the gym to fit my underwear/
Oakley makes the shades that transform a tool/
You'd hate for the kids to think that you lost your cool.
You are on some Room 237 shit with that theory, man. I'm not even saying you're wrong, because maybe that IS what Rivers intended, but there's no evidence whatsoever in the text to support that reading. Roughly one-third of the record is about his career, and there's almost no use of metaphor. Is Epitaph supposed to be the redcoats, the monarchy? EPITAPH? Republic Records is the patriot militias? You are making some serious leaps here!
All right, so for clarification: I finally got this record, and according to the accompanying notes, it was recorded only by Vindsval and a new drummer called Thorns -- no GhÖst or WD Feld -- so if anything, Blut Aus Nord are now a duo, as far as I can tell.
Yep, I fixed this. AFAIK it's "Lonely Girl" but the video uploaded by Weezer was called "Lonely." I'm pretty sure it's still called "Lonely Girl" though. Thanks for the heads up!
Ack, duly noted. I tend to think of Vindsval as synonymous with Blut Aus Nord (esp. because the last three albums were him solo if I'm not mistaken). I totally didn't realize, though, that Memoria Vetusta was an ongoing series. You are 100% correct. My apologies!
That's pretty much been the basis for my hesitance in assigning such a list. (Same goes for Oasis, actually.) We might still do it, because their albums are pretty fascinating to unpack, but the only really interesting argument regarding "ranking" is which do you put at #1, Blue or Pink? (FWIW, I think I'd go Pink > Blue >>> EWBAITE >>>> Maladroit >>>>> Hurley >> Red >> everything else.) About a month ago, a writer (an excellent writer, I should note) pitched me a Weezer Countdown with the enticement that on his list, Pinkerton wouldn't be in the top 2. Of course there's no real accounting for taste, but even if you BELIEVE that, making such an argument seems willfully contrarian, and I can't believe you can produce a compelling argument defending that position. Blue and Pink are two of the best albums of the '90s, and they are pretty timeless artistic statements that justify/excuse/inform everything that followed but also cast that work in a vast and inescapable shadow. Like, even if you prefer EWBAITE or Hurley or Maladroit to Blue or Pink, you still can't really deny that the newer albums are just extensions of or reactions against Blue and/or Pink. That doesn't mean they are without value! But those first two albums are just leviathans.
Sorry man, I wasn't trying to jump on ya. I just didn't want you to be misled, walk into this record expecting it to sound nothing like the title track. I saw dB's review yesterday, written by Zach Smith, and the only negative he noted was the flow: Basically he thought it was three or four songs too long, which frankly would be my only criticism too. (Although I generally don't deduct too much for that -- I can always edit my own playlists once I'm familiar with the material -- and especially after 19 years I'd prefer to get 13 songs than 10, because I'll take everything I can get.) That said, he mentioned the title track as one of the keepers where for me it has been one of the "skips." So your mileage may vary. I'll put it this way: if you like At The Gates, you will like AWWR, I am pretty confident in saying that.
Haha I didn't even say that! I DO think it's representative of the album insofar as this is what the album sounds like, production-wise, it's just personally my least favorite song on the album, or the most unmemorable song on the album, or both. This is technically track 3 on the record (altho track 1 is just an intro), and when I listened to the album the first time, I didn't feel like I got hit in the face till track 4 ("The Circular Ruins"), which had me like running sprints and speaking in tongues and which remains one of my favorite things on the album even now. I've listened to AWWR a few dozen/hundred times by now, and I pretty much start it on track 4 at this point -- from there it's all gold, to me. But you might feel differently! I do think the new one feels a bit more like Terminal Spirit Disease than Slaughter, and I think TSD is a bit more expansive and less pugilistic than SOTS. (I love TSD personally.)
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