Pitchfork review in not getting it SHOCKAH

I think BBR are about a fiftieth as good as the Auteurs (who were pathy themselves but the 4th album is excellent), not that that's relevant here really.

I mean The funniest thing about Black Box Recorder has always been that, embodying all things British, they end up sounding French.!!!???

Right. classic what the fuck moment there.

Frank Zappa to review!

Funny.

Explain how this equals "ooh! Wham! Who remembers them?" please.

Defend them then.

but enough about ILx....

What problem do have w/ Pitchfork's ethics?

Haines even finds time to riff on his status as the band's ventriloquist...

Not one mention of John Moore. Not one single bloody mention. Him and Haines co-write all the frigging songs, for fuck's sakes. He must be one of the most ignored men in popular music, like, ever.

Grr.

Other than that, it's not too far off. But that whole overtone of BBR as being entirely "criminal mastermind Luke Haines" really fucking grates after a while.

For one, their across-the-board holocaust denial.*

*this may not be true.

[Anyone notice how long dumbfucks can harbor grudges?]

Ryan Schreiber's treatment of potential writers is, at best, unprofessional and reflects poorly on Pitchfork.

At worst, it is repellent and makes the whole enterprise look abusive.

But BBR = class in a glass. Uptown Top Ranking is off England Made Me, the first album.

Search in particular for The Worst Of Black Box Recorder, their B-Sides album - it's an import, I think, but it's possibly their best actual album. The cover of Rock 'n' Roll Suicide is particularly swish.

The Auteurs... well, I've got at least two of their albums (I think I might have another, but I forget)... not sure I fully appreciate 'em just yet.

CD1 has the full shot of the car with all three BBR's bleeding over it. The B-Sides are Rock 'n' Roll suicide and The Chocolate Layers remix of The Facts Of Life. It cost me £1.99 from the Our Price opposite Brixton tube, back when it was an Our Price and not a V.Shop or Megastore Express or whatever the hell it's called now. First single I ever bought. Nostalgia... *blub*

Failing that, anyone got any ideas on a decent club to manage on the demo of CM4?

Here's today's Magnolia Electric Co review: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/magnolia-electric-co/hard-to-love-a-man.shtml

These three songs lead us back to the title track, which kicks off the EP. The first single from this year's album What Comes After the Blues, the depressive "Hard to Love a Man" finds Molina singing presumably about himself in second person: "It was hard to love a man like you/good-bye was half the words you knew." The song, like the man, retreats into itself, the elegant blending of pinprick guitars, drums, and truly alien pedal steel creating a new, closed-off world within the song.

After listening to that song a million times, I'm pretty sure he's singing about his father, not himself from the perspective of somebody else. "While you was waiting for me not to call, I sent my love. In a life built out of goodbyes, is there even room for you to try? It was hard to love a man like you, goodbye is just what you do." That's pretty much all the words, and hey, to me it sounds like he's dealing with a detached father. It could be any number of things, maybe an ex-boyfriend or something. Or maybe the song is from the perspective of a woman to her ex-boyfriend, or father, or hell, brother. Point is, the song could be from any perspective, and I imagine that it is from somebody else ("me") singing about Jason Molina to be highly unlikely. To just flat out throw it out there in the review as if it's what the song is really about comes off as didactic and pompous.

And then, what the fuck is with the next part?

The song, like the man, retreats into itself, the elegant blending of pinprick guitars, drums, and truly alien pedal steel creating a new, closed-off world within the song.

What the hell does that even mean? The song retreats into itself, creating a closed-off world within the song? Sure, whatever. Would it still do that if it weren't for the lyrics, or "like the man"? Please, don't use some lyrical interpretation to explain an abstract concept regarding the instrumentation that doesn't even make sense.

Now I remember why I stopped reading PFM reviews.

The review reminds me of when PFM interviewed Arcade Fire, and there was the one point where they were like, "Hey, your song [whatever], I'm pretty sure it's about this. [Blah blah blah]."

Arcade Fire: "Uh, not really..."

PFM: "Ok, next question."

http://www.planet.nl/upload_mm/a/1/0/1987460233_1999999125_planet-logo.jpg

This Magnolia thing is an EP with a previously-released album track: 425 words is pretty decent!

I mostly just posted to this thread because of the "presumably." The picking on the review seemed like a whole lot of frustration over the fact that, in the end, you don't think he interpreted the lyrics right. Which you may be right about, but I don't think there should be anything so maddening or "indefensible" about it -- he just read a line differently than you did!

SHOCKAH

The Animal Collective sings, "you can win a rabbit, you can rabbit or the fast track or (something something)." Presumably the line refers to the new McDonalds Happy Meals in which one possible toy is a stuffed rabbit. Like the McDonalds Big Mac, the song is a delicious mixture acoustic guitar and percussion, making the most high satured fat song in his recent history. The layers of acoustic guitar are smothered in specail sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes.

-Ryan Schreiber, December 15, 2005

xpost
marc, that song is on the last album. I've heard that particular song many many times.

I'll celebrate by answering one of these almost three-year-old charges:

I just never got the impression they were "embodying all things British."

Mr. Matos, I cordially invite you on a leisurely stroll through some BBR song titles: England Made Me, The English Motorway System, British Racing Green, The New Diana, When Britain Refused To Sing... Not to mention Haines's England Vs. America, The South Will Rise Again, "Oh to be in England on a Sunday," etc.

OK, and another one, about how I (horrors) snubbed John Moore: People deluding themselves into thinking that Moore has significant songwriting input in BBR are encouraged to compare How I Learned To Love The Bootboys (The Auteurs, with no Moore in sight), The Facts Of Life (BBR, with Moore) and The Oliver Twist Manifesto (Haines solo): all three albums are completely consistent, all three utilize the same production techniques, the same songwriting tricks (last verses keep getting transposed up a tone), the same instrumentation, the same lyrical obsessions. All three are clearly written by the same man.

THE BOSS OF THIS SITE CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF!

- Bob

http://www.zangerbob.nl

Fine, let's go:

"Do you know the history / Of the British Isles? We are born to be servile / Would you die for your country?"

Is Haines talking about England specifically? Or is he positioning "England" more in relation to the rest of the world (say, France - "French Rock'N'Roll," "New French Girlfriend," those "continental cigarettes" in "Johnny & The Hurricanes," "There were real Europeans in bars across the land" etc), as opposed to, say, England vs Wales?

[Haines is] at pains to express his oblique liking for England - the country which, after all, made him. But with Black Box Recorder's debut album England Made Me, he reckons the press got it all wrong. "They got this angle that somehow it was a critique of New Labour, but really it was just an affectionate look at the rotten aspects of England that John (Moore) and myself enjoy," he explains. "We would have a game of good thing, bad thing. Lord Lucan? Good thing. Jeffrey Archer? Definitely good thing. You can simplify most things in life and it straddles some areas of bad taste. But we have an affection for the rotten-ness of England that we remember growing up in. I can remember those sorts of things more than anything to do with popular culture."

The kind of incident that influences Haines' writing is certainly not whether Posh'n'Becks have new hairstyles. "I remember the whole Jeremy Thorpe incident with some fondness. And the John Stonehouse disappearance. Those are the kind of things that informed my childhood and they came back on England Made Me," he says. "I'm sure there are other incidences on that album - on Hated Sunday: 'Oh to be in England on a Sunday, dear old dismal England on a Sunday...' That's said meaning we'd rather be here than anywhere else. There are references to English things, but they're affectionate. And if not affectionate then observational."

So it's official - Luke Haines likes Blighty after all. "And the older I get the more I dislike foreign travel anyway. Travel narrows the mind," he offers.