Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

That's the kind of comment that really irritates me. Like, you don't *get* the music (which is fine, that's why there's chocolate and vanilla) but because you don't *get* it, that means other people's appreciation must be based on her... personna or something?

It doubly irks because it's the kind of criticism that often gets thrown at female musicians - it can't possibly be their music, it has to be about something else - saying people are responding to that performer's "personality" is a step up from "you just like her looks" but it's coming from the same highly loaded place IMHO.

she's pretty cute tho

So's Thom Yorke. Your point is?

Gukbe had all the bait this entire time, you guys

WCC did not take my post in the spirit within which it was given

your use of "within" makes that sound quite liturgical.

just striving to hit that point where the post plunges through its own transparency to meet the power that created it

It was really interesting watching the crowd change for Tortoise who were on after her.

well ya, it went from (to generalize) a slightly younger mixed group to (to generalize) a slightly older largely male group. this is perhaps not v startling when it comes to tortoise vs just about anybody. and rly i'm not even sure what her persona is, especially not as something notably distinct from the music.

(mild passive aggressive dickishness aside, your stage had a lot of great stuff, doran, i found myself there more than anywhere else. and also, if you were who i thought you were, that was a v sharp fitzcarraldo-esque suit you were sporting.)

Nah, personality may be part of it, but i think the biggest part is blog fame/peer pressure.

she was v.much 'bad' at primavera - needed a smaller stage I think, struggled to fill the space

also, an artist's personality always comes through their music; it's a bad argument that separates the two.

^^^^It's got nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman and everything to do with the fact her music is - IN MY OPINION - paper thin and on the whole unmemorable, the fact her voice is (to me) pretty irritating and there's only really one strong song on the album and even then, I'd sooner listen to Julie Cruise.

Apologies if I've expressed myself badly here but the post was supposed to suggest that I'm middle aged and perhaps too old to 'get it', hence the reference to Tortoise. As I twittered at the time I was pretty much convinced it was the coolest/youngest thing we've ever had our name attached to and it was pretty funny seeing all these people slowly morphing into fucked old dudes who look like me for Tortoise.

But yeah, if I was passive/aggressive or a dick, I'm sorry BUT I reject any claims of misogyny vigorously. There's absolutely no reason why anyone on here should have read anything I've written but all the same there is enough evidence out there to suggest that I@m not some sexist creep - quite the opposite hopefully. Sorry if I've upset anyone I'll try and phrase things more precisely next time.

oh, i meant i was the one possibly being a passive aggressive dick, sorry! (communicating over the internet bad, grimes better.)

additionally i can't fucking stop listening to the track with blood diamonds, i should really be saving my summer jams for summer.

Ah, sorry. And thanks for the kind words on my suit - usually I expect people to say I look like a sex tourist in it. I'm glad you enjoyed our stage. It wasn't as good as last year but yeah, I think there were some ace sets.

^^^^It's got nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman and everything to do with the fact her music is - IN MY OPINION - paper thin and on the whole unmemorable, the fact her voice is (to me) pretty irritating and there's only really one strong song on the album and even then, I'd sooner listen to Julie Cruise.

Doran you can just not like the music rather than posit that her music has no appeal to anyone and people are just vibing off her personality.

Which doesn't really make sense given this album's take-up seems to be much broader than the reach of interviews/profiles on her would suggest.

If anything most people I know who are really into the album got into it in a way entirely disconnected from any notion of who Claire Boucher "is" - in particular at least 3 people I know first became obsessed with "Oblivion" as a kind of ~this year's "Heartbeats"~ thing where they didn't really care who was responsible for the music so long as it filled a specific need for them.

Look, it was an off the cuff observation based on how it seemed to me and I've explained that personally I'm at a loss to understand what people see in her as the album, in my opinion, isn't that good. Then, I had the privilege of watching her gig from the side of stage and seeing how it went off. People were screaming for her deafeningly even while she was setting her gear up. Apart from a pretty cheesy rubber n'angel wings dancing dude there isn't any show to speak of and she commanded our biggest crowd of the day by what I would call force of personality. But this is just what I got from it, obviously most other people would disagree with me and say that the album is full of tunes etc. But as observations go, I now accept that it was a bit shit and maybe not totally thought through properly.

I don't think Doran was out of bounds. I think a lot of listeners DO respond to her personality; it seems like it is a significant apart of her appeal (and certainly a significant apart of her recorded presence). I don't think that's an inherently bad thing at all, but it's something I wrestle with listening to the album, which I really love. I can't always tell how much I'm responding to her music and how much I'm responding to her overall endearing, cool-girl vibe. There's probably no need to even make a distinction between the two, b/c they're so connected.

I guess that's part of why I'm so conflicted about that Blood Diamonds song. I dig it, but it's so sexually charged that it makes me question my motives for liking it and Grimes overall. Am I into the music, or am I just another dude crushing on the cute girl? And again, how can I even make a distinction?

But as observations go, I now accept that it was a bit shit and maybe not totally thought through properly.

the only thing that bothered me about with comment was the suggestion that grimes' audience was responding more to her personality than to the music (something we can't really determine from outside other people's heads). in saying that, you at least seemed to denigrate the way grimes' fans relate to her, intentionally or not.

I guess that's part of why I'm so conflicted about that Blood Diamonds song. I dig it, but it's so sexually charged that it makes me question my motives for liking it and Grimes overall. Am I into the music, or am I just another dude crushing on the cute girl? And again, how can I even make a distinction?

i don't think there's anything wrong with liking a song in part because you think it's sexy - same goes for performers. i mean, people sometimes get gross about this kind of thing, but i think we all pretty much know when we're perving.

I think the other thing is she has a little girl voice, so when she sings that "talk to me daddy" line, she's playing into some sort of icky fantasies

Visions is sexy too, of course, but its sexiness comes from her overall energy and intimacy and the romanticism and physicality in her lyrics. This is the first track I've heard where she seems to be going for a deliberate Lolita thing, so it just feels a little cheap and easy

maybe it's just me but the title feels like a bit of a red herring - i can't decipher all of the lyrics, but it seems there are a lot of tones going on in there besides sexual, and the sexual side itself seems to have some conflicting facets to it.

I have pretty much no concept of who Claire Boucher is but I really, really like this record.

as rich and interesting and fun as her music is, I don't get how someone would only be able to imagine her appeal as only possibly being due to her image - appealing as it may be

There's this thing that ppl do when they're defensive (I include myself in this, BTW) which is, when they're accused of saying/doing something sexist (or racist or homophobic or whatever) which is to say "but I'm not misogynist so I REALLY resent that!" which is infuriating and counter productive.

It's like - we live in a culture which is just soaked in sexist values and we pick them up, consciously or not. I mean, I'm soaking in these ideas even though I've been actively resisting them for 30+ years. They're the things that pop out when we're shooting off the cuff, when we're tired, or not qualifying things or thinking them through.

And it's much better to own it, say "that was a sexist assumption" and move on to a more thought-out reflection or assessment - this actually helps work against that subconscious, internalised sexism in a way in a way that flat-out denial does not.

Just putting that out there, you can do with it what you like.

For the most part, I'm with Tim - drawing conclusions about why people like music that you don't is a fool's game.

You can interrogate your own tastes but trying to go in on others' is a bent mirror.

i'm on the fence about the music, but like scik mouthy, i don't know much about grimes/c boucher. i don't even know what she looks like. while i sometimes think musical voices and personae are sexy, it's usually a rather abstract sort of appreciation, separated from the tangible, bodily things that tend most immediately to engage my erotic imagination. "phone sex" does't even spark that kind of secondhand frisson. there's no sense of physicality or lust in it.

(one of the few songs i do find genuinely erotic, sonic youth's "eliminator jr." is apparently about a famous sex crime, so maybe my calibration is off, i dunno...)

^^I've explained and apologised for what I'm going to. You can't dress me down for presuming too much about other people while doing exactly the same to me. Well, you can, but I'm fucked if I'm going to 'wear' anything. Sounds like by your own admissions you could do with getting your own house in order and stop projecting your own standards on to others. Also you could do with checking the dictionary meaning of "seems" as it pertains to perception.

I didn't know anything about her or know what she looked like before I saw her live but one of the many things that led me towards thinking there was perhaps a cult of personality at work was the fact she looked really cool and there were girls dressed like her in the front row. (Not that these things always correlate - for example I don't think Slipknot are over-endowed with personality...)

A friend of mine heard the album and then saw the Oblivion video and went out and got that haircut within two days fwiw.

okay, so i watched the video. still my by far my favorite thing on the album. funny that i should only notice this while watching her pronounce the lyrics, but she lisps a little, right? "look into my eyeth and tell me..."

anyway, i now know what she looks like, though i don't think i want that haircut.

Doran if you would stop being so viciously defensive and actually looked at the things you were saying...

Like, why is Grimes as an "image band" indicative of "personality" while Slipknot, who are just as much an "image band" - how it that not coded as "personality" in the same way? If you'd stop kneejerking we could have an interesting conversation about that. But you have to admit that there are things in play here.

I guess it's because you're projecting things onto me that just aren't true (as far as I'm aware)... I'm not viciously doing anything. I didn't say Grimes were an image band. I didn't make a sexist/misogynist assumption about Grimes.

Last things first - I don't have to admit anything, I have no idea what your last sentence means.

I don't think a band/singer having a strong image is a negative thing. In fact I'd say that out of all my favourite bands/artists most (Prince, Bowie, Slayer, TG, PE, Kraftwerk, SunnO)))) have a defining visual look and only a few (PJ Harvey, The Fall) don't. So I think the fact that Grimes has a strong visual identity is a positive thing. Slipknot who are a passably entertaining band with one good album, who were quite exciting to watch live at a certain point are positively lacking in personality. It's all just mall nihilism, Hot Topic, Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, merch rights nonsense dressed up as the apocalypse. So in this, I'm suggesting that Grimes is far superior to Slipknot.

So, this conversation you were talking about, I'm all for it but I feel we'll both - not just me - need to pay closer attention to what the other one is saying.

You might wanna change that screen name first.

That is a fair point.

Done.

lol

Doran, I think you're being treated unfairly here but that was cute.

late to the party but wasn't there an interview/thinkpiece/whatever about how boucher is like hyperaware of her image/persona and puts a lot of effort into it? thing is it's not a bad thing imo and it's dishonest to suggest that the majority of artists don't care about their image or the majority of listeners don't care about an artists' image. there's nothing wrong or inauthentic about merging personality with art; it's essentially unavoidable. the annoying thing is that it's almost always used as a criticism of female artists because hey ingrained sexism.

I liked her music before I knew about her personality. I think it really came out in the "Oblivion" video, but she had two albums before that that people liked. There weren't many interviews with her before Visions so I didn't know much about her or her image. Only the "Vanessa" video which is nice but pretty anonymous.

It becomes so impossible to talk about this stuff, no matter how nicely you dress up the conversation, because people freak out and go "OMG you're accusing *me* of misogyny!!! how DARE you!!!" (see also the Erykah Badu thread ad infinitum) when what you are trying to say is "this stuff does not happen in a vacuum." The dialogue surrounding the way music made by men vs that made (or even liked) by women is discussed is loaded at a societal level.

It's this thing that outsidery dudes *love* to do when they are so tied up in their "OMG, I'm such an outsidery dude, I'm so not *affected* by society's mores!" that they don't even notice that they are telling a woman to "get her own house in order" from a screen name with a vastly derogatory term for women because that's just a cute or funny word to them, rather than a term of abuse which has been used to degrade you, personally, and hold back your entire kind. I don't know if it was intended to be *ironic* saying "I'm not going to wear that" when you were, literally, wearing it. You might insist you're wearing a plain white shirt but if you are existing in an environment where every single light shining on you is red, that shirt will look pink. Shouting that you are wearing a white shirt doesn't do anything about the red lights. They're still there, and denying that they exist makes the problem worse, not better.

This whole thing of "image" and "personality" is something that does get held against female artists in a way it just doesn't with male. That if you go to a Grimes gig and the front row is full of girls with her haircut who are dressed like her, that gets held against her and her fans, in a way that if you go to a metal gig and the front row is full of men with long hair, weedy beards and scruffy black clothes exactly like the dudes on stage - that doesn't get counted against them as being "just image." Even though it is the same kind of use of image for drawing tribal boundaries or identity. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a valid complaint against either. But it sure as hell gets used much more on one side than the other. (See also: Wayne Coyne's eccentricity gets him painted as creative, wacky, hoopy frood, while Erykah Badu's eccentricity gets her painted as "crazy.")

I get that you're saying that you didn't mean it in a gender-loaded way, you were doing the whole thing of saying "I'm old and I just don't understand why this is so popular because ugh X and ugh Y" when X and Y might actually be the things that are attracting that audience to that music in the first place?

That you hear music which is "thin" when I hear music that is light, playful, fun, joyous, that she has a mixed-bag, magpie approach to genre and style where everything gets thrown in together to create something frothy which is about mood and tone and creating these kid of theatrical set pieces.

That you dislike her voice - you'd rather listen to Julee Cruise. Which is kind of point-missing, to me. That Julee Cruise uses an airy, ultra-high voice to create things that are pretty, ethereal, beautiful, and generally nice to listen to. While Grimes takes that same vocal style, and uses it to create things that are sometimes pretty, but more often weird, theatrical, odd, strained, unnatural. It's like saying you'd prefer Katherine Jenkins to Diamanda Galas. I, personally, *love* what she's doing with her voice because she specifically uses that ultra-feminine coded high voice and uses it in a way that isn't always pretty, but is sometimes like a parody of feminine-coded voice pushed to absurdity and even ugliness. It's saying, to me, "look at this performance of gender, how fucking weird it is when you push it to extremes!" In a very similar way that The Knife pushed the performance of male and female voices to be slowed down and sped up so you could never tell if it was the man or woman singing or both. (I'm sure that metal dudes love the cookie monster voice, when I fucking hate it - and possibly even for the same reasons, because it's similarly a hyper-exaggerated take on performance of "masculine" voice.)

It's absolutely very much filling the kind of space created by The Knife - that's why I posted her on the post-Knife aesthetic thread on the Sandbox. I respond to many of the same things. The taking a grab-bag approach to the aesthetics of dance and electronic music as suits the song, rather than trying to fit to a specific genre. That air of theatricality - of pretence and masks (literal in The Knife's case, but figurative in Grime's. She doesn't mask her face, but she does mask her voice) is something I find very, very appealing. The whole idea of "give someone a mask and they will tell the truth."

That might be semi-political for me, but that goes way beyond the scope of a Grimes thread. (In a world where Straight White Male is seen as default, people who aren't one, or even several of those things, often already have to wear a metaphorical mask to pass or get by. So a mask seems less like a put-on and more like a tool. But that's another thread.)

To me, interesting stuff comes out when you push beyond that "I dislike (or like) this artist, and I can't freaking understand why people would (or wouldn't!)" kneejerk thing. That often you find out that the thing you hate is precisely what they love. But sometimes you have to have the conversation about whether your shirt is pink or the lights are red (and perhaps both societal and personal attitudes about pink as a colour for shirts, and what that means, though that's perhaps a metaphor too far) before you can get to that point.

Sorry for wall of text. I don't imagine anyone is going to have the patience to read through all of that.

I will in a bit but my screen name was obviously in references to other people's posts with specific reference to a female rapper I currently like. You can refuse this explanation if you like and to be honest, given the circumstances I really don't blame you but you at least have my side of things now re: the screen name.

Ok, point by point:

Don't paint me as supporting Wayne Coyne or use it as an analogy here. I don't support him and it's not helpful.

It becomes so impossible to talk about this stuff, no matter how nicely you dress up the conversation, because people freak out and go "OMG you're accusing *me* of misogyny!!! how DARE you!!!" (see also the Erykah Badu thread ad infinitum) when what you are trying to say is "this stuff does not happen in a vacuum." The dialogue surrounding the way music made by men vs that made (or even liked) by women is discussed is loaded at a societal level.

I'm a fan of Erykah Badu and The Flaming Lips (especially the albums Soft Bulletin, Clouds Taste Metallic, Embryonic, Zaireeka) but I hate their Fat Freddie's Cat smokin dope and chasing skirt counterculture, hippie persona. If it turns out they did release that video without asking for her permission (no matter what she agreed to do or whether she'd done her research or not) then fuck that guy - what a cuntish thing to do.

Also, stop with the caps and the multiple exclamation points. If you keep on insisting that I'm being hysterical, "vicious", "violent", "knee jerk", shouting, losing my shit etc then eventually some people on this board will actually start treating me like I am and I'd prefer it if that didn't happen, given that I've responded to you calmly at every stage of this. All I said was that I reject any claims made here of misogyny. I know what the current thinking in gender studies on this is: it almost doesn't matter what I think, it only matters how you and other women feel about things I say. Which is fair enough I guess. Just don't expect me not to defend myself, and do me the courtesy of not throwing up a vitriolic and confusing smokescreen with all this OMG!!! stuff and constantly blurring the line between what you claim I do and what men in general do.

It's this thing that outsidery dudes *love* to do when they are so tied up in their "OMG, I'm such an outsidery dude, I'm so not *affected* by society's mores!" that they don't even notice that they are telling a woman to "get her own house in order" from a screen name with a vastly derogatory term for women because that's just a cute or funny word to them, rather than a term of abuse which has been used to degrade you, personally, and hold back your entire kind. I don't know if it was intended to be *ironic* saying "I'm not going to wear that" when you were, literally, wearing it. You might insist you're wearing a plain white shirt but if you are existing in an environment where every single light shining on you is red, that shirt will look pink. Shouting that you are wearing a white shirt doesn't do anything about the red lights. They're still there, and denying that they exist makes the problem worse, not better.

I'm not an "outsidery dude" and have never claimed to be one. I'm the 40-year-old father of one who has a mortgage, edits a magazine and does a lot of freelance to keep that magazine going. All I do is go to work and go to nursery. Literally. I'm about as outsider as Keith Chegwin. I have never claimed to be not affected by society's mores. I do not know where you are coming up with this stuff from. I'm not even saying you're doing this on purpose but you seem to be partially having a row with me and partially with some other guys who've said stuff to you in the past. As irritating as it may be to be surrounded by oafs who talk shit about women must be, if we could stick to what I've said and done that would be helpful.

There's this thing that ppl do when they're defensive (I include myself in this, BTW) which is, when they're accused of saying/doing something sexist (or racist or homophobic or whatever) which is to say "but I'm not misogynist so I REALLY resent that!" which is infuriating and counter productive.

It's like - we live in a culture which is just soaked in sexist values and we pick them up, consciously or not. I mean, I'm soaking in these ideas even though I've been actively resisting them for 30+ years. They're the things that pop out when we're shooting off the cuff, when we're tired, or not qualifying things or thinking them through.

This, and only this, is what led me to suggest you get your own house in order. You have just admitted that you make sexist, racist and homophobic comments on a public internet forum. I have not admitted to doing so, nor will I, no matter how much it irritates you. You are presuming too much about me with close to no evidence to go on. I will admit that your second paragraph here is spot on in general terms and yes, it's always good to have ones attitudes challenged and this board and OTF have played a significant part in me fine tuning my beliefs and attitudes on several matters. This, however, was not and will not be one of those occasions and there is no evidence to prove otherwise.

I will in a bit but my screen name was obviously in references to other people's posts with specific reference to a female rapper I currently like. You can refuse this explanation if you like and to be honest, given the circumstances I really don't blame you but you at least have my side of things now re: the screen name.

Dude, I will accept this explanation. And I do not want to get into the whole "bitch" discussion again. However, you do have to understand that it is still a loaded word. And though there are contexts in which I am prepared to accept it, and even use it - it is one thing for a woman, be that Nikki Minaj or Meredith freaking Brooks, to use it. But that does not give you the right to trot it out coz you think it's funny.

And dude, this whole "gender studies" thing. This is a thing that is lived experience of myself, and many other women. It's a thing that we have to deal with, and we have the right to talk about it. If it's not something that applies to you, then you can admit "misogyny is a real thing" and move on.

It's when you go beyond that, and start implying things about my motivations for what I'm doing, you make yourself the asshole here.

I've been trying to be nice, and light-hearted and playful with the "OMG's" and stuff because I've learned that humour gets a better response when talking about serious issues. If you want to read that as "vitriolic" - that's your baggage that you're bringing to the party. I didn't use either the term "vicious" or "violent" at all in my post, but you somehow decided that I did.

This kind of stuff - reading "vicious" and "violent" and "vitriolic" where I'm trying to be playful and lighthearted and have not used those terms at all - can you see how that might lead me to think that there's other stuff going on in your head?

I am, unequivocally 100% sorry about the offence caused by my screen name. I'm fucking mortified in fact. I genuinely thought that on a board such as this, taking a line from a female rapper and using it in a different context, i.e. about reading someone else's posts, with no direct misogynist overtones would be ok but I now see that I was being a fucking idiot - and that by using such a loaded word with such a grim history I would have upset at least a handful of people. This much is crystal clear. If there is anything I can do to try and make up for this within reason, I'll try and accommodate you. And I'll try and watch my language - an unfortunately atavistic product of my upbringing - in future.

XP: I just wrote this so I'll submit anyway.

Doran if you would stop being so viciously defensive and actually looked at the things you were saying...

I didn't put the word vitriolic in quotes.

You have just admitted that you make sexist, racist and homophobic comments on a public internet forum.

That is not what I said at all.

I said that I am soaking in a culture that is so deeply seeped in racism and sexism and homophobia, that some of my first, subconscious reactions to things are informed by the racism, sexism and homophobia of the culture I live in. I am not separate from my culture or my society. I breathe this stuff the same as everyone else does.

Rather than give in to those learned impulses, I TRY to examine things, from my own perspective, and from the shared experiences of others, BEFORE I type or hit submit on an internet forum. It doesn't always work, I often have to be corrected, especially on issues of race and class. But the difference is, I acknowledge that this society is often racist and classist, I admit that bias, I try to correct it, and I move on. I don't carry on still insisting that other people are somehow out to get me, or "violent" because they point out that these things exist. That's an asshole move.

Yet that's exactly the move that you are playing on me, when I suggest that society's ideas about women *might* be affecting the criticisms you raise about a female artist.