Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

I can’t unhear the wonderwall now. I like it better towards the end, and it’s good that it stays short. The video is interesting - her hands look terrifying and it must be pretty noisy there in the actual shoot with all the fans blowing.

I was about to post “ unsurprisingly I like this” so brad otm

(I’m sure some of the background isn’t actually there, but at least on my phone, it’s hard to tell how much)

https://i.imgur.com/rmdSx.gif

I'm hearing some sonic nods to Nashville (mainstream country not the rootsy No Depression type stuff) that would've been pretty unusual for a '98 CMJ song.

― o. nate, Wednesday, February 12, 2020 8:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't get this at all, how does it relate to Alan Jackson or Brooks and Dunn who were mainstream country in 98

i mean basically taking an indie rock song and adding some superficial banjo and pedal steel

unsurprisingly i like this. weird record

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, February 13, 2020 9:09 AM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how is it weird??? if this wasn't grimes and just some b-list indie rock singer who got a song placed in a commercial one time none of you would even give this the time of day!

I mean at this point whether its cod 98 pop alt indie or cod Orgy singles all this stuff being interesting is only interesting in the light of it being by Grimes and how invested you are in the fact that Grimes is interesting and important and therefore the stuff she does is interesting because it either plays into the existing Grimes mythos or goes against them

man i don't even want to like this album, it's just happening

if you want to assume anything about my investment in grimes: the persona, let me assure you i have absolutely none

none investment

I think you underestimate the extent to which Brad likes cod 98 pop alt indie.

and for the record cod orgy singles are inherently interesting to me and resonate perfectly with my taste

xp with markop, who knows me

if this wasn't grimes and just some b-list indie rock singer who got a song placed in a commercial one time none of you would even give this the time of day!

also i just think this is a well-written song! it's got a great chorus! but please continue to assume how i'd feel about it if this weren't grimes (probably... better????)

okay sorry Brad that was bad faith but i'm just...like....mystified...just absolutely mystified why this is better than any random ass bullshit on some "Indie Coffehouse Morning" Spotify playlist

admittedly when i said "weird" i meant it was weird for her, but i also think it works as like a political song for miley cyrus to sing, and makes for a song that collides oddly with yet complements the other songs she's put out from this record, the thesis of which seems to be the world ended in the '90s (agreed)

She seems as bored in the video for this song as she probably was recording this album.

When the leak came out this was one of the songs I liked the best - called “black swan blues” in the demo version - if only for how different it sounded to the whole thing, but in retrospective it has the same sort of problem that every song in Miss Anthropocene has; hollow, overlong and without great ideas going on. She used to be brilliant in creating a sense of progression and dynamics out of loop based songs but every song on this album just seems to be going nowhere and it would be less noticeable if this thing sounded better but this is awfully mixed. I thought the leak sounded terrible and I deleted it because I was waiting for the final version to fix it but it didn’t. This still sounds bad.

I really wanted to like this as I think she had an almost flawless streak of albums prior to this one, but this only has two or three songs I like. I feel like the excitement and that childlike wonder she had making music is missing from this album. I’m not sure what I’d like to hear from a mature, adult Grimes but this isn’t it.

all this stuff being interesting is only interesting in the light of it being by Grimes and how invested you are in the fact that Grimes is interesting and important and therefore the stuff she does is interesting because it either plays into the existing Grimes mythos or goes against them

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 13, 2020 7:42 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbh this is an argument that could be made against any popular musician, it is impossible to have a reaction about something without context. which is why ppl are freaking out over grimes in the other direction as well instead of simply not being into the music that much.

i don't like it, but i think brad is right that it's a bit weird, not just weird for grimes. despite the song, the production isn't doing the naturalistic alt-indie singer-songwriter thing, it's hollowed-out, guitars and vox are tinny and weak and all the heft is in the low end with most of the warm mids scooped out. probably why it sounds poorly mixed to moka. i assume the effect is intentional considering grimes' production experience, but i guess might also just be that she's coming at recording acoustic instruments from a diy electronic background

I mean...

all this stuff being interesting is only interesting in the light of it being by Grimes and how invested you are in the fact that Grimes is interesting and important and therefore the stuff she does is interesting because it either plays into the existing Grimes mythos or goes against them
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 13, 2020 7:42 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbh this is an argument that could be made against any popular musician, it is impossible to have a reaction about something without context. which is why ppl are freaking out over grimes in the other direction as well instead of simply not being into the music that much.

― omar little, Thursday, February 13, 2020 10:53 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think that's true! Some songs are just undeniable! Like you could not be interested or invested in Lizzo but you hear "Truth Hurts" and... That's a hit. Or I already found Kanye annoying at best (not yet repellent) but when I heard Black Skinhead I was like dang that's a song

reminds me of working at Barnes and Noble when we had the Portland Cafe Putomayo comp on in-store play

Or something closer to this song, I'm a non-believer in Taylor Swift but I checked out Red because of ILM and heard All Too Well and all you can say is that is a great well written, well recorded, well arranged song

i was overstating it but i think context is very important in terms of "ok here's a new song by this artist i have an opinion about" and that informs the reaction. but yeah sure some songs are undeniable. i guess which explains why for probably everyone there's been a reaction we had to a song based on certain expectations, that wound up being different than the reaction we have much later when our expectations are different, or gone, or removed from the context.

i liked black skinhead when i heard it in the Wolf of Wall St trailer, didn't know it was Kanye.

I don’t know if it’s those celtic sounding violins at the end but this sounds to me inspired by The Corrs, not Nashville.

i really like this song. maybe idk enough about 1998 indie rock but it doesn't sound that straightforward to me? the chorus is a drone and the production is kind of in its own world. if i heard this w/o context i would think that the artist is clearly trying to show a reimagined, decayed version of the original thing.

can someone post the 1998 indie rock songs that sound like this

sounds like she just mixed it using eq plugin presets

not indie rock jordan like alternative radio station annual festival second stage stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nntd2fgMUYw

right but the grimes song doesn't *actually* sound like that in anything except the most surface level ways

It's a good song, but I agree w Moka that the production/mix sounds awful (and not "interesting," the way I assume it's meant to sound).

Like, if this were actually "some b-list indie rock singer who got a song placed in a commercial one time" or "random ass bullshit on some "Indie Coffehouse Morning" Spotify playlist," it would probably be even better b/c it would have "professional"-sounding production.

for what it's worth I would like this all right if it were some random singer trying to be dolores o'riordan, which it could be

there's no way the wonderwall nod isn't intentional

the mixing on this record is a little wonky but i kind of love that, there's a really out-of-body dissociated feeling she maintains through the length of the album and i think it sounds great, especially on "so heavy." though the electric guitars do still sound like left-on vacuum cleaners

easily her best record for me

"idoru" is just... where did that come from

Idoru is one of the best ones in here I agree

the instrumental of "darkseid" confirms she's been listening to as much skinny puppy lately as i have

excited to pick this up Friday

Halfway through this, and 4æm is the first song I won't delete forever. Even if it does sound like the kind of d'n'b interlude bands like Oasis would use to fill out the runtime of a CD back in the late nineties. Other than that, this is really boring.

i'm a bit surprised it hasn't gotten widely panned. it's not thaat bad but it's still a real disappointment and factoring in her heel turn made a huge backlash seem pretty likely to me

it's not even fun to dislike it unfortunately

It's perhaps slightly better than feared? Ok final track. But mostly it reminds me how much great and thoughtful pop is happening at the moment.

even the stronger tracks like "idoru" are let down by the strangely amateurish mix and sound design

The album reminded me of the time a friend of mine said that Miley Cyrus was more artistically daring than Beyoncé, because she worked with the Flaming Lips

i like the melody of "you'll miss me when i'm not around" a lot but it feels a bit slight overall. there's some interesting stuff happening in the background but it never quite commits to any of it

This is good and everyone except Brad is wrong.

Another thing that struck me is this whole idea of celebrating climate change, isn't that what California did already?

it was a shame the completely bonkers concept she talked about in interviews basically didn't end up coming through at all

That seems good actually

Pitchfork Best New Music? And Brad likes it?
Sigh... I guess I have to give this album a fair chance now. (and here i thought "delete forever" was the final straw....)

warning i now think "delete forever" is the best grimes song

xp: With all love and respect to one of my favorite posters, please name something Brad doesn't like.