FKA twigs

TNI piece OTM OTM OTM so fucking OTM it hurts and I really hope that "the execution is hideous" is some kind of ironic joke because if it is, it's failed, and if it's not, christ, you're hideous.

lmbo

lol

feel like the piece overrelies somewhat on critical darlings and the past five years (I mean, shit, if there was ever a topic to pull out the cliched-and-now-timely-too Kate Bush reference, this is it) but overall it's good

She's my favourite music writer tbqph

My relationship to this piece is complicated by how much I really don't care about Grimes. I don't find her interesting or compelling as a performer, either in the way that she sings or in how she puts together the music. I don't think this is due to a gendered dismissal but I don't really know; it's not something I've strongly interrogated in my musical consumption but I do know that I'm a big, big fan of every other critical darling namechecked in the piece (and thinking that CREEP, Planningtorock, Frankie Rose, Savages, Wax Idols, Glasser, tune-yards, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift all fit into this discussion in different ways).

I don't think it's off-limits to talk about the producers (if anything, it should be done more) but it should be done across the board

That is a good piece, The Knife section especially.

I feel like male rap and pop stars get the producer-centric approach more than rock bands do (most reviews of a Justin Timberlake album will spend a good paragraph or so talking about Timbaland) but that very rarely happens to indie bands unless they happen to be working a name producer like Fridmann or Weatherall.

More critics should be turning their guns on the vocal void that is the Cloud Nothings dude though, but Pitchfork-centric indie has such pitifully low standards when it comes to male vocalists in any case.

OK, over my half-drunken rant about her name and have listened to the album and it would appear to be very good, at least the first half.

I definitely have issues with that piece. I mean: I think the overall gist, that a lot of people who write for publications should probably think a little harder about the received wisdom about men's and women's roles, as undeniably true.

But like:
Like it does with women’s bodies, popular culture permits a narrow range of acceptable beauty in women’s voices. There’s a reason Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons has room to sing flat on a live television performance but Beyoncé is expected to catapult through multiple key changes with perfect tone and pitch. There’s a reason Lana Del Rey bore the undiluted resentment of her audience when she failed to sing charismatically on Saturday Night Live. There is a reason Britney Spears’ isolated, untreated vocals score listens in the millions every time they’re leaked and the guttural quality of Shakira’s voice is as hotly debated in YouTube comments as her sexual attractiveness. As an object of beauty for public consumption, a woman’s pleasantness must permeate the senses.

This isn't taking into account a LOT of different power dynamics that don't fit quite so easily into "girls have to be more pleasant than boys to make it" & fails to account for the different genre values...the focus on vocals in R&B is different from the values in rock ... and of course all of this is shaped by gender/class/race, but in much more complicated ways than she's engaging w/ here IMO. I mean for example: Beyonce is "pleasant"??

up until '4' I'd say that would be a fair statement to make (cf _Dreamgirls_), but I think the recent album was a deliberate attempt to screw with that

it's a fair statement to make about Beyonce's vocals across the board aside from examples like the shouted part of "Ring the Alarm"; Beyonce did not make her money off of singing ugly

Sure Dan, but neither does Frank Ocean

Maybe i'm being too harsh on the piece. There are just points where I'm like...idk ... quoting Jim Derogatis is when you know your polemical is relying a little heavily on the LCD rock cliches, you know?

It’s worth noting that Pitchfork gave Channel Orange a score of 9.5, a full point higher than Devotion.

....

R&B is about pretty singing. Kind of a trait of the genre, right?

Frank Ocean is given more room to sing ugly than Beyonce is.

well frank ocean's always been punching a bit out of his weight class as a singer anyway

trying to convey "ugliness" in R&B isn't done the same way it is in rock music regardless. Ugliness is more liable to be conveyed through personality than by vocal distortion—by affecting a derisive tone, by performing a different mood. It's a conceit of the genre that you are performing ideas perfectly.

even if those ideas are ideas of imperfection

is the imagine dragons guy one of those operatic metal belter dudes or just a nu metal groaner type

at any rate i'm not arguing against the overall thesis—as brad said, it's the execution

is the imagine dragons guy one of those operatic metal belter dudes or just a nu metal groaner type

― goole, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 5:15 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a yarl type

imagine dragons isn't a metal band goole, it's a bastille-ish, onerepublic-esque nu-poprock anthemic outfit

bastille-ish?

as in the hated symbol of the decrepit old order or is that a band

Imagine Dragons dude is a grunge baritone

This piece also got me thinking about Courtney Love; I love her on a bunch of Hole songs, particularly the angry ones, but there's a point in 200 Cigarettes where she's singing along with a jukebox (can't remember the song now) that came across as one of the worst vocal performances is ever heard. Context strikes me as a critical component of this.

It's a strange voice-centric article, with lots of over-simplified assumptions about male and female roles, behaviours and preferences.

it's about the voice, so I am struggling to find an execution that is not "voice-centric"

This isn't taking into account a LOT of different power dynamics that don't fit quite so easily into "girls have to be more pleasant than boys to make it" & fails to account for the different genre values...the focus on vocals in R&B is different from the values in rock ... and of course all of this is shaped by gender/class/race, but in much more complicated ways than she's engaging w/ here IMO. I mean for example: Beyonce is "pleasant"??

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Wednesday, September 10, 2014 4:52 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well does P4k review female R&B singers in the same way that they review Frank Ocean, i.e. giving them a fullness of humanity and agency? For the purposes of this exercise, you're not allowed to reference any Beyonce reviews

ftr i thought the article was really good

Yeah me too; I'm not sure what BN and DJ are seeing that's so abhorrent

reads a little like a college paper i guess but so what

my guess is that The New Inquiry has been written off in advance as "abhorrent" so it is necessary to call any included pieces that

I liked the article; also I feel like I need to sit down with an ILM counselor to figure out which music is correct to enjoy if I want to call myself a real feminist

I'm not being included in the list of ppl who finds this abhorrent because I'm thinking out loud about how gender assumptions affect my perceptions of male/female performers, am I? Or is "DJ" supposed to reference deej?

Deej, I'd never refer to your by your initials because this is a family forum

I mean, sans middle

Sorry, that was uncalled for & inappropriate

Y'know my experience is, when discussing these kinds of things, when someone says really they're fine with "the content" but makes vague unsubstantiated complaints about how the "execution" stops them from getting behind it, it's never the execution they object to. It's the content.

Hahaha

what's 'vague' about what i posted? but thanks for reading my mind

my guess is that The New Inquiry has been written off in advance as "abhorrent" so it is necessary to call any included pieces that

― katherine, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 4:54 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nope

Yeah me too; I'm not sure what BN and DJ are seeing that's so abhorrent

― 龜, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 4:52 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, i definitely said this was an ABHORRENT article, excellent reading comprehension

who are you guys quoting anyway

You sided with a poster about the execution who called the execution 'hideous', idk man if you want to start moonwalking be my guest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

is this another deej-dayo pedantic-off? I said i agree w/ brad that the problem wasn't the thesis but how it was executed. I didn't say i thought it was 'hideous', merely making clear the problem I had was w/ specific arguments it made in trying to reach its conclusion

Think you mean deej-ILM pedantic-off there, buddy

no, i mean you in particular always try to ask irrelevant questions that misunderstand the argument when trying to troll me

Me: i think this piece doesn't do the best job arguing its point
You: Well, does Pfork give women agency?

...

Alright, you win buddy. You've really convinced me

What is the main thesis anyway?

Do male critics relate to female artists primarily through the voice (although this seems a bit confused with lyrics here maybe):

When a woman apparently hangs in the air as she sings, never engineering but simply existing, critics evaluate her music on the basis of their ability to access her emotionally. The voice, at least, is honest. The draw of an album made by a woman is not to consume what she’s created, but to traverse a pipeline directly to her being. She didn’t make the product; she is the product.Critics often praise the confessional, cathartic aspects of women’s music, favoring a frictionless ride to her core. Last month, when FKA twigs’ debut LP1 made its rounds through the critical circuit, several male reviewers commented on her seductive lyrics as though they were being sung directly to them. “How does it feel to have you thinking about me? Um, can I get back to you on that?” wrote Alexis Petridis for the Guardian.

I think more than just male reviewers have commented on the 'seductive lyrics'? Is FKA Twiggs judged primarily by voice?

I also worry about the dogmatism of the conclusion. There's lots of ways of making feminist music e.g. content and subject matter as well as delivery...I'm not sure I agree with this prioritisation of voice: pop singers that strain their voices against conventional gender performance pierce attempts to make them vessels of male engineering and ultimately suspend the male gaze, at least for the duration of their song