Can't argue with that (form and content both).
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:06 (five years ago) link
I applaud Shakey for his true controp. (and disagree violently obv)
― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:07 (five years ago) link
I don't get Kate Bush at all. No emotional resonance whatsoever, just theatre.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:11 (five years ago) link
haha I totally don't believe that was just trying to come up w an opinion that met pomenitul's criteria
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:13 (five years ago) link
I wouldn't put as many ">"s there, but in a lot of ways I prefer Tori to Kate ... tho I like both.
― sarahell, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:14 (five years ago) link
like when I'm in emo "me-time" mode, Little Earthquakes is way more likely what I put on than a Kate Bush album
― sarahell, Tuesday, 29 January 2019 19:15 (five years ago) link
Confessional vs. literary. I'll take literary for $200, Alex.
― innocence adjacent (Sanpaku), Thursday, 31 January 2019 02:15 (five years ago) link
Side 2 of Yellow Submarine > Side 1 of Yellow Submarine
― ArchCarrier, Friday, 1 February 2019 08:51 (five years ago) link
"Tango Whiskeyman" is the only good song Can ever recorded.
― Johan Lif, Friday, 1 February 2019 12:43 (five years ago) link
I don't get Kate Bush at all. No emotional resonance whatsoever, just theatre.― pomenitul, Tuesday, January 29, 2019 7:11 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― pomenitul, Tuesday, January 29, 2019 7:11 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
that's Nick Cave for me
― frame casual (dog latin), Friday, 1 February 2019 12:51 (five years ago) link
^ both of them here (Birthday Party excluded)
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 12:58 (five years ago) link
Theatre doesn't have emotional resonance?
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 1 February 2019 12:58 (five years ago) link
I understand not liking her, but theatre/resonance aren't a binary imo
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 1 February 2019 12:59 (five years ago) link
there is a certain way of thinking
a wrong and terrible way of thinking but still
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:02 (five years ago) link
affectlessness as signifier of authenticity and other nonsense
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:03 (five years ago) link
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 1, 2019 7:58 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkTom Waits falls into this category for me too
it's more just like theater qua theater,...it's top-heavy with presentation.
Tom Waits also falls into this category for me
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:06 (five years ago) link
Co-sign on Tom Waits and Nick Cave.
― Wee boats wobble but they don't fall down (Tom D.), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:08 (five years ago) link
guys working the character a little too hard and failing to wink
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:11 (five years ago) link
Nick Cave = probably 2 or 3 albums worth of good stuffTom Waits = probably 12 or 13 albums worth of good stuffKate Bush = flawless and fuiudDisliking "theatre" = oh fuck off everything's performance
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:12 (five years ago) link
would you watch an actor on stage who reminds the audience that "It's only a play, mate"?
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:13 (five years ago) link
theatricality > schtick
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:14 (five years ago) link
I think for the most part music shouldn't involve suspension of disbelief
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:15 (five years ago) link
a category mistake
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:16 (five years ago) link
PBS was showing some Closing Time-era Tom Waits a couple weeks back and I found it so embarrassing! Two hours of this painful cod-hobo business
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:18 (five years ago) link
There's no question that all the world's a stage, yadda yadda, but that's precisely why an escape from theatricality seems so desirable to me. This implies a self-avowedly impossible, doomed quest for 'authenticity' (no, it isn't real but my wish for it to be is) rather than affectlessness. Art that plays up its own de facto inauthenticity tends to be a tiresome tautology in my book (with exceptions, of course, such as Roxy Music).
― pomenitul, Friday, 1 February 2019 13:28 (five years ago) link
I think for the most part music *always* involves suspension of disbelief
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:31 (five years ago) link
I don't need to believe that David Bowie is, variously, a harlequin or nazi or a astronaut. He's just asking me to play along, so I'm in on it. Whereas for me w/ Waits or Nick Cave I get the sense that they actually want me to buy into these personalities, and I just fail to get there.
― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:40 (five years ago) link
I don't really get more of an 'escape from theatricality' from "Cornflake Girl" than from "Running Up That Hill", though. I sort of get that there's more of a guts-spilling autobiographical quality in Amos's work and more of a third-person storytelling quality in Bush's but I don't know that I agree that this quite maps onto the binary you're setting up. I like Bush a lot more because I think she has a better voice, songs that say more to me, and more interesting music (but I like things by Amos).
― silent as a seashell Julia (Sund4r), Friday, 1 February 2019 13:58 (five years ago) link
Just to be clear, I don't conceive of confessionalism as an escape from theatricality – on the contrary. Authenticity for me means a) that inauthenticity is an insuperable condition; b) that it nonetheless falls short; c) that art must acknowledge this insuperability while simultaneously yearning for something beyond it, which is the impossible itself. Confessionalism often misses the first point in my experience. So it's more of a porous binary (as all are).
― pomenitul, Friday, 1 February 2019 14:04 (five years ago) link
(i.e. Amos's delivery and presentation strike me as very affected.xp)
― silent as a seashell Julia (Sund4r), Friday, 1 February 2019 14:04 (five years ago) link
When I listen to Kate Bush, I don't get the sense of a 'beyond' (she merely foregrounds the theatrical tautology of existence) at all. But that's just me, of course – I don't think there's any kind of rule to be wrung from this.
― pomenitul, Friday, 1 February 2019 14:05 (five years ago) link
look i don't like ange
― The Elvis of Nationalism and Amoral Patriotism (rushomancy), Friday, 1 February 2019 14:07 (five years ago) link
Kate Bush is a seriously honest musician with a tendency toward moments of theatricality that rub me the wrong way-- sometimes it's just an "I like mime" kind of note ("Babooshka", many of her videos), other times it's an "I like to put on funny accents" kind of note ("There Goes A Tenner", "The Dreaming"), other times it's just like "wow I'm going to be silly silly silly" ("Wow", "Army Dreamers"). But she is oftentimes writing "honestly" and when she does ("The Man With The Child...", "Breathing", "Sat In Your Lap", "Hounds Of Love", "Running...", "The Sensual World", most of "Aerial") she is untouchable. I can't honestly say that I enjoy any of her albums front-to-back aside from "The Sensual World" but writing off her entire catalogue because of her tendency sometimes to chew-the-scenery is not my beer
Tori Amos is kind of the opposite, I've typed endlessly about how I think there was an irreversible shift that occurred in her song-writing as her star rose, imo a response to the obsessive traits that her fans embodied, and thus in Tori mk. 2 a kind of "closing off", a deliberate move toward obscurantism ("Boys For Pele" onward). "Leather", "Happy Phantom" and "The Wrong Band" aside, I hear little-to-no points of comparison between Tori and Kate-- Tori is brutal where Kate is not, Kate is theatre where Tori is not.
Both artists are consigned to being tied to former experiences and former selves for me, (Tori was my teens, Kate was my early 20s), and neither have an active part in my current listening habits. Comparing the two isn't really a game I enjoy, I think both are very important in different ways
― fgti's romance (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:42 (five years ago) link
Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson seems a more apt comparison than Kate Bush and Tori Amos
― Gunther Gleiben (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:44 (five years ago) link
writing off her entire catalogue because of her tendency sometimes to chew-the-scenery is not my beer
This thread requires that we sacrifice something to it every few days or so.
― pomenitul, Friday, 1 February 2019 15:46 (five years ago) link
Those theatrical things are some of my favourite songs by her, more than a lot of the 'honest' ones!
― silent as a seashell Julia (Sund4r), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:48 (five years ago) link
Nick Cave = probably 2 or 3 albums worth of good stuff
hell no
also people should really watch Once More With Feeling before they accuse Cave of being all theater, it's intensely theatrical also a deeply felt expression of grief over the death of his son, just killed me
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:49 (five years ago) link
I realise I'm being harsh on him but I never really want to listen to him nowadays
Still enjoy the gleeful sproinginess of the Birthday Party tho
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:51 (five years ago) link
cave is way more complicated and earnest than he’s being classified here
waits too but like y’all are EXTREMELY wrong about cave
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:54 (five years ago) link
booming post, fgti
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 1 February 2019 15:55 (five years ago) link
I love Kate Bush's mime-y videos, but have never found a way into her music.
― peace, man, Friday, 1 February 2019 16:00 (five years ago) link
YMP, I think that's like saying "Led Zeppelin and Mahavishnu Orchestra seems a more apt comparison than Led Zeppelin and Guns 'n' Roses." I can see how the case can be made but I don't think the latter comparison is unreasonable or unfair.
― silent as a seashell Julia (Sund4r), Friday, 1 February 2019 16:01 (five years ago) link
Man, the title track on "The Sensual World" is pretty much the greatest thing I could ever imagine music having to offer tbh
― fgti's romance (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:27 (five years ago) link
Mmmm yes
― Brex Avery (Noodle Vague), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:28 (five years ago) link
Also I don't think Nick Cave is so much about theatricality as he is about selling an id with music attached to it
― fgti's romance (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:28 (five years ago) link
there is something I find off-putting about the more fanatical ends of Tom Waits/Nick Cave fandom (this whole exchange puts me in mind of an argument I had years ago w some guy who claimed the three greatest songwriters in the world were Cave, Waits and Cohen) where there's this kind of romanticizing of drunken nihilism.
I realize this is strawmanning a bit, not saying anyone here is doing this.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 1 February 2019 17:31 (five years ago) link
Drunken nihilism is actually kinda fun tho
― Gunther Gleiben (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:37 (five years ago) link
Cave Waits and Cohen are precisely the greatest songwriters in the world for "some guy". I don't think the three songwriters have much common ground aside from coming up from the same plot of land as Philip Roth and John Berryman. They write accounts of straight white (and/or Jewish) male ("some guy") aging and decay, and drunken nihilism is definitely a part of it, but their appeal has more to do with "some guy" finding a moment of recognition in these male songwriters over 40. Learning how to be an old white dude with grace and drama. (Nobody could ever say Cave, Waits or Cohen were ever young, even when they were young)
― fgti's romance (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:39 (five years ago) link
I don't think of Waits as nihilist, like at all...he's a romantic
I don't think of Cave and Cohen as drunken
I feel like a lot of people just stopped paying attention to Cave sometime in the early 90s
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 1 February 2019 17:40 (five years ago) link
Nihilism (cf. 'Dirt in the Ground') can be darkly Romantic.
― pomenitul, Friday, 1 February 2019 17:41 (five years ago) link