Divorce Song vs. Fuck and Run

Let's be clear: I've never bothered with "confessional" tags because I don't know what it means or how to judge the material! I've always assumed that artists lie and embroider. I ask rhetorically: what makes EIG's skeletal, electric rhythm strum more "confessional" than WCSE's full-bodied sound?

nothing, objectively. but i can stand back at some distance and observe my own reactions to art (and also/especially the reactions of others), and from that begin to draw conclusions about how the art generates its subtle effects. with that in mind, i know that a lot of people did and perhaps still do perceive and relate to something "cool" and "real" in EIG - whether or not that thing actually exists. to my mind, it's a combination of the consistent home-recording sonics, phair's authorial voice (vulnerable wiseass), and the close focus on a single 1st person story.

rhetorically, the much-discussed "lo-fi" production invokes the artless neophyte in her bedroom, recording alone with whatever's at hand because she's got to get this stuff out. less "confessional" than diaristic imo, but that's not important right now. that it's an obvious pose has always been part of that record's magic for me.

i mean, take "uncle alvarez" by way of contrast. there's no suggestion that it was recorded "at home", and authorial myth-building is sacrificed in favor of engagement with the stories of others. it's a discrete snapshot unrelated to any overarching, supposedly confessional narrative.

can's say the same of "polyester bride", of course, but even there, the expansive sonics and reduced cynicism undercut the portrait of the artist that EIG worked so hard to build.

or, yeah, what roger said...

and btw fwiw imo tbh WCSE does feel less immediate than Exile! the voice is woman in LA, not a girl in Chicago, and even in the midst of Johnny Feelgood obsession, there's a witnessing in place of Exile's experiencing. And you're OTM that part of this has to do with age. The standpoint is actually pretty close to what you get in mid-period Aimee Mann ("you've danced this dance enough to know better by now, but here you go again"), but where Mann would do resignation and agonbite of inwit, Phair goes for a kind of sympathetic facepalm. Which, when it works, hits as hard as e.g. "i want a boyfriend"...

I mean,

mom, i'm sending you this photograph
i swear this one is gonna last
and all those other bastards were only practice

just slays.

"Shitloads of Money" and "Girls School" point nicely towards the next album too, don't they?

(btw, roger, you're wanted in the Tom Petty poll I just started)

"runaway trains"

what's the poll?

I've given most of this a listen now, and so far I like the obviously good ones: Johnny Feelgood, Polyester Bride, Uncle Alvarez, Headache. "Perfect World" is good too. Aimee Mann comparison otm; Liz's Lovesexy?

Which Pitchfork writer can eat a bag of dicks? Stay tuned...

Can someone explain their love of "Uncle Alvarez"? It's one of the few on WCSE that I've never really warmed to, and it bugs me that I can't figure out why. Maybe it sounds a little too coffee-shop, musically, even though I think it's lyrically ace.

As for this poll...a few days before my 30th bday I had this weird urge to listen to EiG, perhaps subconsciously embracing music of adolescence. I started thinking that, pre-age 28, I would've said "Fuck and Run" no question, but now I think it's clearly "Divorce Song."

I haven't been able to stop listening to EiG since, and one thing that struck me is how much I love the sound of the guitars on it. Her playing was really particular and idiosyncratic; she sounds like she's playing almost-chords, there's something off-kilter and maybe inarticulate but also confident about her strums that plays off the words so well. It's kind of unexplainable, the effect those sounds have. They really do sound like my own post-college mid-twenties flailing about.

Maybe it sounds a little too coffee-shop, musically

i guess i don't see this as an inherently bad thing, and as you say, the lyrics are great (catchy tune, too)

I've seriously kept billy's post bookmarked for the better part of a year thinking I will eventually be able to say something to articulate why "Uncle Alvarez" is great. Great lyrics, coffee-shop yeah, but there's a real sympathy to it which I think is nice to find. The premise is a <i>little</i> cornball, like something you would come up with as an assignment for creative writing class, but the little moments pay off. "It's hard to believe you were once a beautiful dancer."

I keep telling myself to start downloading homemade YouTubes I love before they're pulled. The "Divorce Song" video I posted upthread is gone, there was a fantastic one for Yo La Tengo's "Satellite" that's gone, ditto one for Hot Chip's "The Warning."

i wish i'd saved that "divorce song" video too. i watched it so many times it feels inseparable from the song itself to me.

imagining an alternate reality where Liz became more mooncalf, hooked up w/ Isobel Sollenberger and decided to hitchhike cross country while also selling weed...

― schizophrenics think I'm hilarious (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, May 4, 2011 2:59 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A number of years back, I was so excited to see 'Fuck and Run' on a karaoke playlist that I signed up without even thinking, and it wasn't until a verse or so in that I started to remember the lyrics in their entirety. I was flattered by the positive attention I inadvertently drew to my str8 self at the gay bar that night.