Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

Fucking adore this record.

Funny that Alex in Montreal referred to Braids upthread as this album strikes me as something of an electronic equivalent, simultaneously tuneful and spacious and drifting (whereas I think Juliana Barwick is a bit of a misleading point of comparison).

"Skin" esp. is wonderful.

i gave this a few more tries and while there's nothing i actively dislike about her music, neither is there anything hooking me back in - it's all vaguely "interesting", also very unmemorable and lite.

cf julianna barwick who hooked me straight away, and gazelle twin whose music i absolutely adore sinking into. grimes has no gravitas.

the cover of this record is really really bad. if you're going to rip off the sacred bones design scheme (which i really love), at least do it well!

ripoff Sacred Bones serifs + some Cyrillic lorem ipsum + some 1994-bad-sci-fi-book-cover graphics + giant in-class notebook doodle-looking thing = a mess and I like it

Yeah, Tim. The BRAIDS reference was not accidental.

Visions is getting a 4AD release in the rest of the world, but Grimes and BRAIDS and Blue Hawaii a couple of other bands in the same general aesthetic universe were all on the same local label for a few years based out of Montreal.

A bunch of their early stuff is available for download by donation at the Arbutus website, including Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, the first two Grimes albums, and Blue Hawaii's Blooming Summer.

Not that that necessarily implies that they sound *the same* but their music is definitely in conversation with each other.

And 'Skin' continues to be the standout for me - the first Grimes track that's hit me emotionally.

(That's not a backhanded compliment - I love the rest of her stuff, but Skin really gets to me.)

Other standouts: Infinite <3 without fulfillment, Genesis, Oblivion, Vowels = space and time, Be a Body (侘寂). Possibly Nightmusic.

thanks for the links and suggestions, alex!

Of the first two Grimes album, I think Halfaxa is a bit more like this one - it's the clear transition to the kind of thing she's doing now, but I love Geidi Primes - it's a little less cohesive, but there's a lot of cool stuff going on.

The Blue Hawaii tape was one of my favourite albums of 2010 - the standout is 'Blue Gowns'. Blue Hawaii's vocalist = the lead vocalist from BRAIDS which should help determine if it's your thing or if you should steer clear - (aka this is a warning for Lex)

The Geidi Primes cover is also really lovely:

http://hangout.altsounds.com/geek/gars/images/1/2/8/3/8/tumblr_l0qlcwbcft1qz8wqzo1_400.png

Halfaxa got another similar weird "skull" motif cover everywhere else, but in Canada we got a photo negative of a topless woman with a bunch of purple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QGXPM_BonA#!

Just found this - apparently there was a re-release of 'Halfaxa' with this track tossed in the middle of it and I never found out? This is lovely.

laurel halo did an awesome remix of that track

And naturally it's not available anywhere but Europe. Dammit. (The Original. Not the Remix)

if you're going to rip off the sacred bones design scheme

well, it does "rip off" the sacred bones design scheme (general layout, fonts), but also pushes beyond it in interesting ways. and the drawing is wonderful. one of my favorite album covers of the year so far.

Skin is killing me. Be a Body (侘寂) too. all of them really.

I think the album really shows post-everything/Internet music doesn't have to just be some senseless exercise in referencing. like there's the Mr. Bungle/Girl Talk-style, 'yo look what just threw in' approach, but it can be done more selectively. like anything is available, but then you can pick out a finite set of elements with more purpose. this feels really cohesive and harmonious to me, like there's a logic to the aesthetic system she creates, and real emotional resonance (really gets to me actually). could probably work out some cultural meaning in this beyond just 'hey post-modernism waka waka'

cf julianna barwick who hooked me straight away, and gazelle twin whose music i absolutely adore sinking into. grimes has no gravitas.

― if u leave imma crank wu-tang in my black matte truck (lex pretend), Saturday, February 18, 2012 11:15 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The (excellent) Frankie Rose album is much more in Julianna Barwick territory than this is, IMO.

She comes across as tremendously likable in the p4k interview I think - love how she invokes all this hi falutin stuff almost inevitably to have a go at herself, and she seems to anticipate a lot of the criticisms that people might want to throw at her without seeming like that's what she set out to do.

Boucher, I mean.

Smoke weed, listen to Mariah Carey. Hilarious, and awesome.

she seems like an excellent person! but i'm not hearing anything compelling in her music.

Frankie Rose is a vocalist, songwriter and musician living in Brooklyn, NY. She was formerly an original member of acclaimed garage rock acts Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, and the Vivian Girls.[1]

erm i'll stick with julianna barwick thanks :o

her background really does not inform the new album at all

haha lex how do you ever manage to listen to gang gang dance without vomiting everywhere.

i carefully avoid finding out information about them that might turn me off.

no, if i google a new act and p4k AND stereogum are on the first page of results then i consider that a sign. dunno what the fuck "brooklyn vegan" is but with a name like that it can't be a good thing.

rofl

man i wish i could not know what brooklyn vegan is

So obsessed with this album. Like I start to get really, really excited when I hear the piano-based second chorus in "Genesis" and that feeling doesn't really dissipate for the rest of the album.

genesis was played yesterday morning on 6 music.

having seen the album artwork i was very pleasantly surprised as it was not what i expected at all.

sounded ace.

glad to see other people liking this so much. was kinda surprised to see some people so meh on it tbh (I mean yeah different strokes - but this is easily turning out to be album of the year so far for me)

To be fair "Genesis" is by far the most cute tune on the album, there are some darker bits that go halfway to matching the cover.

Though in some ways gothstep feels so prevalent as the default move for artsy electro chicks that there's something unexpectedly refreshing-feeling about the combination of eerieness and intermittent cutesiness on Visions.

it's weird that none of the reviews i've read have mentioned 'oblivion', when that seems like the obvious 'hit'

http://www.pitchfork.com/news/45488-the-tale-of-grimes-insane-2009-houseboat-adventure-the-best-thing-youll-read-all-day/

what a tale!

god, "Circumambient" just sent me into a spazz. awesome.

This is a strange record, paper-thin vocals, barely competent use of a drum machine, and yet it's strangely beguiling. A lot of it's in the synths that hold the whole thing together, like she's found a really lovely ambient techno album from the early 90s and worked over the top of it.

grimes has no gravitas.

But she's not aiming for it. One of the things I like about this record is that it isn't constantly doing the glowery face.

the entire thing is paper thin. i thought i'd like it! i gave it several tries! NOTHING STICKS. i have no idea what you're all hearing.

does this sound like the blow?

lol the first 30 seconds of "Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" made me go "this is what Zooey Deschanel's electro side project would sound like"

i should probably go ahead and start a gazelle twin thread because it pisses me off every time i see this get attention instead

"Genesis" sounds like it really wants to be J-Pop

actually I guess this entire album really wants to be J-Pop by way of Sweden? that's the vibe I am getting from the first 3 songs

This is a strange record, paper-thin vocals, barely competent use of a drum machine

i have to vigorously disagree about her drum machines. the parts aren't incredibly complicated but i wasn't joking about the spaz-session that circumambient provoked last night. i seriously lost my shit, it was weird. part of that might be because i'm a drummer with a bit of a improv background, so when i hear her drums i also hear all the parts that i'm playing on top of and around the beats - it sounds fine its own, but it's the imagined space that sends me into a fit.

anyway, possibly someone else will understand what i'm trying and failing to express.

"the drum machines are good because the way that i imagine playing over the top of them in my head is good" = i'm a fucking idiot

It's so strange that Lex and I are having such opposite reactions to this and Gazelle Twin, like some bizarro inverse world. Because I find GT so nothingy and paper thin and nothing to latch on to, while Grimes sends me to a happy place. But their music is nothing like one another, so I do not understand that "why would you listen to this when there is that?" comparison. At all.

I like both Gazelle Twin and Grimes, but then again I have a place for both Fever Ray and, idunno, Stacey Q, in my collection

Mentioned it elsewhere, but listening to Grimes is like looking over the shoulder of a prodigy drawing with charcoal on paper for the first time. Formal art training & oil paints would likely just overwhelm the spontaneity, ease (thinness?) which are the present appeal.

Yes, that's the thing, the spontaneity, the shooting off in unexpected angles, the excited jumble of it all - the fact that she *seems* so excited by everything still, like the music is just rolling out of her in a mad rush.

i should probably go ahead and start a gazelle twin thread because it pisses me off every time i see this get attention instead

― lex pretend, Tuesday, February 21, 2012 3:56 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lex, is this going to be the album that you started off enjoying/appreciating aspects of but not falling in love with but which is close enough to things you love that by December you will be hating it and yelling at us all for voting for it? A la 'Young Galaxy' or whatever?

There's one every year.

I think if no one paid any attention to Grimes, he would probably come round on it, or at least ignore it. But the fact that she's now getting attention from P4k and the NME and all that means that we're all sheep for liking her, even those of us who have been listening since you and Owen were raving about her. Or something.