Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

http://i.imgur.com/EpHXx.gif

I liked this Grimes album! I give it five out of five fives.

TO BE VERY CLEAR:

My "in" with Grimes was realising how unfair it had been of me to equate her with all of these other artists who probably don't sound much alike except in terms of how I've framed them in my head!

LOL this always happens: any time I admit to having had a wrongheaded opinion and then try to self-critique it people feel the need to point out to me how wrong I was.

she at least ... enunciate

As far as I can tell, its just the "Oh baby I ..." refrains taken from 90s R&B that are in English. Most of vocals are pure glossolalia.

Can't find the mid-2011 Grimes interview where she pretty upfront about not caring about the lyrical content at all, as she just likes the sound that emerge.

^sorry bout the singular/plural errors there. I type correctly, then suffer dyslexia editing backwards.

where she pretty upfront about not caring about the lyrical content at all, as she just likes the sound that emerge.

2012 shockah

Grimes' vocal approach here reminds me of Heaven or Las Vegas, not ostentatious glossolalia but instead walking a borderline between lyrical sense and aural sensation.

I can't agree with the allegation of a lack of hooks, the more I listen the more hook-filled (even overloaded with hooks and melodic motifs) the songs seem.

iirc, lex hates adele because she is fat

when have i ever said anything even approaching this? i feel like people must literally imagine my posts instead of reading them sometimes

i'm pretty sure jon is just trolling you, which is funny cuz when people do it to him he "leaves" ilx in a huff

I distinctly remember some thread where there was discussion of an article in which Adele sort of defended her lifestyle and talked about being okay with her body and lex posted something about how she shouldn't be satisfied with being lazy or something to that effect. I can't find it now and I don't really feel like putting in the effort required to dig it up.

Not trolling, but probably overstating what lex said in that particular thread.

I guess this entire album really wants to be J-Pop by way of Sweden?

is anyone else doing this? because that sounds like a genre I could obsess over for a while.

pretty much every artist i rep for who isn't an actual megastar already gets zero traction

You were ranked number one in the ILX hivemind section of the EOY Trax poll iirc. fwiw I tend to give everything I see you rep for at least one go-through. I'm not going to absorb it all properly, but that's just life. I think a lot of people here respect your opinion about certain types of music. It's all good.

does grimes, like adele, win a lot of people over b/c she seems like a really cool girl? the wkiw effect?

i wnkiw her tbh. I read that she was kicked out of college for not attending classes for a year, which annoyed me for whatever reason when combined with her failed Mississippi River adventure. seems like the kind of person I would actively avoid.

stay in school if you want to kiw gukbe folks

I think the rhythm programming on this is excellent actually. A little bit rough-sounding but not actually rough in the sense of lacking nuance or finesse - basically this is just because Grimes is not observing the post-dubstep/minimal orthodoxy of hyper-clipped drum hits. I think she likes the slightly-degraded texture of fuller electronic drums.

dudes, there are garageband presets all over this record (synths too). not that that's inherently a bad thing - it's a tool like anything else, she's making choices, etc. but out of all the reasons to listen to this record (the vocals, the writing, personality), sound design is at the bottom of the list.

but out of all the reasons to listen to this record (the vocals, the writing, personality), sound design is at the bottom of the list.

i dunno about that. unique sound sources /= good sound design.

Having seen that Grimes video where she plays the black keys exclusively, I'm kinda curious whether most/all of her tunes are in C♭ major or A♭ minor (the black key diatonic scales).

using presets or garageband is fine, and you can make it your own, i just don't think the record sounds that interesting.

I don't really care about where the sounds come from.

It's not like most house beats or dubstep beats or etc sound unique.

Oh hey everyone what did I miss

ILX tearing itself apart over a 6/10 album

Unsurprising.

It's not like most house beats or dubstep beats or etc sound unique.

sure (except for the ones that do). i'd just be surprised if the beats & sounds were the reason someone was attracted to this record.

imo the reason to be attracted to this album is how she uses her voice as a background sound effect/adornment

otoh a reason to be repelled from this album is the interminable cooing babydoll voice she puts on seemingly through 500% of it

i love when she goes into that super-high deniece williams falsetto

the cooing babydoll shit didn't repel me as much as i thought it would but it's definitely a reason that i don't think she'll ever connect with me properly

her falsetto is astonishing, which really makes the cooing that much more irritating to me

it's like all of those Mariah singles with that fucking grating whisper voice where you're like "gtfo with that and start singing"

i know right

haha basically it's the inverse of the tUnE-yArDs album

Having seen that Grimes video where she plays the black keys exclusively, I'm kinda curious whether most/all of her tunes are in C♭ major or A♭ minor (the black key diatonic scales).

smh

http://stereogum.com/962491/deconstructing-grimes/news/

julianne escobedo shepherd goes innnnn

and i'm so glad she did cuz she articulates a lot of the reasons i can't connect w/grimes better than i could

yeah, that's a good piece, and like the author, i'm finding the album as a whole pretty unrewarding. i still enjoy the songs that initially attracted me, especially "oblivion" and "be a body", but most of the rest drift past in a gauzy blur. i don't get any clear sense of the performer's identity, and je shepherd otm in that roboticism is only interesting when it has something human to catch in its gears.

I would disagree with the article's contention that Grimes tries to sound less human than her analogues and contemporaries.

A different kind of humanness perhaps.

Like, this sounds like it would be true (and as a skewering of broad brush stroke positive crit probably is true):

"Grimes seems bent on negating her humanness and operating from robot zone, herself. Yet others who’ve embarked on such pursuits — Bjork, for example — have recognized the paradoxical intertwining between nature’s ether and that of the web. Grimes’ music feels like it’s operating in a vacuum, and while internet-referencing internet music is zeitgeistical, eventually the vacuum’s gonna run out of air."

But it misrepresents or ignores the strong sense of humanness that runs through a lot of these tracks, especially in the second half (and especially especially "Skin", which is actually going for almost the exact same altered-humanness vibe as Vespertine, albeit with slightly different sonic reference points). To my ears Boucher's use of a variety of different voices is intended precisely to capture the multivalency (and the internal conflictedness, and the being-with-yourself) of human experience.

As is often the case with such articles this feels like a good, targeted attack on Grimes as she is described in tumblrs and less so w/r/t what Grimes' music actually does.

In this regard the parallels (or inverted-parallels... is there a word for that?) with Lana Del Ray are interesting.

But it misrepresents or ignores the strong sense of humanness that runs through a lot of these tracks, especially in the second half (and especially especially "Skin", which is actually going for almost the exact same altered-humanness vibe as Vespertine, albeit with slightly different sonic reference points). To my ears Boucher's use of a variety of different voices is intended precisely to capture the multivalency (and the internal conflictedness, and the being-with-yourself) of human experience.

yeah, but a "strong sense of humanness" isn't something that exists outside our varying perceptions of it. what you hear as "human experience", i hear as freeze-dried cotton candy: lovely, but frustratingly insubstantial.

Too often when I read these kind of "take-down" pieces I find them utterly flimsy and gauzy, and directed not at the artists themselves, but this take-down of the endless reflecting chamber of blog/tumblr posts, and given that I hardly engage with that at all, it is less than meaningless to me. I don't listen to blogs. I want to tell them to get off the internet and engage with something that isn't endless critculure.

I don't hear a robot-ness to her voice at all. a transbody mysticism that isn't sensual enough for some maybe... but I think there's still a warmth there, an assuring Platonic kindness.

I think the article probably has a bias for a brand of feminism that favors sexuality-as-power, and maybe Grimes is just more of a mystic, isn't trying to progress through a combative politics but through some other means

JES's criticisms along the lines of thin/charmless/unemotional/infantilised are the ones that ring true for me - yeah this is personal preference to an extent, i much prefer (female? alt?) artists to reach out and grab me and make me feel like i have no choice but to listen; or if they're introverted, i tend to really enjoy the ones that are very still and meditative; and grimes fits neither of those descriptions. but i can't find anything else in there at all - THIN is exactly it, and it doesn't register emotionally at all.

yeah, but a "strong sense of humanness" isn't something that exists outside our varying perceptions of it. what you hear as "human experience", i hear as freeze-dried cotton candy: lovely, but frustratingly insubstantial.

sure but if that's the case then the real argumentative thrust of the article kind of falls over beyond the more limited (and hence perfectly legitimate, though admittedly difficult to build a hit-baiting "takedown" around) claims you and lex are making w/r/t not personally being into the sound of her voice and not being able to forge an emotional connection with it.

That's different to saying "Grimes' problem is that she fetishises the robot and forgets to be human in the process."

i like JES a ton, but that article was full of strawmen. tim f otm.

I want to tell them to get off the internet and engage with something that isn't endless critculure.

ironically this is the same thing JES is telling grimes to do

that jes thing is really well written but i had to stop after she tried to apply grimes' opinion about mariah carey to grimes' own artistic pursuits

feels like a disingenuous, forced connection

i say that as someone who initially held lex's view of the record and then realized last week that it is the gothy freestyle record i have always deserved

haha

There are so many reasons one could dislike Grimes. I was excited to see them articulated, but this piece was just bizarrely off base. This part in particular:

Grimes seems bent on negating her humanness and operating from robot zone, herself.

Really? She sounds like a robot? She negates her humanness? You might not like her personality, but how can you accuse her of not having one? If anything, I thought people found her personality overbearing.

Yet others who’ve embarked on such pursuits — Bjork, for example — have recognized the paradoxical intertwining between nature’s ether and that of the web. Grimes’ music feels like it’s operating in a vacuum, and while internet-referencing internet music is zeitgeistical, eventually the vacuum’s gonna run out of air.

Come again?

Of course, Grimes’ cyborg unicorn stance is an updated ideal on the continuum of the asexuality that a certain strain of indie rock values, up to and including twee.

In what world does this album lack sexuality? Grimes dwells constantly on physical contact ("Skin," "Be A Body"). And she sings in orgasmic squeals.

oh yeah i also stopped reading because of the word "zeitgeistical"

Grimes has a host of recent-vintage contemporaries who approach their music with a similar concept, like Lykke Li and Fever Ray and Bat For Lashes and even fellow blog star Charli XCX, all of whom do similarly conceptualized music but tap into their womanhood and sexuality as a source of power, some might say THE DARK ARTS OF WOMANNESS.

This is just terrible writing and impossible to take seriously.

My problem with it is that the writer fails to recognize the paradoxical intertwining between nature’s ether and that of the web, unlike others who've embarked on such pursuits.

And she sings in orgasmic squeals.

lot of squealing on this album, not a moment of it sounds "orgasmic", thankfully

and her dwelling on the physical never actually reads as physical. upthread enya comparisons otm. the language might suggest physicality, but the music and performance deny this. closest thing to a body here is the hiccup in the "oblivion" loop.