Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPK3MyUlx9o

Grimes - Ambrosia

They're the two extra tracks on a 12" vinyl version that cuts a bunch of the rest of the album - 8 tracks total, but two are 'new'.

When you figure out where to slot them into the full length version of the album (I've put Ambrosia before Symphonia IX and Life After Death right before Nightmusic) and tack on the Amazon bonus 'Angel' at the end (and exclude 'Christmas Song', the track what has her brother rapping on it), Visions is a formidable album.

I just got this and it's still growing on me, so I'm not sure where it will end up on my scale of 1-10. This does seem a bit more diverse in its influences than typical electropop, with nods to house and R&B among other things. The combination of fairly fast, steady tempos, sing-songy melodies, glitches (or whatever they're called now), and the slightly affectless, introverted vocals remind me a bit of Lali Puna.

"Vowels = Space and Time" is so perfect. Especially when the bassline comes in and she's singing little girl-like and then switches to breathy ethereality on the line "'cos boy you could [something something something]... yeah yeah yeah!"

people have really complex thoughts about her. i have only heard one song which i thought was slight but nice. i liked her more upon noticing the triforce tattoo on her arm.

I do like how she uses her voice on this album - I just think she could have a bit more presence.

Just saw her live for the first time in a year - holy shit - what a difference. Stage presence to spare, gigantic dance party for an hour and openers Born Gold were damn good too. Miles away from the soft-spoken and slightly-flustered set I saw opening for How to Dress Well. Glad to see the material is finally translating to a live setting really well.

Only complaints: (1) nothing off the first two albums which have basically been declared non-existent, Shakira style, (2) only the uptempo stuff got played. Not sure how 'skin' would have translated live, but wish she'd have tried.

still, amazing. off to afterparty now.

this album is dope

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

― (thinks and smiles) (DJP), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:01 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

my thoughts exactly -- pretty freaking novel and great IMO

It feels very right to me that you like this J0rdan!

yeah i was sleeping, no excuse

i like certain tracks on this a lot, and like the overall aesthetic, some songs are def not standing with the best ones to me? it feels inconsistent

Srs question how much have you listened to it deej? My experience was first few times I liked a couple of tunes a lot and was not so hot on the others, and then each time I listened the tracks that had blurred past me the first time got more and more distinct, and now my favourite tracks are probably "Vowels = Space & Time" and "Nightmusic" which I would never have said early on.

yah i havent listened to it as much will try to spend some more time i suppose

the vocals on "vowels = space and time" are so good

sounds very r&b to me

gtfo no

yeah, like r&b only way better

xpost

/troll

it's really kinda beautiful & novel imo... it's almost like an entire song of backing vocals

novel if you haven't heard many weak-voiced women cooing aimlessly over timid electronic twiddling

idk her voice sounds pretty great on that song

one of the things I really like about her is that many of the vocal arrangements/lines in one song are little hooks/songs by themselves.

novel if you haven't heard many weak-voiced women cooing aimlessly over timid electronic twiddling

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 4 April 2012 17:49 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

*bookmarks post*

if only boucher was a strong-willed women singing the kind of authentic r&b music that critics ignore in this day and age!

if only she could write any sort of hook or make any sort of interesting sound

Her voice is many things. "Weak" is not one of them. I recognise that the theatricalness of her voice may be off-putting to some, but to dismiss that as "weak" is evidence of your bias, not a lack of strength or skill or personality in her technique and performance.

this is gonna sound weird, but i almost think visions is like love king, where like every element is its own little hook, one of the reasons i like it a lot

and yes i did just compare boucher to terius

every element is its own little hook

this is how i hear the record too, which makes lex's comments increasingly obscure to me

anyway looking forward to him dropping into this thread periodically to tell us about how he doesn't like grimes

i gave this album way more chances than i usually give albums that i don't enjoy initially, and after all of them i could not recall a single hook, if they existed at all

some of my favorite moments on this are the brief seconds when she switches to a recognizably "good" singing voice, amidst all the swirling multitracked chipmunkisms

it's a choice, you know, lex.

it's just completely unmemorable to me, and i didn't find it "interesting" enough to even admire from a distance (like with julia holter)

Lex, you're allowed not to like a record. But when you continually drop into a thread to tell how much you hate it and we're all stupid for liking it, that is unbelievably tedious. It's not for you. Move on.

this is gonna sound weird, but i almost think visions is like love king, where like every element is its own little hook, one of the reasons i like it a lot

― "I know its hard to hear but I'm a Realest." (rennavate), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 12:57 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

*yanks rope on bus*

anyway it's not like lex revived this thread, i did -- it's cool

It's just... It doesn't make me doubt my judgement over Grimes. But it does make me rethink my areas of agreement with Lex's taste, which generally do overlap and have a lot of common ground. Bah stupid meta, will shut up now.

i think it's obvious that she has a good, powerful singing voice and this is one of the first recent indie albums i've heard where manipulating the vocals or choosing not to sing 'traditionally' really works for it -- she's not attempting to mask or hide any sort of vocal deficiency, but a lot of times it's like you're trying to reach out and grab these great hooks or melodies that aren't pushed to the forefront... but for like the entire album. again tho i think it works because she can sing.

i think there's something narcotic about the album but not in the super obvious way that, idk, jj or the weeknd go for 'narcotic'

J0rdan otm. She isn't just setting a superficial mood; the songs penetrate much deeper than that

i'm not saying she *can't* sing, i'm saying the way she chooses to sing doesn't work. there's nothing to latch on to.

i'm pretty much coming in here b/c most people in here are the people i usually talk to all the time and mostly agree with so it's the extra WTF are you hearing in this boring music factor.

j0rdan otm itt

That's it, Jordan. she's a hugely skilled vocalist and everything she is doing to her voice, the treatments, the odd tonality, seems completely thought out and deliberate. You can dislike what she's doing, but implying she's doing it out of lack of skill rather than choice is just wilfully negative.

So much of that chipmunk voice and baby-cooing seems like a deliberate parody or reducto ad absurdum of the quality of ~Femininity~ and fragility. And guess what - the other woman that really plays with that contrast between pretty-voice delicacy / fragility and chopped up aggressive music is St Vincent, who Lex also hates.

So it's becoming more apparent to me what it that Lex dislikes in both of them. Though obviously I disagree.

*yanks rope on bus*

Explain, please. You're probably just shaking your head at that comment haha

i'm pretty much coming in here b/c most people in here are the people i usually talk to all the time and mostly agree with so it's the extra WTF are you hearing in this boring music factor.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, April 4, 2012 1:16 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Except this happens, without fail, 3 or 4 times yearly. People who mostly share your taste will occasionally like things you don't, and berating us for being wrong just makes us all grumpy. We're not the people who are ignoring the things you're loving - we're going nuts about Dawn and Kalenna and everyone else - and we're not going out of our way to try to sell you on things that we know you don't like after you give them an honest shot. I dunno. It just feels like an unproductive conversation, because you're not likely to be convinced, because what a lot of us are valuing here are part of an aesthetic framework that you actively don't like.

Normally, I'm all about back and forth to try to figure out what makes something work for me and not for somebody else, especially when so much of our taste tends to overlap, but we've done this enough times that I already know how the conversation plays out, so why not save yourself the stress and rage and just ignore the thread and we can get excited about Teedra or Jade Alston or Nicki somewhere else without hitting all of our heads against the wall?

i'm trying to think of fragile-voiced female singers i love...cassie obv. ashanti too. latter-day mariah when she goes cooey and breathy? stina nordenstam obv! anja garbarek to a limited extent. nordenstam and garbarek can write hooks though.

don't think i ever got round to disliking st vincent's voice specifically due to hating the production so much, but it didn't grab me for sure.

'Visions' has been a grower for me, as much as I loved it from day one. I was worried that the glossier polish and more 'song'-like songs would eliminate some of her ramshackle charm but there are so many more hooks buried in this - I'm not sure if I agree with rennavate re: 'Love King' but I do think his description is on point wrt the album being a constant stream of mini-hooks that sometimes integrate into songs and sometimes don't.

I'm curious what j0rdan and Evan and folk would think of her live show. The vocals are still manipulated and fragile to some extent, but there's more belting and more power in the beats. It's much more of a dance-oriented show than the album would suggest.

also, her dj set at the afterparty was all remixes of Mariah's 'Obsessed' and turn of the millenium r'n'b

"but I do think his description is on point wrt the album being a constant stream of mini-hooks that sometimes integrate into songs and sometimes don't."

ya that's what i mean. i don't mean that it's actually like/as good as love king.

I know this drives you nuts, Lex, but I think a lot of us here appreciate Grimes more than so many similarly styled electro-pop acts precisely because we do hear a little more R&B in her. And the way she appropriates the genre doesn't seem subtle or exploitative to me; she's pretty clever about it. I think your overarching bias against all non-traditional displays of R&B prevents you from taking that same enjoyment away from it, though, so it's kind of a lost cause. Which is a shame, because this otherwise seems like something you could love, too.