Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't Hold - August 16th

"I don’t know if we’re in a place as a culture to have a conversation about why but I feel it’s important to say it. It’s what I feel and I think it warrants expression" :) lol

I love Annie Clark, I think all of her albums are excellent and she's a wonderful songwriter, producer, guitarist, and one of my favorite people in music. But I meant the interjections about her disliking the lyrics and trying to get them to change them...it just comes across a bit weird in that write up.

as an artistic criticism 'fraud' is usually directed at someone whose work has garnered praise and might be credited to be superficially attractive or even convincing but fundamentally does not have the substance or claim to innovation that real/serious art ought to have. i don't really know marcus' sense for the sort of music st vincent got established behind, but if i had to guess i would say it's not even in his ballpark, so it would not be a surprise if he were hostile to it. or maybe he's not fond of her david byrne association?

does marcus hate byrne?

i have no idea, maybe he likes him but disliked her careering off him

anyway, I will say I like the songs from this album more than anything off the Woods which I find unlistenable (last album was great). So maybe AC did a great job here. Maybe Janet felt sidelined; it sounds like it, just from how pally they are in that write up. But that write up could be from a very biased angle. Who the fuck knows. I don't think Janet cares now. I'm going to see Quasi. I'll probably still go see SK.

the write-up seems biased to present something specific. it seems like it needed a bit of controversy and it tries to find it in side comments and fashion choices and album credits, in lieu of anything actually scandalous.

That’s how the NY Times often works, they come up with an “angle” and then write a piece to reflect it.

i just don't think coming up with a band image is really similar...even if they credit some people who also happen to own a fashion line.

also i guess i never thought of S-K's feminism as being against idk wearing certain types of clothes or crafting a consistent aesthetic. i'm really not sure what the extraneous bullshit surrounding this is supposed to signify. i just don't believe a male band would catch the same flak.

― omar little, Monday, August 5, 2019 9:05 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't disagree, but Brownstein talks explicitly about coming up with a new band image and using fashion. Mentioning clothes in the context of the piece and CB's comments makes sense. Greil's take is obviously idiotic and grounded in stale Boomer Yoko resentment. as someone pointed out upthread, the dynamic between S-K and AC sounds very similar to Eno and the Talking Heads on Remain in Light. whether or not this new S-K album is Remain in Light is beside the point.

any band that slogged it out playing houses and dives and sleeping on floors only to break up bc of ill communication and exhaustion has every right to come back 10 years later when their fanbase has grown and their legacy has been solidified and they can perform for huge crowds. it's great and should not be looked down on, even if it's just a cash grab. they deserve the cash. it's a bonus imo that they're making new music, and Alfred otm they're trying something new, cool.

also just noticed I had an old zing draft at the top of my last post. for the record, "the worst movie of the year" is The Souvenir.

I was imagining a documentary in which greil Marcus just bashes on female musicians for 90 minutes

flappy is awesome until he realized he was obv wrong about The Souvenir.

"for the record, "the worst movie of the year" is The Souvenir."

that's what my east coast best best friend assures me everyone he knows is saying, makes me think I will really like it

I am encouraged to revisit it- or one of Hogg's previous films- after seeing how many ppl here & elsewhere loved it.
xp

off topic, but just saw that Archipelago is on the Criterion Channel

and Amazon

LOL

2. Father John Misty, Pure Comedy (Sub Pop) If a smooth croon with perfectly rounded syllables from a penitent wandering through our valleys of error is what you’re looking for, this is for you. Of course there’s an out: Father John Misty is a persona, one of those people, like St. Vincent, who you’re supposed to know is really Annie Clark, who perform as—who perform as artists of such pretentiousness you couldn’t possibly figure out how to talk to them. “Uh Ms., ah, Saint—” No, there’s no way to address a saint: to be a saint you have to be dead. “Father—Father John”—already, you’ve ceded all authority, even if the Lone Pilgrim says you can call him Josh Tillman. Such characters allow themselves to appear as if touched by God, which is what they’re selling, and laugh at you if you’re so square not to know who they really are: to join their club.

Wait til this guy finds out about Robert Zimmermann

that's a blurb more in need of kerosene than anything I've read in Pitchfork in the last decade

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

Still, you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, or it may be Lorde

you can call her queen bee

Went to track down that Greil Marcus comment, and the first thing on his site is a defense of Al Franken in which he accuses Jeet Heer of virtue signaling. Not interested.

even "virtue signaling" is out of date lol

hey wait...did anyone else read that NYT piece like St. Vincent was now a part of SK?

Does she drum?

xp Yeah, it sounds like exactly the same dynamic as Eno & the TH on Remain in Light. Not uncommon.

Byrne delivers an interesting semi-dis of Eno in the Sand in the Vaseline liner notes.

something about Eno "wasn't really writing the material"?

I think in the case of TH it was an issue of Eno getting writing credit, aka money. Let's see how SK is credited, but SK not bringing in TH money.

actually can't comprehend the level of nosiness and bitchiness around weiss leaving this group. while i like what i've heard of SK, i'm not a listener, so maybe i'm missing something, but... fuck me, how/why did this become everyone's business? fans worried about them selling out? like, what? have only been checking in on this here and there. enlighten me.

xp (to Alfred) — yes, exactly:

...was great to work with until the others and I sensed him wanting us to be his back-up band... his source for ideas... but he wasn’t really “writing” the stuff. OK, enough.

I suspect Byrne tossed that in as a sop to the Weymouth-Frantz axis because of course Eno contributed riffs and melodies.

I just read that NY Times article and it was fairly long and I got to the end and was like, wait, the writer forgot to write about the music!

Par for the course these days

how/why did this become everyone's business

when did it not? who a band is and why they do what they do is always relevant to listeners, isn't it?

not really?

It's a band profile, not a record review?

we can play this game forever!

sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. based on weiss' departure and their change of musical direction and that article, this time it is!

It's a band profile, not a record review?

That's an interesting response. My feeling is that the article is about a musical group, though, and the central point of interest for such an article is...music.

Incorrect

It's not a question of correct or incorrect, I'm expressing a preference.

"did anyone else read that NYT piece like St. Vincent was now a part of SK?" yes, which was kind of what was annoying about it.

"how/why did this become everyone's business"

she was a lot of people's favorite person in the band?

That's an interesting response. My feeling is that the article is about a musical group, though, and the central point of interest for such an article is...music.

It talked about the process of making the album and what it sounds like, but it was a profile based on an interview in the direct aftermath of an integral member leaving the band.

If Dinosaur Jr. made a new album and Lou quit again right before it was released, there would probably be questions in a profile.

actually can't comprehend the level of nosiness and bitchiness around weiss leaving this group. while i like what i've heard of SK, i'm not a listener, so maybe i'm missing something, but... fuck me, how/why did this become everyone's business? fans worried about them selling out? like, what? have only been checking in on this here and there. enlighten me.

― meaulnes, Tuesday, August 6, 2019 11:59 PM (yesterday)

i mean you're right that it's no one's business but it's also kinda inevitable. i mean it was no one's business when the beatles broke up! ppl project all sorts of things on bands that they care about, and ppl care about this band a lot.

personally i'm still bummed that janet left but i've finally come around to enjoying/appreciating the new songs.

It talked about the process of making the album and what it sounds like

Not my belief that it really does the latter. Forty or so minutes of music, seemingly - I don't think using a few adjectives does much to talk about what that IS or what it sounds like.

You take the minimal descriptions of the music as a whole and they could add up to a million different things.

m.i.a. ate truffle fries

The result is “Love,” an affectionate catalog of the humilities of indie-rock life — those broke nights sleeping in the tour van — that crescendos into an unyielding bond. “We can be young/We can be old/As long as we have/Each other to hold,” Brownstein sings, as her bandmates provide a chorus with a bright throwback vibe. In Sleater-Kinney fashion, there’s also a turn toward anthemic fury: “Done with being told that this should be the end.”

“They were the classic things that Sleater-Kinney has always done so well, which is great guitar parts and big firework, lightning-in-a-bottle kind of songs,” Clark said, “but then there was this other side that I also felt in the demos — kind of an extra vulnerability from both of them.”

It came through in their vocals and subject matter, which both writers called unusually personal, taking on depression, suicidal thoughts and #MeToo. “Broken,” the wrenching piano ballad that closes the album, invokes Christine Blasey Ford.

Clark, Brownstein said, directed them to “not circumvent the emotion, but actually really delve into it.”

Production-wise, “I remember I was using the word ‘corrosive’ a lot,” Clark said, when she joined the group interview.

They wanted the album to sound “really gross,” Tucker, in contrasting lacy white, said, as her collaborators mmm-hmmmed in affirmation. “Like, disgusting, dirty, gross, dusty.” She went to a Depeche Mode show and got absorbed by synths; Clark and Brownstein saw Nine Inch Nails, and heard industrial.

The three or so weeks they spent in the studio with Clark were, to hear Brownstein and Tucker tell it, transformative. Choruses and bridges were revised; major keys were introduced; Tucker, whose raging vocals have helped define the group’s sound, sometimes sings two octaves higher than normal.

“She pushed us further,” Tucker said, just as they were ready for someone to challenge their instincts. (The trio similarly left its comfort zone making its sprawling 2005 album “The Woods;” after its bruising tour, they went on hiatus for nearly a decade.)

This time, the band pushed back, too. On the poppy “Love,” Clark questioned a Brownstein lyric: “There’s nothing more frightening and nothin’ more obscene/than a well-worn body demanding to be seen.” It’s essentially the album’s defining statement. Clark and Brownstein exchanged a look when I mentioned the line.

It’s something they discussed while conceiving “The Center Won’t Hold.” “This band is always a place for us to go when we feel vulnerable and fragile and angry,” Brownstein said. “It houses emotions that aren’t necessarily sanctioned in our day-to-day life, that people don’t make room for — because we can’t. You wouldn’t function if you allowed the ambient anxiety of the current era to permeate every cell.”

The lyric about the well-worn body was also asking, “How much can any of us withstand right now?” she added later. “All the characters, all the narrators — all of us in this album are seeking a means of resistance and withstanding pain. But I didn’t want to express that in a way that was like a screaming match. I wanted to give people something that buoyed them, that reached a chorus where they could sing together, and sing along with us.”

I know, I read it!

First quote - One of the songs is "affectionate." It has a "bright throwback vibe" and "there's also a turn toward anthemic fury." This is what I was talking about - that could be describing a million different things.

Second quote - Some general comments on lyrics. The music is "corrosive."

Third quote - More adjectives on that same point - "disgusting, dirty, gross, dusty." "Choruses and bridges were revised; major keys were introduced" - This tells me very, very little.

Fourth quote - Music that is not a screaming match, buoys people, "a chorus they could sing together." Could also be describing a million different things.

the writer forgot to write about the music!