Inscrutable

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm trying (and mostly failing so far) to work out why I like New Order for the review of their reissues I'm writing.

What are the bands you love but find hard to write about? (Or, if yr not a writer, love without being able to articulate why?).

Comments

Re: the vocals issue

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I've never thought of the New Order vocals as typical "limp indie singing", even though I've often seen them characterised as such...I haven't listened to NO in AGES (and wouldn't call myself a fan by any means! in fact I only know about four NO songs, tops) but I don't think I ever actually particularly noticed the vocals, they always seemed kind of functional, carrying the melody, just there but not the focus. Like the Booka Shade vocals on their new album. But the NO vocals don't actively annoy me at all, despite the lack of character (and indeed the dreadful lyrics) - I think it's because they don't make a big deal out of their passiveness, they're like that only to get out of the way of the music. I might have to go back and listen with fresh ears.

I'm definitely interested in your ref to "a brit cultural taste for understatement as a mode of intense emoting" though, I've been thinking a bit about British vs American cultural preferences (and specifically the frequency with which I fall on the American side) but haven't got to a point of articulating it yet. Is this why Poptimists (the UK branch, anyway) seems so immune to my r&b divas? :(

Re: the vocals issue

[koganbot]

Well, British preferences will be all over the place, and there's always been a taste for American soul, for instance. And Britain helped invent a form of over-the-top America in the '60s that America then copied from the Brits. But I'd say, very loosely, that among some Brits some of the time there's more of an attempt to declare oneself in control of style, as if image were one's creation while a part of oneself stayed back as the mind behind the creation. Whereas America, which is supposedly the land of new beginnings, people are more likely to want to appear as if they're throwing themselves into style. A smart comment years ago by Steven Sherman in my fanzine was that Bruce Springsteen has had more image changes than Bowie. But w/ each image change w/ Bruce it's, oh yes, Bruce is being so real. Whereas Bowie is the alleged genius shape shifter.

If you take my favorite romantic hair-raising* extremists of the '60s and '70s, Dylan, Velvets, Stooges, Dolls on the American side and Stones, Kinks, Sex Pistols on the British, the British always seemed to have a comic analytic overview even while sounding just as much like the maelstrom itself. While the Americans, who could be plenty comic themselves, still came across as totally committed to the anguish and catastrophe and romance. (But that's not really a statistically significant sample I'm referring to, is it? And the Animals, who were just as good, just not as consistent, sounded as committed as the Americans, and the Dolls did seem to have a sense of perspective in their lyrics, at least.)

However, I don't think this has anything much to do with the relationship in the '80s between, say, British oi bands and American hardcore punks.

*In its time; now it sounds perfectly normal.

Re: the vocals issue

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes as frank says, it's a MUCH more complex relationship in actuality, everyone constantly swapping clothesand borrowing moves: and how it would add up if you could nail it down in the "final analysis" and treat it statistically i have no idea (one of the oddities about rock is that it's so unclear if it's an american music, or an american reworking of a british misundterstanding of an american music-- who invaded who!?)

80s amerindie groups like pavement and yo la tengo often seemed (to me) to be opting into the part of "brit" demeanour that's all cooled out and recessive expression, as a counter to and distancing from the "brits freak out" mode of earlier invasion rock: ie deriving their part of their meaning (and haha means to mean) from our being aware that they were choosing between two "non-american" modes of stance; the choice acting as a scrim through which you interpreted what they did

the interesting question is really - can you ever see (hear) anyone not through some sort of scrim; it's bslutely true that if you "just listen" and pay no mind to the hubbub of context and promo claim and unthinking critical assumption, that soundwise the relationship between x and y (bowie and springsteen, say) is exactly not what everyone says it is... this is an approach chuck eddy and dave q are masters of, for example, and it can be revelatory (but does it reveal what bowie and springsteen are "really" about; bcz surely PART of what they're about is their engagement with the scrim)

new order's achievement - at least in the british context -- was their ability to render the JD-shaped scrim an asset (an early mountain-climb no club dance group ever had to face): does that or doesn't sound "purely in the music"? it depends, once you take understanding the music to be a reading of the choices made at any point, how you weight the choices made before the track starts against the choices made as the track progresses (weighting towards the first would be "rock culture", VERY loosely; towards the second, dance culture: NO were a massive portal for brit listeners towards a "dance culture" aesthetic; second summer of love and after... and some of that is bcz the "skeleton at the feast" move WORKED; a whole section of the audience but the tragedy of curtis behind them and got on with enjoying the moment...)

oddly enough i always like springsteen best when he's being most bowie-esque: when the story of the song is about having to wear masks, and the (real) consequences and feel of this ("candy's room"; a couple of the somngs on "nebraska")