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

[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")