who?
october twenty-fifth | seven forty post meridiem
Stop Making Scents
I went to sleep last night listening to Finisterre, and I've been listening to it obsessively all morning as well. Top 5, so far:
1. Action
2. Soft Like Me
3. Shower Scene
4. B92
5. The Way We Live Now
So far my response to this album has been pure fascination (which Simon Reynolds maintains is the direct opposite of 'meaning', at least re pop music). Trying to articulate why I like it so much is a little like spinning threads around a gloriously painted Aphrodite. Bright threads of soft mohair, but threads nonetheless. I must wear mohair on the outside because mohair is how it makes me feel on the inside.
One thing I like about it, on a meta level, is that it very studiously avoids any electroclash shite and takes its recognizable (to me, anyway) references from the late '80s/early '90s, but in a way that's closer to Technotronic than any more respectable styles. It's gloriously unhip, and therefore so much more capable of enthusiam, of inspiring private and slightly ridiculous obsessions. "Soft Like Me" is probably the tackiest thing they've ever done: the sub-Kid 'n' Play rapping, the strangely distant chorus; for me it conjures up all the accessories to late '80s pop: the clashing primary colors, the floppy hats, the mismatched Chuck Taylors - that faux-boho beat-fetishizing Native Tongues urbanity. It's like the bastard love child of Prince Paul and Downtown Julie Brown.
But this wouldn't matter if the album didn't have that effervescent something the citizens of Saint-Etienne so eloquently call "I don't know what." This is the place in the narrative where Aphrodite flashes her tits, because I have very few words for the particular emotional response St. E. are able to elicit from me. "Shower Scene" is such an apt title because, without referring to the lyrics at all, the music conjures up so many overlapping varieties of ecstasy: soft steam, warm fluids sluicing down glass, quicksilver veins... but these are tactile, not visual, sensations. This isn't porn music, it's being born music [Trademark it! - ed.]. Joking aside, wombiness seems like an appropriate metaphor: there's something about the emotional tenor it reaches and the sensibility is supports that makes me feel so comfortable yet excited at the same time. Comfort which allows for excitement; comfort which opens up possibilities for excitement.
* * *
The other night I got drunk by myself and chatted on AIM with a bunch of ILXers, then finished off the lovely and totally not pathetic evening by posting a semi-embarassing thread that dealt with one of my characteristic issues. I know I said I'd be back here to post more, but right now the dynamics of a message board are pleasing me more than Diaryland. Not that you're not all lovely people; I just like the more immediate and spontaneous form, plus I can read it at work (I don't dare log onto D*land for fear of prying eyes and OfficeScan). In fact, I'd like to encourage some of you to spend a little time there; it's an interesting place with smart and friendly people and you'll probably see more of me than you will here. I'll probably be on AIM more often too, so hopefully you'll come chat with me (handle=synkroniceties).
What else? Today I bought two HOMIE CLOWNZ, Loco and Lucky.
(After a second look, that thread is a bit nuts. It's not representative of the community as a whole, I promise.)