i feel (all this) love (and space)

oooooooooooooooooooohitssogooditssogooditssogooditssoooogoood.....oooooooooooooooooohheavenknowshea
venknowsheavenknowsheavenknowsheavenknows.....ooooooooooooooooooooooooohifeelloveifeelloveifeelloveif
eelloveifeeeeeellove.........ifeeeeeellooooooooooooooooooooooooooveifeeellooooooooooooooooooooooooooove


now that i've got that out of my system (for a little minute), i'm gonna keep you on your toes by listing, in scattered commentary form, some singles i'm feeling these days. blam!! (not that any of it is especially timely):

i feel single(s)

[apart from "i feel love" that is - funny belting that out, on my bike, waiting for the light at broad and spring garden - like who am i trying to convince i feel love i feel love? anyway been going to paradise @ key west lately (see me up there? thanks for photos - that's from last week when optimo played there!) and adding italo disco to the growing list of "subgenres to investigate, learn, and master, preferably in a single feverish evening of downloading". also crushing on "i feel space" (not news, but sogooditssogooditssoetc) and wondering what follows logically.)]

"i feel time...love...joy...i feel space...i feel...me." (?)

(ACTION!!)

also feelin all this love like whoa. uh, more on that later. (haven't seen the video yet.)

feeling ain't no other man. found it a little tacky at first, i think the horn stabs seemed canned and flat, but it's got me now. i actually do think it's pretty soulful. (and stylish, duh, classy i guess, badass even?) anyway i like the lyrics.

also love a public affair, which is technically (obviously) doing an '80s throwback thing, but the song itself for some reason sounds sort of like the '60s to me (like the xtina song, which is pretending to be a '30s throwback, at least based on the video.) i wanna layer that opening glockenspiel line over the end of "crash and burn girl," but it's too late 'cause i already did that with paris. haven't heard any more from either of these albums, but i guess i should.

me & u is probably up there for actual-pop single of the year. when i first heard about it from kate she said it was all about the (undenibly awesome) synth line, not the vocals. (then she tried to sing the synth line - the plinky clave one, not the high winding one - which wasn't very helpful.) but in fact i've had the melody in my head all the time, and have been singing that (which doesn't work so well either, at least the part where i can't sing three-part harmony with myself.) this fits really well over the pack's "vans", which is similarly cool and more than a little ridiculous. (2nd cassie single=also hott.)

otherwise...not hearing too much rap this year (again). i like "kick, push" (quite a lot), but i'm not quite feeling the lupe fiasco album (and the title and cover aren't helpful.) maybe i'll get there though. meanwhile, whatever else it may be, "3 freaks" is a lot of fun. hyphy is on that subgenre list - i'll report back later. (maybe my cousin in SF knows something.) (oh yeah - i like "ridin'" too, especially the sinister synths.)

i like pretty much everything i've heard from the beyonce album (more than the first two singles, actually, though they were both fine) but the standout for now is totally irreplaceable. yay for pop with melodies.

what else? love love love young folks (ooh, cartoon whistling!) and was psyched to hear it out dancing on my birthday. does this mean i should like the concretes? it's good that people are fusing '60s pop and contempo dance, so that i don't have to do it all by myself.

not so new, but i just discovered "this is the world we live in" (whoa, maybe better not to watch the video?) reminds me a little of "i could be that woman." speaking of christina milian, i should probably see what's up with her album these days. should also find out who alcazar are exactly.

i love the whole ark album, and i'm glad they seem to be catching on a little bit, but it's all about "one of us is gonna die young" as far as annum-ruling singles go. (scissor sisters are nice too.)

and speaking of singles of the year (which i'm not), don't think i've forgotten about 4FR, for eva-evah, forever-ever! cause i haven't, and it still works as good as eva.

"pull shapes" and "LDN" meanwhile...are still quite nice too. and the camera obscura singles are sounding stronger, if anything.

oh, before i forget: not like i need to say any more about paris(ite), but i'll take the opportunity to post this video, because i think it's awesome. (it has a moral!) (also it's for one of the best songs this year.)

not feeling so much:
"sexy back" - eh, it's ok. but why are all the hipsto djs playing this and not better current chart pop? the groove is pretty cool for mixing. but nothing else about it is at all interesting. the auxiliary vocal bits in particular are pretty annoying (possible exception: "let me see what yr twerking with.") supposedly it's better in the context of the album (?) (it is somewhat better in da club, i guess.)

"bossy" - also sometimes gets played at the khyber, etc. i want to like this, but the chorus vocal is really annoying and non-melodic. the basic beat also isn't that good. i do like the "diamonds on my neck" part. and "she's fine and she's pretty."

ETA: "get myself into it" - um. well. why is it so slow? why doesn't luke jenner sound like he's into it? (i mean besides that being lyrically appropriate.) sure, you can dance to it, sure, it segues smoothly out of madonna's "holiday." but the beat's uninspiring, there's no real hook, the saxophone is neither obnoxious nor at all memorable. extra points detracted for the notably awkward scansion on the title line. (gotta get myself intto it.) i don't hate this song - i don't really have a problem with it, i just really hope there's something better on the album.

"london bridge" - is not in this category because i don't like it. actually, i do like. a lot more than i thought at first. the bari sax poppin' groove is really really hot and fresh-sounding. her vocals i'm only so-so on (and no comment on the lyrix.) the worst part is actually the hook (also the only part that sounds like "galang", contrary to what some have said.) i even like the goofy doo-doo-doo bridge. also: the OH SHIT/SNAP needs to be at the beginning of my year-end mix, if i can get voices to sound like that saying "OH SIX!"

so that's that.

i feel (my)space

what's really been obsessing my headspace for the last twelve+hours, which i feel silly about waiting until this late in the post to menion, so i'll probably do it again later, is this mix, which i finished at about 6am last night/this morning, and then finished a little bit more after i woke up at 11:30. (added the big star bit at the end, not 100% sure about that.)

it's an attempt at a "straight-up" dance mix, for demo purposes among other things, following angela's wise suggestion that i try to make a demo mix of "regular club music," by which she meant no oldies. of course, it's not exactly all that straight (or entirely free of oldies, though you have to be fast to catch them.) but i think it works pretty damn nice. what brought all this up is that some (actually only three? that's silly) of the singles i mentioned above are included.

what does it say about me that i feel much more cheesy (faux-guilt) about using the lindstrøm track than christina aguilera?

i'd give a track listing, but it's probably more exciting without. but please take a listen. for the most part it hovers around indie dance territory (er, whatever that means) even though it's primarily synth-based - it does get rather trancey at times, which was not deliberate but i like it anyway. (comes of mixing late into the night perhaps?) the transitions are mostly live (with a bit of live 3-way turntable/cd action towards the end) but heavily cherrypicked and edited. (i'm getting more fluid with garageband.) also: note that it obeys the four tet rule. i dedicate it to my roommate who has been mysteriously absent all weekend, enabling me to occupy the living room with my various projects (this + my newspaper jacket, also made a pie last night that i haven't touched.)

and the title of the mix is (ahem):

RAINBOW STYLING!

(because of the similou track which i consider the centerpiece of the mix)

i want to post it on this (typically time-sucking, but atypically awesome) ilm thread, and the electro-soul mix too, but it won't let me sign in, and the password reset isn't coming... hm...

anyway (you might have guessed) it's also at mymymyspace. yay!

so that's what's up. what's new with you?

he's the dj, i'm the typist

guess what, i started a myspace page. i guess in keeping with the franchise it ought to be myncepace. the point is to promote my dj activities, or at least have somewhere to put things about them for anyone who might be interested. for now you can read about my two upcoming gigs, neither of which i have a very good idea about so far. i'll probably have more to say about those as they approach.

the more significant thing is that you can listen to a dj mix i made. (well, you can listen to it from that link too now, obviously, which is probably easier or at least more efficient - but it took a reasonably lengthy internet adventure to figure out how to make it play at myspace, so it would be nice if somebody wanted to listen to it there.)

the mix borrows heavily and wholesale from a different mix i made and wrote about here a while back. you might have heard that one (which was cassette only) if you're dave or a couple of other people, but probably not. and anyway it's better now. so check it out.

again, the project is to combine soul and electro/dance-pop in fluid and interesting ways, and to make it all danceable. while the "original" draft prided itself on being essentially live - well, this one isn't. the transitions are almost all live, but with multiple takes cherrypicked in editing (which i did - as well as the recording - in garageband, which is not ideal for this kind of work, but can be made to work okay.) it took me three days last week to make, including a good day and a half of work before i realized that it was only recording in mono, for some reason, and i scrapped everything and started over.

i'm decently happy with the result. i played it (over the internet! isn't that cool?) at a party last night, and people seemed to respond well, although it wasn't a dancing sort of a party. i want to make another mix of similar length to accompany it (this will probably be the second half) as my dj demo cd.

so this site was originally supposed to be a lot about my mixmaking, but i haven't written much on that lately - probably because i haven't really made a mix in a long time, for mostly unexamined reasons that may or may not have to do with having attempted to formalize my approach to them. (i do have a distressing tendency to be less interested in doing things once i've decided they're what i ought to do.)

and now here's a mix cropping up somewhere else, so perhaps this site should be retitled mincetypes. or perhaps i'll get back into it. (especially now that i have a place to put pictures of them.)

these are some things i've been listening to, tonight and earlier: the raspberries, there are but four small faces, the warp 10+1 comp, the jackie deshannon lp louisa gave me, swayzak's loops from the bergerie, "ain't no other man" and "me & u", the strokes album (the new one - gabe and i expounded at length on its glories the other night), pink (albums 2-4), the beatles. my current all-time favorite songs include the junior boys "first time" and carla thomas' "b.a.b.y."

if you want more music writing (woohoo!) i've got a little bit to say about paul simon over on reminced. because to paul simon is not just music, he's a part of life.

heiress to the throne: dancing in the royal suite

as of now, i'm pretty sure that paris, the debut full-length release by paris hilton, is my favorite album from 2006. it only came out in late august, so i've spent less than two months with it so far, and things could certainly change. (i bought a used, promo-stamped copy the week of its release for $8.99 - which is the most i've spent on a [tangentially] teen-pop album except for maybe a couple of europe-only releases.) i can't say my feelings about it are comparable to (or as confident as) those i had for earlier no-brainer favorites like oh! inverted world ('01), think tank ('03) and the sunset tree ('05), all of which connected with me on a uniquely personal level. (and which i'd like to think would still be strong favorites if they came along now for the first time.) it's definitely not [yet] one of my favorite albums... (are there other dance-pop albums that are? i feel like robyn should be; it's new to me still but i trust its staying power. feels funny to say it about come and get it or fever. maybe some of this hesitancy is that the kinds of albums the genre produces - of which robyn is strongly atypical - [still] don't seem like "favorite" material, regardless of how much i enjoy the music. contemplating them explodes the notion of "album" sufficiently to make equilateral comparisons feel inappropriate.)

i digress though. maybe paris ain't here to stay, but she's here today, so let's have a look at 'er. why is this album impressing itself on me so? and how? in my last post, i ran down the discs that have been my touchstones as far as album-based pop goes, which will serve as points of comparison here. paris stands apart from these since it's not electro-pop, or at least not entirely. actually, one of its greatest assets is its stylistic diversity, which encompasses hip-hop/r&b, "rock", disco, reggae, and (for lack of a better term) straight-up dance-pop. none of these appear in their "pure" forms (well, except the last) - which is to the record's credit, since it retains a fairly cohesive sonic identity - but even so, it's an impressive range.

i've been challenging folks (and myself) to come up with any recent pop album that spans so widely. ashlee and kelly come close, but neither really has anything "urban" (hip-hop/r&b) (oh, the missy "L.O.V.E." remix, but that's not on an album) - the only contender might be love angel music baby, which i haven't given enough attention, mostly because it seems like a lot of filler. robyn is also extremely diverse, and includes hip-hop and (could it be?) soul - nothing rock per se, but the experimentation within what's technically pop is practically radiohead-worthy - and it has ballads (good ones too!), which paris/paris (wisely) doesn't really attempt.

point being, its eclecticism within the basic dance-pop template is one thing that makes paris relatively unique, even if it has a couple of fellows. i've heard a lot of complaints about her music being derivative, and that might be valid (not that i really care), but it certainly works hard trying to be derivative of as many things as possible. besides, it's kind of a laugh saying that she sounds just like/is trying to be like gwen stefani, who's sort of the queen of derivativeness (you say that like it's a bad thing.)

the albums that i discussed in my last post succeed primarily on the strength of their songs and production (little more of the latter on fever maybe; the former on anniemal; both - in spades - on come and get it.) as more than just (reasonably cohesive) collections of songs, anniemal goes some distance towards creating an identifiable and engaging persona; robyn accomplishes this masterfully (as i've raved about enough for now.) come to think of it, fever does present a fairly strong persona, it's just not a very relatable or human one (and the album art doesn't help.) i feel like the rachel stevens album could be compelling on this sort of level - the situations in the lyrics, when i stop and think about them, are intriguing and well-developed - but something prevents me from recognizing anything in it that seems to relate to her in any way.

* * *
paris, meanwhile, may not be quite as consistent on the songwriting front, and production/arrangement-wise it's in a whole different ballpark; but - as i hear it, anyway - it does develop an extremely vivid and fascinating sense of identity and personality. and - great songs notwithstanding - i think that's really what sets this album apart for me. here's what i take from it:

there is a very particular setting involved here, and it is the dancefloor. tons of dance songs are about dancing, obviously, but for me even the songs on paris that don't explicitly reference it seem to draw their sensibilities from a quintessentially "dancefloor" state of mind. this album is all about the complex interpersonal, emotional politics of a night out at the club. the narrator(s) in these songs - let's think of them as all the same girl, and let's call her paris - encounters strangers (or, if not exactly strangers, men she's met before only here in this superficial setting), decides she wants them, fantasizes abouts them, teases them, tries to seduce them. or else: she knows they want her, and she'll play along and flirt, dance, tease - but that's as far as it's gonna go ("ooh, sorry, did i do that?") 'course, how are they to know, really, which one it is, what's she playing at this time, do you like me or are you ignoring me? is this love or just desire? paris holds all the cards, and that's the way she likes it. she's the queen of the scene, and when she holds court on the floor, who can say what machinations are going on in her pretty little head?

the politics of dancing are all about codes, sublimated language, the chance to express with our bodies what we never could or would verbally (our inner, yearning emotions about these people we're just meeting for the first time, may never meet again.) it could be a code for sex - isn't that what this is really all about after all? - or maybe not, maybe that's just what everybody is thinking but that in itself is another layer of encryption, an intermediary, decoy code; dancing masquerading for sex standing in for intimacy giving way to deep, human, connection - could it be? - the whole goddamn meaning of life hidden right there in front of you while you're moving on the dancefloor, and all you need is the courage to go out and grab ahold, no need for words to get in the way.

of course, the singer is using words - most of the time, when she's not reduced to (liberated by?) breathy dahs and las and oohs and yeahs - she's expressing the only way she can, in crude, code-bound language, what you are thinking and feeling, and as you map your movements to her beats your thoughts meld to her meanings...and everything can be understood. except, the singer's just letting you in on a little secret, because, remember, they don't know what paris - remember paris? - has got on her mind, up her sleeve, close to her chest, she is in control (she's sexy and she knows it: clap your hands) and she's teasing the bejesus out of em...or else they're too blind, or scared, or dumb (or could it be they don't want her? unthinkable...most guys would die!) to see that she's not playing a game, this moment is critical, they're starting to win, that they're the one that she likes!

except when i say "they," i really mean do "you," because every one of these songs is about and addressed to, not just a generalized, impersonal, queen-of-the-club address to her subjects, but a very specific and unmistakable singular subject you. yes, you, baby, i see you. the oldest trick in the book, sure, simple and effective, and you are - forcibly, but who's complaining - involved; doubly so -and that's the real trick - if you were already physically involved (as storch and co. try their darnedest to ensure), freeing your ass so your subjectivity will follow. r. kelly famously spelled out his layers upon layers in his teleology of hedonism (per mike powell) - but i wonder if there's not just as much meta-flexivity going on here in these grooves, and in real-time to boot.

* * *
let's get this party started. a single siren blast - make way! queen paris comin' thru! - cue utilitarian/utopian late-period-missy beat ("yeah") bring on those wooshy string flutters ("that's hot") and in bursts "turn it up," offering just yr garden-variety dancing/sex conflation/ambiguity. seems like a sex jam ("gonna make me scream"), but with enough "move yr body/time to party" talk that she might just be hyping up the club heads, getting 'em excited, and giving 'em some practical advice - or just laying down the law: "you gotta know what to do/if you wanna get down/so don't blow the first move." pay attention, she's talking to you. the titular instruction is for you too (though the dj might take heed as well) - even if the "you" at this point is a little imprecise and general (well, it is only the first track - a little early for intimate dirty-talkin' one-on-one, no?) don't worry, you'll get your turn.

only not quite yet. "fighting over me" is the one song on the album not in second person. (the boyz - whom you will soon become - are there, but for now they're simply, generally, they. those silly boyz.) it's also the worst track on the album. potentially inoffensive (or even worthwhile for the chuckleable jadakiss verse and fat joe's "straight swoosh" line) but sunk by a lackluster beet (plinky piano, thin rudimental boom-bap; both way lame) and truly insipid chorus delivery. [paris gets points for the effort, but her hip-hop's got nothing on robyn - "konichiwa bitches" sure, but "handle me" even more so, uncannily street in both diction and cadence for a weepy-hearted swede.] presumably slotted second to spotlight the guests, it does couple decently with the (much more satisfyingly) hip-hop-inflected opener, and i'm happy to have it over with so early in the album. really, i don't mind this track that much, it's just rather dumb. [and i do have a special fondness for it ever since i noticed it playing in a very strait-laced looking forty-something's SUV in west philly rush hour traffic. brings to mind "c'mon, he's just going home from work, he's got his backpack on!"]

"fighting over me" is the first song that's explicitly set in a club, and it also sets up paris' so-so-so-sexy self-image rather nicely (with corroboration, even, though i'm not sure those hired thugs are trustworthy.) this is important because we actually won't be reminded of it again until "turn you on" (also a partial return to hip-hop) nine tracks later: for the bulk of the album, paris isn't a sex goddess, or at least she doesn't feel like one; she's just that girl, out there on the floor, hoping. see her? she's waiting for you, you can have her, she's relinquished her power - her heart's wide open! or maybe that's a put-on to; that's just what she wants you to think, and this time she's pulling one over on you as well as them. (she still sounds pretty darn confident.) the locus of power in these songs is constantly shifting, the tension of wanting/being wanted - the word "want" appears in 8 out of 11 songs - constitutes a slippery dynamic that propels the action forward, anxious and hopeful, in the quest for that elusive, crucial knowing. (because knowledge is power.) does the wantee want the wanter too? are you thinking what i'm thinking? what you waiting for? what do i gotta do? (and: why shouldn't we be with the one we really love?)

couple more exceptions, which i might as well get over with. two songs don't fit with the dancefloor framework (which is to say they occupy a different narrative space from the rest of the album, not that they're incongruous.) as it happens, they're also the two you can't really dance to. "jealousy" is a curious one, a moody mid-tempo angst-pop misfit (wall-of-guitar choruses don't quite constitute "rock"), and the only song that seems to reference the "real life" paris beyond the persona. we're not invited to identify with the "you" here, since it's an actually specific (and, almost uniquely, female) one: nicole ritchie. the nature of nicole's crime is a little unclear, despite the fascinating second verse: "now i'm like the devil/well if i am then what does that make you/you sold yourself for your fame/you'll still never walk a day in my shoes" - so nicole sold her soul to the devil i.e. paris herself, and is jealous because she can never be as diabolical? (and paris is upset by nicole's change even though she now owns her soul?)

anyway. "heartbeat" follows and doesn't quite return us to the dancefloor milieu so aptly established in the preceding "i want you." the "you" is yet again unattributable, although identifying with it takes a little more work since paris clearly knows this person somewhat well. in fact, this is the closest paris gets to a love song - notwithstanding the references to "kissing" and "lying here" and the throwaway double-entawdre on "come," there does seem to be more going on here than sex and superficiality. indeed, paradoxically, the sincerity and sweetness of its emotional landscape threatens its credibility, when set against the gloriously vapid, fantasy-driven realm of the rest of the album - but regardless of whether we want to allow paris the capacity for "real love," it's easily the album's sweetest moment. musically too, as it goes "be mine!" and "heartbeat" and "heartbeats" one better by actually sampling "time after time" (has that song become the inspiration for a whole subgenre?), and overlaying it with a gorgeous new melody that rivals "s.o.s." as '80s pastiche/mashup-pop track of the year.

the spectre of love raises its head elsewhere on the album of course - its possibility is insinuated all over the place, in fact, with the determinist-fantasy logic of dancing>sex>love posited just as inexorably as the old love>marriage>baby-in-the-baby-carriage schtick. one could choose to read "heartbeat" as a particularly well-developed dancefloor crush-fantasy (it's lyric is certainly generic enough) - and you could probably dance to it after all, or slow-dance at least. it does feel like a reverie, and as i suggested its reality is already somewhat suspect. (but no need to force an interpretation - i'm happy to leave it open.)

at first blush, "stars are blind" also seems to be specifically personal and about "love" and all that - but closer examination reveals it's pretty much all in the conditional. the love that's discussed is a potential, not a present, reality, despite paris' confidence that she's "perfect for you" and that "you can see the real me inside." she seems to know you at least somewhat, though she mostly just sees you as a contrast to "those other guys" (joe, jada, et. al.) who just wanna take her for a ride. key moment here is the bridge (a friend of mine claimed it's the song's biggest flaw - peter, are you reading this? - but i beg to differ), which lays out what's at stake: "excuse me for feeling/this moment is critical/it might be revealing/it could get physical." the song suggests a promise of love (though it's never straightorward - consider the ambiguous referent of "i'll show you mine") but the critical moment - the present moment - is all about a revealing physicality: sex - or dancing - that might just be the confirmation of love.

there's enough ambiguity to confound clear interpretation, but it's no stretch to imagine this exchange taking place in a club, (although i tend to imagine it on some perfectly airbrushed sunny beach - that's thanks to the music, natch, a reggae-pop confection that i'm always tempted to describe as a "slice" of something. doesn't need to be discussed more, but it was an excellent and creative single choice.) things are clearer in "i want you", wherein paris is "the kind of girl who likes to tell you what [she] want[s] in life." (even though she doesn't, exactly, beyond "you.") i initially thought this was sort of annoying for its valli/gibb sample, but is now one of my favorite tracks (the melodic overlay is quite nicely done) and also contains the excellent line "you'd be living in a dream if you were waking up next to me." this song is basically the thematic template for the whole album, and the opening stanza in particular sets out the modus operandi of dance-club "relationships":

excuse me, i think i've seen you on the dance floor
excuse me, i think they're playin' one of our songs
i see you, you've been here a lot of times
and you've been on my mind 'cause baby you're just so damn fine

viz: i've seen you, you're hot, i want you. (i love how - and this is totally plausible and psychologically accurate - she identifies the song as "one of ours" even though she hasn't spoken to the guy before.) this basic model holds, though the situation becomes more complicated, in the songs that i see as the core of the album - this one and tracks 7-9. these can be read as a sort of narrative sequence revolving around the same guy (in which case "not leaving without you" comes before the others) or they can be - as i sort of prefer - parallel but separate instances of the same kind of thing happening, much as, in the dancefloor-centric utopian vision of the world this album conjures, it must happen all the time, every night, in every club, all over the world. even though the songs are all addressed to a clear subject, it's an open question whether paris is actually literally speaking to "you" or whether these are simply her unexpressed thoughts, her inner emotional monologue that you as the listener are privy to but "you" the addressee are not. (one could also, of course read the songs as having different narrators - but that's definitely against the grain of my reading.)

in "nothing in this world" (yeah, probably her best song), "you" came to the club with somebody else, but she's not going to let that stop her: you and she "can do this thing tonight." "screwed" (my initial favorite and still way up there - i love the remix too) feels most like a continuation of this strand, wherein she's been initially shut down in favor of the other woman (and isn't it "so cliché" that you're "under the spell of a woman from hell"?), but is still holding out hope that you'll "turn down the lights" tonight (more on this later) - or failing that that you'll take her number for when you realize your mistake. things get twisty in the name of lyrical scansion, but it seems like she has resigned herself to being "screwed" for tonight - hence the unwieldy "tonight you could have found out [she] might have been the girl of your dreams" - however she could still, in may or mid-december, say, be the "perfect girl for you to..." what? root? run? love? (definitely not what she's saying, though it's on a lot of 'net lyric engines) i had myself convinced it was "ring," which at least makes sense in the context ("tell me that you want to take my number"), although it doesn't really sound like that either. by the way, the repeated phrase "please don't let it begin" is a bit confusing as well, anyway...

"not leaving without you" (another very catchy tune, with a really cool funky groove) inhabits similar thematic territory to "i want you," with some more of the nuances i was teasing out earlier. it has another excellent opening line - "i got my eye on you boy/and when i get my eye on something it's like search and destroy" - and it emphatically re-establishes the dance floor setting. i love how it intersperses oddly specific inner stream-of-consciousness romantic speculation ("i need someone who's sweet/someone who wants me for me/and when i'm not around he's not gonna cheat") with matter-of-fact addressing of the present moment ("we can dance, we can dance, we can dance.") she wants to "know things about you," but unlike in "screwed" (which she's clearly not, or doesn't think she is anyway), she doesn't want you to ask her for her number ('cuz it's "undercover," obviously) - she's confident that you'll be hers, and it's not just that she wants to let you know before you go home alone (like in "i want you"): her mind's made up and she's not leaving without you.

after this unstoppable, exquisite suite (easily the album's pinnacle, if you ask me), it's time for a change of pace, and a recapitulation. "turn you on" - musically a pale reflection of "turn it up" and the closest thing to filler ("fighting over me" is at least unique enough not to quite qualify) - is also a lyrical return to the thematic material of the first couple of tracks. in a sense, it works as a concluding summation of what has gone before, pulling the camera back to take in the whole club after a series of close-framed one-on-one scenes. the third-person "boys" are back (with girls too, this time), still after her 'cause she's sexy (and she can't blame them.) they even get to speak, by way of paris' snide impersonation ("i'm hot and i can't take it/i need a drink/she's cooler than i ever thought she'd be.") "you" - her dance partner - is still here too, though her attitude toward you has changed enough - "don't dance too close/i might turn you on" - to suggest this is a different you (though one that you the listener is still encouraged to identify with.) (of course, maybe it was all in your pathetic little head the whole time, loser.) for the first time, paris directly addresses a female (plural) "you" as well, even if it's just to briefly and abruptly chide the women in the club, among them, presumably, those hellish interlopers from "nothing in this world" and "screwed": "don't be mad at me go check your man". it's a harsh shattering of the utopian vision presented earlier, of the dancefloor as a land of opportunity and unspoken romantic potential, a reassertion of paris' power and everyone else's lack of it (including yours), and an affirmation of the crass and blatant superficiality of the entire situation.

how's that for rereading what i initially took as derivative late-album filler into a cynical, overarching statement-of-purpose? just goes to show you can interpret anything however you want. maybe. of course, the album doesn't end on that bleak if intriguingly unidealized note. there's still the closing "throwaway cover." which i would offer instead as a kind of alternate ending - a return to the possibilities suggested in the mid-section of the album, that a connection on a dance floor can deepen into something "real" - that there even exists something real beyond the dance club demimonde, or the empty, artificial, power-obsessed mode of life it might easily be taken to represent.

"do ya think i'm sexy" is the only moment on the album in which the action clearly progresses from the club into the outside world - past the night to the next morning, when "they wake at dawn" and contemplate going to a movie. notice the crucial shift though: this story is told in third person, and it isn't our paris who "at last" has been taken home, but "two total strangers" - to her and to us as well as each other. the chorus shifts to direct address, saying the same thing paris has essentially been saying for the entire album - "if you want my body and you think i'm sexy/come on sugar, let me know" - but it's presented as dialogue in the story, at least until the final chorus, when it's no longer relevant to the story at hand, no longer necessary to help these characters find their happiness, and instead, perhaps, enacts a shift back into paris' own familiar voice, with her still stuck in the club, wanting you, waiting for you to take her home, and why hasn't it happened yet, don't you, doesn't everyone think she's sexy???)

(one final aside: i'm curious about the way three consecutive songs - the exquisite tracks 7-9 - make reference to "turning down the lights." the most straightforward is in "not leaving without you": "when the lights go down" = when she finally gets you home and in bed and will, cleverly, "see what it's all about." "nothing in this world" substitutes "turn out the light" for "stop us tonight" after the second iteration of the title phrase in the chorus, which kind of seems like a throwaway, but suggests, i suppose "the light" that exists between you and her can't be extinguished. which is sort of a nice image. finally, "screwed" - probably the most interesting song on the album lyrically - finds her hoping that "tonight you're gonna turn down the lights and give me a little more room just to prove it to you." my sense is that this turning down of the lights will happen when he's (you're) at home and going to bed, and since - according to my reading - she's not going to be there, the "making room" is metaphorical - she hope's he'll think about her as he falls asleep and that he'll reconsider her offer. that's definitely a more subtle and nuanced scenario than the lyric initially suggests. none of this is especially significant to the album, but i do like how the thematic repetition - which occurs in a few other places too - reveals itself to be so multivalent.)

* * *

now, i can't say for sure that this reading of mine has anything to do with what the album's creators intended. my understanding of this persona is after all based primarily on a handful of the songs and specifically-inflected readings of others, and doesn't entirely apply to all of them; nor do i necessarily think that the thematic resonances across the songs are the result of careful coordination among the various writers and producers involved. they're essentially unexceptional and probably even predictable - not so much coincidences as the unremarkable redundancy of stock clichés. indeed, there's nothing especially contrived about any it, which may be why it's so effective: nobody's trying to present paris as anything unexpected (least of all paris herself) - or when they are ("heartbeat," possibly?) it's so transparent as to be a harmless, even cute diversion - and so i have no problem accepting the persona i encounter in this album to be the "authentic" paris, or at least her earnestly presented public face.

(come and get it, by way of contrast, is full of sincere relationship songs - lusting and falling and loving and getting confused and breaking up - with nuanced, heartfelt lyrics, any number of which capture some essential truth about 'humanity,' and none of which believably, or even recognizably, capture anything about rachel stevens. she has one co-writing credit on the whole record, by the way.)

one could press further and examine the writing credits, and possible previous appearances of some of these songs, as well as looking more closely at paris' real life and publicly-expressed opinions (none of which i know much about) and consider how much intention we can ascribe to paris and/or her collaborators. but i'm more than happy to leave all that aside for the time being (always one of my favorite beings), because ultimately it's not very relevant to how i experience of the album. i don't pretend that my reading of the album in any way definitive, or any more true than any other response to it (of which there have been many.) but it is clear to me that it lends itself to speculation and exploration, and is substantial enough to sustain it. i've very much enjoyed the process of writing this as an opportunity to explore possible meanings in the songs and the album as a whole. hope you've found it worth reading. let me know if you have any thoughts. and if you think i'm sexy, well... come on, sugar.

pop goes the canon

hi girls! want to reserve a spot in the pance-dop pantheon? just throw your hands in the air!

the topic is pop albums. good ones, i.e. all the songs are good (or, only very few are noticably not good.) (pop=dancepop, basically, because that's what it means, basically.) there aren't very many of them, it seems (exactly why that is is the bulk of the thorny analytical tangle i've just decided to absent myself from.) at least, there aren't very many compared to the very many pop albums that have some good (or great) music but are no-way good albums.

i hope we can agree to agree on this.

ignoring roughly everything before the birth of "modern dancepop" - which i shall somewhat arbitrarily designate the late '90s teen-dance xplosion - my canonical example of a good pop album (and ergo, practically, a bona-fide classic) is kylie minogue's fever. only one truly unmemorable cut (track 10, "love affair"), and the next weakest thing is probably the opener for goodness sakes. which, if nothing else, is a seemingly-revelatory departure from the single-first pop tradition.

coincidentally or not, i trace my modern pop fixation - as it has become - to my first exposure to this album, a good year or two late, in the winter of '03. i it borrowed from rabi, along with avril's let go, after being curious, if not entirely surprised, to find them in her sacrosanct collection. (she'd deny it or laugh it off, but at least in terms of wonky 'net-message-board cool, she was definitely a good step or two ahead of me.) anyway, the avril disc didn't do much for me (though i liked the singles, which i'd heard. i have recently acquired it for myself, but haven't really revisited it properly)...but fever, damn. i can't say it was its albumness that did the trick - indeed, i was mostly just falling in love with individual songs one after another, most chiefly the title track (which i still don't think gets enough love) but also <3@1^stsite. but its consistency surely helped encourage my repeated plays.

from there, the combo of my "professional" interest as a dj, my culture-satured summer in nyc during the reign of many of the most attention-grabbing pop singles of the young decade, the continued influence of rabi and her mysterious multi-aliased friend, and of course the effects of great populist critical glasnost worked collectively on my musical sensibilities such that, when dave moore started raving about annie and then abba and skye and pretty soon bet the farm and, you know, became "unusually shrewd pop blogger dave moore" - i'm going to stop talking about him now, since he's evidently the only person who reads this page anyway, and this sentence is ridiculously long - well anyway i was primed and ready to take up the charge of poptimism, lining up to fight behind dave's (purple, dumb-pun-happy) standard. ashlee lindsay rah rah rah.

except... i still have a strong attachment to the album, and though i wouldn't say it's exactly been a stumbling block in my open-armed investigation of this brave new genre-world (the good news: teen-pop cds are generally so cheap that it's easy to forgive high filler ratios) it leaves me conflicted as to how i actually want to experience it. exploratory mp3 downloads, cream-culling mixtapes, and dj-career-writeoff-patchfest-purchases are all very well, but i still want (it feels naive) to be able to put on an album, sit back, and just enjoy away (i never bother with skip buttons) naturally, i'd rather not waste time on mediocre music that shares plastic with tunes i actively enjoy, but the record collector/librarian/completist in me won't really be satisfied unless i can assimilate and, hopefully, learn to like all the things by the artists i like. (why else would i seek out the best-of comps with the longest possible track-listings for artists in whom my true interest probably doesn't extend beyond a couple of big singles.)

all which means i'm going to keep buying (used) and being disappointed by well-intentioned pop records, in the hopes that i can force myself to construe them as good albums even though they're probably merely angling to avoid embarrassment.

eh, that sounds too dire. let's get on with the listing that you probably thought was going to be the focus of this post. to be honest, fever isn't a very interesting album - apart from the electroclash appropriation/apotheosis of the CGYOOMH monster and its clone with the clone-centric video, nothing even tries to feel innovative; and save the classic[read: 60s]-pop formalism of the title track and the funk jitter of "give it to me" there's hardly any sonic or textural variety.

anniemal, which shares fever's consistently "icy" cast, encompasses far more musical range - and accordingly has much more distinctive singles (by which i actually mean standout album tracks, by which i mean almost all of them.) which translates to an album that's similarly cohesive (and equally consistent, quality-wise) but has a lot more personality, even if annie's vocal presence isn't that much more empathetic.

rachel stevens' come and get it is very much in the same camp, and even though nothing on it quite matches the lovable idiosyncrasy of "chewing gum" or the blissful rush of "love at first sight" (or, i'll admit it, the smile-inducing scene-solidarity factor of "heartbeat") it's probably the best album of the three. rachel herself may not present much of a persona (certainly compared to annie), but her singing is undeniably fuller and more emotive, albeit in a sort of mannered way. her album definitely has less of an emotional arc than annie's does, however, despite a nearly comparable diversity of musical approach and tone.

indeed, the sequencing of the album feels almost arbitrary, its most potentially poignant moments stranded mid-album amongst incompatible, higher-energy numbers. but more to the point: nothing on come and get it even approaches filler. (was gonna say the clunky-funky "je m'appelle" comes closest - but screw that, it's totally good!) on the flipside, nothing on it stands out as an obvious single choice (if pressed, i might tap "so good," although "i will be there" is perhaps my favorite song) - and i can't decide if that might feel like a failing even though the reason for it (every bloody song on the record is great!) is obviously to the album's undying credit. maybe if it did somehow have a true head-and-shoulders stand-out (it'd have to be seriously classic calibre) the album would have been a hit (in the u.k. i mean) - i seriously do not understand how it wasn't; i mean, rach's an established celebrity, right? 'course, look at paris, but rachel's a famous singer. well, blimey. maybe her affectlessness hurt her more than you'd expect.

a very different cd in many respects, and one which i enjoy at least as much if not more, is robyn's dramatically unconventional self-titled 'comeback' from last year. robyn does share with rachel's album a dearth of unambiguous single contenders, although the number one slot is appropriately given to a banger - "who's that girl?", whose only (quibbling) fault is rubbing up dangerously close to (its producers/composers) the knife's "heartbeats". actually, there are really only two or three other dance numbers on the whole album, including "crash and burn girl," whose infectious, sinuous bass slither resembles nothing so much as a double-time "closer." but "be mine!", it's ultimately obvious, is the album's most singularly glorious moment. that exclamation point in the title - and even the title itself - seem to have less to do with the subject matter of the song than the sheer effervescence of the song itself, so sublimely conceived that it can't help but exult despite the heartbreak of its lyrical content.

trying not to turn this into a yawning/fawning belated capsule review here, but singling out songs, even as a hypothetical exercise, is like choosing among children. reasonably ignoring the two cute but tiny introludes and the truly bizarre, scene-setting first track, this record only contains ten songs; but each one feels like a world in itself, a perfect little construction that follows its particular lyrical and stylistic conceits to their necessary ends. just as important, each seems to fulfill a vital role in the context of the whole, combining to present a complex and engaging portrait of this tremendously likable woman, among whose attributes are a top-notch melodic sense, a dynamic and versatile voice, a totally nutty sense of humor, spiky cattitude, and a mile-wide sentimental streak. sigh. (don't even get her started on her bada-boom-booms.) especially effective is the closing quartet of songs, each a sweet and affecting portrayal of a different aspect of romantic relationships, which taken as a whole form the tail end of the non-narrative yet unmistakable emotional arc that renders he album so deeply satisfying.

these are the albums that come most clearly to mind. girls aloud have a lot of supporters along the lines of these things, and i like several of their singles, but what will the neighbors say? - the album of theirs i know best - leaves me unconvinced. i may also need to hear a different sugababes disc (angels... gets half marks.) madonna's music and possibly confessions... should probably be mentioned, especially since we're canonizing kylie - the former, in particular, was a favorite of mine pre-poptimism (at the time of its release i heralded its use of house-based beats as a triumphant reclamation of contempo dance music from the essentially undanceable teen-pop legions - and i'm not entirely sure i disagree with that assessment.)

otherwise, you may note that everything i've discussed so far has been european. americans are traditionally limited at this kind of thing (that is, electro-pop, and i guess i should really say "uninterested") - anyway our contributions in this period have been more r'n'b focused (would be good to do a good albums survey there too - aaliyah, sure, but what else?) or more rock than dance. but i have been wondering about britney spears - britney, in particular, has a lot of strong, and envelope-pushing (i guess) album tracks, towards the end especially. i should also probably spend more time with m!ssundaztood.

likewise, i haven't mentioned anything from this year (last year was the glut, it seems, and i haven't even discussed i am me - which is not really a dance-pop album, and anyway isn't adding anything new to the conversation dave and i and those guys have all the time.) it just occured to me to bring up the junior boys, who are obviously (or just seemingly?) in a somewhat different category, but are somewhat cordoned off by themselves anyway, and definitely made at least one album of brilliant dance-pop (last exit: the new one is more brilliant, more pop, but less dance, though possibly still dance enough - will have to consider whether and how to deal with this.) does that mean including ladytron (yeah, they and also goldfrapp are valid contenders, though i'm not sure if either fully deliver the goods. black cherry maybe.) however... and this is pretty straight up: erlend øye. definitely sweet. whoops i forgot the knife too. or maybe not, now i'm just confusing myself. indiedance affirmative action should not be allowed to make me feel better about my pop album quandary, no matter how poptastic it is.

all of which brings me...or rather, it was meant to...to paris. which i'm not going to write about now, because you've had rather too much to read tonight, and i to write, with the realness. but. hopefully somewhere in here i've managed to dispense with some preliminarities that will allow me to get down to business next time, when i thrillingly assert that (wait for it) ms. hilton has crafted (see what i did etc.) a fully worthy addition to the petit canon of post-teenboom dance-pop album statements. surprised yet? and despite what you may think, on the robyn-annie-kylie-rachel spectrum (is that right?), i say she lands firmly left of center.

yow is it ever bedtime!

just like i never did before

listening to my long-suffering copy of the cream of clapton this morning, i notice that e.c. seems to be pretty bad at singing lyrics. i mean, "i told you 'bout the swans that they live in the park"?

well, that's all.

dad-rock ruminations will have to wait. decoding of paris' paris persona coming soon (i don't think it's really all that fragmentary, mr. bedbug.)

damn i want to hear this don byron plays jr. walker thing. i'm such a sucka.

john and sharon: live and in person

01. in d.c. this weekend, i got the chance to see and hear two of my favorite performers: the mountain goats and sharon jones and the dap-kings. in both cases, a total treat. the latter was particularly lovely; not only was the concert free and outside (on the terrace in the back of the kennedy center), i hadn't known it was happening until the night before.

and sharon sounded better than ever. her singing was at its most dynamic and technically impressive; it seemed like her vocal chops have improved in the months since i've seen her. and the band - tight as ever, of course - appeared more comfortable on stage; binky griptite's emceeing was more commanding, the horn section choreography less put-on, and the interplay between sharon and individual band-members - in a spotlighting series of solos that i think was a new addition to the show as i'd seen it - more substantial and touching. despite her weirdly formal pale green pants-suit, sharon's characteristic playfulness and uninhibited pre-song banter (the first thing she told us was that she loses her mind when she gets on stage) won over the demographically mixed and potentially awkward haute-d.c. crowd of mostly daptone neophytes right away. (the incongruous and futile six-count swing dance lesson before the show hadn't made matters easier.) still no sign of "N.B.L." or "all over again" in the live show, but that's a drag i've come to expect by now, and there were several promising new songs that were almost as exciting. oh yeah, and her dance breakdowns on "there was a time" (ooh, checkit) and the bit about her ancestors are as awesome as ever.

as for the mountain goats, they're riding the wave of their growing popularity (a sold out show at the black cat, definitely the largest venue i've seen them at save the pitch4kfest) with typically casual aplomb. which is to say the show wasn't appreciably different from the intimate set i saw at haverford last year (not different, in "mode", let's say, except that that show was many times more special and awesome, partly because of its intimacy.) the setlist drew about equally from sunset tree and get lonely, reminding me how much i like the former ("lion's tooth"! "love love love"! ...as if i needed reminding) and gently enhancing my positive take on the latter, either in spite or because of its lyrical cohesiveness-bordering-on-monotony. (i liked how he introduced "moon over goldsboro" as a song about a guy who walks to the gas station and wishes he could keep walking, but ends up having to walk home.) a couple of older selections too, though nothing older or more potent than "baboon" from the coroner's gambit (a treat) - and an excellent new song (key chorus line: "hold onto your dreams 'til someone beats them out of you.") the set was cut short (i'm pretty sure) by the glitchy twofer of a sound snafu (no guitar in the house) and a broken string. but they pulled through (rather than dealing with these issues) with a bass-and-vocals only closer and encore, including "best houseguest" or whatever that franklin bruno song is called, and an audience sing-and-flip-off-along to "no children."

2. this was my seventh time seeing the mountain goats and my third time seeing sharon. i'd wager you can't see musicians that many times (or else you don't - and certainly not thrice in one year!) without developing the sense of a "personal" relationship with them that affects how you experience their concerts and (perhaps to a lesser extent) records. it's hard to characterize, but it definitely adds a dimension to the "typical" artist-listener relationship, and i imagine it has a lot more to do with why people like going to live concerts than the straightforward pleasure of watching music be created.

i started off by calling sharon jones and the mountain goats two of my favorite performers, but i have to say it feels incongruous to leave that as an unqualified description, and particularly that something rubs me a little funny about using that word to describe john darnielle. and that's the thing i'd like to tussle out a minute here.

3. darnielle (who still, effectively, is the mountain goats) presents himself as an ordinary guy. i hesitate even to say "presents," but you've gotta know that anything that happens on stage, particularly if it happens night after night for years (and seven times in my presence) is some sort of presentation, just as much as 19th century realist fiction involves construction and artifice, as i've spent three hours every recent wednesday being made to realize despite spending [1000 pages in three weeks times ~20 pages per hour averages to] roughly seventeen hours a week (!) allowing tolstoy to try to delude me otherwise. so darnielle's performance mode is "unaffected" - he gets up there, plays songs on his guitar, talks to the audience (or to himself, or to peter) in a witty but off-the-cuff manner that one gathers is not dissimilar to the way he speaks in everyday life (except insofar as he probably doesn't spend much time in everyday life introducing songs), responds to things people in the crowd say, and sometimes acknowledges the artificiality of the concert setting and an awareness of the broader context (for instance, before playing the new song he suggested he'd prefer for people in the audience not to post the song on the internet right away.) that's about it.

"the dap-tone super-soul revue" on the other hand - which apparently is the title of every sharon jones concert even if the "revue" part merely consists of the band playing a number or two (with binky singing) before "the brightest star in the dap-tone universe" takes the stage - is obviously a very different, and much more complex, kind of presentation. one could of course talk about the mountain goats show in terms of costuming, set composition, pre-planned routines to accompany songs (parts where peter sings back-up on a line, for instance), and the deliberate creation of a persona - and it would be a mistake to assume that john and peter don't put thought into these things, even though they don't call attention to them in the way the dap-kings certainly do. but it's perhaps more interesting to consider the more overt ways in which their performance styles are similar (and different) and how these affect their relationship with the audience.

4. for one thing, both concerts have a similar type of predictable conventionality: without having seen either performer before, i could have told you which parts of each show were "standard" (that is, which ones happen at every SJ or MGs concert) and which were unique to that evening. in the goats' case, it's easy to predict (correctly) that the setlist varies from night to night, with some songs turning up at a majority of shows and others only making rare appearances - a traditional approach for singer-songwriters attempting to balance the desires of a "cult" following and newer fans hoping to hear the "hits" - and that the "banter" is effectively different at every show, but that the basic format is fixed and unchanging. at the dap-tone revue, it's possible to distinguish sharon's off-the-cuff banter from the more "scripted" (or at least standardized) patter which probably makes up at least 60% of her talking on stage. and the complexity of concert-going conventions require that we on some level "suspend disbelief" and pretend that her extended monologues-cum-dance-demonstration routines are completely impromptu, something special she's deciding to share with us on this lucky night, even though it's obvious they aren't.

of course, in both cases, this conventionality is only "predictable" with a large amount of cultural conditioning about how to interpret these performances in context - and i can't really speak to how someone with a different set of cultural expectations would understand these concerts. there are definitely concerts and performers that willfully attempt to defy conventional expectations or else at least engage with in novel ways (although eventually every "experimental" performance styles develops its own conventions) but these two are notably standardized modes - folk/singer-songwriter performance and funk/soul revue - that are drawing on well-established traditions.

5. in sharon's case, the relationship with historical tradition is an especially pertinent consideration. everything about daptone records - the music, the stage shows, the visual aesthetic, the preoccupation with LPs and 45s, etc. etc. - is based on (or should i say "taken from"? their website says "channels the spirit of") the culture of soul music in the mid- to late 1960s. this is overt - or, well, obvious - but not quite explicit in the sense that, for example, there is nothing in the "daptone revue" show that says this kind of music and presentation is not standard practice in 2006. it's presented neither as nostalgia (though it could certainly serve as such for the appropriate audience members) nor as "retro" revivalism, but, straight-facedly, as living and contemporary music, albeit music with strong roots in tradition. i would say this choice of presentation is exceptionally canny, since it neither limits nor presupposes their audience (thereby allowing their appeal to range broadly, without the assurance of a given target market), although describing it as a "choice" raises issues as thorny as those it addresses. it's worth noting that daptone is an artist-owned and -run independent label, a manifestly self-propelling and, one imagines, somewhat communal organization whose labor-of-love ethos does wonders for the sense of authenticity purveyed by the music. and authenticity, predictably, is one of the largest issues at stake in all of this.

one significant factor i have yet to mention is the unique position of sharon herself: born in 1956 (i was at her 50th!) in augusta, georgia, she wasn't quite old enough to have been a performer in the "original soul era" (or whatever), but she was sure old enough to have been around for it, which affords her a free pass beyond the quagmire of authenticity issues that plague james hunter, for instance - a young and british musician working in a similarly "spirit-channelling" vein. it's even to her credit that she wasn't a known figure in the old days (she did some back-up singing in the '70s, but didn't record under her own name until the late '90s), since she can't be a "comeback" (read: nostalgia) artist like candi staton; also, even at fifty she's got plenty enough youthful spark to convey the adolescent excitement of classic soul along with its "mature" aspect.

[there's a lot to say here...and i'm getting off the immediate topic of this post...but i've just realized that i'd really like to and ought to think and write more about daptone, and then propose to deliver a paper about it at next year's EMP! fits in perfectly with the theme of history, time and place.]

[EDIT: another thing to think about: sharon and agency/authenticity w/r/t ashlee/paris/et. al., considering her songs are all written/arranged/produced by bosco mann. who's also the bandleader, even though he never says anything on stage, just hides behind his big shades. looking vaguely sinister: like a spector/svengali. she acknowledged him at this show - saying that whenever anything's going on in her life she tells bosco and he writes a song about it - which i hadn't her do before.]

i have no problem whatsoever accepting sharon jones and the dap-kings as fully legitimate, authentic (proviso caveat) and (even!) relevant musicians. actually, it's almost weird to feel it necessary to state that, but i can easily imagine someone taking a different view (seeing them as "nostalgic," "novelty," "niche," or whatever.) and - to get back on track - i'd attribute a good chunk of this willingness to my having seen her now three times, to the relationship we've developed (i mean, even apart from bringing her flowers and being pulled on stage to dance with her) and my investment in and awareness of her as a person. put another way, when you've actually seen a band and recognize them as "just people"/artists trying to make it - even though their onstage presentation belies that image (because they act like they're the biggest stars in the world playing at the apollo) - it fosters an artist-to-audience/community relationship that's decidedly different from the cultural-phenomenon-to-consumer-of-culture relationship. whew. (i'm not sure i want to privelege and valorize the live concert experience the way i seem to be doing here: it's not necessarily so that a concert will change one's relationship with the performer in the manner i'm describing; furthermore there are other ways of that change occuring, including just by listening to the records.)

6. i said a while ago that john darnielle presents himself as an ordinary guy. that's not quite right: he presents himself as "himself." or just as himself (maybe). in any case, he's quite clearly not an ordinary guy. except for being white, male, having a guitar around his neck and writing songs about relationships between men and women. (all of which is more than enough to relegate him to rockist purgatory in case somebody wants to make this into a post about rockism, which i don't really feel like touching.) alyssa once said that being a mountain goats fan is about liking (or at least being interested in?) john darnielle himself, which i think is very true in a way it's maybe hard to see with respect to even other similar artists (i'd have to think about this more thoug - i do see some parallels with dylan, especially q.v. the dylanology essay in best music writing 2002.) given that, the live show is an especially significant locus of the fandom experience, the opportunity to encounter the goathead (?)

more specifically, the live show simultaneously furthers and, in moments, seems to diffuse the mystification that i see as central to the mountain goats' appeal - that is, the tension between fiction and lived reality in darnielle's songwriting. to what extent are john's songs autobiographical versus purely fictional? are they based on emotions and situations that he's experienced, but with details reinvented or obscured? these questions are hard to ask about most of his lyrics, as elliptical as they tend to be, and to be honest they aren't especially relevant to enjoying his work - the flawed logic of "guy with guitar => confessional songriter" trope has been plenty dismantled elsewhere. still, i can't help but wonder, in the wake of two widely-hailed "autobiographical" (but still markedly abstruse) albums and a third that sure feels starkly confessional but flies in the face of the fact of his happy marriage - unless it's a tortured and album-long revisitation of a past breakup(s) in which case i wonder what lalitree's thinking - where, exactly, is john in all of this.

plus, if goats-fanboy = darnielle-spotter, there are tantalizing glimpses of the carefully-selectively-hidden man himself that come in his confessional song introductions (i reckon maybe two or three per show are revealing in some way - his banter at the haverford show last year significantly changed my understanding of the sunset tree, and even if there's something distasteful in the smack of "detective work" i'm sort of surprised there isn't more of an online community devoted to exchanging such "clues") and even in the emotionally charged delivery of certain lines. there may not be much "content" conveyed in his passionate delivery, but the unmistakable intensity (his forceful whisper, his removed glasses, his clenched face and taut, raised palm, his open mouth and its 'silent shout') confirms the emotional resonance of songs whose lyrics only hint at the possibility of great emotion. i love the way he seems to inhabit each of his songs as he performs it; the sense that he is re-living (even the fictional?) scenarios whose essence they capture. that way that, although their substance may remain ineffable, their impact is unmistakably there in that moment, and if you're there, you can share the moment with him too.

key example of this at the black cat show: he introduced "baboon" with the repeated mantra, "hope it never happens to you" - solemnly proferring the wisdom that, though we can't know another's hopes, he hopes we share with him the hope, that "it" never happens to us or to anyone else, hope it doesn't. the song is wonderfully intense, as performed there and on album, and although the lyrics are hopelessly elusive about what's actually happening, darnielle's spoken prologue attests to the gravity of its horror, and affirms the underlying sense that even his most impenetrable songs are about something deeply real to him.

7. john darnielle's mystery is that he's an ordinary-looking, overly articulate, jovial and wisecracking but - it sometimes seems - also painfully introverted, bespectacled, place-name-obsessed boxing fan and classics geek who has the ability to craft marvelously concise and - if you surrender to them - hauntingly poetic songs about the emotional experience of contemporary life and relationships. sharon jones' mystery is that she makes soul music not only vital and relevant, but personally meaningful as a contemporary individual. these mysteries - not all that mysterious, perhaps, but entrancing nevertheless - are at their most pronounced in these artists' respective live performances, where they are, in turn, perpetuated, complicated, investigated, rendered insignificant, debunked, reenacted, and never, we hope, quite resolved... but that's why you gotta go back and see them again.