Flluxblog Weekly #157: Father John Misty, Insecure Men, Speedy Ortiz, Sloan, Flasher
April 23rd, 2018
This Is Just My Vibe
Father John Misty “Mr. Tillman”
1. The verses in “Mr. Tillman” are sung from the perspective of a concierge at a hotel where Father John Misty – a.k.a. Josh Tillman – is staying and behaving like an inebriated paranoid wreck for days on end. It’s played as a dark comedy, and part of the joke is the way the concierge’s polite language puts a sunny spin on Tillman’s disturbing behavior and just barely conceals their impatience with him as the song goes along.
2. Note the contrast of the meter in the verse and the chorus: The concierge’s obsequious dialogue tightly wraps around melody and flows between measures, suggesting a formal and uptight demeanor. The chorus, from Tillman’s perspective, is relaxed and loose. He sounds blissful, oblivious, and delusional.
3. This isn’t the first time Tillman has written a song about himself as a very unsympathetic and unlikeable character. It’s hard to say how much either this or “The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment” is about him – probably a fair amount, with some degree of artistic license. He clearly delights in playing with the audience’s perception of him, being a guy who records under a pseudonym/persona and sings songs about a guy who has his real name. He’s inviting you to doubt how “real’ those songs are, which strikes me as a way of covering his ass. Is he a drunken train wreck, like in “Mr. Tillman”? Is he attracted to women who bring out his worst misogynistic impulses, as in “…Our Apartment”? I don’t know the guy. Maybe?
4. It’s interesting to write a song about yourself going on an out-of-control bender and writing it mostly from the perspective of the people who have to look after you and clean up your messes. He’s being treated like a coddled baby – at one point the concierge offers to bring him a Regalo, one of those safety gates for small children, to keep him from hurting himself. On one level, this is like an admission of guilt after the fact for being a burden on other people. But it’s also a judgment on himself, for giving into the rock cliché of being a spoiled baby-man. And then there’s another layer where he’s alienated by his awareness that the concierge in sycophantic and concerned entirely because it’s their job. If his self-destructive behavior is the result of feeling disconnected and lost in a world full of fake people who don’t care about him, this only proves him right to feel that way.
Buy it from Amazon.
April 23rd, 2018
Third World Tears
Insecure Men “Mekong Glitter”
“Mekong Glitter” is an ambiguous tribute to Gary Glitter, one of the most unsettling figures in the history of pop music. The song focuses on the darkest phase of Glitter’s life after he was released from prison in the U.K. for possessing child pornography and he flees to Cambodia and Vietnam to avoid the scrutiny of the British public and fully embrace his despicable urges. (He ended up getting busted in both of those countries too, and getting deported back to England.) Insecure Men channel Glitter’s distinctive and truly brilliant glam-shuffle aesthetic but fill the negative space with buzzing distortion. It sounds like someone lit “Rock and Roll Part 2” on fire, or like a villainous Glitter strutting through hell. And like, of course, this sounds incredibly cool and that’s also very upsetting.
“Mekong Glitter” is a song that deliberately pokes at you and tries to make you feel uncomfortable. In the breakdown, Saul Adamczewski asks us “Why don’t you ever ask why?,” and it’s hard to parse exactly what he’s asking, but it resonates and effectively stirs up guilt. Why do people like Gary Glitter do the things they do? Why is he seemingly unrepentant? Why does does it feel like we’re turning a blind eye to his crimes and the people he’s victimized whenever we hear Glitter’s songs and acknowledge that a lot of them are absolutely amazing?
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 24th, 2018
Your Just Can’t Evens
Speedy Ortiz “You Hate the Title”
“You Hate the Title” is so sunny and catchy that I’d believe it if you told me Sadie Dupuis wrote it as an audition to become a professional jingle writer. The perky tone suits her melodic style and brings out a playful sweetness in her voice that makes it so that this song about dealing with criticism comes out sounding good-natured and self-aware rather than peevish and wildly insecure. This is mostly an expression of mild exasperation with someone who basically likes what she’s doing but can’t help but complain about the details. At first this sounds like it’s about the audience, but I think it’s more likely about collaborators and producers – you want to please them, you want them to do their job and push you, but you’re also just trying to do your thing as honestly as you can.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 25th, 2018
You Almost Apologized
Sloan “Don’t Stop (If It Feels Good, Do It)”
Sloan is a band comprised of four singer-songwriters with their own distinct but complementary aesthetics. It took me a long time to notice this, but one of the ways their styles overlap is in how each of them writes lyrics. By and large, their songs tend to be addressing someone – their relationship with that person is usually left ambiguous – and the tone is usually critical, though seldom confrontational. They always sound like they’re negotiating for peace, making a case for cutting someone off, or talking someone into something. In the context of the albums it often sounds like they might be passive-aggressively singing to each other. I wouldn’t be shocked if a significant chunk of the Sloan catalog is about the interpersonal dynamics of the band.
“Don’t Stop (If It Feels Good Do It)” is a Chris Murphy composition, but its title and hook is a callback to a Patrick Pentland song from their 2001 record Pretty Together. I’m not sure how significant that connection is, but it doesn’t seem like a coincidence. At any rate, this song slots right into my Grand Unifying Theory of Sloan – the verses are all Murphy chiding some overbearing person with a poor sense of boundaries, but the chorus is just good time rock vibes that defuse the mood. It’s a very fun song, so it’s hard to tell how seriously you’re supposed to take the negative lyrics. Murphy never seems particularly angry. If anything, he seems bemused.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 26th, 2018
Cut Along The Dotted Line
Flasher “Pressure”
“Pressure” sounds remarkably similar to some of the deeply obscure American indie/punk DIY singles collected on the old Homework CDR compilations from the early 2000s. It’s in the voice, it’s in the nervous energy, and especially in the way the melodies wind tightly around the rhythm and hooks seem to leap up slightly ahead of schedule. I love the lead guitar melody that punctuates the chorus – or maybe the better word is bisects it, since the song accelerates into another different chorus on the other side of it. I’m particularly fond of that one, especially the way the phrase “night to night suicide all of the time” spills out over the chords. The lyrics are basically words of empathy and support for someone struggling with anxiety and depression, but the tone isn’t dark or maudlin. It’s a very fun sort of commiseration and catharsis.
Buy it from Amazon.