Fluxblog Weekly #185: Iggy Pop, Deerhunter, H.E.R., Pistol Annies
November 5th, 2018
How I Wish You Would
Iggy Pop “Fall In Love with Me”
Iggy Pop improvised his lyrics to this song, and it shows – it’s pretty clear that he’s free-associating, and there are some lines that probably would’ve been changed or removed if it were more deliberately written. (Why does he seems so impressed by a table being made of wood?)
This is very much a song that would be compromised by too much thought, and a lot of the appeal is in the looseness of the music and the way Iggy seems to be figuring out his feelings of lust in real time. Half of the song is just him trying to describe this woman he’s hot for – her clothes, her personality, her aesthetic – and the rest is him trying to will a relationship into existence. Sometimes the title phrase is a suggestion, other times it’s more of a demand. A lot of the time it’s just a wish that he desperately needs to come true.
The line that really gets me in “Fall In Love with Me” is when Iggy says “there’s just a few like you.” I like the way that acknowledges and appreciates her being special and rare, but hedges just a tiny little bit. That’s the part in the song that best conveys the stakes – he knows he can’t afford to screw this up, because the chances of meeting and seducing one of the others like her seems fairly slim. And when you’re Iggy Pop in the late ‘70s, that’s really saying something.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 6th, 2018
A Light That Burned Me
Deerhunter “Death In Midsummer”
“Death In Midsummer” has an unusually crisp sound for Deerhunter, a band more accustomed to an artful soft-focus aesthetic. A lot of this comes down to the way the verses are guided by a taut rhythm and the clean, trebly tone of the harpsichord. The song moves along for nearly three minutes before shifting into a cathartic guitar solo section that sounds like Bradford Cox doing what he can to channel the sci-fi tones of Robert Fripp. It’s a very graceful and confident piece of music, and it moves the band into a more elegant aesthetic while retaining all of the most essential elements of their sound going back to the harsher, more goth tones of Cryptograms and Microcastle. The pace of Cox’s work has slowed down drastically over the years – this new album comes four years after the last one, and this is a guy who put out five full-length albums and an EP in the space of 2008 and 2009 – but if his art is becoming more carefully composed and refined, that’s a fair trade off.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 7th, 2018
Living In My Head
H.E.R. “Can’t Help Me”
Gabi Wilson sings “Can’t Help Me” with a cautious tone, delivering lines addressed to a partner in a fracturing relationship with the knowledge that her feelings have to be filtered through careful diplomacy. The music, mostly just a thin line of melody plucked out on an acoustic guitar, feels just as gentle and careful. The song is technically sort of chill, but that’s just the surface – you don’t even need to listen too closely to feel the tension in the background of it all. This sort of song could easily be much angrier, or more defensive, or just flat-out mopey, but Wilson opts for a refreshing maturity. She’s obviously too full of love here to get petty.
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November 9th, 2018
An Afternoon At The DMV
Pistol Annies “Got My Name Changed Back”
Miranda Lambert has always been at her best when she’s salty and spiteful, so it’s hardly a shock that she shines very bright on a bitter divorce song like this. She sings about the formalities of going back to her maiden name with a dark sort of glee – clearly very excited about moving on, but also quite aggrieved that she’s had to move on from anything at all. But still, if there’s even a trace of love in this song, I can’t discern it. This is a song for someone who’s truly come to despise someone they used to want to spend their life with, and while it’s all very fun, it’s a mean sort of fun meant to blunt out the pain.
Buy it from Amazon.