Fluxblog Weekly #77: Max Wonders, Kate Tempest, Electric Six, Crying
October 10th, 2016
You’re Not Used To Spontaneity
Max Wonders “Utopia”
Max Wonders is still a teenager, but the grit and grain of his voice, not to mention his verbal dexterity, makes him seem a bit older. He definitely comes off as a guy shaped by experience, and while “Utopia” is basically just him trying to get some girl to get involved with him, the context of growing up in Chicago colors every line. I’m particularly interested in the suggestion of class conflict here when he tells her “you don’t know your neighborhood” because her parents moved her out of the city as a baby. “I can show you how we live,” he says, and while he doesn’t hammer the point, it’s a bit like a Chicago version of Pulp’s “Common People.” But instead of harshly judging this girl and condemning her luck and privilege, he’s just trying to share his world.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 11th, 2016
Recognize The Presence Of My Ghost
Kate Tempest “Ketamine for Breakfast”
Kate Tempest adapted her last album, Everybody Down, into a novel. It’s a rare album that could logically make that transition between art forms – Tempest’s lyrics are dense and vivid, and she’s extremely good at detailing the inner lives and complexities of her characters. If anything, the adaptation seems redundant. Her new album, Let Them Eat Chaos, is written and performed in the same style, but if she were to adapt this one into another medium, I’d hope it’d be film. The premise of the record is that it’s all taking place at the same time in the wee hours on a block in South London, and the songs are like a camera panning around and zooming in and rewinding on all the people there. “Ketamine for Breakfast” focuses on Gemma, a woman who may or may not be recovering from addiction, but is at least telling herself that she’s not as bad as she used to be. Tempest drills down into her psyche in just a couple minutes, but a lot of the detail is carried by images and flashes of memory. People describe records as “cinematic” all the time, but this is a rare piece of music that seems directly influenced by the narrative and editing logic of film.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 12th, 2016
Let’s Get Together And Overreact
Electric Six “Lee Did This To Me”
Lee is one of the most ambiguous names – gender neutral, racially vague, no notable associations with any particular era. In the context of this song, in which Dick Valentine gives voice to a jealous man whose girl has been stolen by someone named Lee, the name is deliberately enigmatic. He’s so worked up that you wonder what Lee is all about, but there’s no lyrical details to use as clues. Lee is a void. Everything in the song is either about this guy’s perception of this woman, his rampant paranoia, and his belief that she was something that belonged to him that has been taken away by someone called Lee. It’s pure ridiculous masculine insecurity set to a peppy new wave beat.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 14th, 2016
To Resurrect What I Forgot
Crying “There Was A Door”
In a way, “There Was A Door” is an update and revision of Fugazi’s “Suggestion,” a song about street harassment and a desire to exist in the world without worrying about the attention of potentially threatening men. The crucial difference is that while “Suggestion” was written and performed by men, and had blunt lyrics designed to get through to the dumbest, most aggro guys at a punk show, “There Was A Door” is written by a woman and gets into the nuances of the experience and the emotional toll of living with constant anxiety about it. The lyrics aren’t designed as rhetoric; it’s all about one woman’s thoughts and emotions, and so the words can be a bit scattered or oblique. The second half of the song is more direct and declarative – “all I’ve wanted for the place I live is respect for this vessel I’m in” – and pushes back on men who cannot respect boundaries. (“FAMILY” doesn’t mean you can touch and “JUST JOKING” is not a reason enough for me to not bite but be polite.”) But I like the way it all flows together, from poetic reverie to assertive response. It feels like a direct translation of complicated feelings in song.
The song itself sounds rather bright and cheerful, but has this odd structure that is constantly shifting into higher gears as if the band is too restless and excited to stay in one position for long. The music feels a bit disconnected from the sentiment of the song, and the odd way the words are stuffed into the meter suggests that maybe this is just an arbitrary home for these thoughts. But then, the sound of this is extremely mid-00s, and a ton of artists around that time were all about packing reams of extremely wordy lyrics into pop melodies.
Buy it from Bandcamp.