Yet Another Year In America August 12, 2010

[koganbot]

Two at least nominally country tracks jump high quickly.

Taylor Swift "Mine": Was humming this compulsively for an hour after first hearing it, but haven't totally given myself to it yet: for one thing, the ringing guitar makes it too samey, drowning out the tension in her voice between strength and vulnerability. The words imply an interesting story that doesn't quite get told ("You learn my secrets, and you figure out why I'm guarded/You say we'll never make my parents' mistakes," "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter"), strength of love surviving struggle and conflict, but the conflict's not palpable - or it is palpable, but only in her singing ("Brace myself for the goodbye/'Cause it's all I've ever known," as her voice traces an unsure trajectory), which as I said would have more impact in a sparer setting. I think my reaction is a work in progress, defending me from disappointment while the song sneaks in and touches me. Also think the leaked version I'm listening to might be an inferior rip: sped-up and thinned-out. We'll see. TICK.

Kenny Chesney "The Boys Of Fall": Gentle, deft singing struggles to stay afloat in a bulky arrangement. Guess this is a week in which I crave quietness. BORDERLINE TICK.

Ke$ha "Take It Off": The only singer I can think of for whom "grating fun" is a compliment. TICK.

Linkin Park "The Catalyst": Longtime fans over on YouTube are aghast, but as a dabbler I'm glad that the unintentionally silly seriousness of their tuneful metal ("Far from the world of you and I/Where oceans bleed into the sky") is given to genuinely silly techno beats and gizmos. BORDERLINE TICK.

Comments

[jonathanbogart.livejournal.com]

Somewhat implausibly, I heard an interview with one of the Linkin Park guys recently, and he was saying that they hoped the longtime fans wouldn't hate the new album because it was a definite change in direction, which is about the only thing he could have said that would make me curious about new Linkin Park music. Glad to hear it is genuinely different.

Fake Freakiness

[talrose.livejournal.com]

Jonathan, from "Tickin and Tockin and Workin All Around the Clock"

"The fake freakiness of “Take It Off” isn’t Ke$ha (or even her character) — but the infuriatingly charming brat who picks and pecks, finds an annoyance and rides it, is."

Jonathan also said something about the "buzzy, gothic music" and its "dark sparkle" (only paraphrasing because I don't want to just copy + past the whole passage), which are perfect descriptions for the music. The song's been on the radio incessantly since August cracked, and it's grown on me a lot since, mostly because it sounds so out of place in the summer and because I've begun to think that "freakiness" no longer is a part of the song. Actually, I think Ke$ha is more of a third person observer than an actual character. She's describing back-alley after hours dive bars where dancing goes on, and I've been seeing A LOT of these recently: Bars with cheap designs and cheap beers with makeshift dance floors. And usually when people are at these bars they're not an elated sort of drunk, but a sad, wobbly sort of drunk that comes with drinking too much, and so the glamorous sadness of the song connotes fake glamour but real sadness, so that that "dark sparkle" of the song imparts a friction that makes it move in a way I can't hear within the context of Animal, but makes perfect sense, for some reason, on the radio.

[koganbot]

Not being a longtime fan, I couldn't tell you whether it's an actual change in direction or just the same old road, one that happens to have a patch with fewer electric guitars and more electro gizmos.

Re: Fake Freakiness

[koganbot]

Oh, I don't mind copying and pasting Jonathan, especially since the post is on Tumblr, which is in effect a permission to copy:

Partying past fun can land in ecstasy, or in the banality of Jerry Springer relationships. But it can also end in weirder places. Of course Ke$ha is very far from being the first pop star to claim to be a freak; in fact her most blatant "I'm a freaky girl watch out" song, "Take It Off" is one of the least inspired on the album, a conventional riff on the "there's a place I know" theme not helped by borrowing the hook off "The Streets Of Cairo" (better known on playgrounds, or it was in my day, as "All The Girls In France"). There's more destruction and violence in the verses, but for the most part it tells rather than shows. This doesn't apply, by the way, to the buzzy, gothy music behind her rote choruses — there's a dark sparkle to the production that almost convinces that Ke$ha's partying has a more sinister edge than the booze-sex-dance trivium we've seen. But ultimately the pathology of "Take It Off" is theatrical, played rather for campy kicks than as anything serious.

...

The pathology of drug addiction [in "Your Love Is My Drug"] was just a pretense for a love song; but that muttered phrase points to other possibilities. She sounds like a teenager trying to get a rise out of an authority figure, phrasing her mockery in the form of a compliment in order to say "whut I said I liked it" and cackle with her friends when he goes predictably off. The fake freakiness of "Take It Off" isn't Ke$ha (or even her character) — but the infuriatingly charming brat who picks and pecks, finds an annoyance and rides it, is.

It's probably Dr. Luke who's responsible for the buzzy, gothic music and its "dark sparkle," though Wikip isn't giving me producer credits, just writers, who are Ke$ha, Claude Kelly, and Luke.

"The Catalyst"

[until-the-train-stops.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I was writing my blurb about the Linkin Park song last night, and that they going in a new "direction" doesn't surprise me, but that the direction seems to be into a dubstep-y realm does. I also kind of like the track.