Search results

<i>Aerial</i> is a very "domestic" album, and indeed, if one wished to put a negative spin on it, an album for which it would be just as easy to claim "self-indulgence" and "self-absorption." I've argued previously that I don't find the vulnerability on <i>Ys</i> to be particularly gendered. I...

Honestly, "helplessness" strikes me, for the most part, as a red herring with regard to <i>Ys</i>, anyway. If someone wanted to make an argument about the specifics of Newsom's alleged helplessness and how it is indeed feeding into female stereotypes, I would be interested in seeing it.

LSD is like pornography - this sort of forced unveiling. Life is a play and surfaces and depths and it's often good to respect that.

It's my understanding that the effect of psychedelic drugs <i>is</i> comparable to schizophrenia in terms of brain chemistry.

OK, I was remembering it wrong - the bear's name is Ursala. I think it's about Ursala being used, though!

I have not heard this. I think it is quite a complex text. Interestingly, "Monkey and Bear" does seem kind of gendered, and perhaps in a kind of stereotypical way, but one that I would characterize as more sort of myth/fable. In any case, the seemingly male-gendered bear is the one who gets the...

I don't think the album deals with helplessness to fate in a particularly gendered way - more as a generally human phenomenon.

Well, how would a woman present the idea of cosmic helpless/helplessness to fate, then, without being criticized in terms of gender politics?

I think if there's anything "helpless" about the album, it is a sort of cosmic helplessness - helplessness to fate, which is not a gender issue.

Looking over the post I was initially responding to again, it seems to me the "strawman" red flag (semantic debate about the term aside) came via this: <i>latched onto by indie fans who hope that the whitebread flavor indie rock has been exuding has been spiced up by the presence of a female...

Nice strawmen. You know, the first Champs (later known as the Fucking Champs) record CAME OUT IN 1995. It was a little ironic, I suppose (or perhaps it was just a curious development) but pretty genuine even then. (I mention the time frame just to point out the strangeness of the phenomenon...

Please don't put words in my mouth. When I say "undervalue the emotional resonance," it is in reference to this seeming desire to write the album off as a "Renaissance Fair" trifle when I would have to believe that anyone truly giving the work a fair shake would at least admit to it having some...

Yes, I think Matthew Friedberger's compositions on the Fiery Furnaces' <i>Blueberry Boat</i> album are an example. If that album had been as fully realized as <i>Ys</i>, there's no reason why it wouldn't have been as successful. Had a decent crossover as it was. (And I don't think the fact that...

I think Meltzer was fairly into punk/post-punk until about '82 or '83.

Thinking more of ways to avoid cognitive involvement in the creative process. Surrealist techniques like automatism.

Does Stapleton actually use any surrealist techniques? Satie and the Les Six people composers were never associated with the movement, but they and the Surrealists had connections to Dada. There were a couple of composers who were a part of the Belgian surrealist group (Andre Souris, for one).

You don't like Tom Scholz?

OK, but that strikes me as being sort of merely a complaint. And, of course, not sure that whatever paradigm would arise after the burning of the guitars would be any better.

Yeah, but in a sense you're saying that guitars = "what is this the fifties, sixties, or seventies?" at the same time.