this is, like, just my opinion, but...
yeah, I think this album is f'in brilliant. Besides being a landmark of aesthetic innovation though, it, more crucially I think, resonates on all the right spiritual notes...
hmmm, how to clumsily illustrate this... k, here goes. Kick ur feat up, light one up...
where is the beastliness? The ferociousness? The murderous chaos and violence of nature? The red in tooth and claw part. It seemed to us that there is not enough evil and violence in the animal collective world view. Or is this insane?
to jump off from these themes ... maybe these more base attributes just aren't what the times are calling for? maybe having cycled through their primal phases their totem animals have evolved higher minds, capable of, and now being more enlightened...
obligated to, CONSIDERING THE TIMES, higher principles?
Up till recently, kids, divorced from a culture or life of any significance or obligation, directionless in a country and age of selfishness, might as well had lost themselves in the meaninglessness. Whether it was Hollywood idolatry or diversionary totems of escape, symbols of authenticity/the cutting edge/truth/escapism. But even for the latter, any theme, any flavor has been fair game, there was nothing at stake but the endless chase of the new. So darkness too, not as commentary or reflection of social truth, but just for the rush of it? Whythefucknot? Nothing is at stake. And for those of us more mystically inclined, lets just cling to the infantile, keep our heads up our asses until the cultural darkness passes. Lose ourselves in the primal. But y'know, the Beasts of the Corporate Jungle were letting their animal sides run wild too. Like with animals, it's just a competition, a race, there is no meaning, just the game.
Let this run it's course a bit, turn the page... and we all know the consequences that such animalistic self interest dealt. Problems we
couldn't ignore, that made us have to finally face this moral/social/political problem. Hell, the election itself ultimitely came down to this battle between SELF INTEREST (don't you want to clutch onto
your money like our "everyman" buddy JOE THE PLUMBER tm?) or higher-minded RESPONSIBILITY/SERVICE/GENEROSITY... brands that haven't exactly proven to sell very well in the past, particularly on the American market (fuck I detest marketing terms, but...).
So, in the face of today's EVENT, with it's layers of significance, not just culturally, but idealogically, I'm happy to bask, for a moment, before we get cynical again, in this sense of good will, of possibility, of optimism, CHANGE(tm), HOPE(tm) (who knows, maybe this CHANGE spirit might even peak it's head into the music world. LOL PROBABLY NOT).
I'll be happy to hear a bit of roughness, of struggle, in music soon enough, it'll probably suit the times. But for this naive moment, the lightness and
transcendentalism of this album hits the right notes, for me. There's nothing that I'd want to hear less right nao than something invoking savagery and law-of-the-jungle self interest. To quote the album "I don't want... to seem like I care about... material things, like my social status. I just want, four walls and adobe slats, for ma girls".
On a very related note, the current cultural sea-change, not so much in it's inspirational aspects, but in the difficulties, already seem to be stirring up completely new impressions on life. A whole new
tone. Like things are at stake. Like there are issues that
matter. I wonder if this'll affect the way people experience and process music, now that it's not
simply a game of distraction...