to take a page from josh blog (which seems to be back)... some ideas on film, easily applied to the indie (mentalist, bourgeois) / pop (sensualist, working-class) "war". (see comments in the 'float on' thread.)
"What concerns me is how ... women, children, whoever, are being asked to dael with their previous enjoyment of [popular movies] - a pleasure shared wtih family, friends and their general social and cultural environment. It seems that they are being left little room for any response other than feeling stupid, or despising those who are still enjoying these 'perverse' pleasures. ... Rather than seeing the pleasures of 'the masses' as perverse, perhaps we should acknowledge that it is the bourgeois 'will to truth' that is perverse in its desire for knowledge, certainty and mastery. ... The crusade to save the masses from the ideology that dupes them can obscure the real social significance of their lpeasures and, at the same time, blind us to the perversity of radical intellectual pleasures. The alternative is not a populist defense of Hollywood, but a reassessment of what is involved in watching films. This becomes part of the experience of oppression, pain and desire. Watching a Hollywood movie is not simply an escape from drudgery into dreaming: it is a place of desperate dreaming, of hope for transformation." -- Valerie Walkerdine, "Video Relpay: Families Films and Fantasy."
!!! - "Dear Can". I like the dance-punk, I really do. It makes me want to dance. But while I worship the ground DFA walks on, !!!'s never really been my cup of tea. There just isn't enough whimsy, or restraint, or maybe there's too much grease. "Dear Can," however, is something else. It's the second song from the band's forthcoming Louden Up Now, and it's dance-punk with whiskey in the jar. Bassline, high-hats and jumbling, chugging guitars, certainly, but also a dose of eyebrowed rage, swearing at the top of lungs. It's a stretch to say it sounds like Limp Bizkit hanging out with the Rapture, but I don't think it's far off to imagine a stomping, smoky mosh-pit with a flashing, rainbow disco floor. And people in sunglasses. (I smile when the chorus comes back at around the five minute mark. At that point that anger's altogether silly, a gratuitous Furnaceface yell that can't (and doesn't want to) undermine the two minutes of crisp, funky plasticene beats that preceded it. But the punks gotta have the last word. [And it's even more silly because he's yelling "like i give a fuck!", which is delightfully contradictory.])
The Lucksmiths - "Self Preservation". A complete change from the above, here's one of my most favourite indie pop songs of all time: jangly guitars, a circumambulating bassline, cool horns to downplay the neat-and-clever lyrics. If my imagination had its way, Australia wouldn't have beaches and sunbathers, just kids like this (and kangaroos, too), all dressed in cardigans and singing along with carefree pink lips. Oz could be a twee utopia, with ee cummings anthologies on every bench, bright blue skies that only rain when you feel like a few minutes of drizzly melancholia. This is from the group's absolutely fantastic Why Doesn't That Surprise Me?, which is like a picnic at the open-air library.
Jeff at the Architectural Dance Society had some interesting thoughts on the college music poll I mentioned last week. I think he makes some cogent points on what surveys like this (if they're true, more generally) should indicate to the music industry. As people scramble to explain the (successive) 10% drop in record sales over the past three years, particularly in the wake of that 'downloads don't damage sales' paper, questions like this are really pertinent: why [are] so many college students ... apparently more fulfilled digging through their parents' record collections (or their grandparents' forchrissakes) than buying new music (even if it's new old-music music)?
If you liked the Nickelback comparison song from Monday, you may enjoy the same treatment as applied (rather more clumsily) to Linkin Park.