Pitchfork Reviews 5/19/08

Scarlett Johansson
Anywhere I Lay My Head
[Rhino / Atco; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 5.5.

Damn, I was really hoping to never listen to this. Scarlett Johansson is a brat. Her one trick is having a husky voice and looking vaguely like the bad girl from next door who smokes cigarettes, and she's ridden it admirably far while at the same time having impeccable enough taste and remaining aloof enough to mask most of her deficiencies as an actress.

This sounds a lot like a limited talent with good taste in songwriting who's gotten together with a devoted and knowledgeable producer and hired a great band. Like most everything else she does, it seems like a lot of creative, experienced, hard-working professionals poured all of their considerable energies together in order to make her look as good as they possibly could.

Listening to this is like overhearing some kind of a quid pro quo daterape-tinged richguy boozy come-on in a dark corner of some swanky Hollywood party I have no business attending. Like everybody's being an asshole, and nobody is concerned for anybody else's feelings and I don't know anybody and this leery guy is telling obvious lies to bed this girl who doesn't seem either into it or particularly not, she's just kind of haggling more than objecting. And it might work or not but nobody seems to really care, and either way they're both not acting like I'm even in the room, so I'm not gonna take sides or even try to make the best of things by stealing something that looks expensive or pissing on the bathroom floor. It wouldn't matter to these people anyway. I'm sad that people get like this, and I feel like a worm. I'm just gonna go home.

I knew it. Shouldn't have come.


Various Artists
The Green Owl Comp: A Benefit for Energy Action
[Green Owl; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 5.6.

Alright, assholes. I've got three choices here:

1. Buy this and listen to it.

2. Try to track it down for free, hence "screwing" the Energy Action Coalition out of some money they would supposedly use (after administrative costs, natch) for pressuring universities into going green. That's what the internet told me they do.

3. Just not listen to it.

Guess which one I went with. Hint: this has a Pete Yorn track on it.


Various Artists
Carolina Funk: First in Funk 1968-1977
[Now-Again / Jazzman; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.2.

Holy shit, I already have this. It feels like it's been WAY more than 2 years, that's how forgettable it is.

Forgive me:

This is maybe as good a time as any to talk about downloading and its moral implications. I am of the opinion that it's generally fine. I talked to a guy who's fairly well respected in some of the circles I run in, and he said "I don't like to steal from artists. Because I'm an artist and I don't like for people to steal from me." I was like "way to call yourself an artist, dude." In my head I said that.

If you like something you got for free, you become a fan of it and become more likely to spend money on future efforts of the people who made it. If you don't like something you got for free, you will at least not be mad at it for stealing your money, and it will have a chance to survive on its own with people who do like it, rather than being (sometimes justifiably) decried by a legion of angry dupes as "the worst moneygrab bullshit that's ever come along."

Things for free is a good idea for artists. Promotes meritocracy. If you give everything away for free and nobody likes it, that tells you something. If you give everything away for free and people like it so much they are willing to pay for it, that tells you something too. When you get something for free that's otherwise available for money, the only artists you're really stealing from are the people whose "art" falls somewhere between "I'd pay money for this" and "I don't even want this for free." In other words: the music industry rewards mediocrity and then treats that like it's some kind of a moral obligation, because these are "artists" and they're being "stolen from" rather than "shitty bands" that are being "checked out to see if they're shitty."

I tend to take a very tough-luck stance on "art" as a "career." Everybody wants to do it because it's fun, so being a professional and maintaining a professional "arts" "career" should be VERY difficult. You should have to be really fucking good, and you should love doing whatever it is you're doing and care enough about it not to rest on any laurels, and if you work really hard on something and don't make any money from it, then that's called learning, and you should be glad your station in life allows you to participate in the educational process instead of having to shovel shit for two cents a day because you live in some Malaysian shanty town. You should not be entitled to function as a professional in the arts just because you're technically proficient and able to afford a good lawyer.

But: money talks. I understand that. As I also understand that above are a fairly brash and demanding list of rules to come from some fucking guy with a blog who oh by the way has a pretty cushy life and also doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, and wants to flatter himself by sounding like he's discriminating and worthy when really he's just a blowhard.

Ok ok. Download versus not is well-worn territory and I don't need to tell you all this. You can hear all about it elsewhere and from better sources than me.

But: what do you do with something like this collection of unearthed obscure funk from North and South Carolina, circa 1968-1977? Stuff like this is all over the fucking place. It's both good enough to pay for and forgettable enough to ignore if you get it for free. And worse than that, it's by people who aren't around anymore as active artists. You can't go to their shows. Half of them are probably dead by now. So getting it free is probably the worst thing you could do with one of these.

On the other hand, and I don't know anybody at Now-Again/Jazzman records so I don't want to cast aspersion in this specific case, but there's no guarantee that the "official release" version of this (as an example of many many alike products of unearthed obscure music) isn't an exploitative royal buttraping of the original artists. In which case maybe that's ok. They recorded a bunch of stuff 30 years ago, none of it went anywhere, and whatever happens 30 years later as some kind of a revivalist movement, fair or not, has got to feel a bit like free money. If you're some 50 year old former tromboner who works in a tire shop in Fayetteville, South Carolina my guess is that's how you take it when somebody wants to give you some money for publishing some tapes you have in your basement. Windfall.

But who knows if that's good or not? It feels like there are a bajillion things going on with one of these deals. I'd be mildly interested if somebody broke down the business-end of these things in some kind of a snappy essay written by Steve Albini, but I'd also be mildly interested if I saw something shiny in my peripheral vision. Without the will to investigate this (it's just a bunch of not-very-good old music, no big deal) I'm left with my imagination. And I have no fucking clue what the story is with any of these people. I have a feeling that working in a tire shop in Fayetteville, South Carolina might not be too far off from a certain archetype.

Anyhow: what about this? Can I download this without feeling bad? Would I be screwing somebody, or is there some voice from a Just Tires off of Bragg Street that can swoop in and say "fuck it, we don't care" as a sort of disassociated but correct moral authority? How do I avoid the question of exploitation for stuff like this, not just with a sneak attack download but with an official release? To the extent to which there is now or was then any exploitation, is it excused by elapsed time, or does there need to be some deeper reckoning?

Do we owe these rediscovered artists some greater loyalty than we owe current artists? Is their passive yet influential rediscovery as vital a part of the unfolding course of cultural events as any contemporary contributor? And since it's usually neither their fault nor necessarily their will to be so rediscovered, do they get a free pass from being thought mediocre? Does their complete obscurity until being "found" exempt us listeners from asking ethical questions about any of this? Should they get more than just street-cred royalties from the funk/soul revival acts of the day? Just who exactly is getting fucked over by who, and how am I, the listener, either contributing to or preventing this fucked-over-tude?

That's a long and overwrought list of questions to have flow from what amounts to a bunch of pleasurable funk ditties, most of which are too long and repetitive to be worth much to anybody but some kind of rare funk-groove night DJ. The one question that strikes a chord with me is this: Is it better to just stay away from this and everything like it than it is to reap the benefits while feeling compelled to think about any of this stuff?

And the answer is that it might be. It just miiiightfuckingbe.


Cheveu
Cheveu
[Born Bad; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.

This is the kind of "raw, lurching guitars and synths" thing I always want to like, to the point of paying money and owning it, but then when I listen to it I don't actually like it, to the point of selling it in order to get money to buy things I do like. It's like a big fish hook full of mebait dangling in the sea. Man, it's right there. Taunting me. Oh man, it sounds great. Totally fucking great. Don't I always say that I would rather music be annoying and challenging and interesting than slick and overdone? Don't I always say that? Oh man, that looks fucking tasty.

Glurch! Oh NO!


Imaad Wasif
Strange Hexes
[Self-Released; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.

You know what sucks more than it doesn't? The movie "Parenthood." But nonetheless I looked at YouTube for like 15 minutes to see if I could find a link to Jason Robards saying, "My GOD, you were a moody sonofabitch!" Because A. that's what this makes me think of, and B. sifting through YouTube clips of "Parenthood" is more fun than listening to this.