Pitchfork Reviews 5/27/08

Estelle
Shine
[Atlantic; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.8.

Well, I'll be damned. I just had "American Boy" stuck in my head for a little while after hearing it in some place where I was expected to spend money. I forget where it was. I tend to go on full body shutdown if I spend more than 7 minutes in any place of business with a floor plan larger than 10,000 square feet. Put me in a shopping mall and I will soon go psychosomatically blind. I am not bragging. I'm not glad that this happens to me. I don't like being a neurotic agoraphobe.

But it's maybe an interesting phenomenon. And it kind of relates to how I feel about big business hit-machine R&B. I had no idea that "American Boy" was this person who calls herself Estelle. If you were to put her in a lineup with Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, and one of the Destiny's Children that's not Beyonce, and I'd have a one-in-four chance of picking her out. My method would involve a guy named Moe catching a tiger by the toe and seeing if he hollers.

Is this awful? Maybe, I don't think so. I'd probably guess Mary J. Blige, because she was the crackhead from the projects that sang her way out, right? She did that amazing version of "I'm Goin' Down" in like 1993 or something. I'd feel bad about getting that one wrong. And Rihanna too because the "This is Why I'm Hot" guy beat the shit out of her and I think there's some magazine cover where she's super hot. That's about all I know. Oh wait. Different guy. The guy who beat the shit out of Rihanna was not the "This is Why I'm Hot" guy, it was some other guy.

Oh wait, what about Ke$ha? White. According to the internet, she's white. Ok. I didn't know that. I still don't know what she sings. I just know she's got a dollar sign in her name and she sings one of the songs that's everywhere all the time. And she's not Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga is the one with the cigarette sunglasses and the electrical tape on her boobs.

Lilly Allen is the British one that got drunk at an awards ceremony and Amy Winehouse is the British one whose face melted. Lady Sovereign is the British one who raps and is tiny and also her career is over by now I think because her whole thing that made people like her is she's just kidding, so she's basically just a tiny British girl Eminem.

This is kind of a fun game.

Spencer Gifts is the one with the Homer Simpson slippers where you put your feet in his mouth and the t-shirts with the Budweiser frogs on them. Forever 21 is where teenage girls go to buy clothes that make them look like sluts. Coffee Beanery is all kinds of flavored coffee. Limited is clothes, I think. I don't know if it's women's or men's, but it's only one. The Gap, duh. I'm not that stupid, I know what the Gap is. American Apparel is the one with all the porn where they think "large" means "still only 3% body fat, but 6'5" tall." Cinnabon sells cinnamon buns, so that's pretty straightforward. Sunglass Hut would be self-explanatory except it's not a hut, but close enough.

Yup, it's roughly the same. And listening to this now is kind of like shopping at a thrift store and seeing a label that says "JoS. A. Bank" and being pretty sure that it's a semi well-made shirt that you should buy if it fits you and the pit stains aren't too bad. Score. And then you get it home and it never feels right and you don't ever wear it. But at least you didn't waste a ton of money. That's exactly what this is, but for music.

Oh hell. Maybe I am bragging about being a ridiculous agoraphobe. Is that so wrong? Can you please squish those Ho-Ho's and slide them under my bedroom door? I'm starving in here.


Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Lie Down in the Light
[Drag City; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.7 and listed it as the 42nd best album of 2008.

There is only one hit on Google if you search for "I don't like Bonnie 'Prince' Billy" and it's a reviewer guy who says how much he likes this one Bonnie "Prince" Billy song even though he usually doesn't like Bonnie "Prince" Billy. And also you can pay the reviewer guy money for buying a Bonnie "Price" Billie song, I think. I don't like Bonnie "Prince" Billy. There. Now there are two Google hits. Welcome, online community of me and one other dude.

I find that very hard to believe, by the way. In the whole expanse of the backbiting internet there are only two people who would say that? I would also like to join the other guy who said Bonnie "Prince" Billy is boring, and the other guy who says "Will Oldham is a douche." Other online search communities: I would also like to start up a safe internet have for anybody who might think that "great or not, there are at least a thousand musical acts that are exactly like anything Will Oldham does, so it must not be all that special."

Also, welcome other people who might be curious about "was John the Baptist gay?" or "who the fuck ate all the chocolate pudding?"


The Wedding Present
El Rey
[Vibrant; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.5.

Uhhhh. I was thinking about all kinds of crappy bands that I could compare this to and I stumbled upon an Earth-shaking revelation. Chavez were joking. I was 16. I had no idea. I just thought they were a regular crappy band with no sense of humor. Instead they were a crappy band with the best sense of humor of all time. This is crazy. I wish somebody had told me.

It doesn't change anything, it's just... this is worse than the time at age 15 when I finally figured out that "what's black and white and red... a newspaper" was a shitty pun about "red/read" and not a straightforward explanation of the Sunday coupons for the meat place back before every newspaper was in color. They were just literally black and white and red. I am mortified by myself right now.

This is why I default to "jerk" all the time. Because I'm gullible and stupid as hell, and I'd prefer for people to think I'm a jerk rather than knowing for a fact that I'm a total fucking idiot. I'm sure my Dad was like "this fucking kid is a jerk" when he told that black/white/red/read gag line to a 6 year old me and I gave him a noncommittal fake chuckle and then walked away. He didn't know I was regrouping, trying desperately to figure out why the fuck that was a joke and not just an observation about coupons shoehorned into a joke format. But at least my Dad didn't think I was an idiot. And fair's fair, that gag has dust on it. Fake chuckle walkaway is a justifiable response.

Still, I probably should have figured it out in less than 9 years.

And here I am. The Chavez "Unreal Is Here" video took me 14 years to decode. I probably would have cracked the code sooner if I had watched it again even one time in my life after seeing it on 120 Minutes in 1995, and it's not like I was wrong to not be too into Chavez, joking or not. But still. This stings. I'm a dumbass.

Anyway, I think The Wedding Present is a crappy band and this is a crappy album, but I might be wrong about that in 14 years. They might be joking.


The Sword
Gods of the Earth
[Kemado; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 5.3.

I wish the wait wasn't so fucking long here. 2 hours? This place sucks. It's just a fucking cheeseburger, anyway. You guys just want to go?


Various Artists
Imaginational Anthem Vol. 3
[Tompkins Square; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.1.

I don't get it. It's always been weird to me there's a whole genre's worth of "dudes who do things on acoustic guitar." Are there that many Audubon Society gift shops? How many laggy "just look at the majesty" montage sections of poorly-produced 70's nature documentaries about the moose need scoring? If all of this stuff disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow, who would be upset about it? I wouldn't be one of those people. Maybe I need to go back to Camp Stonerraggaheehaw and this time take all the Indian culture-appropriation stuff more seriously.