Pitchfork Reviews 5/7/08

Santogold
Santogold
[Atlantic / Downtown / Lizard King; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.1 and listed it as the 22nd best album of 2008.

I fucking love not knowing anything about anything sometimes. I knew about this album. I saw the cover. But I never made an active choice to listen to it until now. Guess what: THIS is the origin point of all those songs I was hearing sometimes in commercials and on the radio at lakeside popsicle stands. Ok. Now I know. That was this. Huh. It's like when you lose your cool and investigate once and for all what's making your fridge buzz so loud, and you figure out what is (you can't do anything about it, but now you know it's the coil-grid thingie in the back that's rattling). I'm not sure what I'm going to do differently, because I was already on a pretty strict "ignore Santogold" regimen. And I was totally right about it, by the way. But now that I know what it is, it might make me quicker on the draw to turn away from it now that whatever mild curiosity I'd had is officially dead.

Oh wait, this is that "got no need for the fancy things" song? Ok, I'll still be happy-ish to I hear it when I find myself on a dance floor in a place that would play that. As long as that only happens maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, no thank you Santogold, I am not a teenaged girl, and this is not "my jam."


Robert Forster
The Evangelist
[Yep Roc; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.6.

Mental note to me: if you ever see a 80's era Go-Betweens LP available for $5 or less, go for it. You'll listen to it once or twice ever and like it well enough, and then you'll probably end up selling it but you'll at least turn a profit because those guys apparently had/have a loyal fanbase. But as far as you're concerned, 6 dollars is a stretch.

Mental note to everyone else: this is the 2008 solo album of one of the guys from The Go-Betweens.


Various Artists
Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980-1986
[Strut; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.2.

Oh, I get it. THIS is exactly what every dance-oriented thing from now is shooting for. An early-digital electrofunk world music pastiche that sounds like it was recorded in 1983 by cocaine-era Sly & Robbie at a studio in the Bahamas. Well shit. It's always good to go back to the source, I guess. Even if much of it sounds like (to the point of actually being it in some cases) the "we've been on this groove for over three minutes now and we're running low on ideas, might as well start rapping" sections of "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club. But I can think of a lot worse things to sound like or actually be.


Tickley Feather
Tickley Feather
[Paw Tracks; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.7.

I don't actually bear Pitchfork any ill will. It's not really their fault that the site emerged as the most reliable reportage on all things "indie," and by now, because "indie" came to mean "independent but also everything else" in the 2000's, that task has ballooned big enough that they commit most of their largest errors by a combination of omission and unnecessary inclusion.

But even now I rarely disagree with anything they say. Sometimes I hate the scholarly this-deserves-discussion tone, and sometimes I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody bothered to say any of it about any of the mountain of shit they're saddled with, and often I wish they'd say either more or less about the implications of music sounding the way it does at any given moment. But: I don't read the features, just the reviews. And: most of the time when I disagree I at least see where the reviewers are coming from, which on the most egregious misses is usually from a place of "Hey, I'm 22 and I get fooled sometimes. It's hard. We have deadlines." The biggest problem is I just get the sense that they take themselves too seriously, and oceans of piss need to be removed, it's not generally a question of right or wrong.

Anyhow, credit where credit is due: Joshua Love is 100% dead-on right here about Tickley Feather.

But also, he is right while at the same time saying things like "the jury's still out on whether there's enough here to build a sustainable and rewarding aesthetic." Though correct, this gets a typical Pitchfork "are you fucking kidding me" award when applied to a one-person home recording project of effects-drenched pleasant background music. Click on the link above and listen for yourself. I don't know what standard they're holding everybody to, but it doesn't seem to change one iota to take context into account. It's a safe bet that anybody who home records a bunch of totally fun background songs, then releases it under the name "Tickley Feather" is probably not too worried about sustainable and rewarding aesthetics. Which actually IS a sustainable and rewarding aesthetic. One that Pitchfork could use 20,000 cc's of. Stat.

I have my own agenda, and that agenda says that no one person or group of people who purport to care about music can convince me that Santogold is "better" than Tickley Feather by any kind of appropriate-to-the-context measuring stick. Santogold is trying to "produce" perfect danceable pop laden with non-Western influences. Tickley Feather is one person (talent level: moot) trying to have fun making music. It's both a more admirable goal and more of a success in execution. All of Santogold's output save the one danciest single is a failure on every level except commercially. Come on, guys. Come on. We're supposed to be rooting for the little guy, remember?


Orion Rigel Dommisse
What I Want From You Is Sweet
[Language of Stone; 2007]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.4.


Anybody need an extra helping of spooky-tune music (think a better, calmer, and more appropriately narcotic-laced soundtrack to the "Lemony Snicket" end title sequence) with lyrics about 1920's ghosts and stuff sung in a pretty, straightforward, almost cute manner by a female vocalist who sounds like she's all cat and no power?

Me neither.