Pitchfork Reviews 6/26/08

Pyramids
Pyramids
[Hydra Head; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.5.

The best rock is a war against whatever most musicianly forces are ruling the day. This is a thought I had last night while getting super baked and watching "Hype" for like the 9th time. I don't know if it holds any water, per se, but you could make a decent case for it. I think you could also make a decent case that this Pyramids album might be, for a certain subset of the musical spectrum, a fairly apt demonstration of the most musicianly forces ruling the day. There is certainly nothing simple going on here.

Ok, I understand the language being spoken here, it's avant garde metal and complex tension-based arrangements ladled onto a kind of shoegaze-y pop songwriting structures with plenty of breaks for pure introspective abstraction, a la side two of David Bowie's Low. Ok. I get it.

But also: I don't get it. What's fun about that?


Air France
No Way Down EP
[Sincerely Yours; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.6.

I know people who tell me I'm wrong when I say things like "techno is not a valid form of music." And that's why it's fun to say those things. It's like saying "I can't believe you're into that stuff, Jim Henson was a child rapist" to somebody who still makes a big deal out of loving the Muppets even though they're a grownup.


The Watson Twins
Fire Songs
[Vanguard; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 4.6.

It's gross, but the fact about twins is: they always seem like they're hotter than they actually are because there's two of them. The phenomenon doesn't work for music, though. They don't sound better than they are.

They sound like regular, pleasant, pretty adult singer songwriter music of a kind you can probably track down at any given medium-sized "on the downside of the career slope, hence mellowed out hassle-free" oldrock venue at a major metropolitan area near you. Or maybe at some place bigger if they're opening for Tom Petty and you want to get there early.


Plantlife
Time Traveller
[Decon; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.9.

I like this in roughly the same way I liked this when it came out. I actually like something about it, but I'm taking it with a mountain of salt because I know it's an appropriation.


Fern Knight
Fern Knight
[VHF; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.1.

I also watched a documentary about the Shakers last night. They're fascinating. As I was watching I launched into a reverie I often have where I'm a hip "Lean On Me" style history teacher in a run-down inner city high school. The Shakers documentary would be a part of a lesson I could probably never get away with called "Why White People Are Like That." It'd work fairly well as a teaching tool, because the Shakers are basically a cartoon of W.A.S.P. religious and cultural values.

Inner-city high school kids would totally fucking hate it, though. Not to mention I'd probably get fired for showing it and/or having a lesson about white people. But: Shakers are W.A.S.P.s in a nut shell. W.A.S.P.s think that to be Godly, you have to be serious and focused and work hard at everything you do and make it the best it can be, and also you can't have sex (or at least you're supposed to be in control of your sexual urges). And as hard as they try not to be judgmental, they think other people should be the same way because God don't party.

Part of the Shaker program is music, and their music says a lot about W.A.S.P.s. Here are a people who at their most spiritual make music that is unadorned, simple, God-fearing people singing as plainly and as earnestly as they can. "Tis the gift to be simple." That kind of a thing. It's the voice of a people saying to God, "Ok, you gave us these nasal, pinched voices, and we don't care if we sound like some kind of an embarrassing librarian folk singer, we will take our ability to sing thin, wavering devotionals as a gift and praise you with these annoying voices of ours, and we will not be self-conscious about style or technique or sounding all gross and reedy because that's not what we think you would want, Glory to You." And, weirdly, right on. "Shake" what your mama gave you.

Of course if you're looking for a more complete picture of why white people are like that, there's also the Appalachian tradition of moonshine-soaked Holy Ghost relijun, but those are not WASPs, those are White Celtic Protestants. Totally different breed. Their God has a deep appreciation for recklessness and banjo. And that stuff is also an important part of why white people are like that. Not sure what I'd do to communicate that with these fictional kids. Maybe if somebody made a movie out of this and probably also this, and while we're at it, because Catholicism is centrally important to understanding the middle-class urban tradition of why white people are like that, also this and this and this and... aw hell, this is turning into a college-level ethnic studies class about Caucasians for inner-city high school kids. I might as well cut the middle man and just shiv myself.

Anyhow, Fern Knight is Shaker rock. You can only get super into it if you live in a big house and never get married and wear simple clothing and never make a picture of anything and you worship God for 22 straight hours every Sunday while doing ritualistic dances, and you work so hard to make perfectly functional things that everything you make will last forever. Otherwise, no thanks.