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samedi 27 octobre 2012

New EP/Work in Progress (english version)

These songs were not recorded in a century-old farmhouse in upstate New-York. These recordings were not mostly made in traditional studios in collaboration with a handful of other musicians. Those songs were not written in a remote cabin in the woods. It isn’t more intimate and stripped bare than my previous album. The previous album was not lavishly sensual. My lyrical concerns have not moved from an otherworldly New-York to the English countryside. It is not a sophisticated blend of art-rock grandeur and synth-pop. I didn’t establish myself as the most brutalizing band of the city. There are no gently strummed and sweetly sung pleas. I don’t share the same birth year’s as Snoop Dogs’s classic 1993 debut, Doggystyle. I didn’t spend a fair amount of September and October trekking Europe with songs from my hellishly excellent 2012 record. I was not recently highlighted in Bon Iver’s «Holocene » remix competition. I haven’t steadily earned a reputation for releasing classy, gorgeous-sounding house music, with melodies so smooth and glistening that you can practically hear dew dripping from their edges. This album was not recorded in four separate rooms of a house in Portland, Oregon. This is not retro-obsessed psych-pop obscured in lo-fi tape hiss. It doesn’t sound like it was crafted purely from the dust lifted off of Can records. I am not often painted as an artist who possesses two mutually exclusive halves. These tracks do not mark the first time I have worked with an outside producer. I won’t take you on a dusty, hypnotic Italo exploration. I am not a Brooklyn-based DJ duo. I don’t happen to work in this medium. I don’t lacquer the malaised vocals. I am not the saviour of punk music. I am not making a bid for alt-country singer-songwriter territory. I didn’t rise quickly to Internet fame, both in indie circles and in parts of the mainstream,and didn’t raise fascinating questions about the blurrier-than-ever lines between those two audiences and the underground's newfound embrace of R&B. I didn’t get my music in a shitload of ads, from Victoria's Secret to Zales to American Express to Subaru. I don’t hate it when bands change between records. I haven’t been M.I.A. since the group began attracting attention. I am not talking from the backseat of a van during an MTV interview. In this age of reality television, 24-hour celebrity news, and second-to-second documentation-- where behind-the-scenes sagas mix with what's on screen and on record, creating an ever-morphing, ever-more-self-aware new normal—I am not an apt avatar. "I will love you till the end of time/ I would wait a million years," doesn’t sum up about 65% of this album. It is not an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo. This is not a record that crackles with "let's get this on tape now" immediacy. I did not benefit from the spaciousness of Steve Albini's recording. It is not touring with the likes of Depeche Mode that has inspired a newfound showmanship in the vocals. I didn’t spend time playing softball, attending church, and coping with the loss of a family member. I didn’t begin as a somewhat (no pun) catholic punk band. I didn’t pop up last year with a Bandcamp page of intriguing and untraceable songs. I never worked at Epic Records nor wrote material for singers like Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson. I am not spinning gold from the sounds from the past. My style is not loose and jazzy with fluid, melodic lines. I don’t hit glorious high notes like a feral Mariah Carey. Melloncollie and the Infinite Sadness was not a major influence on this album.I don’t sing in a vaporous falsetto. This album is not a welcome change for anyone into post-Gaga pop's tethers to artifice, theatricality, and skronky, turned-up-to-11 beats. There is no song about post-plane crash cannibalism. I didn’t rehearse the music more or less constantly in a house’s A-frame attic. There is no sense of what comes next.


now back to work

source: Pitchfork.com