Mates of State
Cute Grows Up
Mates of State: Team Boo (Polyvinyl '03)
Music box. Hurdy-gurdy. Pinball gallery. Turning point of silent movie. Between-innings entertainment at a minor-league ballpark. E Street pseudoclassical. Even, almost, ? and the Mysterians. That’s how pop history is conceived by Kory Gardner. Words aren't quite irrelevant‑-cf. "This is the whiner's bio," or "Set the rocks on fire." But they are ancillary. B PLUS
Mates of State: Re-Arrange Us (Barsuk '08)
Alternia knows two things about this duo: raw biography and raw sound. Married, two kids, publicly affectionate on stage; so tuneful they embarrass coolsters who think babies are icky, but also, due to how hard Kory Gardner pumps her organ and John Hammel meets his match, energetic, rendering the tunes forgivable. And right, sometimes their hooks are sugary enough to give me a tummyache too. But for Gardner to devote herself to piano as Hammel quiets down doesn't justify the consensus diagnosis of, eeuw, domesticity. Musical symptoms just aren't specific enough. Instead one must refer to those supposedly unmusical carriers of specificity, the words. Seldom anything special in the past, now they add up to a painful, unresolved song sequence about a couple who buy a biographically verifiable dream house and then hit the rocks as definitely the husband and possibly the neglected wife seek sexual solace elsewhere. So no, Pitchfork guy, you can't call "Blue and Gold Print" a lullaby just because it's slow and invokes the kiddies. No, Pop Matters guy, you can't praise the "The Re-Arranger"'s arrangement without noting that one thing getting rearranged is lives. Pop hooks deployed to keep up a good front are too complicated for tummyaches. Not heartaches, though. A MINUS
Unless Clown DJ was using his real name, in which case I apologize to not only him but his father Buffoon and mother Floozy.
By "moral lives" do you mean a moral perspective that informs or guides their work? Or are you actually referring to actions these people took on a daily basis while living their lives?
ClownDJ:
Tuan emphasizes the importance of the sympathetic imagination in developing morals and describes the "moral lives" of three thinkers particularly inspirational to him (Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil).
By "moral lives" do you mean a moral perspective that informs or guides their work? Or are you actually referring to actions these people took on a daily basis while living their lives?
The latter seems highly unlikely so I'm now presuming that moral perspective is what you were asking about all along.
Yes? No?
Friends, here's a scan of the cover to Funeral Dress II if you want it for your iTunes library: http://goo.gl/azO3C
Happy Thanksgiving!
Does the "moral lives" term come from William James? "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" (1891)? I have never read William James.
Tom: I think I actually snagged this term from "Morality and Imagination" by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (much more approachable than James). Tuan emphasizes the importance of the sympathetic imagination in developing morals and describes the "moral lives" of three thinkers particularly inspirational to him (Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil). I love Tuan's thinking but his style is so gentle that it proceeds quickly from tonic to tranquilizing (he has the decency to keep his books short, though). Since I find much of what he says pretty consistent with what I've gleaned from Christgau, I figured this perspective might gain greater readability from a bit of that rock and roll vigor. Which seems like a win/win.I just read, vis a vis Tom Hull's Rhapsody Notes Turkey Shoot remix, Jim DeRogatis' own Turkey Shoot column, which I found pretty lame. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of JDeR to begin with, but the selection process for his bottom ten, arrived at mostly by singling out disappointments from artists he basically likes, resulted in an overwhelmingly uninteresting list. Also, not only aren't most of the records picked that bad (many B+ range for me), but most of the artists aren't that great to begin with anyway (does anyone really expect great things from Coldplay? really?). Much preferred reading Tom's list for the second time, but that goes without saying.
When an critic says an album disappoints him/her on a personal level, be very suspicious. I think you can make a lot of bad calls by putting too much focus on artists that "mean" a lot to you -- overrating things that pull your sentimental strings, disappointed by things that falter slightly. Better to approach everything on as equal of terms as you can get. It's helped me anyway. It's something I hope to master better in the future.
I can see that reading of the back-and-forth that originated with Clown BUT his first comment was innocent enough, if poorly worded.
Well, with some of us language-high-strung types, that can be the KOD. That, and I've got a thing about internet anonyimosity. Especially hyuk-hyuk personas that both suggest and screen buried aggression. Unless Clown DJ was using his real name, in which case I apologize to not only him but his father Buffoon and mother Floozy.
So, okay, whole thing's recast for me.
(BTW-- My initial "boring personal anecdote" remark was what they call in the trade an "inside joke," which in this case can only be explained by a boring personal anecdote, all of which I have sworn off forever in EW.)
LB (is it ok that i call you that?)
how do you do that reply-box thing?
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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