Ani DiFranco/Bhi Bhiman
Two Albums That Begin With Excellent Songs About Homelessness, and There Will Be More
Ani DiFranco: ¿Which Side Are You On? (Righteous Babe)
After a decade of futzing around, of music so overthought that even her best-of couldn't make a case for it, this one's like re-encountering a friend who drifted away after she took a bad job or married a jerk. Both of which might have happened‑-nobody she signed to Righteous Babe did much for her bottom line, and the nuptials that ruffled her feminist faithful in 1998 ended badly in 2003. Now, finally, her first album since she married her five-year-old's father is as fresh as Lisa Lee at the top of the key. With Uncle Pete signing on via banjogram, the title song announces a political renewal so focused on the three-syllable F-word that it includes an E.R.A. anthem. But for DiFranco the political has always been personal, which doesn't mean private and can mean intellectualized, as in "Promiscuity." The singing on the homelessness tale that opens is as emotionally accomplished as its assumed first-person is formally atypical. The one that reads "If yr not getting happier as you get older/then yr fucking up" is her true credo. A MINUS
Bhi Bhiman: Bhiman (Redeye)
In an unruffled show of assimilative will, this Sri Lankan American 29-year-old channels John Hurt and the Staple Singers into sweet, firm folksongs about injustice's cruelty and love's confusions‑-and is funnier about both than, as a random instance, Van Morrison. The stolid beats define the limits of his Americanization. But from the first strums of "The Guttersnipe," the melodies are universal language at its most outgoing. A MINUS
The lyrics and her tone are so exaggerated that I think she is definitely distancing herself from what she's singing. Intended as irony? Not sure. But I agree with Nick that the lyrics are not necessarily meant to be taken at face value, though I'm sure they are by the majority of listeners. (Lots of people are into this sort of romance novel stuff.)
To me it comes off as a non-narrative but chronological account of loving someone more than they love you and sacrificing yourself in an attempt to earn their love (by the end, "now you do" seems to indicate that our protagonist is successful). Chronology is suggested by the content but also the forward rolling feeling of the music. There are so many traditional masculine-feminine heterosexual images that it suggests that she's winning the manly dude by bowing to the hyper-femininity that also characterizes Lana's image. ("Pull up in your fast car/whistling my name," "He holds me in his big arms/drunk and I am seeing stars," "I'm in his favorite sundress," "Put his favorite perfume on.")
It's very much an upper middle-class college age account of romance, I think. (The fact that she's an archetypal east coast sorority girl in appearance supports this.) "Video games" seems to be a euphemistic sex reference that draws masculinity into the sex act. (Akin to "hey wanna watch a movie in my dorm room...?") It seems like she's being pursued by the guy who is seeking sex rather than romance. He allegedly likes "bad girls," which in that context one might take to mean girls who fcuk outside a discrete romantic relationship, giving them a sort of masculinity.
Her lilting, babyish "honey, is that true?" I think is a challenge to him. She's giving him sex to draw him in (bad girl), but she's also exploiting aspects of a specific ideal femininity, attempting to hook him as "the perfect girl" with her deference to his manly appetites (dressing for him, asking what he wants, "it's you, it's you, it's all for you/everything I do," etc). She's one-a them Madonna/whores you hear so much about: she's bad but good, girlish but grown-up sexy, etc.
"This is my idea of fun" reads more like "this is your idea of fun," when the fun is getting drunk with the guys at a dive bar and playing pool, and the line is delivered so somberly. "I tell you all the time" is followed by a lot of lines focusing on a romanticized vision of monogamy it seems, "the world was built for two," and such--seems like she's trying to convince him to love her and be with her only.
By the end of the song it seems like she's won him over with her feminine wiles. Her doleful, flat delivery and the overall melancholy of the song suggest that it feels hollow to her. It's impossible to accept sincerity in the lines where she glorifies the wonderful love she has: "it's better than I ever even knew," "heaven is a place on earth..." She sounds most sincere with "it's you, it's all for you," and maybe that's what the heroine's so sad about--she feels loved for the role she played to captivate the guy and she's done nothing for herself.
(I CAN'T BELIEVE I TOOK MORE THAN 4000 CHARACTERS FOR THAT. AND AT LEAST AN HOUR.)
Want to take a crack at it, Irene?
Uhhh. Uhhhh. I might as well do a close listen. I was an English major, after all, I should be able to handle this.
{Time lapse in which I listen to the song a few more times. Scratch that, about a billion more time.}
OK SO. The first time I heard this song it was, as I've mentioned, right after I had my initial therapy appointment when I thought I was going crazy mid-life-implosion (ca. mid October, 2011). Maybe I wasn't at my most level-headed, but it came on the college radio station and I found it very bittersweet and compelling at the time, so I jotted some lyrics down so I could look it up later. Played it when I got home and realized immediately that it would be divisive and decided against sending it to my tunebros for fear of castigation. (Currently JockRothko is a fan; ClownDJ is not, though he would be open to it if Xgau told him to be, he sez.)
Then I didn't listen to it again until the past few days when it became a topic of discussion. Coming back to it, I find it very opaque--not entirely sure what Lana's trying to do with it, but I will give a few theories.
* Fixed so my pointless exposition could be on one post and my stupid "Video Games" mini-essay in another.
Look forward to hearing her. On CD. Which come out when, exactly? I want to mark it on my calendar.
No "old money misogyny" in that diagnosis.
One, why are we arguing about a video? Isn't this is a music place? I mean, I know this is very old-fashioned of me. But just as a point of information, I first watched the LDR video yesterday and had trouble paying attention. Look forward to hearing her. On CD. Which comes out when, exactly? I want to mark it on my calendar.
Two, I don't agree with Jon about most of these Larger Issues, but I think it says a great deal for him that he's hung in there. I'm flattered. You should be impressed. He is not in the majority here. That's hard. And BTW, there are folks around here I'd be much quicker to brand some kind of -ist than I am him. But I won't. That's taking on a rhetorical weight best reserved for extreme circumstances, a rhetorical weight few non-ideologues are fit to bear.
The issue of tropes that desperately need retiring has come up a few times recently [...] I'd say ["androgynous asexuality'] definitely qualifies - the idea that those two words are somehow joined at the hip, and that it's some kind of creeping, growing evil. Being of the gender-fluid persuasion I have a personal stake, of course, but even if I didn't I'd like to think I could still cheer on the idea that A) many people naturally fit the description of what's considered to be the male and female norm, and they're happy that way, however B) there are many others out there who find themselves naturally somewhere in between those two poles, and find this obsession with nailing down a definition of what makes a "real" man or woman doomed to failure, and pretty alienating. Like, I'm not even sure why, in this day and age, even writing about it is necessary...
I'm also really perturbed by the equation of androgyny and asexuality. They are different concepts. Klosterman did the same thing: "tUnE-yArDs is [...] a somewhat androgynous American woman named Merrill Garbus. [...]I get the sense that asexuality is part of her hippie aesthetic." This may have been a topic of discussion already; I wasn't paying close attention to this post's comments until I decided to spar.Allen, continued wishes of health and peace of mind to you and Tamra.
I want to hear what women think about LDR and this song. Want to take a crack at it, Irene?
Still, we're going on very little detail here.
It's still hard to turn w h o k i l l off once I click Play. Repeat is more like it.
Thanks again.
When Lana Del Rey plays up to hyper feminine beauty ideals and plumps her lips with collagen, she is punished for "inauthenticity". When Garbus dares to present an authentic female face with bright war paint in place of conventional make-up and a light, brush of hair on her upper lip, she has her sexual identity sterilised. Klosterman's mis/non-reading of Garbus[...]proves that music criticism, and the wider world, celebrates a narrow idea of what women in pop should be.
Obviously I am a proponent of the idea that this mis/non-reading goes both ways.http://goo.gl/cgGIa
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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