How To Live In Public

Cat Power, "The Greatest" - Not many people know this about me, but all through my middle-school years my family was in the paper on a fairly regular basis for some unembellishedly horrible stuff. I'm not going to be going into the specifics since they're not particularly germane; we've all got our things, even if we didn't all make the paper for them. No, it's the forced public exposure that really fucked me up, because as bad as it was to go through Said Alluded-To Trials And Tribulations, I'm not even sure I know how to describe how much worse it is when you get to shuffle off to middle school every day knowing full well that you're going to be surrounded by people who (1) know some profoundly intimate details of your life and (2) have absolutely no stake or interest in treating you in a way that keeps your head out of a noose. To this day I have serious problems with the simple concept of my existence in other people's lives; I still have problems recognizing what people need to be told and reconciling that with what they already know, and I don't doubt that it'll continue to be an issue until I leave this planet.

Consequently, as you can probably imagine, I've always had a very hard time extending to Chan Marshall permission to exist on this planet. It's not just her music - although until last year's The Greatest, a bafflingly excellent record to which I am (SURPRISE) just now catching up, the music sure wasn't doing her any favors - but rather specifically the way she went about cultivating her infuriating little pariah persona. I don't want to be insensitive to the fact that her life has probably sucked a cosmic dick or two in its time (anyone who'd inflict a record as anathemic as her album of cover songs on an unsuspecting world certainly has some pain in their past) and I suppose the rules are probably different for (allegedly) foxy indie chixx than they were for my unfortunately-shaped seventh-grade self, but take it from me: if you're really concerned about the pressures of being paid an overabundance of attention, the last thing you want to do is make that fact known. You don't make albums celebrating your open psychic wounds, you don't send out press releases announcing your entry into a rehab facility, and you certainly don't try to match the juvenile affrontery you perceive with like-minded acts of your own like, say, facing away from the audience when you play a show; I speak from experience when I tell you that it's a cold-ass, spiteful-ass world, and the only guaranteed consequences of actions like these is further attraction of its intention. You will therefore excuse me if I've always had a little hostility towards her musical output, even/especially the stuff that's supposed to be really great which I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole; there's no more galling artistic archetype than the person prostituting a pastiche of your own suffering in order to move records.

The Greatest, however, is a horse of a different color; for the first time since I've been aware of The Self-Perpetuated Cult Of Cat Power, she's made a record that sounds like she's cognizant of the fact that, like it or not, the rest of the world's going to be interacting with her output. This is, as far as I can tell, the only lesson to be learned from the exceptionally unfair situation of being stuck in a spotlight you never called for; more importantly, it's also a lesson which everyone, fucked-up in terms of their grasp on the public's level of participation in their lives or not, has to deal with, which is probably why The Greatest is almost certainly the most widely beloved of all of Marshall's records. It's not just the music, although the music is beyond unimpeachable; considering how long it's been since The Greatest came out, I hardly think anyone's up for a retread of how or why its music sounds like a revelation, although I do think it bears pointing out that this is as magesterial an example of someone finding a sound so strikingly consistent with their goals in making music as anything that I've heard since The Marble Index. Rather, it's the way Marshall presents herself and her songs, most of which are breathtakingly direct in their intentions and their motivations; I could give this record to my mom and my little sister for Christmas and feel perfectly secure that none of its pleasures would be unavailable to either one of them, and given how gratifying a listen The Greatest is, it's a theory I may end up trying out.

But this merely brings The Greatest up to the level of "worthwhile listen"; its greatness lies in the way that, underneath all the Dusty-in-Memphis (and for once, that's not critic code for "My girlfriend lets me play with her bosoms if I put this record on") trappings, this is still a Cat Power record, and an illuminating one at that. Again, I'm someone who's gone on the record as saying that attempting to put one's fist through Marshall's Downsy little face is nothing less than the work of God; it's genuinely not some idle concession I'm making when I say that the genius of this record comes from the way it shows you the appeal of Cat Power's music in the first place. I'm not saying I'm sold on all of it; I don't have much use for the cloyingly cutesy "Could We" or the Imogen Heapery of "Where Is My Love", and even the overall experience of The Greatest is hardly going to send me running back to give Moon Pix another chance. But suddenly I find myself seeing the appeal, an almost incomprehensible leap forward in terms of the party line towards Marshall I espouse; contrary to every ill-informed opinion about Cat Power songs I'd ever bothered to assemble, I see now that Marshall genuinely does understand that of which she speaks, and that even when I personally find the substance of her songs unrewarding (seriously, "Could We"? really?), it's not inconceivable that someone else might gratifying. And besides, when The Greatest works - as it does most devastatingly on the title track - holy God does it ever work; "The Greatest" hardly needs to lay itself as bare as it does with its burnished backing vocals or that historically winsome violin when it opens with a line as laden with meaning as "Once I wanted to be the greatest", the kind of line hinting at emotions that would be the domain of the past and the past alone if there was a way to express them in any timeframe other than the present. It's a staggeringly beautiful little song and would presumably still be one even if I'd never been enticed to pay attention to it, and while I'm not willing to go back and search for more of them in Marshall's catalogue, I'm certainly glad I encountered this one and the album it came on. So there's that. (Click here to buy The Greatest directly from Matador)

Late of the Pier, "Broken" (demo) - It feels somewhat unfair to lump Late of the Pier in with all this "Neu Rave" fooferaw, but I fear it's an inevitable thing; despite the fact that only the Klaxons have ever gotten/will be getting any mileage from the term, it's a term with far too much perceived commercial clout to be bypassed, especially when Late of the Pier happen to have so many of the signifiers (ruthlessly fast drumbeat + charmingly plastic synth + sloganeering vocals) in spades. It just feels like a shame, because if "Broken" is any indication, there's absolutely no reason why Late of the Pier shouldn't be getting famous on the strength of their ability to write murderously catchy songs. It still sounds incomplete (unsurprising, considering I found this track as part of a pack of demos they made available through their MySpace), mostly because it feels like they're wasting one of the most appallingly catchy synth hooks on the first half of this song; given the way they return to it in the first part of the song, it's pretty obvious that they're aware of just how infectious a series of notes they've managed to stumble over, so it's a little disheartening to watch them resort to a merely serviceable shred-out to bring "Broken" to its conclusion. But these are academic concerns; Late of the Pier haven't even released their debut single yet and they've already managed to craft an aesthetic that lets them come up with pop music more immediately palatable than any number of bands who've been "honing" their "craft" for years. These kids have my undivided attention; I suggest you give them yours. (Late of the Pier's debut single is slated for release on the shit-hot Way Out West Records; in the meantime, click here to visit their MySpace to hear more songs, including an undownloadable yet arguably better remix of "Broken")

Lifelike & Kris Menace, "Discopolis" (A Hundred Birds Bestless remix) - I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GOING TO KNEE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU RIGHT IN THE TAINT IF SOMEONE DOESN'T GIVE UP THE IDENTITY OF WHOEVER KEPT THIS SONG FROM ME FOR SO LONG RIGHT NOW. I mean oh GAWD; this is just flat-out hysterically beautiful music, all searing violins and gently percolating arpeggios and inhuman vocal flourishes recalling nothing so much as a steam valve capable of attending to itself. The fact that it came from "Discopolis", of course, is more than a little ironic given the way the original track cuts straight through your
pleasure centers like a plow through a rabbit warren; the effect isn't dissimilar to the one you'd get from hearing "One More Time" reimagined by Phillip Glass (and god, that needs to happen). Still, as tempting as it is to write A Hundred Birds' remix off as a mere curiosity, it's not really a very honest way to appraise the song; this is a piece of music put together to leave the listener feeling staggered, and to that end it's a runaway success. (Click here to buy the "Discopolis" single featuring the A Hundred Birds remix from Juno.co.uk)

ELSEWHERE
- BLOGOSPHERE BE KILLIN' IT, SON: You all need to make ABSOLUTELYSURE you hit up The Rich Girls Are Weeping for Escort's absurdly awesome remix of Tracy Thorn's "It's All True"; how these kids haven't been signed to A Touch Of Class nine times over already (Escort, not Cindy y Pinky, although I'm sure they'd beg to differ) is beyond my powers of comprehension. Then make sure you hit up James Headphonesex for the Emperor Machine remix of "Marble House"; one track in and I'm already exponentially more psyched for EM's excursions into italo than their ones into motorik, although surely remixing such an monumentally beautiful song helps. Finally, Good Weather For Airstrikes seems to have finally roused from its slumber in a big way with their (or maybe just Derek's - I don't go around keeping up with internal blog politixxx too much these days) exhaustively compiled top 50 music videos of 2006, most of which seems to be in order apart for Simian Mobile Disco's video for "Hustler", which is at least 19 spots too low.