“Communists devout” protest the Party “line” that alliances be made with “bourgeois groups” and even, ugh, Socialists. No coherence to such “kaleidoscopic” politics, and, meanwhile, what happens to the Revolution? “It can wait.” But, in truth, it hasn’t arrived, yet, and such brinksmanship risks what Mangabeira Unger calls “the dangerous limiting case of transformative politics.” The empty purity of the hard line.
Read more "“Our Line’s Been Changed Again” (Joe Glazer)"
The celebration of instrumental technique and the materiality of militaristic force to reinscribe the flexible (chalky, murder outline-like) contours of the nation. Driving backbeat propels dazzling arpeggios, intermittent two-hand tapping and, at end, the soaring higher octave reprise of chorus riff. Patriotism, or the consolidation of enforced populations, is only a byproduct of the seduction of community (through self-generation). D-days, then, are inherently premeditated due to continual need for national unity. Loving nature.
Read more "“Cliffs of Dover” (Eric Johnson)"
Our collective love life appears to be determined and bracketed–bound between the covers of a book. It’s just the same old story, really, and we’re all a terrible, sad cliché. Who wrote us, and is the author “someone from above” us? Where is the missing or hidden ur-text, so that we might read it? And finally, “why” is it this book “true” (why am I subject to it)? Seeking answers, by song’s end the sextet peruse the book and forecast that their romances will end happily, as all things must, for lovers, in the genre of the romance. (Breakups are merely plot points in Chapter Four—difficulties to be overcome for purposes of readerly pleasure.) This conventionally happy news, however, cannot cover over the fact that the “who” and “why” questions remain fundamentally unanswered, and that our fate is to remain embedded as type. Let’s assume, then, that no one wrote “The Book of Love,” and for no good reason. And let’s register the dead-stop/single-drumbeat signature in the chorus as a sign of reading interrupted, a break in the question, a Zen-like whack to the skull with a massive tome. C’thunk.
Read more "“The Book of Love” (The Monotones)"
Two-bass attacks are uncommon, what with the risks of a muddy low end or bottom line. Plying the upper (chordal) registers, a combination of four- and eight string basses wend along, sometimes meeting for unison voicings. Our pitiable narrator is the murky base. Sequestered in a “well” (or shell), her head pops up and out every now and again, but only in projection. Professing whiteness (“Indians . . . [are] so smart”) and desiring animality (“that excites me”), it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that she’s merely sheltered and listening to the “echo” of the small world around her. But don’t forget the power of a “wish”: beginning to imagine “someone else’s thoughts” and inviting strangers into one’s life. Sonically and politically committed to mingling without overdetermination and difference with spite for location. An excitation.
Read more "“Turtle Song” (Hugo Largo)"
It’s all about a tree that has been cut, modified and commodified—turned into a red, cigar-store Indian. On the one hand, the tree, in the form of the brave warrior, aspires to human status. It wants to “show” something to the world—to speak and interact, for example, with the wooden Indian maiden across the street, peeking out from the antique store. But it also remembers a time before commodification, “when he was still an old pine tree,” communing in the forest. Perhaps this is the whole of the problem of the stereotype. It necessarily tends toward hardened inertia, and yet there is no clear alternative. Yes, one can fight stereotypes, and replace nasty, old types with seemingly benign and corrected new ones. But no matter how proud one is of these achievements, petrification begins again with representation and the market. A kind of reverse-Pinocchio strategy remains strangely plausible, however, and it starts by pining for the unformed.
Read more "“Kawa-Liga” (Hank Williams)"
In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama declared that a “defining project of our generation is to restore [the] promise” of “the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead” despite the “accident of [your] birth.” With the introduction of the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, however, we’re encouraged to think structurally, from increased pre-school (“public savings” and a return on investment!) to “fair discipline practices” in schools and criminal court systems. Lest we think he’s appealing to crusty Baby Boomers in the former and white liberals/wonks in the latter, keep in mind that young men of color are a “drag on State and Federal budgets” that should be salvaged in order to “unlock their full potential.” (But as Michelle Obama points out, if her parents “did everything right,” their children would just “have a chance.” Slim odds, slimmer hopes.) Enter Chief Keef, avatar of Chicago lawlessness. There’s a whiff of racial discipline all around. Reviewers called his album everything from “irresponsible, unforgiving, and often infectious” to a representation of African American culture. How can young black and brown men account for themselves given these odds? Here, the trax flounders: snitches, whiners, pregnant women, wanna-be drug kingpins are all objects of derision. Then again, it’s also about cuckolding you. A monetization of the outlaw—both ways. Isn’t this what the whole conversation is about?
Read more "“I Don’t Like” (Chief Keef)"Is the “refrain” in the repetition, the singularity of the melody, or the repression of impatience? A bit of all, to tell the truth. As the first Eurovision Song Contest winner (1956), it’s a way to understand Europe’s sense of being at a particular moment. But it’s not a European song inasmuch as a Swiss song in French, which beat out the German Swiss song. This descent down the location ladder is challenged by the inversely proportional desire to sing particularly (here, of an experience), setting up the trax’s loop: the proper way of being and comportment writ large must be miniaturized in order to be magnified. The chanteuse sings in the present to the love of her youth, noting a sense of mutual maturity while lamenting what’s been lost. Instead of melancholy in which what has been lost must eventually disappear into a generalized longing, this could be taken as a desire to differ from one’s self—a need to retain previous identities to register one’s difference from them. What matters is a promise to decide, continually, on the promise of such difference.
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After the loving community—an insomnia-induced incarnation desiring a prenuptial agreement for inclusion—hits the “floor,” singer wonders how one can “add another to love” without inheriting “classic” community’s exclusions. Lacerating kick drum and staccato descending bass figure point the way, repeatedly; it’s the rest/pause which can admit the rest of us (without worrying about dividends). In the reverse: apart from “hope” and “without pressured expense,” one should only fret about how to expend love without short-changing.
Read more "“Unlimited Capacity for Love” (Grace Jones)"
Secrety, slowly, and incrementally the country no longer is in the hands of the people (sure, sure: we certainly live in a land where leaders endorse Leo Straussian lying and misdirection). And by “tomorrow,” it’ll all be gone: in the hands of the “fools” who are “rapin’ the land.” Long organ lines and hard-rock crooning turn this into a lament: it’s nearly (or really) too late for action. But, were we all to “wake up” right now, we could turn this country in something “strong” and full of “class.” Creepy.
Read more "“Creepin’” (Grand Funk Railroad)"
As a remix of an earlier, forgotten single often described as “sinister” and having “stakes in the streets,” it’s the claim that the trax is an example of “rap vérité” which proves (unintentionally) helpful. From jump, Prodigy exploits this: the listener is “stuck off the realness” of affect-less characters with gang loyalties. Yet the stakes of realness aren’t in the streets; they reside in those who are slumming it, vicariously rehearsing the rags-to-riches-to-rags (-to-grave) persona (and keeping their “shook” sensibilities at bay). But there’s no “halfway” engagement when “react[ion]s” between those of “no relation” are all this world asks of you. Moments of anxiety are nested within, manifested through questions of doubt (“do I deserve to live[?]”), motive (“thirsty for recognition”), and legitimacy (“I’mma live illegal”). Read against voyeuristic tendencies, the rub: “I’m creeping” beyond the “petty thinking” and watching you watching me.
Read more "“Shook Ones, Pt. II” (Mobb Deep)"