Saturday, May 3, 2008

GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
 

I’d like to start today by apologizing for the rather large pile of horseshit I submitted last week as my column. It was short-sighted, unfunny, and belittling to those who actually have it in their souls to take their jobs seriously.  I can’t take back what has already been writ, but I can promise you this: from this point forward I’ll fill this space with insightful, hopefully interesting posts about subjects I at least think of as important. So, again, apologies to you the readers, and to John for dropping that turd on you – it won’t happen again. I’m about to make a statement that I hope won’t turn away every open-minded reader this site has, it seems to be blunt and stupid, but I promise I’ll redeem myself if you just give me the rest of the column: I’ve never been much of a fan of female singers, or bands fronted by females. Okay okay, I know, a terribly stupid way of thinking. You can stop throwing the leftover Vienna sausages and used diapers and just give me one little second to explain myself.  I’ve been thinking about this column for the last few weeks, and I’ve been struggling to come up with a way to phrase this that wouldn’t have me coming off as the biggest ass since Roger Clemens (and oh man, what an asshole that guy is, all of this scandal validates seriously ten years of hatred I’ve had for that redneck prick).  It isn’t that I have anything against female musicians, it’s just that I’ve struggled for the majority of my life to find a female musician who really blew me out of the water. Let me reason this out with my favorite form of argument, BULLET POINTS! 1.  I grew up in The Nineties.  I’ve got to say looking back now that if you weren’t capable of digging a little deeper in those dark times finding strong female musicians accessible to a male audience was at least somewhat difficult.  Tori Amos?  Too much man hatred.  Fiona Apple? Too creepily sexual for my adolescent mind to read as “talented.”  Alanis Morrisette?  C’mon, really?  I was too busy being shocked by her allusions to theatre fellatio to care whatsoever if she was talented or not.  By the time she was pumping out Ironic and Two Hands, I’d already counted her off as a parody.  Blame my blunted sense of music appreciation for missing out on Bjork, thinking The Breeders were a one hit wonder, and completely missing out on the thrash of L7, Bikini Kill and Seven Year Bitch.  I was watching MTV and pondering just what lucky guys hands were on the cover of Janet. 2.  The first three CDs ever purchased for me by my hoodlum friend Scott Smith were Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and Nirvana’s In Utero.  And I think I was in sixth grade when I received all these.  Instead of judging me for my brainless discounting of an entire sexes music, I think we should be happy I made it out of high school without any felony arrests and/or tattoos.  These weren’t female musicians, let alone female-friendly musicians (does anyone remember the Nuttin’ But A G Thang video?) and I think it sort of affected me from the start.  I don’t even think I owned a female artists’ album until I purchased Polyrhythmatics when I was 16 (and Apani B Fly wasn’t even the starring member of that group).  Looking back now, that’s sad.  You can blame Scott Smith, my mother always has. 3.  In all honesty, I didn’t start tapping in to indie rock and the wide world of music until I was, maybe 23.  In high school and almost all of college I listened to hip-hop – all the time.  My weekly trips to the CD store were solely for perusing the newest hip-hop albums.  I have four CD cases from high school and college and they’re full of rap music…and that’s all.  No offense to hip-hop (I’ve posited my feeling on it in previous posts), but for female artists it’s a limited field.  Yes, today we’re being exposed to more, amazing female emcees, but for a long time it was a barren field and I was standing dead center in the middle of it, completely unaware. 4. The MTV generation, which I’m ashamedly a part of, isn’t exactly renowned for its amazing female musicians.  Again, this being said with the express knowledge that I could’ve dug a little deeper, growing up I wasn’t interested in Britney (well I was…), or Ashlee, or Janet, or techno-era Madonna.  It seemed like overproduced crap and I was having NONE of it. Thus I strayed towards hip-hop and male oriented rock music and up until six months ago thought that a male-dominated music taste was just fine. Goddamn if I wasn’t wrong. I wish I could I say that what’s going on right now is a resurgence of female singers, that my brainless dismissal of nearly one half the species was based on lack of quality, but lets be honest, that’s bullshit.  It’s been an equal ballgame since day one and I’ve just been sitting on my thumbs watching a grand old world pass me on by.  That stops now.  Ladies, you’re doing a grand old job, and you always have been. For your enjoyment four songs I’ve been digging from man’s better half.

:Sera Cahoone - Baker Lake:  Sera Cahoone was seemingly grown directly from the Earth.  In person, the former Carissa’s Weird and Band of Horses’ member looks as if she emerged from the trees to grace us with the Earth’s very own lament.  She’s lean, wiry, and has seemingly taken the worse the world could lay out, and just kept on rolling.  Baker Lake is a slow, sad little piece about the good times that came before, and lo and behold if it doesn’t remind me of pick-up truck rides and barren one-light towns.  Cahoone’s Sub Pop debut album Only As The Day Is Long was released in March.

:She And Him - Why Did You Let Me Stay Here?:  I’m almost positive every music writer in the country secretly believed that actress Zooey Deschanel’s debut album with M. Ward was going to be a travesty.  Well, ladies and gentlemen you’ll have to reserve that ire for Scarlett Johansson’s impending shitfest, ‘cause She & Him is an absolutely brilliant album.  A collection of homage’s to classic rock, 60s be-bop, all lovingly crooned by the excessively talented, excessively adorable Deschanel.  Too bad her lawyers sent me that restraining order or I’d be giving her a big old squeeze of congratulations right about now.

:Santogold - Starstruck:  I mentioned earlier that rap has never been an entirely lady-friendly genre, but that notion has been decidedly turned on its head in recent years.  M.I.A. has been showing her best stuff for a couple of albums now and it’s nice to see some worthy protégés following in her wake.  I know almost nothing about Santogold, but the blog world loves her, and this track proves way.  Big hard crunching synths and a delightfully atonal voice rising above it all.  Her self-titled debut album is out now.

:Cryptacize - Cosmic Sing-A-Long:  Oh man, I was sifting through emails this morning and happened upon an update from the good people at Asthmatic Kitty introducing me to this amazing trio.  It is really hard to define this music.  It’s got a sort of lo-fi afro-beat feel to it, but in an almost post-punk way.  Whatever it is, it’s rad.  Short, sweet and beautiful and the female half of the equation, Nedelle Torisi, is just so simple and clear.  Nothing complicated, just an awe-striking voice.  I thought about including one of her solo tracks from the album, but couldn’t pass up posting Cosmic Sing-A-Long.  I implore you to check out  Dig That Treasure out on Asthmatic Kitty now.

- Noah Sanders -

Unless otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by John Laird under a Creative Commons License.