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March 08, 2006
Jocks vs. Soft Males
Stephen Metcalf discussing Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again postpunk book in Slate:
And now for a brief aside, if you'll indulge me. As someone imprisoned within a bizarrely testosterone-addled culture, it seems to me that the hermetically sealed universe of grad student twee epitomized by Orange Juice, and later by Belle and Sebastian, does have a larger significance. If you're an American, the very ideas of "literate, playful, witty, camp" conjure up a gender indeterminacy that makes many American males squeamish, to say the least. You close your book by adverting to George W. Bush; you wonder if the current crop of bands that name-check postpunk can oppose Bush, and his and Blair's joint venture in Iraq, with the same intensity that the original postpunkers opposed Reagan and Thatcher. We think of punk rock as necessarily violent and loud, but does political anger always have to be violent and loud? Look at how Bush came to power, then stayed there: in no small part by feminizing his opponents, often on the issue of national security. Responding to the tone colors the Republicans surrounded him in, the American electorate saw John Kerry as French, a kept man—good god—a windsurfer. Why not say it outright: He hits like a girl. A society with such a low tolerance for the ironic and quirky is a society with a low tolerance for ambiguity and nuance, and we're paying for this fact dearly right now.
Next week these U.K. indie-pop wimps set out on a North American tour with James Blunt, the former Kosovo peacekeeper who surprised the world by proving that it's possible to be more insufferable than David Gray. Trés savvy: Nothing makes tunes called "Warm Panda Cola" and "God Takes Care of the Little Things" sound less puke worthy than ones titled "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover."
On The Best Party Ever, their debut (out since 2005 in England, but due here next month), the Boy Least Likely To come off as the boys most likely to replace Belle and Sebastian in the hearts of frail indie folk for whom Belle's recent diversion into swinging T. Rex glam-boogie constituted treason. Like Stuart Murdoch, singer Jof Owen tempers his hothouse melodrama with crucial wisps of black comedy; in "Fur Soft as Fur" he celebrates "fresh strawberries and cream" before admitting, "Sometimes at work I feel like a machine."
Owen's multi-instrumentalist partner Pete Hobbs helps keep the train out of the ditch too. He laces "Sleeping With a Gun Under My Pillow" with tumbling-tumbleweed slide guitar, and makes a jubilant Fisher-Price fiesta out of "I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star." Best party ever? Hardly. Best pity party ever? Maybe.
Posted by timothompson at March 8, 2006 01:56 PM