swears

preppy-kei
I think Penman might have alluded to the "guilelessly fuckable" quality of Ms Newsom and the libidinizing effect it has undoubtedly had on male critics of a certain age...

How is she "fuckable"? She just reminds me of some really ditzy, annoying 38th generation nu-hippy type that would bore you to death at some god-awful student "gathering".

There's nothing sexy or interesting about her at all. She has that combination of arrogance and gormlessness that afflicts so many musicians so much nowadays.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
i don't think she's literally ugly, but that daft look on her face makes me want to slap her. she makes the face like swears is saying, the "i'm a deep coffee-shop pseudo-intellectual who reads poetry and doesn't get it but really likes to be seen with a book in the right place. i am also very twee and do things very cutesy-like and my parents are baby boomers and i have a trustfund that funds my ultra-'bohemian' lifstyle."
 
^^^i like liberating those types...

...as long as her speaking voice sounds nothing like her singing voice and she has nice feet

i'm a sucker for corn rows and manicured toes...;)
 

tate

Brown Sugar
It's all about the punctuation - the remarks about the Wire in general* and about Current 93 were contained within parentheses, clearly indicating that 'smugness personified' referred to what Carl Impostume called the 'punchable' Newsom.

K-punk, since you quote Carl Impostume's blog post -- where he describes musician Joanna Newsom's "slapability" and her "punchable" face, and says that he would "have to kill her" were he actually to read the interview with Newsom in Wire -- let't read the entire post:

from Impostume, Thursday, October, 2006, quoted by K-punk above . . . http://theimpostume.blogspot.com/2006/10/couple-of-things-1-bloody-simon.html:

Carl Impostume: "2) I’ve never heard Joanna Newsom but think I can assert without fear of contradiction from even the most staunchly loyal of her advocates that she has a profoundly irritating face. A degree of punchable winsomeness and self-satisfied artsy-slapability not seen since Bjork pig-tailed and boss-eyed her way into the public mind. Do these two share a missing chromosome? I suspect that if I actually read the interview then I’ll later have to kill her. This is why I should not buy The Wire."

In my world of colleagues, friends, and family, we have words for people who express such sentiments as those cited by Impostume, words which include: thug, sexist, coward, and intellectual fraud. I think that insecure male, vile, and loser might also apply.

Though I have already made myself clear, I will again say that in my opinion, the utterly subjective procedure of deciding upon someone's "smugness," "self-satisfied artsy-slapability," "missing chromosomes," and the like, on the basis of magazine photographs -- and then to base an expression of physical violence against a fellow human being for said imaginary traits -- belongs to a person who could only be described as an intellectual zero.

Out of curiosity, K-punk, do you agree with Impostume's post in its entirety, since you quoted it?

It goes without saying that none of what I have said here has anything whasoever to do with the quality of Newsom's music, which is another issue entirely.
 

vernoncrane

garrett dweller
Calm down Tate, I'm not seriously proposing that I would like to murder her, am I? It's a bit of hyperbole for comic effect, if you don't find it funny, so be it, but you risk coming off looking shrill, sententious and humourless here. It would also seem that I'm not the only one to comment on there being something irritating about Newsome, (far from it, in fact) but you may be a little over-literal in thinking that I am actually advocating violence against her (and that Mark K-punk has to take some pro/anti Newsome Jihad stance)....after all she's playing in London soon so I could probably quite easily nip round there and shoot her if I was so disposed....(actually.....).

"thug, sexist, coward, and intellectual fraud. I think that insecure male, vile, and loser might also apply."

coward, intellectual fraud, insecure male, i'll accept, sexist i'll semi-accept (it's a daily battle!) loser? maybe, vile? well naturally i wouldn't go so far as to describe myself as vile, thug? nope, i'm too much of a coward...

and remember, people like me derive enormous pleasure from upsetting people like you... so why give me the satisfaction?
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
In my world of colleagues, friends, and family, we have words for people who express such sentiments as those cited by Impostume, words which include: thug, sexist, coward, and intellectual fraud. I think that insecure male, vile, and loser might also apply.

Blimey tate, get a sense of humour bypass for christmas? Hyperbolic comedy innit. I thought that quote was pretty funny.

tate said:
Though I have already made myself clear, I will again say that in my opinion, the utterly subjective procedure of deciding upon someone's "smugness," "self-satisfied artsy-slapability," "missing chromosomes," and the like, on the basis of magazine photographs -- and then to base an expression of physical violence against a fellow human being for said imaginary traits -- belongs to a person who could only be described as an intellectual zero.

If everything anyone ever wrote was completely grounded in the factual, life would be really fucking boring. It's way more fun to say "this record is shite, anyone who's ever enjoyed it is rubbish, fuck off I'm right" than it is to say "I find the music made by the artist in question a bit annoying but I can see how some might enjoy it, neither of us is right, let's all have a party."

You have a lot of interesting, considered things to say chap, but you have to admit sometimes it's fun to cut loose and have a rant :)
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
i don't think she's literally ugly, but that daft look on her face makes me want to slap her. she makes the face like swears is saying, the "i'm a deep coffee-shop pseudo-intellectual who reads poetry and doesn't get it but really likes to be seen with a book in the right place. i am also very twee and do things very cutesy-like and my parents are baby boomers and i have a trustfund that funds my ultra-'bohemian' lifstyle."

LOL

Tate, yes, I do 'agree' with the rest of Carl's post, but then I'm not literal-minded and humourless.

What is sexist about an attack on two specific women btw? Surely 'punchable winsomeness and self-satisfied artsy-slapability' aren't gender-specific insults? I'm sure we could think of some men who exhibit punchable winsomeness and self-satisfied artsy-slapability'...
 
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nomadologist

Guest
tate: why do you like newsom? i'd really be interested in hearing.

among classical musicians (13-year member of national guild here, used to do beethoven sonata competitions) it's considered a cliche to take your training and then make really "innovative" progrock by playing wrong with the same amount of technical proficiency. Newsom's harping is so prog it hurts. i mean, especially when your uncle the mayor paid for your years of lessons you took from your professional musician mom (see, even more musician "cred"). she's just like all the other rich kids i used to have to audition with--their idea of creativity was taking their parents money and someone else's idioms and starting an indie microgenre with them
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
she's just like all the other rich kids i used to have to audition with--their idea of creativity was taking their parents money and someone else's idioms and starting an indie microgenre with them

bah. sometimes that can sound cool though, in this case it doesn't. if the basic channel guys weren't fucking loaded they wouldn't have spawned an entire genre of amazing music. anyway enough of your wealthism (you dissensus folks enjoy talking in -isms right?), it makes me feel uncomfortable ;)
 
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nomadologist

Guest
i know, i know, lots of music i like (basic channel is great) was funded by the disgustingly wealthy and their unduly lucky children. that was pretty rare-- problem is now there's the whole "trustfund hipster" cultural phenomenon over here.

if you lived in brooklyn you would want to hari kari a million times a day like i do, because its crawling with people like newsom who think she's an artist because she once read keats and she has a closet full of fairy princess costumes with a couple military buttons sewed on that she bought at a boutique at a 500% markup. these trustfund hipsters have no discernable talent (when they do they use it in the service of warmed over freakfolk like 90% of the time), and--here's the scariest part--are even starting to multiply. yes, they are getting married and having kids, whom they push around the barrio in antique "prams" (i'm not making this up) and say things like "regular strollers are so tacky" while standing next to a mexican women with three children and no stroller (saw this happen). it's getting seriously disturbing. the city is rezoning just to try to accomodate them, yet when Subway (restaurant) tried to move in so the construction workers could afford something for lunch (the other restaurants are vegan organic specialty shops), they tried to stop construction because it would "upset the character of the neighborhood."

just last night i walked past sufjan stevens bedford ave near north 5th in williamsburg. he gave me his "do you know who i am? do my upper middle class blue eyes penetrate your soul? i'm a POET" look. i wanted to strangle him with my headphone chord.

IN SHORT, there are a million reasons to hate joanna newsom. she's the perfect figurehead for everything that sucks in music/culture at the moment, imo.
 

evergreen

Well-known member
pardon my interjection, but these largely read like complaints made by people who are insecure about their own creativity. apologies if i'm off base, but i've definitely made similar comments in the past :)

i'm currently leaning twds Ys being fairly overrated, but not a bad record by any means. certainly not so bad that it's ethically unsound from an artistic standpoint. comments about Newsom's "artsy-slapability" seem ironically like reverse arguments for authenticity by the "street" demographic. what's an allowable degree of artsy-ness then? sure--the record and the music have an aesthetic, one which seems to invite a lot of reactionary faerie-girl bashing, and very few rational criticisms other than 'fiddly orchestration' and a dozen different ways to say 'i don't like her voice'.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
don't know if anyone put this up yet, but YOU CAN'T BLAME THIS ON THE WIRE:


Joanna Newsom documentary. I think I just ruined my New Year's. I'm serious. I'm supposed to start my chemical celebration in few hours, but this may obliterate my chances of having fun at all. Didn't Tori Amos cultivate this persona 15 years ago? thought so

Watch this at your own risk--not recommended for people with heart conditions or hernias or high blood pressure.

More fun!
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Why does it strike you that way, Evergreen? Her voice is ANNOYING. Her song structures are nothing new. The melodies are predictable and often ramble and meander nowhere when they're not. Harmonically, I can hear things Newsom didn't in her own songs. There is nothing about them beyond mood or atmosphere that seems interesting to me, and as has been said before in this thread, she establish one mood and sticks with it for the duration of the album. Her music itself is nothing very noteworthy to me. It's her persona and the image she is cultivating that, added to her overly contrived sonic sensibility, I find distasteful in the extreme. Not saying you can't like it, or shouldn't like it, just that I can be very secure in the knowledge that I hate everything I've heard by Newsom.

Kate Bush and many other artists have successfully cultivated an over-the-top, performative, "artsy"-to-the-point-of-being-shticky persona but because their music is sonically interesting, I like it. Joanna Newsom is no Kate Bush. She's more like Tori Amos. I don't know, even Tori Amos would roll her eyes at this girl.
 
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tht

akstavrh
today i downloaded track 2 off this (monkey and bear) and it is indeed abject. emetic nursery rhymes for entitled cunts and their wetly sincere friends and their lactose intolerant alpine hitler babies etc.

why so much poxing the nudniks who buy this shit though. if you burn down every liberal arts college and kill wes anderson then these people will just latch onto some other shit. ninja tune revival?

the only non aesthetic critique (abigail's party stuff) is their supposed fucking up of inner city areas.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
tht i guess it's worse for americans who have to live in the thick of the breeding grounds for JN-types and her fans. think about it.
 

Leo

Well-known member
if you lived in brooklyn you would want to hari kari a million times a day like i do, because its crawling with people like newsom who think she's an artist because she once read keats and she has a closet full of fairy princess costumes with a couple military buttons sewed on that she bought at a boutique at a 500% markup. these trustfund hipsters have no discernable talent (when they do they use it in the service of warmed over freakfolk like 90% of the time), and--here's the scariest part--are even starting to multiply. yes, they are getting married and having kids, whom they push around the barrio in antique "prams" (i'm not making this up) and say things like "regular strollers are so tacky" while standing next to a mexican women with three children and no stroller (saw this happen). it's getting seriously disturbing. the city is rezoning just to try to accomodate them, yet when Subway (restaurant) tried to move in so the construction workers could afford something for lunch (the other restaurants are vegan organic specialty shops), they tried to stop construction because it would "upset the character of the neighborhood."

just last night i walked past sufjan stevens bedford ave near north 5th in williamsburg. he gave me his "do you know who i am? do my upper middle class blue eyes penetrate your soul? i'm a POET" look. i wanted to strangle him with my headphone chord.

IN SHORT, there are a million reasons to hate joanna newsom. she's the perfect figurehead for everything that sucks in music/culture at the moment, imo.

oh man, lol...spot on! certainly (one of) the downside(s) of gentrification: neighborhoods made safer and now acceptable enough for midwestern parents to allow their kids to live there (usually subsidized, of course) and the ensuing cliquish smugness that pervails. ah, but i guess it's always been that way, i'm sure the natives and max's kc regulars viewed me as an intruder 30 years ago, hopefully i did come off quite so arrogantly (...i forget, does that qualify for dissenus law?).

funny how even the rave reviews of "ys" seem to hedge, no one ever sounds genuinely convincing in their praise, all seem to jump the same bandwagon of cliched descriptions. I've given it a half-dozen tries but nothing seems to stick. was going to be persistent but it might be difficult to take it seriously after nomad's last post and k-punk's lisa simpson comparison!
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Leo, I hear you. I just decided that if Joanna Newsom were uglier physically, no indie guys would be caught dead listening to her. It's her moderate good looks that are propelling her career. Maybe the elvin ears help. Definitely the ditzy airhead act. But not the music.
 

tht

akstavrh
tht i guess it's worse for americans who have to live in the thick of the breeding grounds for JN-types and her fans. think about it.

if they were socioeconomically identical but more into robert rental and larry levan would that be ok? new york is still fairytale land for me but didn't losing my edge refer to like actual people or was that just a fairytale too? suicide talking about the slums they lived in during the 70s make even the shittiest environments outside of somalia seem gentrified, i wonder if that's the same places you're talking about.

that interview with newsom is another level of worseness even beyond all the other stuff that's shit about her. i'm beginning to wonder whether the animal collective are ideologically sound now as well ;-)
 
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turtles

in the sea
Wow those video clips are great! Now, I certainly wouldn't want to actually sit down and talk with her too long about her favorite element (my favorite's the back right one on my stove), but I think I've upgraded her from successfully pretentious hipster to bat-shit crazy hipster. Of course, the question of whether it's an act or not doesn't really matter, as you have to be at least a bit bat-shit crazy in the first place to even decide to act like that.

And really, what else are you supposed to do when you're from a well off family, have gone to all the right schools, and actually have some skill, than go incredibly incredibly prog? It's the only way out. I think the fact that there are people who take themselves and their music so seriously is great. Serious hipster >> ironic hipster, right?

Newsom's got a complete story from start to finish, a weirdly ambitious, intricate and beautiful one, that seems to be pretty damn unique to her. So what if I wouldn't want to interact with her too much socially, there's no way she could make music as over-the-top as she did without being rather over-the-top herself.

I'm pretty sure everyone here loves plenty of artists as ridiculously pretentious as Newsom. If Brian Wilson made a new album with Van Dyke Parks and Steve Albini critics would be selling their grandmothers to get a hold of an advance copy.
 
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