#bill nace

[dustedmagazine]

Myriam Gendron — Mayday (Feeding Tube/Thrill Jockey)

Photo by Justine Latour

Quebecois folk singer Myriam Gendron is far from the first artist to turn in some demos expecting them to serve as a rough draft, only to decide that the results stand on their own. Since that debut collection of Dorothy Parker’s poetry set to music (2014’s Not So Deep as a Well), Gendron’s only put out one further record (2021’s justly attention-getting collection Ma Delire: Songs of Love Lost and Found), but she’s been busy with literally life and death. It was only after having kids and then putting together Ma Delire that Gendron really started touring consistently, and then that was sadly halted because of her mother’s sickness and eventual death. That experience informs Mayday, an album of firsts for Gendron; first more traditionally “studio” recording, first time she’s made her music her day job, and first time she’s written most of the songs herself. Despite all those changes, though, Mayday is just as exceptional, intimate, and timeless feeling as anything Gendron’s done before.

On Ma Delire Gendron brought in Bill Nace and Chris Corsano for a song apiece; here she widens and deepens her net (and Nace is back too). A mutual admiration society between her and justly-lauded performers Marisa Anderson and Jim White resulted in the three working together on three songs here, about a third of the total running time. The results are stunning; Anderson and White have worked together to great effect before and Gendron’s richly crestfallen voice fits in perfectly, whether the duo are calm and reflective on “Long Way Home,” foreboding and restless on “Terres Brûlées” (with Nace), or exploratory and elegiac on “Lully Lullay.” The former two also feature Cedric Dind-Lavoie on double bass, and it’s hard not to wish for more from that particular grouping.

That’s not because the rest of Mayday is lacking, though. Gendron eases the listener in with the Fahey-homaging instrumental “There Is No East or West,” and although the title references a gospel song, here it seems to speak more to the feelings of doubt, uncertainty, and grief that course through Gendron’s songs. Whether adapting Parker again on “Dorothy’s Blues,” turning out gemlike instrumentals like “La Luz,” or leaning into the soaring sadness of “Look Down That Lonesome Road,” Gendron continues to be a singular voice (figuratively and literally).

The title of the closing “Berceuse” translates to “Lullaby,” and gentle tone and lyrics match. Until Zoh Amba’s saxophone squeals surge in, playing the track off as Gendron’s electric guitar slowly gets quieter. It’s a striking moment, and after a few listens on that it’s hard to imagine the song and the album without, as if the messiness of life is bursting in to remind us why we need to sing children to sleep in the first place. As always, the beauty of Gendron’s music feels both hard fought and carefully wrought, something worth sharing and protecting.

Ian Mathers

[jacobwren]

Bill Nace on taishōgoto

[jgthirlwell]

12.01.23 Bill Nace at Public Records Brooklyn

[mxdwn]

Kim Gordon Releases Surprise EP As Body/Head

https://music.mxdwn.com/2023/05/07/news/kim-gordon-releases-surprise-ep-as-body-head/

[bandcampsnoop]

7/31/23.

I was record shopping the other day, and ran across a couple of Samara Lubelski LPs. I've enjoyed Lubelski's music since her debut "The Fleeting Skies".

Lubelski (New York) is still quite active musically. She played as part of a duo with Bill Nace last May. I own three solo LPs and they all are quiet, contemplative and melodic. Every once in a while there will be a more upbeat song. Often I think of Vashti Bunyan or Diana Darby when I listen to her music.

Lubelski has quite a varied music background. She's played violin with Thurston Moore, and engineered recordings of Ted Leo ("Hearts of Oak"...one of my favorites). And on "Parallel Suns" she works with Hamish Kilgour. I also bought "Spectacular of Passages" - again Kilgour plays drums, but Gary Olson (Ladybug Transistor) also joins.

"Parallel Suns" was released by The Social Registry (Brooklyn, New York).

[whtaever]

[eraseer]

Listen/purchase: Secret Cuts by Body/Dilloway/Head

[persistentvisionz]

June 15, 2024

Aaron Dilloway & Bill Nace - Mr. Smalls Theater - Pittsburgh PA

[sinceileftyoublog]

Six Organs of Admittance Interview: More Than a Couple Chairs

Photo by Kami Chasny

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When Ben Chasny dives into something, he usually dives deep. Upon answering the phone in February, when I called him to talk about his new Six Organs of Admittance album Time Is Glass (out today on Drag City), he seemed a bit scattered. Despite mentally preparing himself all day for the interview, he got distracted by a "What are you digging lately?" Bandcamper compilation Drag City asked him to put together to advertise his record release. (A music fan with a voracious appetite, Chasny was rediscovering music he had purchased a couple years prior and forgot about.) Six Organs records often occupy the same dedicated headspace, Chasny setting aside blocks of time to think about nothing else. That is, until Time Is Glass. On his latest, Chasny blurs the lines between his outside-of-music life and the music itself, the album a batch of songs that reflects on the magical minutiae that sprout during a period of needed stasis.

The last time I spoke to Chasny, he and his partner [Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers] were still settling in from their move to Humboldt County in Northern California. "When Elisa and I first moved here, we didn't have any friends," Chasny said. "But there's a group of us that live in Humboldt now. A bunch of my friends moved up since the last time I talked to you." That includes fellow Comets on Fire bandmate Ethan Miller and his partner, fellow New Bums musical partner Donovan Quinn, and folk singer Meg Baird and her partner. "Every New Year's Day, if it's not pouring rain, we take a walk on the beach," said Chasny. One such photoshoot on January 1, 2023 yielded the album cover for Time Is Glass: That's Miller and his poodle, along with Baird's Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley. This unintentional artistic collective meets up often, whether for coffee or as Winter Band, a rotating cast of area musicians who form to open up for musician friends when they come through town, like Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls. As such, according to Chasny, Time Is Glass is a celebration of community.

Perhaps the supportive strength of his artistic family gave Chasny the willpower to incorporate elements of his daily life into Time Is Glass, something he couldn't avoid. He didn't share with me exactly what in his personal life made it impossible to separate the two, though he mentioned his dog, a difficult-to-train puppy that was a mix of three traditionally stubborn breeds. Said dog inspired "My Familiar", a song that uses occult language to inhabit the mind of his obstinate canine companion. "And we'll burn this whole town / No one says there's good," Chasny sings, alternating between his quintessential hushed delivery and falsetto, his layered vocals atop circular picking exuding a sense of sparseness. Indeed, you wouldn't expect a Six Organs record about home life to sound totally blissful; Time Is Glass is at once gentle and menacing. The devotional "Spinning In A River" portrays the titular carefree act as lightly as the prickle of Chasny's guitar or as doomily as the song's distortion. "Hephaestus" and "Theophany Song" imagine their respective mythological characters as gruff and voyeuristic. "Summer's Last Rays" indeed captures a sense of finality, Chasny's processed guitar and warbling harmonium providing the instantly hazy nostalgia before the fade-out. The album is bookended by songs more straightforwardly hopeful, the opener "The Mission" a dedication to friends falling in love with their new place of residence, the closer "New Year's Song" a twangy ode to dreaming. But it's the moments in between that Chasny was forced to capture on Time Is Glass. And thankfully, what was born out of necessity yielded, for him, new ways to interpret the same old, same old.

Read my conversation with Chasny below, edited for length and clarity. He speaks on domesticity, mythology, playing live, and Arthur Russell.

SILY: You've lived in Humboldt County for a bit. Is Time Is Glass the first Six Organs record in a while you made while situated in one place?

Ben Chasny: I did do a couple records here before. The first one, I was in the process of moving here, so I wasn't really settled. The second was at the beginning of lockdown. This is the first one I felt like was recorded at a home. Everything was settled, I have a schedule. When I was doing the first one, I didn't even have furniture in the house. I had a couple chairs. [laughs]

SILY: Do you think the feeling of being recorded at a home manifests in any specific way on the album?

BC: I started to incorporate daily domestic routines into the record, more often. A lot of the melodies were written while taking the dog for a walk, which I've never done before. There was always stuff to do as I moved in. The times weren't as separate. Before, it was, "Now I'm recording, now I'm doing life stuff." There was a merging of everything here. I would listen to it on my earbuds while taking walks and constantly work on it for six months.

SILY: It definitely has that homeward bound feel in terms of the lyrics and the sound, like you've been somewhere forever. There are a lot of lyrics about the absence of time, and there's a circular nature to the rhythms and the guitars. Does the title of the album refer to this phenomenon?

BC: A little bit. Time does seem, in general, post-lockdowns and COVID, different. The lyrics on the record have a bit more domesticity. It always seems like there was something that had to be done, that would normally keep me from doing music, that I tried to incorporate here. Maybe I'm just getting older, too. I'm getting more sensitive towards time. I'm running out. [laughs]

SILY: Was there anything specific about your domestic life that made you want to include it in your music?

BC: Just that I had to include it in order to do anything. It was no longer separate. The way life ended up working out, I could no longer separate my artistic life from other life. I had to put the artistic aspect into it in order to work. Instead of getting frustrated, I brought [music] more into the house.

SILY: Did working on the record give you a new perspective on domesticity?

BC: I don't know. A little bit. I was just trying to come to terms with basic life things. Let me look at the record, I forgot what songs are on it. [laughs] The song "My Familiar" is about my dog. I got this book called Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, which was sort of taken from transcriptions of witch trials from Scotland in the 1500's. A lot of dealing with things like witches' familiars and demon familiars. I found a very strong similarity between that and my dog, which seemed like it was maybe a demon. She's a Husky-German Shepherd-Australian Shepherd mix, so as a puppy, she needed a lot of work. So that became a song. That's a more humorous way everyday life made its way into the music.

[With regard to] the last song, "New Years Song", Elisa and I have a contest on New Year's Eve when we're hanging out where we go in separate rooms and have one hour to write a song. We come out at 11 or 11:30 and play the song for each other. We've done it for a few years now. This was the song I wrote for New Year's Eve going into 2022.

SILY: You talk about God on Time Is Glass and delve a little bit into mythology. Was that something you were thinking about on a day to day basis when writing?

BC: The “Hephaestus” song was just a character. That was a rare song for me in that I was trying to make sounds that particularly evoked a mythological figure. I've made nods to mythology in the past, but the titles were almost an afterthought. This particular song, I was trying to make the sounds of that character in their workshop with the fire and anvils. I was trying to evoke that feeling. That was kind of a new one for me.

SILY: Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but you also seem to talk a bit about your state of mind on "Slip Away".

BC: It's funny you caught onto that, because I wasn't really expecting to bring it up during interviews. I wouldn't say that I came close at times in the past couple years to schizophrenia, but I could see way off in the distance and horizon what that would be like. I...was trying to write about that. At the same time, the lyrics that have to do with two minds and the splitting of the mind are also somewhat of a reference to the idea of a celestial twin or Valentinian gnosis, how you have a celestial counterpart. That idea [is behind the concept of] someone's guardian angel.

SILY: On a couple songs, you sing to someone or something else. "The Mission" you've mentioned is for a friend and their new partner. What about on "Spinning in a River"?

BC: Maybe it was more of a general idea. It wasn't so much to a person as to a general concept of Amory.

SILY: What were all the instruments used on the record?

BC: I had some guitar, I was singing, and there's some harmonium on it, which I did a lot of processing on, lowering it octaves. I've got some really basic Korg synths. Electronic-wise, there's a program called Reactor I like to use a lot. I do it a little bit more subtly than electronic artists. I use it more for background.

SILY: I picked up the harmonium on "Summer's Last Rays"! I feel like you never truly know when you're hearing a harmonium unless it's in the album credits. Sometimes, that sound is just effects.

BC: There are two different harmoniums. When the bass comes in, that's also a harmonium, but I knocked it down a couple octaves and put it through some phaser. It has a grinding bass tone to it. This is actually one of the few Six Organs records with bass guitar on it. Unless it's an electric record with a band, there's never really been bass guitar. I was really inspired by Naomi Yang's bass playing in Galaxie 500 and how it's more melodic. I told her that, too.

SILY: On "Theophany Song", are you playing piano?

BC: Yeah, that's at my friend's house. I just wanted to play a little melody.

SILY: Was this your first time using JJ Golden for mastering?

BC: I've worked with JJ before. He did Ascent and a few others. I particularly wanted to work with him this time because I had just gotten that Masayuki Takayanagi box set on Black Editions and saw he had done that. I have the original CDs, and I thought he did such an amazing job that I wanted to work with him again.

SILY: Is that common for you, that you think of people to work with and you dig a record they just worked on and it clicks for you?

BC: That's the first time I had just heard something and thought, "Oh, I gotta work with this person." I usually have a few mastering engineers I work with and think, "What would be good for them?" or, "What does this sound like?" I usually like to send the more rock-oriented stuff to JJ, but I was just feeling it this time.

SILY: Have you played these songs live?

BC: The instrumental "Pilar" I have been playing since 2019. That's the oldest song on the record. I did do one show last September where I played a couple of these songs live. I have some ideas on how to work it out. It will be a solo acoustic show, but I [hope] to make some new sounds so it's not so straightforward. One thing about this record is I tried to write songs in the same tuning. On previous records, I used a lot of tunings, and it was a real pain to try to play the songs live. I did write this record with the idea that most of these songs would be able to be done live.

SILY: What have you been listening to, watching, or reading lately?

BC: I just got the Emily Robb-Bill Nace split LP. I just saw her live a couple nights ago. The latest one on Freedom To Spend from Danielle Boutet, which is awesome. Freedom To Spend is a go-to label for me. Also, this split with Karen Constance and Dylan Nyoukis.

I've been reading Buddhist Bubblegum by Matt Marble, about Arthur Russell and the systems he developed, which I knew nothing about. His compositional systems have almost a Fluxus influence. The subtitle is Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell, so it's also about his Buddhism as well. When I first heard about the book, I didn't know if I needed to get it, but I heard an interview with Matt about the detailed systems Arthur Russell came up with. It gives me a whole new level of appreciation for him. It's so good.

SILY: Did you listen to Picture of Bunny Rabbit?

BC: It's so good, especially the title track. It seems like when he has us plugged into some kind of effects or delay, he's switching the different sounds on it, but it makes the instrument go in so many different areas. To me, the title track is worth the price of the entire record, even though the whole thing is good.

SILY: What else is next for you? Are you constantly writing?

BC: This is gonna be a very busy year release-wise. I have a couple more things coming out. It's hard to write stuff because I always think it'll take so long for it to come out. I'm halfway working on something, but I have no idea when it will come out.

[thesearenotphotographs]

Kim Gordon with Kelsey Lu, L’Rain, Circuit des Yeux and Bill Nace duo, plus more at Knockdown Center

On Saturday, March 23, 2024, Kim Gordon’s “The Collective” tour came to Knockdown Center in Maspeth, NY for a sold out show. The evening featured performances by Gordon, Kelsey Lu, and L’Rain on the main stage, while Matt Krefting, Full Size, and Circuit des Yeux with Bill Nace (performing as a duo) did sets in the Noise Room, which was curated by Nace.

I covered the fantastic bill for BrooklynVegan and images covering the whole night are now available on that website here.

[alanlicht]

Chris Brokaw, Alan Licht, Bill Nace triple bill at Tubby's Kingston Feb 1

Looking forward to this triple bill with perennially cool cats Chris & Bill. Tickets and all info here.

[ave-studio]

VALISE performing in Philadelphia on 17 November 2023 with Universal Cell Unlock. flyer by Bill Nace

[radioactive-cloud]

i'm gonna go to london and kill myself in front of joker out and damon baker to change the trajectories of their lives. btw

[ana-chronista]

Made up fic title: Planes to catch and bills to pay

I mean, we say made up, but now I kind of want to write this... JO ensemble fic, the SSF airlines AU nobody asked for apart from everyone who wants to see Nace in a suit again, so at least three of us. General crack and slice of life, featuring but not limited to:

Bojan having a weird almost-relationship with a pilot from a Finnish airline who he keeps bumping into in various locations. Rumour has it they've never even had a full conversation, instead communicating via facial expressions and in jokes. It's debatable if they even know each other's names.

Jure running a side business shipping and delivering random items as he's saving for his own plane. Anything from kitchen knives to exotic animals to ananas lonkero (that last one didn't have far to go, as it was Jan who ordered it - his hand slipped and he ended up with ten times the amount he wanted Jure to pick up...)

Jan and Nace thinking they're being super subtle and secretive about their new relationship, while being 110% blatantly obvious to all and sundry because absolutely no work is getting done at any time and there's only so far that the cramped conditions of the plane can go to explaining why they're so up in each other's personal space the whole time.

Poor Kris spending most of the fic like this running gag from Airplane:

It's on my list, anyway 😂

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

[sparkles-oflight]

Sunny side of London

Hi, yesterday I made some people sad. Have some lighthearted BoKris and JaNce fic.

Thanks @anxious-witch for the proofreading!

Synopsis: Jure has instated a policy that prevents any of the couples from sleeping together. But it's Joker Out, they follow no rules or common sense.

Disclaimer: Please think of these as characters and not the actual people. I don’t encourage anyone to send this to any of the actual JO members nor do I encourage people to force any type of relationship between anyone.

Sensible topics mentioned: sex

The room assignments were simple: Nace with Kris, Jan with Jure, and Bojan alone.

“Let’s keep it like during Eurovision”, Jure proposed “For the sake of my mental health, please”.

Jure knew if the couples were sleeping together, boundaries could easily be crossed. And if one of the couples did, the other would too.

So why not return to the basis? Jan and Jure are great roommates and Nace and Kris are even better – Also, nobody but Guštin himself can handle Bojan’s snoring.

There was a problem, after Stožice, Kris moved in with Bojan, and the two of them had grown used to sleeping together, or at least in the same room, so, the older one was struggling to sleep tonight. He worked all day to get some lyrics out, but nothing. Nada.

Frustrated, he decided to get up to the kitchen, maybe a glass of water would help.

He walked barefoot. Bojan didn’t mind the cold much, but London’s cold was something completely different from Slovenia’s. Luckily for them, they had heating, though he wondered how much the bills would cost them.

Following an orange light to the end of the corridor, he entered the living room which wasn’t empty.

Kris was wrapped up in a blanket scrolling on his phone with headphones on. Quickly he noticed the other's presence and put the objects he was holding aside.

- Trouble sleeping? – he asked.

- Uh, yes. – and Bojan replied.

Kris patted the empty space next to him on the couch, inviting Bojan to join his side. He accepted the request and they cuddled.

- So, what happened?

- Uh. Lyrics. – he sighed – I can’t wrap my head around them.

- Just that?

Bojan didn’t reply. Instead, he turned the tables.

- You? Why are you awake?

Kris looked up and let his body completely rest on the sofa.

- Overwhelmed.

Bojan glanced at the table with an empty tainted wine glass.

- I figured.

A moment went by.

Silence.

Then Bojan decided to look up and also rest his body like Kris.

He looked at the ceiling. Empty, just like his mind.

- What color would you like our ceiling to be?

Kris was confused by Bojan’s question.

- What do you mean?

- When we settle down, what color would you like the ceiling to be?

Kris chuckled. He was slightly flustered at the question.

- White. Like all the ceilings are.

- Why? Why are ceilings white? Why not a cool color!? Like...Orange!

- That’s a warm color.

- Ahaha, funny. – Bojan mocked him – No, but why not?

- Because makes the space look brighter, cleaner, and bigger.

- Oh.

Bojan didn’t say anything again, but then Kris grabbed his chin for their faces to meet.

- When we settle down, you can paint our room any color you want. - He looked at his small brunette who grinned from one ear to the other. - Except orange, what the fuck is wrong with you?

- But I like orange!

- And I like purple.

- That’s your favorite color, it’s different. Mine is pink.

- Then why do you want orange so bad?

- Because it’s your color, Kris.

- W-what? – he muttered.

- It’s your color. It’s the color of the sun, and you brighten my day every day. So, it’s your color.

Kris was left speechless. If he weren’t a bit tipsy, he probably would have mocked Bojan for what he said. Make a snarky remark, a mean comment, tell him is just like a little puppy, but, right now, he wanted to cry at the idea Bojan saw him as the sun.

In fact, Kris was about to cry...

- You are the “Sunny Side of London”, Kris. – ...but Bojan had to make a pun.

Kris planted his hand on Bojan’s face.

- God, you are unbearable. – Bojan licked his hand making Kris flinch – Hey!

- Shush, be quieter, they are asleep.

- We could go to sleep too. – Kris suggested as his hand found its way to Bojan’s chest.

- Together? – he smiled but then flinched as he felt Kris slightly gripping a nipple.

- Together together. Did that turn you on?

- A little.

- Too bad I’m not having sex with you tonight.

- WHY!?

Kris’ lips met Bojan’s.

- Shush, the others are asleep. – he said as he opened his blue eyes to examine his lover’s face.

Bojan was suddenly hit with the realization that he lived with his friends.

- But you know what you could write about? About this. – He kissed him again – About my lips meeting yours – and again – About you falling for me – and again – About the nights we spend together.

Bojan couldn’t even begin to express how happy he gets when he has tipsy Kris kissing him softly and getting to hear the sincerest of Krises.

- You taste like grapes. – Bojan commented.

- And you love it, don’t you?

After a make-out session, the late-night hours were starting to take a toll on them, and they decided to leave for Bojan’s room where the two men would cuddle very closely on a single’s bed.

They didn’t realize that they did wake someone else – Jan.

The tall dark-haired man made sure the coast was clear before going to the room in front of his. He opened the door slowly to see another sleeping man.

He made his way to him and kissed his shoulder, which made him move a little. Jan then whispered in his ear.

- Mister Jordan? – he teased the other.

Nace turned to him, and he opened his eyes slightly. When he noticed it was Jan, he smiled. God, Jan loved his dimples.

- Are you lonely? – he asked.

Nace nodded. He knew Kris wasn’t feeling well and woke up in the middle of the night and he had also heard some noises coming from the living room...Nace was sleepy, but he could still put two and two together.

He opened his arms to Jan who slept next to him for the first time in a while. Nace’s arms were warm against Jan’s body. He felt at home. He met the “Sunny Side of London”.

Jure, on the other hand, was not dumb. The coast is clear for him, time to text a cute bartender he has been talking to since he got to London. He has been with these boys for a while now, he knows Bojan doesn’t sleep when he’s frustrated like this. And he knew for a fact that one way or another they would all end up sleeping with each other.

“Are you by the area?” he asked and after some texting, she dropped by after her shift.

The morning after...nobody said anything. None of them apologized for “breaking the rules” because nobody followed them. And Bojan wrote a new song, so...it’s a win-win situation?

♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩♫♩

I don't know what to write here lmao

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