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Apr. 6th, 2011 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOkay, I swear this is total coincidence and just what happens to be up next on my booklogging list, but the book I'm going to talk about today is called Let's Talk About Love . . .? NOTHING TO DO however with my locked post of yesterday. (Which I am actually thinking about unlocking, but enough people have commented with what may be feelings that they don't feel comfortable sharing with the internet that I'm sort of hesitant to change the game - does anyone have strong feelings about it?)
The full title of this book is actually Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, part of the 33 1/3 series of music criticism focusing on single albums, in this case Celine Dion's Titanic-era bestseller.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agonistes recommended this book to me EVEN THOUGH I know nothing about music criticism (except what I've picked up from her) and EVEN THOUGH I have no feelings about Celine Dion one way or the other, and she was totally right to do so; I found it completely engaging.
The thing is, the author of this book starts out - as many music critics and self-proclaimed people of taste do - hating Celine Dion music with a disproportionate passion. Which is a phenomenon we're all familiar with; I don't think there's any of us who has not either ranted about "My Heart Will Go On" ourselves, or listen to our friends rant about it. (Okay I guess maybe some of you were too young to really remember Titanic, but that's a depressing thought and I'm going to leave it alone now.) Carl Wilson's project for himself, though, is to go against his instinctive reaction to Celine-bash and try to find out why our cultural Arbiters of Taste have so vehemently dismissed Celine, and why so many people passionately love her anyway - and, if possible, come around to being a Celine fan himself.
The resulting book is a really fascinating look at class, globalization, and cultural capital, not to mention the nature of personal taste, all of it in ways I did not expect. I did not come out of it with a particular urge to download Let's Talk About Love . . . but I did come out of it with a certain degree of respect for both Celine Dion as a musician and Carl Wilson as a critic, and also, an urge to listen to more music.
Therefore, semi-relatedly: guys! Rec me music! It's finally starting to be spring, the season for putting on your iPod and walking places instead of taking the subway everywhere like a slug, and I would love to have some new stuff to listen to. I like songs that are lyrically interesting, but I also like a level of - I guess I would say tunefulness; I do not, for example, appreciate Bob Dylan as I ought. (Or rather, I appreciate him as a lyricist, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to him when I'm walking around town.) I tend to gravitate towards slightly offbeat lady singer-songwriters (Jesca Hoop, Vienna Teng, Thea Gilmore, Neko Case), stuff that has a bit of a creepy folksong vibe, and conversely I also enjoy entertainingly over-the-top alt rock. That said, I also have liked a lot of other things, not excluding pop and country and rap (especially French rap! OH MANAU, so amazingly ridiculous), so please feel free to try and broaden my musical horizons.
The full title of this book is actually Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, part of the 33 1/3 series of music criticism focusing on single albums, in this case Celine Dion's Titanic-era bestseller.
agonistes recommended this book to me EVEN THOUGH I know nothing about music criticism (except what I've picked up from her) and EVEN THOUGH I have no feelings about Celine Dion one way or the other, and she was totally right to do so; I found it completely engaging.The thing is, the author of this book starts out - as many music critics and self-proclaimed people of taste do - hating Celine Dion music with a disproportionate passion. Which is a phenomenon we're all familiar with; I don't think there's any of us who has not either ranted about "My Heart Will Go On" ourselves, or listen to our friends rant about it. (Okay I guess maybe some of you were too young to really remember Titanic, but that's a depressing thought and I'm going to leave it alone now.) Carl Wilson's project for himself, though, is to go against his instinctive reaction to Celine-bash and try to find out why our cultural Arbiters of Taste have so vehemently dismissed Celine, and why so many people passionately love her anyway - and, if possible, come around to being a Celine fan himself.
The resulting book is a really fascinating look at class, globalization, and cultural capital, not to mention the nature of personal taste, all of it in ways I did not expect. I did not come out of it with a particular urge to download Let's Talk About Love . . . but I did come out of it with a certain degree of respect for both Celine Dion as a musician and Carl Wilson as a critic, and also, an urge to listen to more music.
Therefore, semi-relatedly: guys! Rec me music! It's finally starting to be spring, the season for putting on your iPod and walking places instead of taking the subway everywhere like a slug, and I would love to have some new stuff to listen to. I like songs that are lyrically interesting, but I also like a level of - I guess I would say tunefulness; I do not, for example, appreciate Bob Dylan as I ought. (Or rather, I appreciate him as a lyricist, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to him when I'm walking around town.) I tend to gravitate towards slightly offbeat lady singer-songwriters (Jesca Hoop, Vienna Teng, Thea Gilmore, Neko Case), stuff that has a bit of a creepy folksong vibe, and conversely I also enjoy entertainingly over-the-top alt rock. That said, I also have liked a lot of other things, not excluding pop and country and rap (especially French rap! OH MANAU, so amazingly ridiculous), so please feel free to try and broaden my musical horizons.
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Date: 2011-04-06 03:29 pm (UTC)(Also if it makes you feel better I saw Titanic three times in the theaters.)
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Date: 2011-04-06 03:35 pm (UTC)(I saw it once in theaters and enjoyed it! Then I saw it on an airplane, and then I saw it on a bus, and by that time I was sort of done. *laughing*)
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Date: 2011-04-06 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 03:50 pm (UTC)The Ditty Bops:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZRtiMbouw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-mif8m6OzA
And Miss Derringer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeidJVzqFGQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-djqNJl1w
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Date: 2011-04-06 04:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 05:08 pm (UTC)http://kate-nepveu.dreamwidth.org/389503.html
(and also "Folk Bloodbath" for Josh Ritter, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtxKQi5aRyg )
For good walking music, perhaps these Hold Steady songs (rock, offbeat lyrics):
http://kate-nepveu.dreamwidth.org/401524.html
For quirky singer-songwriterness, John Hiatt, who is massively prolific; here's four songs from YouTube that I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDdkwwiV-is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im-ssehAPgQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbhcXxW4y2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gcBzqqmOrI
(If you like, I would be happy to make you a personal best-of.)
And more generally, my two most underrated albums are
* The Wallflowers, _Breach_: Americana, pitch-perfect isolation and despair and hope; the first track is "Letters from the Wasteland": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaJsUNH1Rss
* The Afghan Whigs, _1965_: slinky rock about messed-up people, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9hLB0p2tFA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT7Oz8KdXvE
And three songs I like a lot that I happened to have links lying around for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrqgU0Qlba0 -- happy springtime rap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiZHmwzNAqE -- more slinky pop/rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6sNC_rstIk -- horn section, baby
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Date: 2011-04-06 05:25 pm (UTC)(I also would in no way object to a personal best-of.)
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Date: 2011-04-06 05:20 pm (UTC)Also Mary Chapin Carpenter who's an older country/folk singer who I just love. Her songs always make me want to sing along.
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Date: 2011-04-06 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 05:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 06:03 pm (UTC)One is from Montreal and called Stars. I bought it because I loved the cover so much, and then I fell in love with it. Here is a song I love called Dead Hearts. Love this album. It's poppy but sweet.
Mr. Viv just got me The Civil Wars, another duo who is being marketed as alt-country, but their album is way more than that, and their voices are GORGEOUS together. Here is a live version of Falling. They might have the creepy folksong vibe for you, especially with Barton Hollow, which is what had Mr. Viv and me going "o.O WHO ARE THEY?!?!?"
Have you ever given The Decemberists a try?
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Date: 2011-04-06 06:05 pm (UTC)I've got a bunch of individual Decemberist songs, but I've never listened to a whole album of theirs, and have been meaning to for years.
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Date: 2011-04-06 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 06:11 pm (UTC)I also really like what I have heard of The Hush Sound - I've got one album of theirs so far, and enjoyed it enough that I am probably going to be seeking out more.
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Date: 2011-04-06 07:35 pm (UTC)(As for the post: I have no strong opinions, but you could always just repost? Say up at the top that you'd previously posted it locked, and that this is the same content but you didn't want to unlock comments people had made without their permission.)
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Date: 2011-04-06 07:40 pm (UTC)(But . . . that would take effort . . .)
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Date: 2011-04-06 08:24 pm (UTC)Marina and the Diamonds are quirky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr-SqRWImmI), Ellie Goulding, Susie Suh, Pauline (she's a French pop singer hence the singular name), Natalie Merchant, and 90% of all the things previously recced for female singers I agree with (mostly because I don't know the other 10% and am seeking to rectify it).
Lastly, I don't know how you feel about fan stuff but someone wrote out arrangements from the songs in The Hunger Games trilogy and they are indeed creepy folksong vibe. Rue's Lullaby (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ve-WpgIknc) and The Hanging Tree (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdJJ1KpvLCw), so it's awesome music based on a book, best of both worlds!
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Date: 2011-04-06 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 08:58 pm (UTC)As for music: lots of people have recced The Hazards of Love, buuuut I will say that that album didn't do much for me. HOWEVER, their album that came out last December is on fairly constant play around my place! It is The King Is Dead, and the mandolin dude from REM does a lot of backup work, and Gillian Welch does backup vocals, and I LOVE IT. I love everything about it. And I especially love how well it hangs together as an album -- while the songs are good, it's very well-crafted as a unit of work. Lately I have also been enjoying a lot of Mountain Goats; proooobably my favorite album of theirs (although it's early to make that determination) is Heretic Pride, of which the title track is far and away my favorite.
Lady singer-songwriters: I'd add Caroline Herring to that list. Married couples: Oryx and Crake, the lyricist of whom is Agnes Scott '04 English. They definitely give good creepy!
I think everybody else I've been listening to heavily lately is a little twangier than you're going for, but I'd also really, really recommend the Handsome Family. They meet the tunefulness requirement, along with some seriously fucked up lyrics in the most delightful ways. Favorites include Weightless Again, So Much Wine, Cathedrals, and In The Air. Andrew Bird covers them a lot, as does Jeff Tweedy. Other songs I like that I have not found satisfactory YouTube links for: Tin Foil, After We Shot The Grizzly, The Sad Milkman, When That Helicopter Comes, and The Giant of Illinois.
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Date: 2011-04-06 09:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 10:01 pm (UTC)Also, um, this is an excerpt from the first post in my journal that pretty much sums up my Titanic-phenom experience:
Now is probably a good time to explain that, when the first little girl was eight, a certain big-deal James Cameron movie came out. She really did not like it at the time, because it was sooooo looooong, and sooooo boooooring, and whyyyyy were they kiiiiissiiiiing, and ewwwww, and uuuuugh, and HAHAHA LEONARDO DECAAAPITATED. Also, at the time she was pretty sure the girl's name was, like, Kate Winslow.
That being said, a few things did change over the next eleven years. The little girl grew up a smidge and learned many things. She and her peers, for the most part, stopped using the nickname Leonardo Decapitated. "Kate Winslow" was in several more good movies. (And! It turned out that that was not her name!)
Um, yeah. And then people like drown for like an hour, god, pshhhh.
I actually am quite fond of Titanic now, for the Kate/Leo and the pretty and the fact that as I get older I more and more appreciate the level of technical achievement that happened in that movie holy fucking shit etc etc but HAHAHAHAHA oh man at the time. We had to sing My Heart Will Go On in one of my choruses - I was like eight? - and we were all sooooooooooooooooooooooooo grumpy about it. The teacher was getting married that year. We sang a lot of stupid love songs. blejrklfdsahgeeeeeewww. :|
=)
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Date: 2011-04-07 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-06 10:04 pm (UTC)I don't have a very good stock of offbeat female singers, really. As for offbeat male singers, I'm sure Sweeney's thrown ALL THE ANDREW BIRD at you, so: Todd Rundgren! He's been making music at least as long as my sister's been alive, if not a little longer, so there's a very very very very wide variety of stuff to choose from. My albums of choice: Runt, Something/Anything? and Second Wind.
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Date: 2011-04-07 03:19 am (UTC)Haha, I do have a fair amount of Andrew Bird from Sweeney, but no Todd Rundgren, so thank you for the rec!
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Date: 2011-04-06 10:08 pm (UTC)I am also trying to get everyone to listen to Carbon Leaf, because I adoooore their musical style.
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Date: 2011-04-07 03:20 am (UTC)I ALSO LOVE CARBON LEAF. "Paloma" is one of my favorite songs of all time.
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Date: 2011-04-06 10:57 pm (UTC)(You can listen to/download one of my favorite Nujabes songs here (http://www.box.net/shared/4nv9uik2e9).)
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Date: 2011-04-07 04:36 am (UTC)I effing loved Let's Talk About Love as a teenager - yeah, I totally bought it because of Titanic (NINE TIMES IN THE THEATER, TYVM, first time was for my fifteenth birthday), but I really fell in love with some of the songs. I have a distinct memory of listening to "Tell Him" over and over, on my old Discman that skipped if you so much as looked at it funny, just totally grooving on Celine and Barbra's voices and how they worked together. Just writing this comment is making me want to listen to it again.
Celine is such an interesting phenomenon, because it's so cool to hate her and has been since AT LEAST 1997/98 when "MY Heart Will Go On" dominated the airwaves, but she has such a commanding voice. I'm kind of cool on her myself these days, since she's tended to pander to the soft rock crowd and that is not my thing, but I can't deny how powerful her voice is - I do love her cover of "O Holy Night." It's considered the definitive version in my family. *g* Her career has never really recovered from Titanic. She got hit with the same kind of backlash that nailed Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio, but they've struggled back into respectability through sheer force of talent in a way that Celine has never quite managed. I must check this book out sometime, it sounds like a very interesting read.
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Date: 2011-04-07 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-09 02:47 am (UTC)