Gorillaz R 4 RealzIf a corporation could have a hobby, I think Converse shoes has found theirs. In the last few years, Converse has opened it’s own recording studio, and every couple of months, it’s commissioned some great, unexpected collaboration singles, like last year’s irresistible “I’m a Goner” which matched indie pop duo Matt & Kim with swag rapper Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em and Andrew W.K., the original party rocker. You can still download the song for free home page, and while there, check out the behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the song’s video, which looks like it was inspired by the final scene of Summer School.
“I’m a Goner” (2011)
Converse’s latest collaboration single brings Gorillaz into the studio with Outkast’s Andre 3000 and LCD Soundsystem’s maestro James Murphy. It’s called “Do Ya Thing”. Check it out and download it for free here. Like any good Gorillaz song, it’s a veritable pinata of brightly colored audio sweetness – doodly doo organs, tooting horns, glitchy beats – and there’s a great contrast between lead Gorilla Damon Albarn’s jaded intro verse, and Andre’s marathon sprint, with James Murphy swooping in periodically to deliver a hilariously just-a-little-bit-off falsetto hook. The bummer about this collaboration is that this is really the sort of thing that Gorillaz does all the time – it’s not unlikely that these three artists would have been in the studio together for part of the next Gorillaz album. So while it’s great to have a new Gorillaz track out there (for free!), I generally expect something more unexpected from Converse.
In the 1970s, performance artist Marina Abramović created a piece called Rhythm 0 in which she arranged a collection of 72 objects – instruments of both potential pleasure and potential violence (including a gun and a single bullet) – on a table, and sat passively for six hours essentially inviting viewers to do what they would to her with those objects without fear of either reciprocation or retaliation. You can hear the artist talk about the results – yes, someone did load the gun – here.
Well, this isn’t quite so extreme. But there are parallels. “Drunk Girls”, the new video by LCD Soundsystem for the first single of their just-released album features the band, led by songwriter-producer James Murphy, surrendering themselves to the initially merely annoying but increasingly violent whims and wiles of a gang of people dressed up as evil pandas. For instance, James Murphy’s trying just to get through the song’s first verse, not pulling any crazy rock star moves, no windmilling arms, or skyward fistpumps – just a guy standing there singing while being prodded and fondled by panda suit people.
The video’s camerawork seems to be working in conspiracy with the pandas. Before we can get too wrapped in the minor abuses being rained upon Murphy, who only momentarily seems to defend his personal space (and seems to catch himself, as if he knows he’s transgressed somehow), the camera jerks to bandmate Nancy Whang. The pandas jiggle her microphone while she tries to sing. Annoying, yes, but harmless. Soon enough, though, the evil pandas are blowing air horns in people’s ears, gassing people with colored stage fog (I think?), stripping them of their clothes, tackling them, dragging them around the floor, smearing make-up on faces, duct taping them together and setting off firecrackers around their bodies. There’s property damage. There’s vandalism. It’s like a contained riot.
Sure, this was almost certainly a more controlled “happening” than Abramović’s Rhythm 0 – at the very least, there were no fatal weapons being brandished about – but you start to get a sense by the end of the video things have gone a little beyond the group’s “artisto-masochistic” capacities. Moreover, there’s something strangely adorable about the panda people – specifically their costumes, the cheap-looking coveralls, the Sharpee facial features are as cute a third-grader’s homemade Halloween costume, but as one of the video’s Youtube commenters noted, it’s also as sinister as a Slipknot get-up. It certainly looked a lot more fun to be one of the pandas than to be “with the band”, so to speak.
All this sorta got me thinking: Lindsay Lohan. (Deep thoughts by Paul Lorentz.)
But then again, maybe this was just another exercise in personal limit-stretching and self-defeating unrockstardom for James Murphy, whose video for the 2002 debut LCD Soundsystem single “Losing My Edge” (a hilariously specific indictment of hipsters) featured Murphy getting slapped in the face by an anonymous hand (or several)… like a hundred times. The band’s third, and what Murphy has suggested will be final, album This Is Happening, hit stores last week.
Real quick, though: Interesting potential Grammy performance alert: The Time (of “Jungle Love” and “Purple Rain” film fame for those of you with no soul whatsoever) are reuniting on the Grammy ceremony and performing with Rihanna…which should be pretty goshdang interesting. Are Time members Jam & Lewis delivering a subtle shot to star pupil Janet Jackson for leaving them behind on her upcoming album (which I’ve heard is *very* good)?
Anyway, what I originally started writing: many of you know the Village Voice as the bastion of the New York City liberal. I *used* to enjoy reading their music reviews (headed by the venerable if occasionally wrongheaded Robert Christgau). Every year, they have a who’s who of music critical intelligentsia vote on their favorite albums and singles of the year, and every year the results are…well, they’re kinda predictable.
Not to say they’re wrong. Their picks are uniformly solid, although I gotta admit that I don’t *get* the whole big deal about LCD Soundsystem (who came away with the year’s best album in their poll). I also don’t get why everyone salivates over Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” (his album is better than Ghostface’s? And Lupe’s?-which also somehow wound up below Britney Spears-REALLY??) when it’s (to my ears) just as mediocre (in a dependable kinda way) as “Kingdom Come”. The list did, however, remind me that I need to get that Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings record that I’ve walked past for the past four or five months every time I’ve gone into Virgin Megastore.
Singles list? More of the same. Lots of indie-pop, lots of Winehouse (a little ironic in the Morissette sense that “Rehab” checks in at #1 on their singles poll just as Wino finally heads off to actual rehab!), lots of T-Pain (let’s face it, the guy was *inescapable*).
I’d write more about the list, but frankly, I’m tired and the words are starting to run together.
