Sweden has, historically, never been short on cranking out top-notch pop. In its hands, the genre has taken forms as varied as disco (Secret Service), dance (Ace of Base), rock (The Hives), indie (Lykke Li) and even the genuinely creepy (The Knife). But as the name suggests, the idea is to be popular. And being popular usually doesn’t mean being sincere.
This article is from FILTER Issue 51
A funny thing happened to Talib Kweli last night. Performing onstage with Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) as Black Star, he was fixed on one guy in the audience wearing a T-shirt that read, in rhinestones, “More Tupac, Less Drake.” And, amidst this set, facing a couple thousand people, all Kweli could think was, “Why do you have to wear that shirt at my show?”
This article is from FILTER Issue 50
I begged Andrea not to make me go. I told her I would find someplace where I could hide from my editor and that if I stayed I knew that we could make things better again. But she refused.
“You have to go,” she said, “because if you don’t you’re going to fuck everything up.” When I looked up and saw her face illuminated beneath the naked light bulb, I knew she was right so I got out of bed and gathered my things.
“Ask about our Seven Deadly Sins packages,” tempted the intentionally sexed-up outgoing recorded message of the hotel in Perth where Nick Cave was holed up on the Aussie leg of his 2013 tour. It was pricelessly apropos. After all, it’s hard to imagine another songwriter—nay, writer—who has so fearlessly navigated the minefields of sin and redemption as has he, fighting a veritably unwinnable artistic war against moral complacency and torpor.
Said moral battleground has been trod once again, and in the aftermath has arisen Push the Sky Away, Cave’s 15th album with The Bad Seeds. At first listen, it seems rife with biblical symbolism—hardly shocking for the gent who actually penned the introduction to a 1998 Canongate publication of King James. Yet Cave is quick to insist that the record’s “religiousness” stands utterly apart from…that book.
The songs teeter precariously between the Cave of devastating romantic lamentations (“Wide Lovely Eyes”) and he of the foreboding tales (“Water’s Edge”) of those trapped living on the wasted fringes of our incessantly unforgiving mortal existence. He drags us through an imagined but frighteningly recognizable world, explicated by arcane metaphors and bare, uncloaked confessionals (as well as the occasional delicious blasphemy)…and leaves us once again in a perplexing yet also enlightening exegesist purgatory. But if it were easy to comprehend Nick Cave (or morality itself, for that matter), well…everyone would be doing it.
Historically, festivals have been a way for a culture to collectively throw off the shackles of their mores, taboos and any other number of social institutions that contribute to a functional and safe civilization. In this vacuum of order, sexual hedonism; chemical experimentation; gluttony; drunkenness; and excess become commonplace and sanctioned expressions of participation.
Modern music festivals are perhaps the most dubious example of this type of Dionysian collective celebration, with their Gestapo-style security, rigid scheduling, mandatory proof of identification, insurance concerns and adherence to the profit model. Our consumer masters have deemed fit, however, to unload “free swag” onto us to demonstrate their willingness, as corporate “citizens,” to join in on the fun and throw proverbial caution to the wind.
All in all, a pretty bleak state of affairs, but your mind is still a magical motherfucker, even if you’ve fried it with a steady diet of reality television and social networking news feeds about the Mayan calendar.
My antidote to being lulled into the semi-narcoleptic and docile state, ideal for consuming, that your masters wish to induce in the fully immersive commercial (FIC) that is the modern music festival is to retreat into the mind. This is the same exercise that served as the impetus for almost all of the existential music and philosophy we use as a cornerstone for modern “individuality.”
Here I have outlined some steps.
Way back in 2006, when the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was a single weekend, two-day affair (ah, the olden days!), the French foursome of bassist Deck d’Arcy, guitarist Laurent Brancowitz, vocalist Thomas Mars and guitarist Christian Mazzalai made Phoenix’s desert debut to a packed crowd inside the fest’s second-to-smallest tent. Supporting their then-impending album, It’s Never Been Like That, the hits were sparse but savvy and distinct: arguably “Long Distance Call,” that 2006 record’s jittery single, and “Too Young,” the flirtatious pop cut from their 2000 debut featured fondly and memorably in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 tour de force Lost In Translation.
Seven years, one Mars–Coppola knot-tie and a 2009 main stage stop in Indio (that time touting the soon-to-be critically adored Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix) later, and Phoenix have ascended to the festival slot previously reigned over by Jay-Z, Gorillaz, Arcade Fire, Kanye West and Radiohead. In addition to feeling the heat left by the others who’ve soaked up the Coachella Valley sun, Phoenix will be unveiling songs, many for the first time, from the band’s upcoming release, the slyly titled Bankrupt!, an album already weighted heavily by the buzz and expectation built from its brilliantly executed (and Grammy-winning, Platinum-selling) predecessor.
Here, the Guide talks to Mars about why the band’s highly anticipated follow-up is called “Bankrupt!” and not “Ludwig van Phoenix,” the strange elegance found in overindulgence and which Coachella performance “changed everything.”
At a time when gangsta rap dominated the airwaves and captured the hearts and minds of hip-hop fans, there was a lesser-known Los Angeles–based collective of emcees and DJs making a name for themselves in a scene that wasn’t as popular as that of their hardcore brethren. With four socially conscious microphone fiends rapping about everyday issues and two mixmasters who cultivated their soulful, funky, throwback sound, Jurassic 5 was part of the “other” LA hip-hop scene that spawned several other success stories, including eventual pop radio fixtures The Black Eyed Peas.
Initially two separate groups, Hollywood’s Unity Committee (emcees Chali 2na and Mark 7even with DJ Cut Chemist) and Rebels of Rhythm (Zaakir and Akil) joined together, soon adding DJ Nu-Mark, to create Jurassic 5. Beginning with first single “Unified Rebelution” in 1995, the group slowly began their march towards mainstream popularity.
Still young at a strapping 24 years old, James Blake has followed an impressive trajectory, from purveyor of minimalist house music to crooner with a technophile’s heart. Through five EPs, a goodie bag of singles and a critically adored debut, Blake has eagerly molted, losing one shell after another, deconstructing dusty piece by dusty piece to reveal a songwriter more interested in pulling apart the genres that birthed him than dredging the already-shallow wells of dubstep for signs of R & B or the sediment of soul.
Since signing to a major label, the London native and classically trained musician has toured exhaustively, hooked up with folks like Bon Iver and Kanye West (“He’s a nice guy with big ideas,” Blake demures of West), and has singlehandedly dampened the proliferation of dubstep’s uglier incarnations (cough—Skrillex—cough).
Republic Records will release Overgrown, the follow-up to Blake’s debut, this April. Two singles leaked early—the lush “Retrograde” and Brian Eno collaboration “Digital Lion”—which beg for wide audiences and sumptuous venues; that his American tour begins at the massive Coachella festival just feels right.
Along with half the human race, Blake was recently in Austin at SXSW, so the Guide phoned him to interrupt his continental breakfast. With an arch sarcasm to his every word, Blake talked about the art of collaboration and the rigors of touring, as well as implying that he may have flagrantly lied in past interviews. We can’t verify the truth of anything here with 100 percent certainty, but he sure seemed sincere.
It can take just one album and already they’ve got you in a box. Conor J. O’Brien has his box and into it we’ll place him along with the other singer-songwriters who pluck strings of guitars along with hearts. And so it goes…
Conor J. O’Brien: singer of the confessional variety, literate, Irish, boyish and charming. First album—Becoming a Jackal (2010)—lauded and celebrated in the proper circles. Those who drink black coffee, dark beer, brown liquors, wear brown shoes and cultivate brown beards—they all nod and know the secret that this so-called “Villagers” is only a moniker, this Conor J. O’Brien its mastermind. The songs are good and strong and sturdy enough to put this box up on that top shelf near Bright Eyes, down the way a bit from Elvis Costello. And if he properly ages like the aforementioned brown whiskey, we’ll shift him an inch closer to his hero (Costello) and farther down the line to who-knows-where, his potential being vast.
This article is from FILTER Issue 51
"I feel good," he reports with a bit of vinegar in his voice. He’s in Los Feliz, and it’s not actually vinegar; it’s however one would describe the sound of a man who seems to only speak in deadpan. “I feel glorious, wonderful,” he confirms, and this he punctuates with a chuckle—which is helpful, because it’s not often Mark Oliver Everett feels this way. He wouldn’t blame you for not believing him.
This article is from FILTER Issue 51
