I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU!
Michelle Kennedy is a Registered Psychologist in Alberta, lover of the arts, cat mom and “very opinionated” human.
Like any relationship, the relationship between audience and performer is about managing expectations. Pop music is as much about expectation as whether or not Dick kisses Jane on their first date. This isn’t to say that expectations cannot be surpassed or broken for the positive but that usually means that at some point expectations were met.
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Indie rock tragedy #65: when a band ferments in the hype machine so long that the buzz finally requires actual activity, and they fail to live up to the demands of the world that made them. Braids, a much hyped band, will not fall into this trap. Instead they have more than risen to the challenge. Native Speaker sounds like The xx with a mad crush on Tears for Fears and the Gossip all steeped in a rich tea of prairie aesthetic indefinable other than to say…vast. The point of this mixed metaphor is to say simply: Braids are one of the best new bands from our great country.
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In this era of pop-diva overload it behooves each and every one of these women to distinguish themselves in a legitimate and interesting way; some of them have even done it. Lady Gaga has because a champion for freaks everywhere, Rhianna has tied herself so perfectly to Jay-Z that she’ll be famous as long as he is and Duffy? Well, remember that episode of Friends where Phoebe gets sick and she is suddenly a much better singer, so when she gets well she does everything in her power to get sick again? Endlessly sounds like that: like she tried to get sick to sound amazing and instead all she got was an annoying head cold that made her voice sound like some combination of Willow Smith and Fran Drescher.
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Regina Spektor is pop music queen. Her voice shines through the absolute glut of pop-ladies-in-waiting like a beacon of hope for what could be. There is no metaphorical longing or thinly veiled euphemism at her piano; she says what she’s thinking. She says “fuck” and she means it; she talks about sex and cocaine and doesn’t pretend to be a virgin to sell records. Spektor is legit and Live in London is the proof.
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Close your eyes and picture this: two dudes, like DUDE dudes – bearded, scruffy and wearing corduroy pants and cardigans. Dudes.
Dude #1: Dude, the new Black Mountain?
Dude #2: Wilderness Heart?
#1: Yeah man!
#2: Dude, shreds!
#1: Yeah man!
And so on. And Wilderness Heart shreds, those dudes aren’t wrong about that. But, it would be a terrible disservice to the depth and dynamics of this album to dismiss it as an album that ONLY shreds. Instead of simply being a metal record it is part prog, part pop, part metal and part gospel album. There is nothing simple about Black Mountain and therefore there is no simple generic definition for this band or this album.
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