St. Monday and the Ignorants

While this site was launched primarily as a promo tool for St. Monday etc., the ramblings of the Drunken Bee and the sporadic quality of pitchforkmedia reviews authorize my current diatribe against the website docent of all things hip and Stephen M. Deusner in particular. It's clear that, post-Uncle Tupelo, pitchfork has unambiguously aligned itself with the Jeff Tweedy camp, giving serious attention to the musical product of Wilco, while essentially writing off the efforts of Jay Farrar and his vehicle, Son Volt. Tweedy is the experimental pop genius; Farrar the earnest dope with one string to strum. Deusner's review of Son Volt's latest album is par for the course: the music's decent, the vocals ok if you like Farrar's sort of thing. But the kicker is that Deusner blasts the record for attempting to be a collection of protest songs while in fact only being "songs about protest songs." It's too abstracted, not direct enough to have any political valence; the same Fredric Jameson, Georg Lukacs, Mike Gold, who-have-you that we've heard a million times before. Yeah, you're right Deusner! I only listen to protest songs with lyrics like: "Mercedes head Eckhard Cordes is resigning. Dieter Zetsche, who becomes DaimlerChrysler's CEO next year, will assume his duties." I think it's been established over many decades that lyrical content can have a political valence while not necessarily utlizing strictly denotative language. Actually, one can do that while writing what most of us are accustomed to calling "lyrics."

Oh, and as for the song "Jet Pilot" as "some disgusted sarcasm toward (you guessed it) Bush," dude, what the hell were you listening to? There's nothing at all disgusted in those lyrics; they're actually extremely ambivalent, conjuring the image of a guy who likes to "let his hair down" while "lov[ing] to see the [Texas] Rangers play." "Jet Pilot," for those with ears, is an extremely ambivalent and almost sympathetic portrait of Bush the younger -- for Pete (Dopieralski)'s sake, who wouldn't mind watching a Rangers game, especially if Texeira's in top form? The idea in that song is that there is a dangerously thin line between "genuine" Americana and the enjoyment thereof, and the distortion of that culture into an aggressive imperialistic regime.

I, for one, am somebody who is done listening to pitchfork reviews for genuine analysis of content. Unless you get someone who is really familiar with the band or movement reviewed, you're getting a hatchet job by a careerist hack. Read their news; it's helpful and informative. Laugh at their reviews, or else the blogosphere will be overfull with rants like this one.