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October 24, 2006
Lady Art Rock for No Real Reason...
...except that I like it. I also like you, blog reading public. I will now bring my likes together, like so.
Love is All - "Kiss Kiss Kiss" (Yoko Ono cover)
Love is All's kick ass Nine Times That Same Song album is clearly one of the finest that 2006 has coughed up. Its early year release date, and the fact that Pitchfork somehow bent time and space to put it on their 2005 Best of, might conspire to leave it out of the forthcoming end of the year list orgy. Like an Oscar screener reminder for forgetful academy members, the album is being relaunched with a mini-disc of four bonus tracks. One of them is the unstoppably good Kim Foley cover, "Motorboat". Here is another.
It's a cover of Yoko's 1980 song, from her and her late husband's Double Fantasy record. Lennon fans at the time mainly took this screech pop number as further fuel for their hate of the dreaded Beatles slayer, although its structure is more conventional than some of her most art damaged material. To their credit, Love is All keep the skronk mainly intact. The first :45 seconds is pure speed freak free jazz hoo-hah, before Josephine Olausson enters stage right. Her echoed Swede bray is alien enough to do Yoko justice, but probably a bit more cuddly to discerning ears. Not the melody bomb that Love is All sometimes develop in their own work, but it gets over on their signature smash down the door energy.
Y Pants - "Favourite Sweater"
Also from 1980, but like actually 1980 and not a recent re-interpretation, is "Favourite Sweater" by Y Pants. In the downtown New York art scene of the time, distinctions like artist, perfomance artist, and musician were very loose and interchangeable. The women of Y Pants were all coming from the visual arts tradition, and as a result played mainly gallery shows with their all miniature toy instrument onslaught. Avant guitar guru Glenn Branca was rangled in to produce the EP from which this was taken, and he barely keeps the thing together. Very simple musically, the Pants are smart enough to play to their strengths by always returning to the plodding mini-piano refrain. That an affecting song can spring forth from such limited materials is a magic trick of sorts. It's that spirit of making music somehow, anyhow, that is still the most endearing aspect of listening to these lost songs today.
Tags: Love is All, Yoko Ono, Y Pants, Glenn Branca, Art Rock, Ladies, Lady Art Rock
Posted by Jeff Klingman at October 24, 2006 07:59 PM
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Comments
Barbara Ess of Y Pants is a marvelous photographer. She's featured in the "Music Is a Better Noise" exhibit currently on view at PS1.
Rumor has it Y Pants reconvene every year to celebrate one another's birthdays. If only they'd make one of those meetings public!
Posted by: Andrea at November 1, 2006 10:49 AM
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