Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

A scandal, tailor-made for ILM. Pretty sure it's a conspiracy at this point.

“Dark is going to be my main alter ego,” she says. “It’s visually the best thing I’ve ever come up with. Everyone is very tired of me making metal and screamo and stuff, so that can just be Dark.”

Who is very tired of her making metal and screamo?

“Twitter. Fans. Honestly, my parents. I came out making beautiful, ethereal, chill synth music and I do still really like that, I just don’t like being pigeonholed so I had to react against it for a minute. Now I’m back to it. I honestly think Shall I Compare Thee is kind of Visions-y.”

She pauses to take a sip of her coffee, and it occurs to me that the more I listen to Boucher the more I realise she is talking to me above a background roar. The deafening cacophony of voices on the internet pulling apart every aspect of her music, her politics and her personal life is always there whether she engages with it or not.

I read the whole thing and gotta say — “AI dictatorship” quote aside (and even that may be “ironic”) — she makes her case well and comes off pretty good to me.

more power to you but this sort of thing is far too dark and twisted for me!!

“If there’s nothing left to lose, that’s actually a really fun idea to me. I think it has freed me artistically. The best part of the movie is the Joker"

ooh a gritty reboot. how edgy

lmao at the joker quote and ilmers cheering her run of the mill Reddit chud dimestore futurism

she's going to end up on Rogan lol

With a flamethrower and a doobie.

this heel turn sucks

I say we revive the death of the author.

https://pics.me.me/childhood-s-when-you-idolize-baiman-adulthood-is-when-you-3468830.png

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/361/696/95e.jpg

Upper missippi at timespace warping levels of otm ... this is what I meant by accelerationism

The LP's second single is reportedly titled 'makes u think'.

Yang/Grimes 2020

Jack Dorsey ($1,000), Rivers Cuomo ($1,000), and Noah Centineo ($2,700) all contributed to Andrew Yang's presidential campaign in Q1

— David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) April 16, 2019

dorsey and rivers....fucking perfect

The only thing I know about Andrew Yang is that a dude I met who supports Jordan Peterson and jives with his all-meat colon cancer accelerator diet is also a fan of Yang's.

The LP's second single is reportedly titled 'makes u think'.

A Zeitgeist-defining record.

She should change her name to C- amirite?

After she covers Terry Riley.

i have to agree with her. people do really love this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a05PgrhU3ms

lol Moka

footage of Twitter v Grimes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak7daE1CYD4

petition to make grimes say "we live in a society" on the new album

4th: “I’m not locked in here with you... you’re locked in here with me” (ft. Azealia Banks)
― mumsnet blvd (wins), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 10:01 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

genuine lol, thanks for that.

as long as she sticks to being an ideological ding-dong that makes interesting music I'm in

I get that as someone with a level of fame and the resulting platform there's the responsibility to use it, etc, but assuming this is an actual outlook and not a public persona that supports a concept album... well, thanks Canada, for a Rush for the twenty-teens

“Without me doing anything, just by random association with other people, I’ve watched my career and my reputation get totally fucking smashed,” she says. “I worked my whole fucking life for this and now everyone thinks I’m so stupid. I was just sitting there incredulous watching my life’s work go down the drain.”

"random association" you say

where's that emil.y quote about grimes being a popular kid making out she's so weird, like

You guys are acting like the high school kids, honestly!

Maybe b/c I’m not a “fan” and have no real investment in Grimes, her music, or her “politics” — but the reactions she elicits in this thread, for doing/saying not-very-controversial-seeming things, are v bizarre to me.

saying that humanity should be enslaved by robots, that the world is going to end and that's cool and funny to her, that democracy is not working, overall lightweight post tumblr anime nihilism, at a point in history where climate change and inequality seem to be tipping into overt fascism -- you don't see HOW someone could be upset about these ideas, even if you don't care? i mean sure twitter is satanic and the way it makes fans feel entitled to an artists time / psyche is fucked but also a separate convo imo

I don’t know about controversy, but I feel like ppl would make fun of any high-profile musician coming out with this kind of shit

the jduge orders me to take off my anonymous v mask & im wearing the joker makeup underneath it. everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit

— wint (@dril) March 10, 2015

considering I derived some entertainment from a Matthew Barney film that was conceivably a commentary on whaling that took place on a whaling ship but had as a feature attraction a giant vat of petroleum jelly and had a scene with the artist and his partner cutting at each other with knives... ok, I'm not sure where I'm going with this

in any case, art (and artists) can have contradictory or even muddled takes on issues you may care about and it's fine to enjoy the art despite that conflict

if it's some "what about the kids" thing then, hey, there are a lot worse influences that have very clear takes on things

wins otm

AI fascism is, like other sorts of nihilism, a coping mechanism for despair over the future. I think it's interesting that Grimes is working with these themes (accelerationism, climate change, AI, fascism vs democracy) and I hope she does interesting things with them in her music. They're looming issues for most of us so it's v relevant work which is really what we should be asking from our artists. Whether she does it in the politically preferred manner is a different question and sorta a distraction since making sure your politics are right vis-a-vis eschatology is pretty fiddling while the world burns. nb that I don't judge people who find this approach disturbing as well as they're dealing with the same anxieties and concerns about the disintegration of society and what that will unleash among humanity when the chains of civilization have weakened and previously condemnable behavior is rampant. But I don't think any artist is obligated to assuage those concerns by parroting the correct perspective. If she ends up signing up with the Nazi party tho I'll be really disappointed in her.

The dril tweet is funny, but she’s presenting the “they want a villain? I’ll be a villain” thing as an aesthetic strategy for dealing w/ climate change (as we’ve discussed at length above)... maybe it’s a “bad” one that will fail, but it seems like something different than cheap internet nihilism.

(Also I guess the “real” political actions of hers mentioned in this thread trump the silly AI-takeover rhetoric for me)

so she's making art that explicitly accepts the reality of global climate change and postulates negative effects of machine learning technologies and casts the stance of being for unfettered change in those realms as villainous

hrrm

on the other hand, the Joker.. is incredibly cool so maybe villains are good

(sorry, I mean “the article” — not “this thread,” lol)
xp

look, everyone is assuming she means batman's the joker, but steve miller band's "The Joker" includes a line about a "space cowboy" that is very muskian. this album is going to sound like steve miller band.

now you all know what it's like to be a fan of Billy Corgan

Not me, I’m not certain I’ve ever heard any grimes song before this new single. My eyerolling is purely opportunistic

"My dark hour
My dark hour, you know it's drivin' me wild"

some new grimes lyrics about grimes main alter ego? nope. more steve miller band.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

the fans have rejected her metal, i.e. her songs that sound like the flaming lips. give us your 'take the money and run'.

"I think it's interesting that Grimes is working with these themes (accelerationism, climate change, AI, fascism vs democracy) and I hope she does interesting things with them in her music. They're looming issues for most of us so it's v relevant work which is really what we should be asking from our artists. Whether she does it in the politically preferred manner is a different question and sorta a distraction since making sure your politics are right vis-a-vis eschatology is pretty fiddling while the world burns."

lmfao. OR, maybe making shitty reheated gravity kills tracks while talking about how climate change is, to you, mostly a cool freeing artistic abstraction rather than something that is actively killing people right now, is the real fiddling?

Yes she’s a musician her job is to fiddle

grimes needs to find god. she should collaborate with hunter hunt-hendrix

the "grimes doesn't take climate change seriously" bad faith take is truly the worst

(the "grimes does take wolf-whistle guitar mimicry seriously" good faith take is truly the best)