Kate/Kae Tempest

Figured it couldn't hurt to have a thread for her. BRIT school, Mercury nominee, but this is the least interesting part. Instant comparisons to Mike Skinner's work abound, but there's a bit more to it maybe? Something very ominous in the production and her delivery and her poetry... I find myself listening obsessively to just one song at a time, despite her album 'Everybody Down' being a song cycle pretty much. Getting through the whole thing is almost too much to cope with.

Thoughts on this, ILM?

Album of the year. She's an amazing storyteller, and she really inhabits the voices of all three characters so convincingly, so they're living, breathing people, not archetypes. It's a really gripping listen, en masse, and you don't know how it'll play out until the final moments. But despite being a story, it has immense replay value, and the album is littered with moments that literally knock me cold, like the interaction between the drug-dealer kid and his step-dad, or the other guy's restless and unquenchable jealousy over his masseuse girlfriend, and the way she describes the first guys as "one of those 'save me' types" when she first meets him.

I think it's a genuine masterpiece, truly remarkable. This has been an amazing year for music, but this is so easily my favourite album of the year, without question.

Also cannot wait for her novel next year.

That's cool. I didn't know she had a book out. Also hadn't realised she was the same person who fronted Sound of Rum a few years ago, who I initially and wrongfully dismissed I'm sad to say.

I still haven't listened to the whole thing yet. I keep getting stuck listening to certain tracks. The flow on the second track is mad, it just skips and slips all over the beat in the chorus but it works (just about). The production is really intense as well (who's in charge of that?) murky, oily beats and on 'Chicken' there's an almost Scott Walker-y dissonance going on as the family sit round the table picking over dinner and forcing small talk with their mother's new man. It's really hard to listen to that track.

Yeah, Chicken is brilliant and queasy. Forgetting at the moment who produced it but he did a fab job. There are also Mike Skinner and Pikachu remixes on the Circles single that are worth a listen.

Her new poetry collection Hold Your Own is brilliant too. Very different from the album.

Dan Carey produced btw

Great record

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/23/kate-tempest-we-live-in-crazy-times-you-cant-tell-a-story-without-it-feeling-political

^^^ great piece

yeah really good. the kind of piece that makes you want to meet her IRL.

Is now an A-level set text. Dear fucking Christ

Big swing around in critical acclaim then?

Good for her.

Think of the children though.

you can hone critical skills on any old shite so no worries really

She's great. That she aggravates ilx's cadre of Grumpy Old Men only confirms this.

LJ is now officially an old man :-o

If it quacks like a duck etc

age is an irrelevance and i'm not particularly grumpy but i reserve the right to rip the piss out of Youth Service pop culture getting bigged up by the social work massive. not good enough to be an MC, not good enough to be a poet.

getting bigged up by the social work massive

oh, that's not a good phrase.

I don’t see it mentioned as a highlight often but “Pictures on a screen” is great, at the center of a venn diagram featuring gil scott heron and “making plans for nigel”.

New album has its moments too, “hold my own” in particular.

The most annoying artist on 6Music heavy rotation. reeks of worthiness.

she's just a really intensely bad lyricist and poet. akin to banksy but maybe a tad more on the nose

A gift to the BBC. 6Music sessions, Glastonbury coverage, the whole awe-struck voiceover bit. Desert Island Discs can't be far away.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/06/kate-tempest-announces-they-are-non-binary-changes-name-to-kae

They're an amazing artist and this is a lovely story. :D

Isn't that a wee bit presumptuous to claim your own personal pronoun? Additionally (s)he wants to be called in the plural, grammatically that is rubbish. What bewilders me there is that the Guardian immediately accepts and promotes this instrumentalisation of the language for a personal cause by reprinting it. Is there no public discussion about this kind of language intervention?

Uhhh, they/them is extremely common, is this being posted through a time portal?

great revive

Things you were shockingly old when you learned.

Ahahahaha

wait, what year is it?

Is there no public discussion about this kind of language intervention?

Here y' go knock yourself out;

https://www.mumsnet.com/

This usage of "they" in the singular was added to the Merriam-Webster a little more than a year ago. So yes, apparently I wasn't quite up to date. Thanks for the clarification.

The OED traces the singular ‘they’ back to 1375, good piece about it here from 2018:

https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/

I wonder if that usage had something to do with the German "Sie" which is used to address someone politely e.g. when you are not too familiar with the person. "sie" = they.

I use the singular "they" to refer to someone online if I'm unaware of their gender.

Should we get an admin to change the thread name? Could call it Kate/Kae Tempest since the thread starts in the Kate years.

What surprises me is how symbolic being accepted as "they" has become - as if it was the ultimate victory in recognizing that people have freedom - fluidity in their identity. I personally still don't get why it makes any difference whether you place this freedom within the conventional binary or outside, and why we pretend as if we had really just come up with the concept 5 years ago. So sure, go ahead and wear it as a badge of honor if you want, as long as you do not suppose that the rest of the world is a rigid monolith of conservatism.

Hi there. This is a sincere suggestion, but if you have... questions, concerns, comments, genuine requests for discussion or a desire for explanation / learning moments (rather than you are ~having a bunch of feelings about trans and nonbinary people~ and their pesky pronouns, name changes etc. - not to mention projecting into their "supposed" beliefs?) there's a whole thread for that right here:

Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

Perhaps use that space to work through your feelings and come to a better understanding, rather than spaffing up threads for trans and nonbinary artists, with stuff that sounds and feels uncomfortably like dogwhistle transphobia to a lot of the people here?

otm

Should we get an admin to change the thread name? Could call it Kate/Kae Tempest since the thread starts in the Kate years.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

Yes. As always, I think it'll stay as the original for bookmarks, but will change for everything else. I'll change it to your suggestion for search purposes, but if anyone has any strong feelings about getting rid of the old name entirely then let us know.

I'm assuming (alex in mainhattan) is not from the US (or UK) and therefore the advances in this culturally over the past several years may have passed him by. I'm not sure how other countries are addressing this evolution.

German, I think?

The visibility of the issue is definitely maximal in the anglosphere and, I suppose, areas that have always been on the LGBTQ forefront like Scandinavia (see "hen"). Language creativity and flexibility aside, there's bound to be slower and different uptake given levels of conservatism / liberality in politics and culture. For example, there's still heavy resistance to the use of inclusive language in gendered French, so there's a long way to go to accept pronouns such as iel in, say, the work sphere. Not that acceptability of the pronoun is a measure for the rest.

To Branwell: I won't dignify "dogwhistle transphobia" but sorry if my comment seemed insensitive and thank you for your offer.

Anyone listened to this new album? It's good! Wider range of beats and guests than prior, to good effect.