Joan of Arc - C/D?

I saw them once and found them to be a total dud. I don't think I've listened to an entire album, though, so who knows. Maybe there's something to 'em.

previously on ilm

TFD (stands for Total Fuckin' Dud).

ZZZZZZZZZ

So Dud they've gone right past Classic and back to Dud again.

I thought the first album was pretty good if listened to all the way through in a sitting. Didn't like Memory. Hate Pitchfork.

The stuff I've heard by him is pretty but nothing to crow about. The rampant pretentiousness alone (despite the assurances of a friend that it's actually a parody of pretentiousness) makes it all fairly dud.

Two records from 2003, "So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness" and "In Rape Fantasy and Terror Sex We Trust" are quite enjoyable though demanding light-dark counterparts. Joan of Arc are pretentious and while funny, the art posturing of the music, lyrics, packaging and inerview sound bites are not gestures toward a parody of anything but the moves are pretty damn interesting nonetheless. If you give them time and are inclined to enjoy such things, Kinsella and co. effectively satisfy the Brechtian goals of the Godard films they've been known to reference; their work draws attention to the form of language, music, and media.
"Terror Sex" straddles this odd tightrope between falling completely apart and sounding all tight together. Mike Kinsella's drums always come in at this odd delay past when you'd expect them to. In its deliberate offness, you think about what together sounds like. It's a neat effect. Annoying and embarrassing when I first heard it but rewarding and revealing upon each successive listen.
"Happy 2001 and 1984," track 2 on "Terror Sex" is probably the most audacious post-Patriot act Bush Administration protest song to come out and yes it's something you might be a little bit embarrassed to write and sing yourself. The ghostly brat, high whiny background vocals are a nice weapon utlized here and elsewhere by Joan of Arc. Another of the tiny ticks and pops they supply that you can't really get from other artists currently.
You might argue that JOA have nothing to say and that's difficult to argue since their efforts (musical,lyrical) seem geared towards the overarching statement "we have nothing to say, and we're saying it" but that becomes the point then doesn't it? Their efforts in saying nothing are thoughtful, varied, surprising, and disturbingly relevant to current American culture and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. You should all not wait along with me.

I wrote the most negative review I've ever written of anything about their album The Gap, for Magnet. A year later, they interviewed the frontman, and read the review back to him, asking what he thought. He was pretty cool about it.

I read somewhere that Tim Kinsella said that he's only listened to The Gap once since completion, after the first pressing. He apparently thinks they took Pro Tools editing too far. I've only heard a few songs from it but "Black Pants Make Cat Hairs Disappear," "Knife Fights Every Night," and "Me and America (The united Colors of the Gap)" are all neat songs. I guess my cleares statement on JOA is that hey use pretentiousness, art project gestures, in the way a brechtian would use melodramatic excess.. They don't really get much credit for being as interesting as they are.

Saw them live at some point and they were god-awful. they had an anti-Iraq war song that was so bad, I might change my party affiliation and vote for Bush just to spite Tim Kinsella. It would make my dad happy, tho.

We played with them once and they were kind of assholes.

They aren't assholes, they were being ironic. They were trying to make you question the asshole dialectic.

His brother Mike makes much better music as American Football or Owen.