Yours Tonight

Cagney & Lacey

Tyne Daly?

So it seems the idea here is of, say, forced (as opposed to unforced) intensity breaking through a few barriers anyway? Hmm...where would that place Jandek?

I don't understand, Nitsuh. I mean I don't think safety is a useful consideration anyway when you're listening to music, but surely lo-fi- ness (which is what this sounds like from your description, covers or no) is an absolute cornerstone of the indie ethos and therefore (like the Shaggs) as safe as can be. A feeling I get sometimes from non- mainstream music is that there is nothing that could possibly be considered a 'mistake', let alone 'unsafe' - this is a very good thing in terms of the range of sounds that get made but it kind of precludes surprise.

About the only thing a non-mainstream performer can do which is embarrassing is to do the same thing again and again and again - which is where Jandek fits in, Ned.

I can probably explain better, Tom, since I'd had a few drinks when I posted this. The thing about the Cagney & Lacey record is that it is lo-fi but it is not "lo-fi" in the traditional sense of being grotty edgy "indie" lo-fi: if we want to dig back to the roots of the word "fidelity," we could in fact say that Six Feet of Chain is incredibly hi-fi, insofar as we hear the very clean, unadulterated sound of two-people-playing-in-a-room, gaps, inconsistencies, and all. "Lo-fi" in the sense you've used it gets applied to knotty sneery fuzzy rock, whereas this record is nicely summarized by the sparkly swoony completely-unironic version of "Loving You." If anything, it has more in common with twee indie- pop than the mainstream of indie rock, and even that comparison fails, as it lacks self-consciousness of its own tweeness and is a hell of a lot more "soulful" (or at least attempts to be a hell of a lot more soulful) than twee.

What interests me is the bedroom-y quality, which is a great, great risk. Lo-fi indie rock basically escapes that risk by seeming sneery, by providing the deliberate thrill of not caring (see, say, Pavement's Westing). A lot of twee escapes that risk by celebrating its own shambling cutesy amateurism, making it a genre- based aesthetic decision that can't really be picked on. Six Feet of Chain, like most of the twee that actually appeals to me, does neither; on some level it just gives you the raw sound of people playing earnestly, like two teenagers with a condenser mic, and asks why that's not enough. (In the case of Six Feet of Chain, which is mostly terrible, it's not, but that's a separate issue.)

It also interests me that Rev released "Yours Tonight" on a semi- "experimental" record consisting of just sketches of pop songs, single synth patterns with Rev sing-speaking over them, as if he wasn't really going to actually record the song but just wanted you to know how it might go if he did. In many senses this makes it perfect for covering and even more perfect for Cagney & Lacey, who do the fleshing-out Rev doesn't and convert his aesthetic experiment into a gorgeous, gorgeous pop song that could well have been a Cyndi Lauper hit circa 1984.

I'm actually more interested in the Rev record than Cagney & Lacey, and originally meant to post this thread as a See Me Ridin' RFD.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the C&L album, mainly because I don't like Dean's wife's voice particularly, but the single on Earworm (Borderline) was rather charming.

Just for clarity: I do think the album is terrible. There just happens to be this one particular way in which it's not. Like a horrid-looking building that you occasionally catch in a certain light from a certain vantage point and think: wow. (Although it's hard to tell, then, whether you're seeing what's meant to be good about the building in the first place or just an unintended accident of perspective.)

which is where Jandek fits in, Ned

No more so than Muslimgauze, actually.

whereas the joy of a good shoddy indie record is that some of them go so far as to Mean It, Man about something that's unsafe and possibly even embarrassing

sounds like this should be the definition of bedroom pop, e.g Six Cents & Natalie, Laura Watling, etc. etc.