Planningtorock -- 'All Love's Legal' (2014)

Bring it.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/all-loves-legal/id732985584

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCk22Bjf07I

Achhh I love this stuff

Can't wait for the full thing.

Also new Q&A

http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=21605

<3 "Jam". Ned let's get us some gender-neutral names.

I am all for this.

I shall call you George and Sydney

We're to be married in spring.

My name is Glad Bag

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2745106/kermit-yay-flail-o.gif

aw. i shall try again

Wait, never mind, I guess it worked. That is me. That is me right now.

Giving a listen to the full promo now and it's just incredible so far. SO much beautiful space playing out in the arrangements.

"Public Love" is SUCH a monster, and I love how it just kicks in towards the end of the album instead of being frontloaded. Winner.

Will the plans ever become a reality?

So I guess this is where I stop never listening to them because of their terrible name huh

Absolutely, yes. She's (pronoun used provisionally unless I hear otherwise) been great from the very first LP but the W album on DFA is an under appreciated classic. The track list here makes it look like it includes most of the singles she's released on her Human Level imprint and the amazing Knife remix that just came out.

jjj I would be shocked and amazed if you disliked this

more like planningtosuck

W is so great, live show is great too

The first truly new single is out and amazing:

http://soundcloud.com/planningtorock/human-drama

Really is. Glad it's out there, a definite highlight from this thing.

Streaming away:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/feb/11/planningtorock-all-loves-legal-stream

OH GOD WHY CAN'T I STREAM?

OK, it's streaming now, never mind. "Let's talk about gender, baby, let's talk about you and me..."

I am 20 seconds in and it is amazing already.

this is great

I would happily listen to this 22 times in a row over the next two days! Like, obviously her politics are important and the message is one that is, still, badly needed, but let that not distract from the music, and I would just like to state for the record that this album rocks like a truckload of fucking pigs!

I would kill for a Lone remix of "Beyond Binary Binds"

(Am I the only person looking at this album cover and wondering if the visual allusion to Technique is deliberate?)

initial thoughts: it seems like she is making a political statement against using pitch correction. ha Dan re: "Beyond Binary Birds"! Definitely looks like a Lone song title, but the notes she plays are "off" in a very unusual way that would probably get smoothed over in a remix by him.

Her voice on the record reminds me of some of Kevin Blechdom's music, in that what on the page looks like straight up pop melody, or electronic pop anyway, comes out much stranger in practice.

Ha I've always thought her entire production ethos was so! political! from the moment I heard "What I Need", but I hear things like "MIDI pizzicato" and "unquantized" and the fluidity of her scale choices as deliberate exercises in production-as-subversion

Of course I mean "Changes", not "What I Need"

One of the coolest people on the planet imo

Have been hearing this new one for about a month cause I'm a criminal but I'll buy it with money when I can
Was worried this thread would be full of ppl saying the lyrics are "a little too on the nose" but maybe that crappy phrase's damnable ubiquity is confined to B-posters on tv threads

i have not felt as insulted by an album in years as this horrible, thuddingly obvious, hopelessly subtext-free comic sans take on queer theory. it's like born this way except somehow MORE reductive (also not even catchy)

"let's talk about gender baby"

*proceeds to fail to present a single insight on gender*

like seriously the way all this is presented makes me assume she thinks her audience are 5-year-olds

Sorry we can't all be as clued up on genderqueer issues, and how queer theory affects female assigned at birth people, as a ~gay man~ is, but I'm glad that this record exists and presents these issues in a "comic sans" kinda way because it's my dog in the actual fight.

Seriously, "Born This Way"? Get tae fuck.

Sorry, that was unnecessarily mean (but so was your post).

But you know how every time we try to have a complex, nuanced discussion on gender, and A. Man comes in and starts flapping his little mouth about the Cis-Het Dude Point Of View? There is still a need for the "comic sans" 101 level basic stuff on this, as *well* as the complex, nuanced discussion.

Unlike you, I am not convinced that this even *is* a "comic sans" version; granted, I've heard it once on a shitty streaming site. But Jam Rostrom is someone that I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it's more complex and nuanced than your reading, even when she is deliberately sloganeering for the purpose of reaching people who need the 101.

That's a reasonable crit, lex. Me, I find the production/composition choices (i.e. what you'd describe as "catchiness") to be enough queering for my taste... though on first listen I prefer "W" to this new album.

One of the coolest people on the planet imo

I had the pleasure of *cough* jamming with Jam one evening seven years ago and s/he is unquestionably one of the most effortlessly talented singer-musicians I've met. ...I mention this because knowing that she's got sky scraping vocal chops has made her deep-voiced, deliberate vocal treatments on her last two records all the more soul-destroying to listen to.

I should probably stay the fuck off this thread, because you guys are gonna suck every ounce of enjoyment out of a record I was super-psyched to listen to.

But, like... a woman who has "sky scraping vocal chops" abandons pretty-voice to make some experimental music which uses weirdness and queering to deliberate effect, and that's... "soul-destroying to listen to"? But when Scott Walker abandons *his* pretty-voice to make some strange sounding experimental music to deliberate effect, that's ... ????

this straight dude still thinks this album is great; also I don't know that "soul-destroying" was meant pejoratively there

There is still a need for the "comic sans" 101 level basic stuff on this, as *well* as the complex, nuanced discussion.

i did guess this would be the counter-argument. would normally agree but the thing is, i feel like it's not EVEN 101 level stuff - she doesn't explain it, she doesn't explore it, she doesn't grapple with it, she just repeats enough trite slogans to let us know she's read the texts but that's all it feels like. i don't get any sense of personal stakes in it or urgency or any sense that there's a challenge here (to us, or to her). it's soulless like an undergrad lecture presented by a mediocre tutor. i haven't listened a second time but the two songs that stood out negatively were the opener, with that "love whoever you want to" line repeated endlessly as though it was a political statement and not a macklemoresque platitude, and "let's talk about gender baby" which took an idea that the knife used (thrillingly) as a 30-sec coda and dragged it out over a whole song without expanding on it in any way.

as for people needing the basic 101 stuff, of course, but planningtorock ain't about reaching those people. the knife were accused of elitism, preaching to the choir, and i felt like that was unfair, but planningtorock has no interest in making any moves to gain a new audience, or at least it doesn't show in her music. it's an album that'll stay inside the same arty bubble that she's always stayed inside.

i don't say this to be mean to anyone who does like it, but i had a visceral and unexpected dislike to it (have never clicked with her before but what i was reading really piqued my interest) because i felt like she was condescending to me and insulting my intelligence with this, and in a way that reminds me of a lot of bad student-level art.

apart from the pitch-shifting vox (yes, very well done, i get it, i got it when the knife did it too) i didn't notice any other queering elements about the production

"Repeated slogans over beats" does not bother me in the slightest, because I have had to listen to enough boring, heteronormative vocal riffs scattered over dance music in my life.

Fuck, if I could just hear this banging in a club for every time I've had to sit through "Smack My Bitch Up" or something.

This feels like the nub of the issue:

as for people needing the basic 101 stuff, of course, but planningtorock ain't about reaching those people… it's an album that'll stay inside the same arty bubble that she's always stayed inside.

"OMG this album is comic sans" then "OMG this album isn't centering the needs of flapping comments thread dudes quite enough"

Maybe it's just... not your record?

No, you know what, once DL turns up on a thread it's time for me to check out.

Rebuttable presumption that political music preaches to the converted only, IMO.

Since everyone's on the Flappy Bird ripoff bandwagon, I would very much like a Flapping Comments Thread Dudes game.

Lol I did actually really "flapping" as in "hand flapping" but I'll assume that's a misreading.

xp Perhaps you should start your own blog where you control who posts there because this is getting tired.

...and sometimes when someone doesn't want to talk to you, it's because they have reached the point where they know it is pointless to try to talk with you.

Yes, Tim, "flapping" = hand flapping or mouth flapping, but flocks of comment thread dudes works just as well.

I'm sorry you feel that way but you don't have to talk to me. I was agreeing with Lex, not addressing you. You can just ignore my posts if you like. I already avoid posting in threads that you've started or feel proprietorial over.

Congratulations, DL, on positing your refusal to accept anything I say until your male colleague repeats it in a "better tone" as some kind of ~restraint~ - that is *super*-big of you.

...so about the ALBUM, then.

it's unlistenable

I wish "Beyond Binary Binds" was four times as long; it basically lasts just long enough to rope me in and then it's done and I just want MORE

dl do u do requests

It's amazing, but I haven't got the bandwidth to listen to it more than once. When's it out, again?

lol did bb really just flip from outrage that someone might be engaging w/ bb to outrage that that same someone might not be engaging w/ bb? too funny

bb do you use public transport?

So glad you're all going to buy this awesome album on the strength that you might get to rubberneck on some simmering clusterfuck! That would actually be great.

iTunes says the album is out Feb 18

more on the basis of liking the last one but if this is as dumbed down as lex is saying i might pass.

Ah, I was really worried it was going to come out this week and I'm already trying to get my head around the Katy B album this week. Why do all the good records have to bunch up at once?

lex didn't like the last one either, so grain of salt etc

being someone who doesn't start paying attention to lyrics until maybe 18 months after the fact, I have zero to say on whether this is dumbed down or not but it sounds fantastic; also, I like New Order so you're going to have to go "bluffin' with my muffin" levels before I start calling your lyrics dumb

I didn't feel it was "dumbed down" but as stated upthread, I don't have a problem with sloganeering. I feel like Jam has already proved their credentials, if they want to make an album that just goes for the dancefloor, even if it's just a little party for our "insular, arty group", I have not got a problem with that. (I didn't feel like it's either insular or "comic sans", TBH, it's just Jam doing what Jam does.)

I am also a New Order fan so YMMV, but Dan's right, it sounds fantastic.

It's lyrically simplistic as hell, maybe on purpose, based on how kindly you feel towards the sonix you might think its a disarmingly direct approach or eyeroll undergrad bullshit, I mean she pulls out "the personal is so political" chestnut for a chorus, I enjoy it on one level as kitsch but also the way she SINGS it (and the production) is moving imo

Lex isn't wrong exactly but I agree with bb and would like to talk about this album later in the year when you all stop being idiots

There were xposts there but who cares

"her stories are boring and stuff, she's always bluffin' my muffin'..."

Yes, Tim, "flapping" = hand flapping or mouth flapping, but flocks of comment thread dudes works just as well.

― "righteous indignation shit" (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 9:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

here to describe someone as "hand flapping" would be a negative reference to their homosexuality, I assume it has a more generalised application in the UK.

Ha! OMG, no, that is the opposite of... Oops, internation slang problems. I'd never heard that usage. I meant hand-waving, complaining, kicking up a fuss. Will try to be more careful with word usage in the future but did not know that one! I am so sorry!

"soul-destroying to listen to"? But when Scott Walker abandons *his* pretty-voice to make some strange sounding experimental music to deliberate effect, that's ... ????

Also soul-destroying and a perfect simile with Walker imo. I mean "soul-destroying" in a positive way, it hurts so good.

Lex otm on his first point, it is regrettable that the lyrics are sometimes so placeholder for "I have read". Lyrical simplicity has always been Jam's style though, her first album's lyrics tell little more than "I left Bolton / moved to Berlin / I want to make good music" but I've gotten used to it and have found an appeal in their bluntness.

I could get into some of the deeper production details that suggest subversiveness but it'd be boring for everyone. As I mentioned before, listen again to "Changes" from LP1 and tell me it don't wear its m.o. in plain view

I do bristle at the "The Knife did this already" stuff, suggesting that their collaborative relationship is Karin with the ideas and Jam ripping them off, I don't know for sure, but it is presumptive.

Oh, OK! Sorry, I did think it was a reversal on hr previous opinion, but after Lex's carping I read "soul-destroying" as negative. And yeah, that "just like The Knife" thing really set my teeth on edge for many reasons, most of which you nail.

her their, too, *burp* sorry

Haha branwell it's all good I was pretty sure that was not how you'd intended it.

hr = yr, wow our pronouns are all over the place tonight!

i thought this was pretty rad and the blunt, repetitive, sloganeering lyrics were part of it. idk really know what kind of nuance or poetic vagueness yr looking for from a song called 'misogyny drop dead' but i like how suggestive it is of a kind of winnowing, a paring down to solidity/solidarity? a feel like the whole thing is of a piece really, the music and the lyrics, its forceful and declarative. but its also sounds/feels under threat, 'somebody close the door/ i cant breathe in here' and stuff, its claiming the absolute in the face of annihilation or w/e. i think its true to a certain way of being, of feeling under siege and searching for core beliefs idk

Wow, yeah, what a great reading, Lamp, fantastic post. And that's really the kind of comment that makes me go back and listen again (at least, when I get a copy) and see if I can hear it from that perspective, because it feels like it would make a lot of sense.

Lyrical simplicity has always been Jam's style though, her first album's lyrics tell little more than "I left Bolton / moved to Berlin / I want to make good music" but I've gotten used to it and have found an appeal in their bluntness.

You know, I keep coming back to this. Because the first time I saw PlanningToRock was at a Plan B/AMP show in Brighton with Kevin Blechdom. And though I missed the first half of the set (perils of promoting, end up working the door, blurgh) when I came inside to watch, I found this exact stuff frustrating. I remember making usual dumb comments about "why do they keep talking about how much they are planning to rock, (and never get around to rocking)?" which is an absurd comment, because by the end of the show, they rocked the house down, (while repeatedly telling us that was the intention). It hadn't quite clicked yet that for this person, talking about the thing was the thing. I didn't click with the first album (granted, I should go back and listen again, because I was in such a different place then) but on the second album, the whole self referential "now I am telling you about the thing that I am doing" seemed less important than the whole, immense physicality of the *sound* and atmosphere of the thing.

Ugh, talking about this artist just really reinforces the difficulty of talking about music without reference points (and how lazy and bad it is to fall back on that "sounds kinda like..." way of processing music) and why music journalists love Record Collection Rock so much, because it's so much easier to *write* about Record Collection Rock.

And, y'know, one *could* throw out a bunch of comparisons to "arty females who talk about gender" and Peaches and Chicks on Speed and The Knife and Kevin Blechdom, and BOOM I've made this into a Record Collection Rock record - but the reasons that I fucking hate that way of addressing music is 1) it falls into that whole "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE" tokenism with regard to female artists, where somehow the existence of The Knife negates the need for Planningtorock (and the existence of Kate Bush negates the need for Tori Amos etc blah blah blah ad inifinitum) in a way that the existence of The Replacements does NOT negate a possibility for Husker Du and the existence of the Byrds does not negate a possibility for REM. And 2) this record doesn't even *sound* like any of those records, I'm standing by my Scott Walker comparison until I hear it again.

This is way more than I intended to type, really, I just wanted to say: excellent post, Lamp.

Only just found Plannintorock via a Spotify recommendation (I know), and I so much love 'W'. 'Public Love' is a bit obvious, at least lyrically, for me to love, but I haven't listened to it much yet. But 'W' is a lovely, lovely album.