Advertisement for a subtle and important protest group

[imomus]

Subtle and important protest pop group The Books (Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto) release their new album Lost and Safe on April 5th on Tomlab.



According to Pitchfork, which previews the track Be Good To Them Always, The Books are now less important and less subtle. They protest too much: "The Books have always maintained a documentary-like distance from their material... [but] given the sparse instrumentation and the content of these snippets ("I could hear a collective rumbling in America"), their agenda is clear, eliminating the need for the listener to draw conclusions. In that sense, "Be Good to Them Always" compares to older Books songs like "Enjoy Your Worries" the way a Michael Moore film compares to The Thin Blue Line: They've revealed their hand and diluted some of their magic in the process."

For Pitchfork, The Books' political commitment is a failing. For the emotional communists in their audience, though, The Books' use of cold, objective "documentary" vocal samples to build up a warm, unified perspective on the errata of modern America is welcome, and an achievement. What's more, this time The Books are singing more. Some of these songs sound like a Simon and Garfunkel album re-assembled in a dust-free research lab by white-gloved scientists. Committed white-gloved scientists, working for the communists.

"Lost & Safe cannot be called an anti-American, and therefore anti-Bush album," muses Cokemachine, picking up the same political theme. "There is nothing specifically referencing the U.S... However, the general tone evoked by many of the excerpts more than suggests that The Books have had enough of American culture and foreign policy."

Here now is a Books Kit. First, some of the vocal samples you will hear on The Books' new album:

"I could hear a collective rumbling in America."
"I've lost my house, you've lost your house."
"This great society is going smash."
"You are something that the whole world is doing."
"You know, I simply cannot understand people."
"A culture is no better than its woods."
"Feeling of being connected with the past."
"Look at it this way: you may fall and break your leg."
"And so one leg is shorter than the other. Can nothing more be done?"
‘The modern town hardly knows silence.”
“It will rain, it will rain.”
"An owl without knees."
"I want all the American people to understand that it is understandable that the American people cannot possibly understand."

Secondly, a thought from Professor Momus: spoken word vocal samples are not only texturally gorgeous, and good for making poetic, fresh juxtapostions in aural collage, but give a 3D perspective on the present by throwing up humanistic sentiments from a past where people spoke, thought and felt differently. It's a kind of relativistic humanism which subtly re-inforces the liberating feeling: "Things actually don't have to be this way. We have other traditions to draw on."

Next, an mp3 of another song from the new album, An Animated Description of Mr. Maps. Followed by: a message-board thread in which early-adopting freeloader-downloaders discuss the album ("There is a really great track where they sing each vocal snippet they are sampling"). Finally, a list of the venues to be played during April and May, when subtle and important protest group The Books tours the US, that great society hobbled by one short leg.

Comments

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I'm liking this new Books track quite a bit. It gives the impression of "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" if Byrne had paired up with Laurie Anderson and used as their inspiration the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack instead of world music.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, I've never heard the protest in the music previously. Even with my expectations having been shaped by this post, I still don't see them as having tipped their hand any more than they had previously.

hibari misora

[(Anonymous)]

I listen to the misora hibari singing the soba song. its funny. its a country&western song, first sung in japanese than after a trad. jap. intermezzo in english.


erik
holland

Re: hibari misora

[(Anonymous)]

she even does a real cowboy yell! hihaaa!

I have a record in my collection with japanese songs from the 60s, with a lot of western style arrangements, she could well be on it, but as all the information on the sleeve = japanese, I hardly know. the title is SHOWA NO RYUKOKA VOL. 1.

[(Anonymous)]

the mixing of found spoken words and sung lyrics, meaning, the guy singing the same words than the ones contained samples, is such a great, simple yet amazingly effective idea, i was baffled by it.
then it's true that the record is overall feebler melodically.
but they remain a great band. i'm glad you're mentionning them as being apart.

(odot)

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

So they'd be a bit like Radiohead then?

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Stopped dead by the first line of the Cokemachine review:

The whimsy of The Books has gone, replaced by a melancholic whisper of sorrow.

You're only just now hearing that? Wow.

Be Good To Them Always

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm, I definitely hear a Geogaddi influence.

[lyrane.livejournal.com]

I've been listening to them for about a year now and still have trouble classifying them as "protest pop". I don't think I will anytime in the near future, either. I think "The Lemon of Pink" was about language and how it works and adapts absurdly, and I think "Lost and Safe" is about expectations and what you actually get. "Thought For Food" is hard to try and figure out and as of yet I haven't the slightest opinion on what it's about. Protest could come into the Books' music, but more as a part of their greater musical vision and the palette with which they paint the world.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I'm being a bit perverse painting them as a protest group. If it's protest it's very, very subtle. But I do think it's there, and it's one of the reasons I like the group. I detect a very civilised and humane perspective behind what they do. Just to hear a clip of W.H. Auden (I think it is) saying that a culture is no better than its woods... I mean, what a strong environmental point that makes! And what a nice texture his voice has, jumping out of the track like that! Guest vocals by W.H. Auden, class!

I also like the idea of folk music coming back in a postmodern guise, but with its 1960s Folk Revival political agenda intact. And I like the idea of making points obliquely, with a collage of other people's voices, mostly, rather than direct "hard-hitting" Rage-Against-Machinesque lyrics.

[facehead2k.livejournal.com]

But do you think there is a place for both?

Is it as clear a divide as teach covertly vs. preach overtly?

[lyrane.livejournal.com]

A capital sort of class!

[wilkerton.livejournal.com]

yeah i think you just have to be very carefuly painting them as a protest group. i think there is a fine line between individuals who are protesters and individuals who are just flat out intelligent and acting upon their observations of the world. the latter of which i think is what they are, and is thefore part of why i love them so much. i dont think theyre protesting. i think theyre observing and commenting, like musicians often do. like more people should do i guess, in a general sense.

[(Anonymous)]

A journalist-student friend of mine said that a former Pitchfork writer told him (off the record) that in recent years Pitchfork has become an overt politically conservative force, with writers required to bash any album with a liberal political agenda. (not that any CMJ-topping conservative albums exist to test this claim. where are those Japanese rap van conservatives Robert Duckworth was talking about when you need them?)

-channing

[wilkerton.livejournal.com]

yeah i dont think its political though. i think its just concious of the world...and thats what i like about it. thats just my opinion i guess.

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

Secondly, a thought from Professor Momus: spoken word vocal samples are not only texturally gorgeous, and good for making poetic, fresh juxtapostions in aural collage, but give a 3D perspective on the present by throwing up humanistic sentiments from a past where people spoke, thought and felt differently. It's a kind of relativistic humanism which subtly re-inforces the liberating feeling: "Things actually don't have to be this way. We have other traditions to draw on."

Wow you should hear some of that Hip Hap musics from 1980s.

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

p.s. I do think I would die and go to heaven if you gave into a strategic Afrocentrism and finished out your career as a hip hop producer. I guess I wonder what you think of Pharrell Williams and Timbaland and Kanye West and such.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I could well go Afrocentric, but it would be Afric-Afro, not Americ-Afro. I'm still disappointed that Toog didn't make the "Toog Go To Togo" album he promised a couple of years ago. Maybe I should do it instead. Kalimba samples and polyrhythms! Dry, warm, complex, spacey, tactile... synchro-system! French Africa! 4WD!

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

Even better for you sir: pan-Africanism! I am not unserious about this. I thoroughly tire of Eurocentrism par excellence in art and culture--I thought it could resolve my western anxieties from Plato to pomo, but I'm a Canadian child of Parsi (Zoroastrian) and Indo-African and white prairie descent, so it's much more complicated, you see... and I have to confess that after years of indie devoteeism, it's hip hop that is finally showing me the many ways I work my angles. You I have always loved, so like Vice I would hope to cross you over to that scene, if I needed a transcontinental beat to spit on.

[eptified.livejournal.com]

Goddammit, I read that track review and it annoyed me. Thank you for defending it! Why is political passion the only kind that's not allowed in pop music?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think politics is rightly shied away from or discouraged when it's a stream of cliches, an opportunity for language to get stiff and solid and predictable and pompous. But that's not the case here at all. This is a "politics" which works the same way as the best poetry. And yes, it's all mixed up with a sense of loss, and the emotion of sadness and disappointment. (Can't you just tell this album was made after November 3rd?)

You're attracted to a vocal sample for some reason you might not even be able to define. You store it and use it in a track. You might break it up so that it makes less sense, re-combine it with a different sample. Context changes it again, everything is momentarily out of control. But, like a collage which, no matter how much you break it up, still keeps forming a recognisable landscape -- the mirror image, perhaps, of the landscape you're in -- the song keeps referring back to reality. In an environment when the word "freedom" is part of a rigid, oppressive, propagandistic mindset, you find that the exercise of real freedom cannot fail to be accusatory. Even if that "freedom" is just the ability to splice a soundbite in a way that seems to defy conventional logic.

[hexachrome.livejournal.com]

Bearing in mind the subtle political undertones, as I listen now to the album for the first time I'm also finding parallels somehow with the musical and stock-footage editing of Adam Curtis' fantastic 'The Power of Nightmares' documentary series (surveying the parallel rise of American neoconservatism and Islamic fundamentalism) shown on BBC last year.

[(Anonymous)]

channing said: ...where are those Japanese rap van conservatives Robert Duckworth was talking about when you need them?

and i say: i:m tickled pink that you would remember that, but just in case the fine denizens of Q.O. have NO IDEA what post of mine you over on GlitchSlapTko are referring to, here is the link.

http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2005/01/hiphop-concept-car-recto-flossin.html

[xchimx.livejournal.com]

I do love the vocal samples hidden away in this album. The books are a excellent group and this was an excellent album. But its easy to go overboard. when people normally suggest an addition of vocal samples i'm first reminded of bad 90s industrial like some velvet acid christ. and that is enough to send shivers up your spine.

[zamba.livejournal.com]

Pitchfork is to be taken lightly, everytime they basically give an album a bad review, I make sure to check the album out myself. They originally gave Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" a terribly low rating, but when Wilco started to make it big in the "indie/hipster" scene, they magically upped the rating.

It's sad to realize how much impact Pitchfork has out there. I'm a college student and I work on my college radio. Recently, I got into a discussion with 2 other DJ's and I asked about a random band's album which I thought was great, and they told me they hated it. When I asked why, they both admitted they hadn't fully heard it, but that Pitchfork gave it a bad review.

Eh, never trust their reviews of albums.

[zamba.livejournal.com]

p.s. you ever coming to tour the states???

[freesurfboards.livejournal.com]

i just love how a bad review in pitchfork has become a compliment