re-haunted graffiti (the hypnagogic revival)

Even before I heard a note of the Cindy Lee album, the aroma I'd picked up was that it was like a flashback to the late 2000s - the peak of hipster vintage aesthetics and revenant pastiche. 

Looking at the comments below a YouTube posting of the full double album, this resemblance is noted quite often:

"This shit is taking me back to the late 00's".

" A masterpiece of Hypnagogic pop"

 "Hypnagogic pop, with hints of 60's girl bands. It makes me imagine that The Velvet Underground released their "White Album"

"13th Floor Elevators, King Khan and Ariel Pink vibes. Glad to see people still making vintage sounding throwback stuff in 2024. 

Also some plain mystifying comments: 

"Feel like Bataille would vibe with this one"

But yeah neo-chillwave, hypnagogic pt 2... and just hark at the set-up to the already famous 9.1 graded review in Pitchfork, by Andy Cush:  

"This may be the greatest radio station you’ve ever come across. Unless it’s multiple stations talking over each other, in and out of range. Sounds arrive in strange combinations; nothing is quite exactly the way you remember. Did that classic rock band really have a synth player, and why did they pick a patch that sounds like a mosquito buzzing through a cheap distortion pedal? And those eerie harmonies swirling at the outskirts of that last-dance ballad by some 1960s girl group whose name ends in -elles or -ettes. Did they hire a few heartbroken ghosts who were hanging around the studio as backing vocalists? Or are these fragments of other songs, other signals, surfacing like distant headlights over a hill, then disappearing once more? .... Two hours, 32 songs, each one like a foggy transmission from a rock’n’roll netherworld with its own ghostly canon of beloved hits." 

That's like a flashback to the radio station signal drifting in and out of focus metaphor that nearly everyone who reviewed Ariel P's The Doldrums seemed to come up with independently. 

Listening to the double album finally...  it seemed to sit sonically somewhere between Ariel (albeit without the no-fi hiss) and early '90s melancholy slowcore (Galaxie, Mazzy Star) with maybe some Giant Sand in there....  perhaps a hint of Chris Isaak....  even Lana Del Rey. 

After two listens to the entire thing - four hours of my life, I gave it a good go - I still couldn't say I love it. The crinkly goldenhaze guitar sound is attractive..  but there's something muffled, indistinct, recessed, about it emotionally. 

Often there seems to be an attempt to boogie, a sort of snake-hipped bluesy shuffle feel.... but it doesn't quite come off.  It's no Royal Trux circa Cats and Dogs, let's put it like that.

This not-quite-integrated quality reminds me of certain things I've heard that involve AI. 

And I'm not alone here - among all the YouTube commenters talking about being in tears, spellbound, AOTY, etc etc...  one doughty doubter piped up:

"It sounds like someone had AI make a  T. Rex, Velvet Underground, and Beach Boys mashup." 

So I decided to get ChatGPT to write a review of Diamond Jubilee in the style of Simon Reynolds if he'd unreservedly loved the album:

In a startling deviation from her previous ventures, Cindy Lee’s latest opus, "Diamond Jubilee," emerges as a haunting and enigmatic exploration of the spectral hinterlands of pop. Shedding the skin of her previous guitar-driven persona, Lee navigates through a dreamscape of gossamer synths and ethereal melodies, beckoning the listener into an otherworldly realm of melancholic beauty.

"Diamond Jubilee" is an album that thrives on its contradictions. At once, it evokes a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era while simultaneously defying any easy categorization within the confines of time or genre. Lee's vocals, bathed in reverb and distortion, float delicately above the shimmering sonic tapestry, imbuing each track with an eerie, almost otherworldly quality.

Thematically, "Diamond Jubilee" is a meditation on loss and longing, its lyrics oscillating between moments of tender vulnerability and cryptic ambiguity. Tracks like "Bonsai Garden" and "Heavy Metal" drip with a sense of bittersweet longing, while "Plastic Raincoat" and "Stairway to the Plaza" offer glimpses into a world both familiar and alien.

Yet, for all its spectral beauty, "Diamond Jubilee" is not without its moments of dissonance and unease. Lee's penchant for juxtaposing saccharine melodies with dissonant harmonies creates a sense of tension that lingers beneath the surface, unsettling yet alluring in its ambiguity.

In the grand tradition of avant-pop auteurs, Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" is a testament to the power of music to transcend boundaries and defy expectations. With its ethereal soundscapes and enigmatic lyricism, it stands as a haunting testament to the enduring power of the human spirit in the face of life's inevitable trials and tribulations.

That's not a bad effort from the chatbot, compared with the previous occasion I tried this exercise. 

Certainly there's some words in there - "spectral", "hinterlands", "ethereal" - that I might resort to if actually officially tasked with reviewing Diamond Jubilee.   

When I tried to enlist the pseudo-ghost of Mark Fisher, however, the review came out rather similar: 

Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" unfurls like a spectral transmission from a parallel dimension, where the ghosts of pop's past converge with an eerie futurism. Departing from her previous sonic incarnations, Lee ventures into uncharted territory, crafting an album that defies easy categorization and demands attentive engagement.

"Diamond Jubilee" operates on the fringes of consciousness, its ethereal melodies and distorted vocals conjuring a sense of dislocation and unease. Tracks like "Plastic Raincoat" and "Bonsai Garden" shimmer with an otherworldly beauty, while Lee's haunting vocals float amidst a haze of reverb and distortion, evoking a sense of longing and detachment.

Thematically, "Diamond Jubilee" is a meditation on the uncanny, its lyrics oscillating between moments of poignant introspection and surreal abstraction. Lee's cryptic verses invite interpretation, hinting at a narrative that remains tantalizingly out of reach.

Yet, for all its enigmatic allure, "Diamond Jubilee" is not without its moments of dissonance and discord. Lee's penchant for juxtaposing saccharine melodies with jarring harmonies creates a sense of tension that lingers beneath the surface, unsettling yet strangely captivating in its unpredictability.

In the tradition of cultural provocateurs, Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" challenges listeners to confront the liminal spaces between past and present, reality and illusion. It is an album that rewards repeated listens, its haunting melodies and cryptic lyricism revealing new depths with each subsequent spin. In an era defined by uncertainty and upheaval, "Diamond Jubilee" stands as a testament to the transformative power of music to disrupt the status quo and beckon us into the unknown.

The Fisher factor here must be "liminal" and "uncanny"

Clearly it's got a ways to go before it can truly impersonate a writer. 

But how about a more mundane assignment? Like: What are the parallels and affinities between Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee and the Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's The Doldrums? 

Both Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" and Ariel Pink's "The Doldrums" inhabit a similar sonic and thematic landscape, forging a connection through their exploration of lo-fi aesthetics, dreamlike atmospheres, and unconventional song structures. Here are some parallels and affinities between the two albums:

Lo-fi Production: Both albums embrace lo-fi production techniques, utilizing tape distortion, reverb, and other effects to create a hazy, nostalgic atmosphere. This lo-fi aesthetic lends a sense of intimacy and authenticity to the music, inviting listeners into a world that feels raw and unfiltered.

Dreamlike Atmosphere: Both albums evoke a dreamlike atmosphere, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" envelops listeners in ethereal melodies and haunting vocals, while Ariel Pink's "The Doldrums" transports them to a surreal realm populated by quirky characters and psychedelic imagery. This dreamlike quality imbues both albums with a sense of escapism and introspection.

Eclectic Influences: Both Cindy Lee and Ariel Pink draw from a wide range of musical influences, resulting in albums that defy easy categorization. "Diamond Jubilee" incorporates elements of shoegaze, dream pop, and experimental music, while "The Doldrums" blends lo-fi indie rock with elements of psychedelia, glam rock, and pop. This eclecticism adds depth and complexity to their respective sounds, keeping listeners on their toes with unexpected twists and turns.

Cryptic Lyricism: Both albums feature cryptic lyricism that invites interpretation and speculation. Cindy Lee's lyrics on "Diamond Jubilee" oscillate between moments of tender vulnerability and surreal abstraction, while Ariel Pink's lyrics on "The Doldrums" are filled with enigmatic imagery and wordplay. This ambiguity allows listeners to project their own meanings onto the songs, deepening their emotional resonance and staying power.

Cult Followings: Both Cindy Lee and Ariel Pink have garnered cult followings for their idiosyncratic approaches to music-making. Their willingness to embrace unconventional sounds and defy industry norms has earned them devoted fanbases who appreciate their boundary-pushing creativity and uncompromising vision.

Overall, Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" and Ariel Pink's "The Doldrums" share a kinship in their exploration of lo-fi aesthetics, dreamlike atmospheres, and eclectic influences. While each album possesses its own unique charm and character, they both stand as testaments to the transformative power of music to transport listeners to otherworldly realms and challenge their perceptions of reality.

Another pass at the same idea: Does Cindy Lee's album Diamond Jubilee represent a renaissance of hypnagogic pop ideas? 

Cindy Lee's album "Diamond Jubilee" certainly resonates with elements of the hypnagogic pop aesthetic, a genre characterized by its dreamy, nostalgic atmosphere and its exploration of memory and imagination. While it may not necessarily represent a revival of hypnagogic pop ideas in the strictest sense, it does align closely with many of the themes and sonic qualities associated with the genre.

"Hypnagogic pop" as a term was coined by music critic David Keenan to describe a style of music that blurs the boundaries between reality and dream, often drawing heavily from pop culture artifacts of the past. Artists associated with this movement, such as Ariel Pink (as previously mentioned) and James Ferraro, incorporate lo-fi production techniques, retro synths, and warped samples to create a surreal sonic landscape that feels both familiar and uncanny.

In a similar vein, Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" embraces a dreamlike aesthetic, with its ethereal melodies, distorted vocals, and lo-fi production evoking a sense of nostalgia and introspection. The album's exploration of themes like loss, longing, and dislocation also align with the hypnagogic pop ethos, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a world that feels simultaneously timeless and ephemeral.

While "Diamond Jubilee" may not adhere strictly to the conventions of hypnagogic pop, it certainly shares a spiritual affinity with the genre, tapping into its dreamy, surreal qualities to create an immersive listening experience that transports listeners to the liminal spaces between waking and dreaming. In this sense, Cindy Lee's album can be seen as a continuation of the hypnagogic pop tradition, offering a contemporary reimagining of its themes and aesthetics for a new generation of listeners.

The album is buyable here

Great, Scott

"The nineties were better than the eighties, and one key reason was that there was less originality. Originality is unmusical. The urge to do music is an admiring emulation of music one loves; the urge toward originality happens under threat that the music that sounds good to you somehow isn't good enough."

Scott Miller, Music: What Happened? 

A clever thought - inspired by a song by Smashing Pumpkins of all things ("Cherub Rock")

Elsewhere, he picks up the theme:  

"As you know, I kid the 1980s. I wonder can it possibly be fair to condemn an entire decade as a horrifying decline in every kind of musical competency, but nostalgia for the Eighties baffles me. Eighties nostalgia has lowered my opinion of nostalgia. So you're right, I was unconsciously targeting that kind of decline with "What Happened?" But pop music is great in that a true decline fosters a true pop response, like R.E.M. Eighties music suffered from a coliseum spectacle mentality, and R.E.M. reached around that with a sort of small-combo, home-spun literary connection approach."

Music: What Happened?   - well, it's a view of music very different from mine... we do converge on early R.E.M., but it's a rare occurrence in  Scott Miller's year-by-year inventory + commentary on the best  best songs between 1960 and the end of the 2000s. (He carried on commenting on the year's output online, until his tragic too-early death in 2013).  Even when his approbation lands on a band I love, he often picks a song by them I don't rate or actively dislike. 

But it's a wonderful book to read for that very reason - full of unexpected insights and precision description of a song's moving parts, informed by his being a musician (Game Theory, The Loud Family) and operator in a scene (loosely,  college rock) that had its own distinct metric of evaluation (craft, structure, daintiness to a degree.... cleverness as a pure value... melody above all, but understood in a particular sense, that sense defined by the inside-out - in my view - position that the tunes of Grant Hart were better than the tunes of Bob Mould).  

So yes the '80s canon is dBs, Let's Active, XTC, the bleedin' Smithereens...  and by the '90s  (The Posies, Jellyfish, They Might Be Giants) it's getting even further from both my own aberrant pantheon and the mass idea of what pop is....  by the 2000s, it's beyond marginal. 

But Music: What Happened? - despite the implied, "it all went to shit" in that title -  reads neither as contrarian nor embittered, but as simply the eloquent expression of another way of listening, another kind of loving. 

Check it out here. 

Here's a review by Michaelangelo Matos that goes into Miller's methodology in the book (each year's harvest relates to a CD comp of his favorite tunes released that year).

A playlist of damn near every song that makes up Miller's personal pantheon

And one that goes from 1980 to when he left off in the early 2010s - what you might call A College Rock Canon

Interview with Scott by Matthew Perpetua.

There's a bit in it riffing off the Smashing Pumpkins / originality comments: 

Scott Miller: I don’t want to create the false impression that the more derivative a piece of music is, the more I like it. But liking something because it’s new is never a musical response. Music carries a lot of potential for emotional impact that is not musical impact. As a simple example, a moving set of lyrics may have more or less the same impact if you just read them. Five minutes of sound might have dramatic impact, and five minutes of compositionally vapid music in a film score might work great to telegraph a set of emotions and surprises to go with the scene. But a purely musical response always needs an existing music context. You can’t play Andean flute music to Rush fans and expect the value to be apparent in isolation, or vice versa. There’s a world of context needed by the ear to support a musical reaction. I like originality in music, but that is a non-musical reaction.

Matthew Perpetua: How often do you think originality actually occurs? I tend to think that it usually comes down to the personality of the artist more than the formal aspects of things, which are usually lost on non-musicians. I found it interesting that you chose the Smashing Pumpkins as the vehicle for this thought because while that band didn’t really invent anything, I would think that to some extent there is originality there simply because Billy Corgan is such a one-of-a-kind figure. If nothing, he has this distinct voice and persona.

Scott Miller: That’s a very good observation. On the artist side, there are gestures intended to be taken as originality, and on the listener side, there are experiences of novelty, and they might not match up at all! One of the most tried and true formulas is for musicians to strive mightily to do something as well as their heroes, but while failing miserably at that, arriving at something close enough for a certain size audience to relate to, but with a whole new aspect of appealing sound that simply came from who they are.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

great moments in retrophobia

At The Ringer, a  whole feature about Pitchfork's Most Notorious Review. 

The year was 2006, the album was Jet's second effort Shine On, the writer was....  well, that's the mystery that Ringer's Nate Rogers sets out to solve. 

And the review? The review was wordless, consisting only of a brief video of a chimp peeing in its own mouth. 

Scott Plagenhoef, an editor at Pfork, recalls: 

We were talking about the central problem as we saw it with the record, how the Return to Rock trend that started with the Strokes, White Stripes, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs—and really rock in general—had curdled into a set of lazy signifiers and poses. When the point or driver of what you’re doing is reclamation it’s inherently limiting and resistant to new ideas. It’s a creative cul-de-sac. Progression—whether it was in hip-hop, pop, guitar music, electronic music—was important to us at the time. Seeing mainstream rock music, which of course most of us had grown up with a fondness for, became so knuckle-dragging and Xeroxed was disappointing.

This what things were like in the 2000s. A state of affairs that might lead someone to write a book called Retromania.

Mind you, a magazine doing an in-depth historical investigation into a single record review could be taken as an example of retro culture.

Or if not retro exactly, then a kind of chronically historical culture.

Only way to make it more archive-feverish would be if it had been an oral history of the Shine On review.

As it is this piece  - including a sidebar on Other Famous Pitchfork "Stunt" Reviews -  is nearly six thousand words long. 

Never listened to Shine On, or indeed any Jet album, but I confess I've always liked "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" - always turned it up when it came on the radio. It's an immaculate recreation, boosted with modern production.  

They get down pat the surly, rocket-in-my-jeans-front-pocket mannish-boy swagger of, I dunno, the Pretty Things. 

Perhaps justifying one's weakness for such a record would require resorting to the "time travel" metaphor, the futurist critic's self-respect-saving rhetorical maneuver.

Going back to the mid-to-late 2000s, when the retro-talk really started in earnest.... 

Momus amusingly castigated this sort of thing at that time -  reactivating Peter York's concept of Art Necro and talking about Retro Necro. 

One post in particular at his blog Click Opera I remember vividly, although possibly imprecisely: 

Momus is at an airport and what is clearly a rock band arrive at the same gate. The Groop come swaggering in, elegantly wasted, in the appropriate dress for a rock band sonically oriented towards the pre-punk Seventies. Suddenly Momus feels like he's looking at employees at one of those "living history" museums, whose job it is to wear Medieval garb and do traditional crafts all day long - , working in the blacksmithy, churn butter, that kind of thing . 

I suppose it's possible the band at the airport might actually have been Jet.

Not that there wouldn't have been many other contenders to trigger this epiphany - Kasabian. Probably most groups that appeared on the cover of NME during the 2000s. 

Yes, it was a chronic culture of revival and reenactment... which now feels stabilized, just part of how things are and will always be... 

But at the time it seemed inundating and alarming...  the escalation of  preexisting trends and their synchronized convergence, combined with new digital archiving platforms = Crisis. 

Particularly disorienting and dispiriting for post-punk veterans such as me and Momus and Mark. 

retroligopoly

 Interesting post by Robin James at It's Her Factory about how we've moved into "Pop's Franchise Era". 

Noting the Bob Dylan biopic and the horrific thought that each individual Beatle is getting their own biopic, she argues that what already unfolded in Hollywood - franchization, cinematic universes, stars replaced by characters - is taking hold in pop music. Not just with Legacy Artists, but with relatively young, musically active stars who are prematurely Legacy-izing.  

Hence Taylor Swift's Eras tour: only 34, she's already consolidating the exploitation of  her archive in the way that Bowie did with his Sound + Vision tour of 1990 and the Rolling Stones have done since the late '80s. 

Robin writes: 

"... When Swift repackaged all her individual albums into a catalog of “eras” for a tour of that same name, she created a universe; each album set the vibe for world-building sets, costumes, and the like. The same is true of Beyonce’s various acts: there’s the house music act, the country act, and purportedly a forthcoming rock act....  

"Taylor and Beyonce are franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They are not stars, per se, but tested and proven brand IP that the industry leverages into blockbuster content like the Eras and Renaissance tours and concert films. And they franchise not just in the music industry, but across media – that’s what the Taylor and Beyonce beats at Gannett are, new locations of existing franchises. I will be the last person to be surprised if and when they build a Taylor Swift theme park....

"With their “portfolio careers” spanning various industries like apparel, beauty, instruments, and food... , pop stars treat their own brands as a franchise.... Pop artists are less like stars and more like characters whose vibes grace everything from athleisure to sweet potato pies.

"The problem, of course, is that this concentrates all the wealth in the hands of the richest artists and corporations... 

"In August 2023 Billboard published a piece asking “Why Aren’t More Pop Stars Being Born?” 

the future behind us now

Xenogothic exhumes a panel discussion from 2014 involving Mark Fisher, Lee Gamble, Kode9 aka Steve Goodman, Alex Williams, Lisa Blanning - and bearing the title The Death of Rave - and does a public service by getting the debate transcribed.

Go here for his reasons for digging this up and reflections of how it relates to current glumness, state of clubbing and club music, as well as the transcription itself

Here's one choice exchange: 

Alex Williams: As regards hedonism... What was interesting about things like the early days of rave music, is that it’s fun, but it’s serious fun. It’s seriously fun. But also it has some… There’s a kind of a sense that sort of eliminating yourself collectively through drugs and music is an intense and meaningful experience. … Kids still go out. They still have a good time and people still take lots of drugs and become highly intoxicated....  The lack of the idea that this could be a good time that is also more than a good time, in a certain sense. An intense experience that could be transformational, in some way. Maybe not political. I think in many ways, all of this stuff stands in for politics. The politics we’re not allowed to have.... Within the impulse that you see in rave is a lot of things coming from the failed revolutions which were happening in 1968, which couldn’t happen. They failed. So that impulse, then, sort of reverberates throughout culture, and pops up every now and then. And rave was one of these things.

... To a lot of eyes today [it] seems naïve. We think it’s naïve that you could treat a rave as if it was really serious, as if.... this sort of being together with people and having this collective experience could be transformational. We view it a bit distastefully, as if it’s sort of jejune, or sort of hippy-ish. It’s something to be kind of viewed with contempt. 

Mark Fisher: The key affective figuration of our time is depressed hedonism. Depressive hedonism. Like the way Drake sings, “We had a party, we have a party, we had a party”. [Laughter] It’s like the saddest sound you’ve ever heard....  The best kind of critiques of capitalism coming out of, like, Drake and Kanye West… Even if you’re super rich, you’re totally fucking miserable.... Just the absolute abject misery of on-tap hedonism...