`Tales Of Us` - Reviews By Us

whisperit

la_catalina said:
...You prove to me truth is real and I might believe in it. There is no truth, just endless subjective viewpoints, sometimes there are many of these that are in agreement, this is called consensus, but that is all....an agreement of approximation...

...Of course Anna Kerenina is far from truth, truth is a fiction, which incidently is what Tolstoy wrote

Oh, I see. Sorry, I misunderstood your position there.

This leaves me in the slightly awkward situation of agreeing with almost everything you've said.

Scraping round for some areas of friction, I am left with:

1. Your notion of truth makes the term virtually meaningless. I would rather say that truths should always be acknowledged as limited, but that it's perfectly possible for a novel or a song to tell a particular kind of truth, whilst remaining a fiction.

2. You're a bit harsh on Alison/GF in terms of artistic purity. I dont think they've ever pretended to be something they aren't i.e. a pop band. It's not like they're The Clash, for example, declaiming about the "Guns of Brixton" and signing to CBS, fer Chrissakes'....

How's that?

iuventus

Oh, fuck, shit, cock, cunt, ass!

la_catalina

iuventus said:
Oh, fuck, shit, cock, cunt, ass!

bollocks!

la_catalina · Post edited by la_catalina at 2013-09-26 11:11:27

whisperit said:

la_catalina said:

and worse still, I saw John Lydon on the TV doing Glastonbury, for fucks sake John! whatever happened to "I hate hippies" and AND it looks like he got his teeth done ... its the end ....

It's difficult with Goldfrapp. One doesn't expect art from a pop band, but occasionally pop slips over and becomes art, or as good as, Chuck Berry, that first Velvets record. And I was never one of those snobs who thought the Fine Arts were better that other art forms. I love art, I love those people who painted in caves 24,000 years back, I love Francis Bacon,I love Jeff Koons and Giacometti and I love Steve Ditko (he drew the original Spiderman and Doc Strange) and for me those 60's Marvel Comics are as good as it gets. I love lots of other things, pre drip Pollock, Warhol, Rauschenburg, all those guys...., but I hate bad art, and I hate pretentious art, and basically the art world has a lot of pretention floating around in it.

Now Goldfrapp aren't just a pop band are they? They come with some other agenda, or they wouldn't make the films, and they'd not do the serious stuff, like FM which face it is never going to be called pop. So for me Supernature was Alison playing at being pop,and being just a teensy weensey bit ironic and tongue in cheek ;;bless her;;; and she did a bloody good job because there are some great pop songs on there, good as the best!

So it's hard for Goldfrapp to ever just be a pop group, no matter how hard they try they'll always be a bit more 'arty'.

Trouble is, for me, and I'm making a big point of saying, FOR ME, they seem to have dug 'em selves into a bit of a hole because they have this arty element to them, ....and, that means they expose themselves to the mechanics of art criticism like the rest of the art world. and although it shouldn't be, it's a more demanding world than the world of entertainment - which is what pop is.

KatRobin

3 simple words to say re the new album: Thank You Goldfrapp xxx

Jozzy81

KatRobin said:
3 simple words to say re the new album: Thank You Goldfrapp xxx

could'nt agree more :)

stevil

KatRobin said:
3 simple words to say re the new album: Thank You Goldfrapp xxx

Bravo!!!!!! =D>

cw37frapp

1 word= PERFECT.

tweety · Post edited by tweety at 2013-10-05 21:15:28

la_catalina said:

whisperit said:

la_catalina said:

It's difficult with Goldfrapp. .

is it?

tattmaylor

la_catalina said:

Trouble is, for me, and I'm making a big point of saying, FOR ME, they seem to have dug 'em selves into a bit of a hole because they have this arty element to them, ....and, that means they expose themselves to the mechanics of art criticism like the rest of the art world. and although it shouldn't be, it's a more demanding world than the world of entertainment - which is what pop is.

Actually I'm with you on this. Very well calmly explained ;-).

I think this is also why Head First didn't work like they wanted. The music and records they were homaging were done as pop music but seriously, earnestly and in some ways innocently. That fact they turned out to be cheesy is more in retrospect. So in trying to recreate the essence of those songs in a 'knowing way' would always fail. Why bands like The Darkness can do it once with great tongue in their cheeks but then struggle to make more than one record that anybody wants to hear. That's also why it is so hard to deliberately make a cool pop record. Most are actually accidents (and often never intended to be pop records). The reason people like Annie (scandanvian singer) struggle so much trying to do pop but in an intelligent way. Great pop music is a bit silly.

Border_Mind

One month on from its release and I still adore this album, I am on my 4th listen since yesterday, my cats also seem to love the album, they are both very chilled out to it, yes my cats are huge fans of Goldfrapp too...

banana

OMG first reaction's coming in taken direct stop.

SHOCKING

UNFORGETABLE

LOTS OF BREATH

HYPONOTIZING

REACHING FOR DESERPERATION

STARGAZING FOLK

DEATH HAS NEVER SOUNDED SO GOOD

iuventus

I believe that I shall never tire of this album.

la_catalina · Post edited by la_catalina at 2013-09-17 11:14:56

Regarding artistic integrity:

People make art for numerous reasons: that they have done so for tens of thousands of years and that art is included in the most fundamental of human activies, gives us some indication of the value art has for human beings.

Art and culture are usually the things a society is remembered for: There is great art, and then there is everything else... stuff that is not earth shattering but just ok. Paeleolithic cave art and Banksy for example, who's to say?

Somehow and somewhere along the line, the notion of artistic integrity creeps into arts assessment and perception. After giving the matter some thought I have come to the conclusion that it needn't necessarily have much to do with aesthetic quality, it's more correct to say that Integrity is bundled up with the artists motivation to make the work in the first place.

And that motivation has to fullfil certain criteria for a work to have integrity.

And we should be aware that the idea of the artist as an individual is a recent historical idea that goes back maybe 500 years and the notion of the artist as a celebrity is even younger say 100 years tops ...

so artistic integrity is a recent idea.

Why would one work be considered as having more integrity than another? What differentiates Van Goghs Wheatfield with Crows from Damien Hirsts Shark in Box? Both are celebrity artists, and both artists work sells for stupid money. Yet why is the Van Gogh the work with the integrity?

I would stick my neck out and say it's to do with money. Poor old Vincent painted because he believed in what he did, he had to do it regardless of the fact that in his lifetime he sold 3 paintings, and was bailed out by his brother when it came to staying alive. The poor bugger had an aweful time materially but made some of the most valued paintings the world has. I would say he believed in what he did, no matter what. Vincent was not about to give the world a nice painting for the Salon wall, that everyone would ooh and aah over just, so he could nip off down the Alimentation with his newly got readies to buy a bottle of absinthe.

Hirst, on the other hand, primed by his tutor Michael Craig-Martin, who saw how the times were a changing in the Thatcherite Yuppie 80's signed up with Saachi, an ad man who by his own admission actually knows stuff all about art, and who threw loadsa money at his newly accquired protege(s). Hirst wanted and knew he was up to make a lot of cash ... I know this because I used to know his girlfriend and she told me in 1991 that he'd told her " I've made a lot of money, and I'm going to make a lot more"

I think Damien was more motivated to make money than to make good, honest art.

... it's a gut reaction type thing. I couldn't say concisely why Hirsts oeuvre is crap, 'one liners' we'd call his type of work at Art School... and yet I can also tell you that the unknown person who drew in a cave 25,000 years ago was the real thing ... it's just ultimately something you know, it's an instinct. Art historians could give you a better set of well argued valid , just why reasons, but I'm just an artist and it's beyond me say rationally why one is good the other shit. You just have to take it from me that I know what I'm rabbitting on about

BUT:

Basically if you sellout you kiss your integrity goodbye!

If money is in there, in the mix of impulses that might motivate an artist, like the serpent in the garden, it corrupts .... it doesn't matter if the art is still aesthetically valid if the motivation is tainted even the slightest bit by profit, and therefore by default public acceptance and approval ... invariably the work will suffer, because compromise creeps in .

Did Goldfrapp sell out with Head First?

Should they have let record company pressures dictate their creative decision?

Did they comproise?

Did they have any freedom of choice in the matter?

Why is Tales a work of integrity in a way Head First clearly is not?

Now these are personal answers, and if they offend anyone I'm sorry, but I'm just out to clarify for myself, why I feel the way I do about the band and their career.

I think they probably did sell out, and I think they should have told the record company to go take a hike, because I think once you compromise once, it's a hell of a road back.

I also think Tales is a concerted attempt to regain some sort of control - though the idea of deluxe box sets at 70 odd quid... well I wince at that a bit.

On the otherhand you have to balance pragmatic choices, Goldfrapp are a commercial concern, they do actually sell records and have a presence in the cultural world, it beats me why, like so many other artists they haven't got their own label?

Why not? Then they'd have artistic freedom?

In the end you have to balance the need to get the work out there, and keeping true to your vision. Some sort of compromise huh? Tough to choose huh?

Would you compromise on what is precious to you if it meant selling either 20,000 copies and just about paying the mortgage? Or do you give the public what it wants and have that new loft in NY and the flash car?

I know what I'd do but...

Who knows?

You can sell your soul to the Devil in so many ways

Howdy, Stranger!

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