easycure

No, Arianna, I don't mind at all! As for the term "narrative," I brought it up, and it refers to the fact that a piece uses a certain dynamic/sound effect to elicit a "development" of what it tells, whether it's a sensation, an emotion, or a real story. This element is actually omnipresent in classical music; in Rock, the Slint are a blatant representation of it: "breadcrumb trail," which is precisely the recounting of a lived life story (by the way, it's brilliant in this too: because it narrates a common life episode, not exceptional, but MADE exceptional in the emotional exaltation of the feelings experienced at that moment... a true "poetics of the moment") develops precisely by not following a predefined canon (the song format) but while remaining faithful to the "theme," it twists it unpredictably depending on what it wants to represent... the peak of "narrativity," which is the same discourse as saying, as I said, that they destroy the style by bending the form to expression. The same goes for "washer," which suddenly interrupts and hangs in suspense with those repeated parentheses of dissonant calm... it's a dramatism that always has a storytelling function; this is the "narrative" element.

the real new wave is in New York.. yeah, great times, great music, great Lydia Lunch, great James Chance, great cover and big Teenage Jesus

In fact, I never said that everything "for pleasure" has to make sense.. I said that everything in order to be ART must have meaning.. If you think about classical music, every single note played in a precise way always has a narrative function. That's the point: too often this has been overlooked in rock in the name of it being a popular art. But self-referentiality is actually an incomprehensible distortion of the universality of rock.. a universality that must instead express itself in simplicity, communicativeness, and in not being elitist or necessarily intellectual music.. but not in being empty music. This is why Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Spiderland by Slint, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart, Velvet Underground & Nico, Suicide, Zen Arcade by Hüsker Dü, and many others are masterpieces: for being fundamentally direct albums but not for that any less profound or less absolute than the masterpieces of classical music or jazz... perhaps these references should be considered to understand a discourse like the one I present. The fact remains that in light of this, in a very objective manner (but certainly through the lens of something that remains a point of view, or rather: an interpretation) Muse reveal themselves to be utterly mediocre.

Everything is beautiful! x Kosmina: the magazine!! ;-D

but, in my opinion, it's quite a logical matter.. certainly (relatively) more difficult to identify with notes than with images, but still quite logical.. definitely a contextualization can help in this sense, then of course, nothing is 100% "demonstrable" objectively, but I don't think anyone can claim to do so.. it's a priori premise of any discussion

Just ask yourself, indeed: what is the meaning? Because meaning in art is everything; if meaning is taken away, the soul is taken away, and the very concept of art is eliminated. What is the meaning of that arpeggio that surrounds "Bliss," for example? What does it confer to the piece? How does it change and make the meaning unique? As Gestalt suggests, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This is where the sense of a device lies, in giving a unique form rather than being purely additive, which, by definition, would be purely self-referential in its complete uselessness. The same tragically applies, in a much more weighty manner for the song, to Bellamy's singing: what sense does it have? That insistence, that emphasis, what meaning do they have if not to evoke, in a more paroxysmal and therefore even more aestheticizing way, an emotional state that is all too predictable? This is what one must ask themselves.

I agree with Arianna: in my opinion, Teto is definitely distinguishable, and it's up to criticism to do so; let me give you a paroxysmal example because it's illustrative: the classic cinematic case of "violence for its own sake," like in "The Passion" by Mel Gibson: now in that film, the torture scenes directed at Jesus are completely self-serving, provocative, self-referential, and thus snobbish, because they clearly make no sense: what sense does it make to show wounds, the torturer cruelly wielding a cat o' nine tails, such insistently celebrated pain? Obviously none, except for the sake of being there as such... a sort of "voyeuristic exercise," as Mereghetti would put it, frankly quite horrible. This is the same case, in music, in a more explicit manner in my opinion with a band like Dream Theater, and in a more insidious yet no less crass way with a band like Muse (in this case, we're not discussing an ethical factor, but purely aesthetic merit).

I don't claim to determine what "they thought" when composing... but I'm not really interested either; what’s certain is that I brought up the references to show just how retrograde and unoriginal their poetics are. "Spontaneity" is certainly a merit to me, but it's not so much a matter of being "sophisticated"... rather, it’s about being very pretentious, daring to refine things with the insidious hypocrisy (I repeat, purely aesthetic hypocrisy) of those who believe this resolves the expression of a feeling, the beauty of a piece... which is obviously the blandest, most obvious, and elementary thing one can conceive, a classic trap for those who, forgive me, don’t have much musical culture (which is not necessarily your case, of course, I’m speaking generally). It's true that from this perspective, knowing little about Radiohead is a notable flaw... undoubtedly, in the "current" of Muse, they have been an absolutely essential reality in recent years... and frankly, to say that Radiohead are "not very technical" is decidedly reductive: they certainly don't get lost in useless solos or various embellishments, that's for sure, but they are definitely excellent musicians even in a sense that's not strictly "communicative." To return to the earlier point, in conclusion, it’s not a question of losing immediacy, but of pretending to resolve a certain type of expression by referring to purely formal aspects: which is truly a provocational low-brow display, empty and snobbish presumptuousness.

here they are! The Medicine; album "Short fort self living"

Ah, there was an insane Noise/shoegaze band from those years... but I can't remember the name (I download too many CDs, damn it! .. then I don't remember them..) ...it wasn't bad, when I remember the title I'll let you know!