Political over tones in depeche mode songs

POLITICAL OVER TONES IN DEPECHE MODE SONGS SERIAL

It recollected the worst solipsistic flower-child affectations of 1960s hippies and flattered and indulged their audiencesвЂ™ insular LiveJournaling sensitivities. Individually I admired many (not all) of these artists, but collectively they seemed to be staging a kind of privileged retreat from the dystopic realities of post-9/11 America while claiming it as resistance.

This gauzy idealization of childishness seemed endemic to indie rock of the time (think of early Bright Eyes and Arcade Fire, for instance), particularly among artists often grouped with Stevens as psychedelic folk or вЂњfreak folk,вЂќ such as Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Animal Collective. None of that might have counted against Stevens so much if it hadnвЂ™t been part of a pernicious tendency of the period. And when he wasnвЂ™t staging happy-clappy revues, he was playing tremulous, reverent acoustic music, as on the Seven Swans album, whose vulnerabilities still felt studied and removed.

POLITICAL OVER TONES IN DEPECHE MODE SONGS SERIAL

Even when he sang about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, it was hard to take seriously because it was couched in the social-studies-class-friendly context of the imaginary вЂњstates project,вЂќ reducing the subject to just another curious fact about Illinois, like UFO sightings and the Sears Tower, but with added mischievous shock factor. When he later told Pitchfork that вЂњ some of my most profound spiritual and sexual experiences were at a Methodist summer camp,вЂќ it was the least surprising interview revelation ever-except for the part where he said вЂњsexual.вЂќ To my ears, most of StevensвЂ™ music seemed averse to incorporating the messy physical aspects of human experience, maybe due to his faithвЂ™s long history of setting the spirit at war with the flesh, or perhaps because it would clash with the mood of whimsical childishness at which so much of his work seemed to aim. With songs like 2005вЂ™s вЂњ Chicago,вЂќ I could never deny his musical gifts, but I also couldnвЂ™t stop eye-rolling at his penchant for tour outfits like multicolored angel wings. In the mid-2000s, onstage and on albums such as Michigan and Illinois (which launched a PR-stunt conceit about making albums for all 50 states that many fans took all too seriously), Stevens tended to come off like a liberal Christian youth group leader cajoling listeners alternately to get in touch with their feelings and to sing along with show tunes. And I was especially alert to that hazard because earlier in StevensвЂ™ career, his apparent cultivation of an aura of guileless purity was what made me wary of him. HeвЂ™s right that this is no moment for pretensions to blamelessness.

That early disavowal of naГЇvetГ© stood out for me on a record the nowвЂ“45-year-old longtime indie-or-what-have-you darling has said that for him is unprecedently вЂњ political and bossy and bitchy.вЂќ I wondered whether heвЂ™d at all call to account his white, Christian self amid the havoc being wreaked disproportionately by putatively Christian white Americans. The song, called вЂњMake Me an Offer I Cannot Refuse,вЂќ is explicitly a prayer (вЂњLord, I need deliveranceвЂќ) that also sets the emotional tone for a protracted 80-minute voyage through desperation, rage, pleasure, and transcendence-though not in any such neat, cathartic order.

вЂњThereвЂ™s no time for innocence,вЂќ Sufjan Stevens sings on the opening track of The Ascension, his first solo album since 2015вЂ™s Carrie & Lowell. Slate has relationships with various online retailers.Д«ut note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.ДЄll prices were up to date at the time of publication.

Political over tones in depeche mode songs