Vertimus

And those 'rules' are changing constantly from one person to another, one subculture to another, one coast to another, one class to another.

It doesn’t bug me. I said that. I am talking about from the POV of the wider culture in this MeToo age. Just as she uses a song title, Venice Beach, which would upset some as degrading to women if Harry Styles named a song that. I am just pointing out that different rules often apply. I am sure there are some feminists find the VB title degrading and not empowering.

Some here are clearly not educated, and are hostile, irrational trolls to boot, who loves taking things out of context and attempting to bully whomever they can from the relatively safe distance of the internet. They’re everything that was wrong about the pre-NFR thread, and worse, hiding pathetically behind masks of liberal tolerance and ethical standing.

Yeah, it sorta tries to be clever and fails. And California is practically the capital of serial killers.

The "you're just a man, it's just what you do line" seems a little sexist in 2019, and wouldn't be tolerated by some of the same audience if the gender were reversed and sung by Harry Styles, Twenty-One Pilots or Justin Bieber, I don't think. I'm not bothered by it. Also, "if he's a serial killer, then what's the worst that can happen to a girl who's already hurt?" seems laughably naive if taken literally. I assume it was just a sort of fun, throw-away line. Serial killers sometimes dismember their victims, they eat them on occasion, they torture and kill them violently, they bury them alive. All of which is a lot worse than being emotionally hurt, which most or all of us are at some time in our lives.

'AF,' so simple, so fantastic, so powerful and confident, and yet never put on an actual release. The same with 'Hollywood'--perfect, powerful, straight-forward, uncomplicated, masterful. That's the LLDR I fell in love with, and why I object to some of her more recent tracks, which seem fourth-rate by comparison (I'm thinking of the weaker tracks on LFL).

Since NFR has been done for 6-8 months, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were half finished already either, at least the record itself. Clearly, the production of the cassettes, albums, various color vinyls, album art, uploads to various platforms, music videos and tour schedules takes a great deal of time too. Probably more than we tend to think.

You’re in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass.

Ella has started a thread about it—LDR is writing songs, which she described as ‘cute,’ for a film about the real lives of the people involved in the writing of the Alice in Wonderland books in the 19th century, which will also include, apparently, vignettes from the Alice stories themselves.

As someone else wrote, perhaps the messy mixing was done on purpose? What songs do you hear it on? I hear it on CG—do you? I think most of us are sort of cynical about all aspects of the production on her records after LFL, and I would personally extend that to parts of UV and HM. For me, Paradise has the best over all production.

We can hope. Good news about Jack if accurate. Does this mean Elle has to start a White Hot pre-release thread?

Oh No. Not again (though I am sure many of us suspected this had to be true). Will 13 months turn into 18? Will we have a thread with 5,000 pages? No word on the producer though. And the Alice project in between.

The true story of Lewis Carroll and the real Alice, Alice Liddell, is a truly rich source of material, so this sounds promising—I wouldn’t want to see just another straightforward attempt to film the Alice books. No previous effort has come close to getting them right. Viva Lana!

‘California’ and ‘Bartender’ benefit the most from finally hearing them in HQ. ‘California’ sounds remarkably better. I really like what they did with HTD. The new arrangement, production and guitar solo make the song for me. Also, she sings it less mawkishly. The title track musical arrangement, and especially the strings, seem influenced by the overall production of Joni Mitchell’s classic ‘Court & Spark’ of 1974. TNBAR still sounds clumsy and ‘clearly from another project.’ It has that same muffled, foggy sound that several songs on LFL had, as if it were recorded with a pillow over the mic. WHY they didn’t completely re-record it, with all their money, I will never understand. For me, the highlights are TG, ‘California,’ ‘Bartender,’ ‘CG,’ MAC and VB. I still can’t appreciate HIAB. It still sounds like three different songs mashed together. Maybe one day.

It’s a take on the famous Fifties B-film, ‘Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.’

That would have made a much better and simpler album cover, and suited the music better too.

Perhaps Barrie will answer the love call thrown out to the world on NFR, return to California, and he and LDR will write an album together, perhaps even her next, and their destiny will be ‘made right.’ Lord knows he wasn’t released anything much of value since leaving Kassidy, where he really shined.

There are a lot of creative, fresh, three-dimensional songs on it, among the ho-hum tracks. I greatly prefer it to UV or HM, and to NFR.

Thanks. Not only have we heard half the songs, but the snippets also gave away almost everything about the other tracks, since the title song, 'California,' 'Cinnamon' and 'HIAB' are basic and repetitive--so the album as a whole is a good argument for not listening to snippets in the future. I was also expecting something more in terms of the arrangements and instrumentation after 'VB.'

'Bartender' stands out from everything else that wasn't released as a single from the album (except 'The Greatest'). It has structure and form, it's musically tight, and it's idiosyncratic in concept like the best of all her songwriting. I cringe a little at the 'bought me a truck' English, but that's me. I think one 'baa-ar-tender' would have been enough. I agree it's neither clever nor novel after the first occurrence.

If it's what she wanted to do now, fine. I'm glad she feels free and comfortable creating and releasing whatever she wants. I feel as you and your friends do about various aspects of NFR (though I don't like HIAB)--MAC, VB and TG are musically interesting and dynamic, but much of the rest of the album feels flaccid, almost too comfortable. Though it's fairly long, it all feels 'over too quickly.' I remember a reviewer said about Honeymoon that it was "too much of not very much," and that's how I feel about NFR as an album.

He's back in Scotland, probably in Glascow or outside of it. He released a single called 'Free Like A Bird' in November of 2018, which you can hear on iTunes, which went nowhere. Another, 'Mad Men,' came out about the same time and was up on iTunes, but has been taken down. Both are supposed to be from a forthcoming album called 'Psychedelic Soup.' Since leaving Kassidy, to me, he sounds washed out and defeated on everything he's done under his own name or under Nightmare Boy.

We can’t say that NFR is receiving “universal acclaim” yet, as it hasn’t even been released and there may be some negative public/professional reviews ahead, but I do think NFR is, generally speaking, the kind of stripped-back album critics like and approve of. There’s not overtly silly on it or caricaturish, the way, for example, some people didn’t care for Stevie Nicks’ voice (and compared it to Sponge Bob) or the gun shots on GBA. They’ll ignore what they don’t like (if anything) in the face of the maturity of ‘Hope’ specifically, as well as the fairly austere MAC, VB, California, TG and the title track. Greil Marcus, one of the most respected and hoity-toity of rock critics, praised VB, so I am sure his opinion is having influence.

There’s really not much of a concept for the TG video.

I am not and have not been saying either. I’ve been saying, “it’s okay,” and giving it a C rating.