Review Summary: Near impenetrable, but those who endure will find something memorable, and dare I say, beautiful, buried beneath all the fury.
13 of 18 thought this review was well written
Before I begin, it should be noted that this is not so much a "review," per se. If it were a bit shorter I would have just wrote a sound off and left it at that, but I wanted to do a bit more. This is not an analysis of the album's technical or thematic excellence/failure. Indeed "Jane Doe" has both technical and thematic excellence in spades, but that's no secret; it's readily obvious to anyone. Frankly, though, I don't feel that it is especially important to consider with this album.
We've all heard those albums, the ones that the music community goes crazy over, yet you can't understand why. "What is this crap?," you ask. "How could anybody even listen to this?" At some point our curiosity gets the better of us (or maybe the few parts of it you enjoy draw you in) and you give it a listen. It takes time, but at some point it starts to grown on you, it all begins to make sense.
It's been my experience that the best music is the music that has to grow on you. That is the music with depth and staying power. It might not be easy to listen to, you might even hate it, but there's something that keeps you listening for reasons you don't quite understand. The catchy hooks and melodies of the songs you immediately fall in love with get boring, even grating, but the growers get better over time; they seemingly work their way into your soul and become a part of you.
Most recently, I've come across "Jane Doe". It's been labeld as "Classic," "Legendary," "Untouchable." It even managed to work it's way to the top of Sputnik's "Top Albums of the Decade"
I had to hear this album.
I fired up Spotify, searched, and had a listen. "What in the name of...Spotify has to have this labeled wrong." It wasn't. I checked other sources and Spotify had it right. "How could this be the album of the decade?" It was noise, incomprehensible; unlistenable. The vocals turned me off the most. "Does anybody understand this?" It sounded as if he was just screaming random nonsense through a terrible mic. I hated it, it was awful.
I didn't understand.
There had to be something I was missing. "This album is so highly revered for a reason." I was determined to figure it out. I listened to it in its entirety, again and again. Still nothing.
And the one day, something peculiar happened. I sat down to listen and found myself not listening to understand it, but because I wanted to listen to it. It was then that I truly heard the album, or "her" rather, for the first time. All of her fury, all of her silence, everything that had been so foreign came to me in perfect clarity; it was like a revelation.
I couldn't ever imagine growing to like it, now I can't see how I ever could have hated it.
It IS kinda cheesy, but it's interesting to read. It's pretty relatable, and i particularly like
this:
"This album is so highly revered for a reason."
I REALLY like this mindset because when people don't like something that a lot of people do, they go
for the retard route and are like "OVAHWATEDDDD!!!!", instead of thinking "no no, this thing is
admired for a reason, but maybe it's not for me".
Props for that.
I didn't neg nor pos this review because frankly i don't know what to think of it, it's not really a
review(like you said), but it was an entertaining read.
"and the one day, something peculiar happened. I sat down to listen and found myself not listening to
understand it, but because I wanted to listen to it. It was then that I truly heard the album, or
"her" rather, for the first time, with all of her fury, with all of her silence. Everything that had
been so foreign came to me in perfect clarity"
yeah this was actually pretty cool. i liked this review
"Cool review. Sorta cheesy.. but at least you explained a situation well that a lot of us go through. "
That was the idea. The album has been examined on a technical level repeatedly, and I didn't feel that that was the best or most original way of going about it. I wanted to explain...I guess...the process of how it grows on you, the experience of it and how your perception of it changes over time. How it just sort of "clicks."
I'll probably go through and fix up a few spots, as it's very late and I'm quit tired, but for now it will have to do.
…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…
…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…
…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…
