There have been periods where every song has been my favorite, but they are all pretty much perfect so idk. Right now I'm loving Distance and Meaning. Its so weird, it sounds like its spinning almost.

Hell to Pay / Phoenix in Flight are my favorite tracks. Yeah, I know, I am a wuss.

Album Rating: 5.0

Great review/essay.





I haven't read all the thread so sorry if this has been brought up, but your ideas seem to have something in common with Barthes' concept of the death of the Author, except he sees it as the birth of the Reader (or listener, I guess) but you see it as a flaw that leaves the work empty. Do you believe, then, that a record absolutely depends on a real, or apparently real, compositional presence? Surely there is always some element of distance between the musician and their work, even if it's only the added input of their unconscious mind.







Pos'd

Your arguments are starting to make a ton of sense to me MJ. I just still fail to see how any of the things you claim about Bannon's role as a faceless member of a cult (that is your assertion, yes?) render the album any less worthy of the "classic" status it has achieved.

Album Rating: 5.0

Aren't all frontmen/women set apart from, or elevated above, the crowds they play to? How is this specific to Converge and Bannon?





Also, the few times I've seen Converge have all been in the same tiny venue where Bannon was face to face, even mingled with, the audience.

Album Rating: 5.0

No rush, man.

Album Rating: 5.0

I think that's what sets DYI punk from other genres in general. From Black Flag to Converge, most of the bands never got mainstream and always interacted with the crowd, rather than have a mini-army of security guards between them.

That is true. It is traditional of most DIY hardcore bands to play in small, intimate venues, most of which have no stage. The entire band is surrounded by spectators on all sides, and vocalists in particular are mobbed and pushed as though they were spectators themselves. A fantastic example of this is here, a Converge show in Providence, RI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPpHttdnNt8

And again here, a year after the release of Jane Doe, in NYC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9izIEb0ur84

I would find it a much more compelling argument to attribute these almost messianic qualities to other musicians such as Bon Jovi or Pete Townsend, who play before large sell out crowds on raised platforms, every ticket costing nearly an arm and a leg, the performer being himself untouchable, paid to stand on the sing to a group of fans that cry at the mere sight of his face.

I also feel that even with that in mind, these "cults of personality" are a natural/common part of human interaction, not unique to Converge or even to musicians in general.

Album Rating: 5.0

You've attributed the failure of this album to its universalizing tendencies. Hidden among this assumption is the fact that you've similarly assumed such a universal exists, as if any one work of art could ever hold universality in thrall. I think that's bogus. Consider then that the affect and force that Jane Doe captures arises precisely from it's failure to capture universality. If you're right, if Bannon and Jane Doe are symptoms of a certain metonymic movement between themselves and their music's 'readers' as such, then you can't explain the force of affect that Jane Doe has - IF they are exact and precise mirror images of each other, Jane Doe would have no force, no affect - the crowd would not need Jane Doe, and Jane Doe would not appeal to it's crowd.



Your argument oscillates between two positions that never quite resolve themselves - on the one hand, you're claiming that Jane Doe is a self-enclosed text, that it 'speaks the universal', as such, and thus loses it's potency. On the other, you're saying it is simply a symptom of effects which are not it's own making, whose force comes from the outside. Both positions disavow the relationship between the particular and the universal, equivocating each with each other. Jane Doe works so well precisely because it never manages to capture the universal. It succeeds precisely because it fails. For all it's claims to universality, the Real of Converge the band and Jacob Bannon the Man, remain as a leftovers that invades and shatters it's claim to universality, that disrupts the movement from Jane Doe in it's particularity to it's universality.



You keep trying to 'pathologise' Jane Doe, to explain it as a symptom, or as nothing at all, and as a result you completely lose focus of the album in question, in it's specificity. You disavow the ambiguity of Jane Doe in a search for concrete meaning, and finding none, you attribute it either the universal or nothing. The problem of course is that no text is self-enclosed, or universal. No such position exists. I think for all your verbose sophistication, your reading of Jane Doe is still incredibly vulgar and unsophisticated.



i speaka your language.

Album Rating: 2.5

i speaka your language.

Album Rating: 5.0

He just smiled and handed you a vegemite sandwich?

Album Rating: 4.5

streetlight this kills me but man the it's its switch

Album Rating: 5.0

Again, you speak like any identity can contain the ground of its existence in itself. All identity is symbolically mediated, split between the in-itself and it's symbolic representation. Again, you disregard subjectivity. And again, you're seeking for explanation, for concrete meaning, again, you ignore the fact that JD's ambiguity, together with it's specificity provide it with it's force and power. I mean what are you after? Music like hi5 or the Wiggles? They spell all their shit out with bright colors, dance and diagrams too. I just think every point you make against JD actually works precisely in it's favor.

Album Rating: 5.0

Most of these are tl;dr

Album Rating: 5.0

^this

Album Rating: 5.0

It's StreetlightRock, but whatever.



And if you're a old school Hegelian than thats the problem. I think the best albums are those that refuse to pretend to have mastery over what they intend, who create spaces for ambiguity, who recognize that whatever command they have over their work is only partial, and embrace that partiality insofar as they let their audience further work on the album their selves. If you don't, then well, whatever.

@ every one of MichaelJordan's posts: tl:dr

You hit things with sticks.

You don't hit things with a bass pedal, you silly Billy.

Haha, yeah yeah. I just thought it'd be ironic if I pretended to misunderstand the least complicated post you've made in this thread for about three pages.