ARTIST: Kristeenyoung
TITLE: Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker
LABEL:
GENRE: Rock
BITRATE: 189kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 47m total
RELEASE DATE: 2009-00-00
RIP DATE: 2009-08-03
Track List
----------
1. Son of Man 2:38
2. The Depression Contest 3:32
3. Stop Thinking 3:13
4. Everybody Wants Me To Cry 3:56
5. You Must Love Me 2:56
6. That's What it Takes, Dear 3:59
(featuring Patrick Stump)
7. I Won't Be Home For Christmas 2:37
8. Comfort is Never a Goal 3:57
9. He's Sickened By My Crude 3:40
Emotion
10. Lily Sincere 1:05
11. Keyboard Like a Gun 3:02
12. If You Marry Him 2:31
13. Protestant 6:15
14. Halfway Across The Atlantic 4:03
Ocean
Release Notes:
1. You are either going to love it or hate it. ThatÆs how it is with YoungÆs
voice, so this is not going to be a review so much as notes on a record IÆve
loved since 2007, when ôDepression Contest,ö ôProtestant,ö ôHeÆs Sickened By My
Crude Emotionö and others began to surface in their live set.
2. ItÆs the album of the decade, though, and I actually mean that. My decade,
anyway. Meet Miss Young and Her All Boy Band is a huge young voice learning that
itÆs capable of anything; The Orphans is a string of great
singles-that-never-were mixed with a string of great b-sides-that-never-were,
but Music For Strippers is the voice of Kristeen YoungÆs maturity, God help us
all.
3. The sound isàreally good. I donÆt know how else to put it. They havenÆt made
a giant stylistic change -YoungÆs banging, internally warring, multilayered
chords, accompanied by Jef WhiteÆs inspired drum parts, are always immediately
recognizable- but Strippersæ mixes just seem to have all the right ratios.
ThereÆs so much going on below the voice on almost every track, layers of piano
and synth; a lot of this could be very interesting as an album of instrumentals.
4. The singing is mutating and alive, and Tony Visconti records the vocals
beautifully. The album does not have the vocal variety of some of their prior
ones, but we have the prior ones for that, and what it lacks in broad-ranging
experimentalism it makes up in wit and complexity of delivery. These vocals seem
very fresh; nothing about them is mannered.
5. I do really love the lyrics. TheyÆve evolved to a point where the mix of very
bald and very subtle stuff is incendiary. ôProtestantö is a statement of faith
(not much of it Protestantism) which makes great use of her gift for stripping
the sensuality from sex but lavishing it on everything else; ôThe Depression
Contestö boasts that YoungÆs tears are ômore nuanced -na na- and deeper than
yoursö and invites you to pity her harder and faster; ôHalfway Across the
Atlantic Oceanö marries two of her heroes, Dorothy Parker and Judy Garland, and
also is straightforwardly sexy with two real characters in it, which hardly
anyone ever gets right.
6. [SCENE MISSING; don't want to mess up the order, but I don't like the point I
had at #6.]
7. If you are a fan, you can make a solid guess at the identities of a couple of
the people sheÆs singing about.
8. But a biographical reading is even less interesting than usual. This is an
elliptical, referential album, whose central metaphor -the business transaction
of stripping and watching, as it applies to various characters in various
orders- is always present but never explicit.
9. This may make it sound florid and inexact, which it isnÆt. The writing is
precise and without pretension. But trying to read it biographically will make
it seem like a riddle -deliberately obscure- and thatÆs not the point; itÆs
actually just deliberately elusive, I think. Which is very different. An obscure
thing hides; an elusive thing is always visible, but canÆt be caught and
dissected.
10. Really good records always humanize the artist rather than the other way
around; sometimes (though not with this one) itÆs the only way you can actually
tell theyÆre really good. In this case, I really felt as if these shattering
troubles didnÆt go away after they were made into art, and thatÆs a surprisingly
unique emotion. The temptation to make it all bitterly triumphant seems to have
been avoided.
11. This album perfects YoungÆs aesthetic. It doesnÆt cancel out her previous
writing, but whatÆs new is a terrifying consistency and connected feeling and,
along the way, itÆs very technically exacting. ItÆs a near-perfect album from a
band whoÆve already come close to perfection a few times. I hope I donÆt turn
everyone off with my ôalbum of the decadeö talk, but for me, I canÆt call it
anything else.