[DID NOT ATTEND: April 14, 2023] Caroline Polachek / George Clanton
Caroline Polacheck is a name that I keep hearing in the context of someone that I should be listening to. It kind of blows my mind when someone I don’t know (but who is in a genre that I like) plays a venue the size of Franklin Music Hall.
Polachek co-founded the band Chairlift who I guess I don’t actually know, but who I’ve at least heard of.
But this review of Polacheck puts her squarely in my wheelhouse of musical taste
At its highest register, her voice is diaphanous and otherworldly, somewhere between the call of a siren and the religious arias of an 11th-century abbess. When combined with Polachek’s futuristic synth stylings, the result is like something from a science-fiction novel. Polachek is lithe and willowy, with a surreal, selkie beauty that matches her ethereal voice. Her visual work deals heavily in the fantastical, where her elven features fit right in — it’s almost hard to imagine what she would look like in everyday clothes (or, rather, it’s easy to imagine that she simply wears leather, buckles and 18th-century corsetry to the grocery store). She frequently co-directs her music videos, which take inspiration from Greek mythology, obscure surrealism and historical fantasy.
Although I don’t really like her music all that much. I don’t dislike it, it just doesn’t quite do it for me.
George Clanton (also known by the monikers Mirror Kisses, ESPRIT 空想, and Kid’s Garden) is an American electronic musician and singer-songwriter known for his involvement with the vaporwave music scene.
I had to look up vaporwave because I’ve heard it a bunch but never actually saw it defined The always reliable Wikipedia tells me:
defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s.
This instantly makes me dislike it. Although:
The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
So I’m guessing I like vaporwave except for the musical component. And after listening to Clanton, that’s pretty spot on.
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