Friday, April 28, 2023

Breaking Ground: Sorority Noise - You're Not as (blank) as You Think (2017) / An Unexpected Discussion of Problematic Behaviors in Music

 


 

 Well I think there's no shame in admitting that I just don't have a Trylemma album dissection in me at the moment, if I ever did. Sometimes folks appreciate what I write and express that and I appreciate that myself, but for the most part I just don't have that background knowledge to draw on, and that's just to start with. All that's to say two things: this will not be up to the caliber of the excellent Gold Midas Breaking Ground we got last week (super thrilled Trylemma enjoyed it and I hope you guys will as well, to me it's got what I love about Kid Cudi and Serengeti wrapped up in one amazing package, over some of the more interesting sample based beatmaking I've heard in a minute), and also I really wish I'd done more things around this music than get high and listen to it and occasionally make it (don't ask lol).

However! Getting high and making it gave me some insights into instrumentation and songwriting, if fairly humble ones. So this week's Breaking Ground, a Ceschi-esque (not rap at all, but neither is Gregory Pepper and we cover him) indie shoegaze thing called Sorority Noise is a good one for me to dive into seeing as it is chock full of good examples of both.

That's how I planned to start this post. Then I googled these folks and looks like there was an allegation made against the frontman, Cameron Boucher. Neither I nor Trylemma knew about it. So I'm torn between writing the post I'd planned and scrapping it and starting over. I'm thinking there's some room here to do two things, one is to examine the music as a band and not as the project of the single frontman and the other is to talk about what it means to be in the spotlight, and how we should react when artists we may admire do things we may not. This will be a very delicate process and I want to state first and foremost that I'm challenging myself and my intention is NOT to trigger anyone. So please feel free to shred anything I say in the comments or C-Box. Okay here I go.

First off, the music. I really DID enjoy this album. It strikes a very delicate balance between moments of softness and moments of intensity, dealing with extremely heavy subject matter in an intelligent and articulate fashion. The lyrics are, although VERY emo, also clever and well written (speaking sarcastically of the act of IV drug use as letting out the Holy Spirit in someone's veins) and deal mostly with the death of a friend and the survivors guilt and depression that ensues. This hit close to home for me as I've lost more than one friend to fentanyl and other drugs recently. It's clear the singer is using this music to exorcise some demons.

Anyway the music is really what I enjoyed. It has a shoegazy Otem Rellik sound, with fast paced percussion and palm muted clean guitars keeping even the most depressing of the songs fairly lively, not to mention when things unexpectedly ramp up and grimy distortion and frenetic percussion never fail to surprise and elevate the tone to something new.

I don't want to sell it to much so I will stop now. I want to go into more detail about what I found and how it has changed my attitude towards this music. It sounds like after being confronted online about an encounter the front man had that the woman involved had deemed rape, he reached out to the victim and was able, supposedly, to reach an understanding. At least that seems to be the tone of the statements being released. Who's to say what really happened, both around the assault itself and the alleged closure taking place?

My conclusion, hopefully unsurprisingly, is to not buy or listen to this album. It IS a shame when good music gets ruined by the behaviors of one party involved in it's creation (although I would rather lose faith in every single one of my musical heroes than experience an assault of course), but the fact is in this world music and the artists behind it cannot be separated like some people like to wish. When we listen to music that comes from a problematic personality, we diminish the perceived seriousness of what was done by them in the eyes of people around us. And the fact is there is so much good music out these days from artists who don't have these dark clouds around their personal lives.

It is my firm belief that, even if sometimes these allegations seem a bit unfair, people in the public eye in the types of careers that cultivate heroes like music, sports and film have a responsibility to behave in a way that is unimpeachable. We no longer live in the era of rockstars exploiting young women as perks of the job. We need to take things like this extremely seriously no matter how much we may enjoy these musicians. And I have had trouble with this in the past. I loved Astronautalis' music, and I enjoyed Isaiah Toothtaker also, although quite a bit less lol. But we can hold these people accountable for their crimes by withholding our dollars and 'listens'.

Now finally, can we ever forgive these people? I can't say and if I tried I'd be in the wrong because it's not my place to do so. That's for the victims to decide. I will say that I think it is probably more useful to see alleged abusers making public gestures of apology, contrition, and attempting to fix whatever is broken inside them than to cancel them forever. But I don't think they should ever be allowed to be held as heroes by anyone, and that, somewhat sadly, means they really shouldn't be making music anymore. It seems Cameron Boucher has done this as I'm reading he's doing social work and not making music or touring anymore.

This may seem obvious or painfully clear already. I don't know. I just know I saw an opportunity to discuss something complicated and do a post a bit more useful than my usual bad jokes and I took it.

What do you guys think??



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