evil of banality

 

Laura and I went record shopping on Saturday and got a lot of great stuff. Still sifting through it (well I am, I won't speak for her). 

This is a suitably banal observation but I'll make it anyway, while I drink coffee and eat chocolate in a short break from writing comments on a frustrating masters thesis draft: Crazy Horse were (are?) a great band, don't worry, they are great players with a really appealing rough, edgy skill that makes you always feel like they are just about to fail. When they are not playing Neil Young songs and writing/playing their own songs, they are every bit as great in the playing, and the music is rich and varied and dynamic and intense. But the lyrics fucking suck the proverbial big turd in the mud. They're not weird, they're not lazy exactly, they're just intensely generic. 

I often wonder whether people who write terrible lyrics like this think the lyrics aren't important, or arguably worse, they think their lyrics are fucking awesome and touch on a core truth by their very essentiality. 

I just imagine Crazy Horse, about whom I basically know nothing, in the studio sweating over these bullshit lyrics, looking at each other with sincere eyes (and then the rest of the time talking about balling chicks they hate, I bet). They have already by this stage spent an inordinate amount of time with NY and recorded one of the all-time great albums in Everyone Knows This is Nowhere, so for fuck's sake, why don't they get that you have to put a little bit of thought into what you're saying?! 

I could quote bits, but they're not worth it. 

I will say that other bands-with-amazing-singer-songwriters-at-the-helm-who-made-whatever-the-opposite-of-a-solo-album-is-that-is-a-band-album-without-the-main-person haven't had this problem necessarily - I really love the Sensational Alex Harvey Band album without Alex, for instance and groups like Buzzcocks and Depeche Mode have done masterfully following the departure of their 'main man'. So what the hell Crazy Horse. Lift your fuckin' game. 

Backpedal: I had a few more listens (so, apart from anything else, it can't have been that objectionable) and really there's only one song that totally winds me up. It's called 'Kind of Woman' and it should be shot. The rest is manageable.