Patrick Wolf is just what he defines himself as, bless'im, namely a pop star. His source of creative tension (one of them) is reconciling that poptimist gestalt - in which eg. there's no such thing as "selling out" - with his also-instinctive neo-rockist prizing of authenticity and self-expression. And that's just him, his fans aren't on the same page yet. XD Whereas Owen Pallett is very much indie-as-a-way-of-life, defining himself within a scene and the scene's expectations. (The collaborative bent is a factor; by own admission PWolf is pants at being in a band, unless they all take orders from him. XD)
I see both these choices as political, actually - indie obviously, but pop too - pop being lesser-prestige because it's feminine and queer, whereas rock guitar is the sound of white male hegemony. That's uhh the framework I'm used to when thinking about t3h anti-rockist ideal, and pop-ism is the aggro in-yr-face variant of that. It sums up PWolf's school of thought pretty well.
Back to Pallett - all those things that he does come from the Western classical tradition! That's just how classical music is played, you have to internalize and reproduce all the structure and memorization and almost-math before you can get to the emotion. What it does is contradict the accepted measures of quality in the indie rock worldview - self-expression over technique etc. And given that indie is where Pallett is coming from, it is a bit... suicidal may be overboard. XD I'm not saying he's a drama queen in his own mind, but CONTRARY TO EXPECTATIONS MOST PEOPLE DO DIG IT. (Starting with his bf? Wasn't that the story?) But the fact that he can be like "fuck it, it's all a stupid gimmick, I'll be over here with my violin" is probably what allows him to get on with it up there.
But I may be reading too much into this XD (GEEZ YOU THINK, WHAT COULD GIVE YOU THAT IDEA) - I have a fraught relationship with classical so I think it took me longer to get wid it than most people! And PWolf's music is really obvious to me, but that's because it may as well have been custom-tailored to my tastes. In any case my thesis is THEY ARE BOTH TOTALLY PUNK ROCK IN THEIR OWN WAY ♥, as proven by the fact that they're both fans of Joanna Newsom, and she is also totally punk rock, so there you are.
(Besides the FF thread itself, I've only come across Owen Pallett on ILM on a Joanna Newsom thread, arguing about some modern composer I'd never heard of. I gathered he demolished the other guy but I didn't understand a word of it. XD)
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Date: 2007-11-23 07:57 am (UTC)I see both these choices as political, actually - indie obviously, but pop too - pop being lesser-prestige because it's feminine and queer, whereas rock guitar is the sound of white male hegemony. That's uhh the framework I'm used to when thinking about t3h anti-rockist ideal, and pop-ism is the aggro in-yr-face variant of that. It sums up PWolf's school of thought pretty well.
Back to Pallett - all those things that he does come from the Western classical tradition! That's just how classical music is played, you have to internalize and reproduce all the structure and memorization and almost-math before you can get to the emotion. What it does is contradict the accepted measures of quality in the indie rock worldview - self-expression over technique etc. And given that indie is where Pallett is coming from, it is a bit... suicidal may be overboard. XD I'm not saying he's a drama queen in his own mind, but CONTRARY TO EXPECTATIONS MOST PEOPLE DO DIG IT. (Starting with his bf? Wasn't that the story?) But the fact that he can be like "fuck it, it's all a stupid gimmick, I'll be over here with my violin" is probably what allows him to get on with it up there.
But I may be reading too much into this XD (GEEZ YOU THINK, WHAT COULD GIVE YOU THAT IDEA) - I have a fraught relationship with classical so I think it took me longer to get wid it than most people! And PWolf's music is really obvious to me, but that's because it may as well have been custom-tailored to my tastes. In any case my thesis is THEY ARE BOTH TOTALLY PUNK ROCK IN THEIR OWN WAY ♥, as proven by the fact that they're both fans of Joanna Newsom, and she is also totally punk rock, so there you are.
(Besides the FF thread itself, I've only come across Owen Pallett on ILM on a Joanna Newsom thread, arguing about some modern composer I'd never heard of. I gathered he demolished the other guy but I didn't understand a word of it. XD)