And also…

Forgot to mention, I want Florence to make music that sounds like this reads (see also the sad, bizarre follow-up).

Last post on Florence and the Machine, I promise.

Still Cold…

(apparently Britain was as cold as the Antarctic this week!)

Image from here.

We got together this week, but only to eat and watch The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. We made Lentil Stew (we really need to make some dishes that photograph better):

So I was following up my end of the year interest in Florence & the Machine, and I think visually her videos do get a bit more interesting after Dog Days:

I worry about her though. I think she’s possibly got the potential to do something really interesting, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s doing exactly what you’d expect her to do. Her lyrics seem to exemplify the stereotype of women as purely emotional creatures, beholden to their feelings. And though she gets compared to Kate Bush a lot, it’s not a favourable comparison. With Kate Bush, right from the start you know that this is someone who’s interested in and engaged with the world, who has interests and obsessions. From Wuthering Heights, to Cloudbusting (all about Wilhelm Reich), to her interest in interpretive dance (and so on…), her songs lead places outside of themselves. Florence’s songs seem to be entirely inward looking – you don’t get any sense of her being a person in the world, just as an uncontrollable flux of emotion.

It feels to me that, where once an artist like this would have been expected to engage with the world in some way, now all we have is people stuck on the surface and going no further. This music is just music, nothing more. But the thing is, the best music, the music that sticks in your chest, that marks you and changes you, is never just music – it goes places, and drags you with it, it references ideas and creates new possibilities. It shifts the world ever so slightly on its axis.

None of this would matter, only her songs have caught hold of me in recent weeks and it bothers me, for the above reasons. Also, big disclaimer, I’m basing this on what I’ve heard of her on YouTube – it’s entirely possible there are far interesting more songs on her album.

Finally, I finished Tile Massacre SHMUP, you can get it here. OSX and Linux versions still to come, I’m afraid.