It turns out there are plenty of people who believe strongly in their voice, maybe too many, but they stem off into several varieties: protesters, politicians, auctioneers, your boss, disk jockeys, dentists while your mouth is occupied by the awful thing that scrapes particles between the gums and teeth, and the teacher in fifth grade that you believed treated you differently because they were sexist. These roles are infinite. With the present opportunities given to us to use our voices positively or for gain of a cause, movement, or ourselves, we must take advantage of the multiple mirrors to express it and not easily become these completely monotonous roosters. Claire Boucher may know what I am talking about.
Grimes is the project Claire Boucher has been working on for two years, but only just recently popped up on my radar. When I first heard her, I wrote off her music as relatively trendy, poppy electronic music, but taking a deeper look inside, I found a soul that wanted to contribute heavily to her art through brilliant production and meticulous vocal manipulations and multiplications. After a few interviews I had seen, she seemed legit, so I proceeded to open Visions by Grimes into my popular music playback service. The result of that is this thought: “I want to listen to that more.” And I did, upwards over ten times. Visions is absolutely one of the most infectious albums to come around in a long time. Once you understand it, it’s hard to get it out of your head, whether it’s a lingering song or just the need to spin the record once again.
There is an undeniable throwback vibe to just about all the choices made by Grimes on the album, whether it’s old J-pop or 90s female R&B, it makes sense when she says that her specific genre is “post-internet”. It feels like that era of the 90s, but in the most progressive sense possible. When people usually tell me “oh, dude, yeah, it’s like, 90s shit. Remember that shit?” I usually cringe or at least a good reason for me to overlook it. First of all, I was seven by the time the 90s were coming to a close, but I vaguely remember being with my mom, listening to various Madonna songs, and the radio, the damn radio. It was hard to escape this sound for me at that age and time, and for that reason it’s not as nostalgic as it is childlike and retrospective. I didn’t enjoy it then and I sure as hell don’t enjoy it now. On Visions, though, there is something to be said about that time.
Last September, I saw Drive. It’s basically been my favorite film of the last few years and I like to take modern cinematic examples from it. That film had a very specific feel, very consistant and at the same time varied within it’s own story and artistic flavor. I find both Drive and Visions extremely relatable in scope. Drive had a soundtrack primarily led by synths and popular electro-pop outfits while commenting on the idea of cheesiness and how it can affect everyone’s life in a deeper way than it vocally expressed to them. The film starts out slow but progressively gets to the point where you don’t know what the fuck just happened and it’s difficult for the average moviegoer to go into that movie’s first 30 minutes and find any reason to really respect it with it’s corny, sign-of-the-times soundtrack and rarely used dialogue. That changes down the road of Drive‘s runtime. I had preconceived notions of retro synth-pop going into the movie and I came out of it knowing that it can be used as a serious medium of expression, which is where a lot of my respect for Grimes now comes in.
My own prerogative, however, makes little difference to anyone else “getting” this album. Structurally, the track listing makes a lot of sense, starting out of the gate with a sketchy and rambunctious introduction to the sillier vocals of Claire Boucher with “Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment”. “Genesis”, the lead single off of Visions probably sets the tone for the rest of the album as good as it can, but the issue with that creating any sort of consensus on its overall musical space is tough since there is a lot going on here. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, she says, “I approach music– and this sounds crazy– as though I’m Phil Spector, and I’m cranking out these pop stars and forcing them to do all this crazy stuff– except they’re all me.” This brings an interesting light and intention to the album that makes me imagine that there is a sense of reluctancy to these sounds, that there is a story behind her huge, funny pop songs.
Through the album’s first half, we find Grimes in a pop centric mode, seeming to love the music in a tribute-like sense. This mood seems to fade around “Visiting Statue”, the first dooming sense received from Visions. It’s actually sad-sounding, versus the disconnected emotion from the tracks before it. The entire album dissolves once then builds back up to “Nightmusic”, the moment when Grimes bursts out of her production limits creating that “wall of sound”. It’s one of the album’s apexes of her ferocity towards pop music, the other being “Circumambient”. This song rings through my head like sex is apparently supposed to (see, misconceptions of the male mind).
WINNER: Visions by Grimes
WHY: Entirely, Visions has been brought up to be this album from a kinda-neat artist for some kinda-hip people. It deserves more than that: your mind.
Fermata over Whole Rest 