Purple-haired Marie Antoinette and an angel stabbing themselves
October 27, 2015 11:37 AM   Subscribe

Claire Boucher / Grimes has released the first music video for two of the (relatively) guitar-heavy tracks from her upcoming fourth album, Art Angels: “Flesh Without Blood/Life in the Vivid Dream” (She has also been sharing cover art sketches for all of the album’s tracks on her tumblr.)
posted by Going To Maine (30 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
I tend to be ambivalent about Grimes’s music, but I quite like this track, probably because it’s a bit more straightforward pop to my ears.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:38 AM on October 27, 2015


I love that Grimes shows how much fun weird girls can have. She's awesome.
posted by darksong at 11:40 AM on October 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


What is a good starting point for her music? I have never been able to get into it, somehow, but that may be because I didn't start at a good point. What are the songs that seem the most accessible?
posted by Frowner at 11:43 AM on October 27, 2015


I also really liked this demo Grimes released about six months ago (in fact, I think it's my favorite song of hers): REALiTi
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:49 AM on October 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


A remade version of that song is going to be on this album, by popular demand.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:52 AM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Frowner, her album Visions is a good a litmus test as any. I was hooked thirty seconds into the second track.
posted by STFUDonnie at 11:54 AM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Agree w/ Visions -- this live performance also hooked me.
posted by feckless at 11:56 AM on October 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pop for Misfits
Can a former noise musician become a star?

By Kelefa Sanneh ——> New Yorker.
posted by tychotesla at 11:56 AM on October 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


Frowner: The video for Oblivion, where she reclaims masculine spaces while singing about how sexual assault turns the world into a fearful place.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:58 AM on October 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


I didn't really like Visions, though it had the big hits. I consider Halfaxa to be my album of choice. But then, I don't really associate Grime with particular songs (except for the big single), just sounds.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:04 PM on October 27, 2015


This song is the literal expression of how I felt when I heard about the Gilmore Girls relaunch.
posted by Automocar at 12:09 PM on October 27, 2015


I discovered Grimes in 2012 when I was reading the Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks Of The Year list. I hadn't really liked hardly anything I had heard, so I clicked on the number one song expecting to hate it. It was the "Oblivion" video, linked above. I was absolutely blown away, and I've been a huge fan ever since. Pitchfork rightly gets a lot of shit, but they absolutely got that one right.

This new stuff is great. I've already pre-ordered the album.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:40 PM on October 27, 2015


Did anyone else notice she's got a collaboration with Janelle Fucking Monae on the new album?!

I mean, I was excited as hell for this before, but knowing Grimes and Janelle are doing a song together? Now I am beyond hyped.
posted by SansPoint at 4:51 PM on October 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


I had no idea that she had two more albums under her belt since the first one. I think I was meh on the second album and missed the third. I like this a lot, and the idea of her (or anyone) collaborating with Janelle Monae is always a plus. (Not so much the execution: looking at you and your sad underuse of her, Duran Duran.) I'll have to give the whole album a listen when it comes out.
posted by immlass at 5:46 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Her first album, which is still perhaps my favorite, was all about Dune. I mean, just listen to Caladan. It's a wonderful, minimal, noisey and jangly album. I think Grimes is largely responsible for vaporwave becoming such a popular genre as of late.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 6:32 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I actually think REALiTi is my favorite as well. But everything she does is wonderful.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 10:12 PM on October 27, 2015


This is secondary to her music, but watching her videos one thing I'm struck by is that she's one of those people who just disappears into a new look and becomes almost recognizable with each new outfit and hairstyle.* It's awesome...in the new video, I don't think I'd even pick up it's the same person from scene to scene if she wasn't in the middle of the shot lip-syncing.

*I swear to god, I've seen Oscar Isaac in like ten movies and I still have no idea what he looks like.
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:03 PM on October 27, 2015


I've watched the video a couple times and I'm impressed at how well-crafted it is compared to some other "throw everything at the screen" music videos I could mention. Her characters often seem to throw a gesture into the next scene that keeps it coherent and there is a lot of stuff going on the background that I didn't catch on the first viewing. Plus it's a good song.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:55 AM on October 28, 2015


(The album dropped today, beeteedubs, in case people are interested in the rest of it.)
posted by Going To Maine at 8:18 AM on November 6, 2015


The album is AMAZING but I am stuck on Kill V Maim right now because as soon as the song ends I have to listen to it again.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:13 AM on November 6, 2015


Art Angels is a late contender for my Album of the Year. Oh, man, so good. So, so so good.
posted by SansPoint at 11:04 AM on November 6, 2015


Awww yeah. This is the Taylor Swift for me.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:15 PM on November 6, 2015


Seriously. This has been a great, great year for music.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:18 PM on November 6, 2015


Have heard the new album.

Holy shit. It's both immediately appealing (I have the same problem as everybody had matching towels - I can't get through the album because I keep wanting to go back to re-listen to favourite tracks) and yet it feels huge, like there's an amazing amount of material here to digest. It's so bursting with vitality and texture and variety. What an achievement. I hope it blows up huge.

And "Venus Trap!" Grimes and Janelle Monae are the feminist superhero duo of my dreams and they exceed expectations.
posted by erlking at 8:07 AM on November 7, 2015 [6 favorites]




^ Good lord, that guy comes across as an asshole.
posted by erlking at 9:02 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Grimes and Janelle Monae are the feminist superhero duo of my dreams and they exceed expectations.

Throw in St. Vincent and you've got yourself a 21st-century weird-grrl Charlie's Angels.

I finally got around to listening to the new album over the weekend. It's like seeing a pink Malibu Barbie Corvette on monster truck tires drive over a whole pile of NOW CD compilations, and it is wonderful.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:55 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Will Butler’s review of Art Angels

^ Good lord, that guy comes across as an asshole.

I've tried getting into The Arcade Fire on several occasions and found them a joyless dirgeful slog every single time. Anybody have any idea what the last sentence of his review even means?

It’s like Grimes herself sings — I think — on “Flesh Without Blood”: “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each/I do not think that they will sing to me/We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

I get that it's a casually-dropped Eliot quote, but WTF is he putting the quote in Grimes' mouth instead of his own? It's not part of the lyrics of the song in question.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:17 PM on November 16, 2015


yeah, that poem is not even thematically related to the lyrics, as far as I can tell.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:28 PM on November 16, 2015


The closest I can figure is that it's him expressing his own reaction to the album; i.e.:

"I recognize that this is awesome, but I'm too old and set in my ways (NOTE: Butler is 33 years old.) to bother assimilating the cultural software I'd need to enjoy it. Pity me in my dotage, won't you?"
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:07 PM on November 16, 2015


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