album #2

feed the animals (girl talk)

This is a pretty solid album, definitely grew on me. It's not the sort of thing I inherently love, but I could imagine fucking Loving this on the dance floor.

It's a brilliant flow, it all runs from one song to the other from beginning to end. In a way, the begin-and-end marks for the songs are artificial barriers, and the entire thing is one tapestry. Also the album grows very well, each track gets more exhilirating and well crafted than the previous.

his specialty, as other reviews have attested, is mocking and undercutting the sincerity of love songs (and love itself). Some of my favorite moments are whenever he really nails the contradictions in love songs and relationships (I know that I- and I'm sure, almost all people- have had their relationships where one person is thinking 'nothing compares to you' and the other thinks 'I was gettin some head'). Of course, the contradictions aren't meanspirited or cynical, he seems to mainly have a fun, party vibe to it. it's all a big playful celebration of sexual debauchery.

Also I really loved certain moments when he sampled beats from particular pop classics that I love- come on eileen, big country, young hearts, you got it. Girl Talk reminds me of Warhol and Family Guy and generally the schools of art and pop culture that are all about reclamation and presentation and repackaging. He takes what we already love and re-presents it. So it feels natural that the parts I love most are the parts I recognize most. That's the nature of this particular art form, it encourages, and somewhat depends on, our love of the familiar. Still, I gotta credit him for remixing and mashing up with pretty sublime creativity and a relentless sense of fun.

One of the things that limits my appreciation of the album is, I'm not really a big rap fan. Or rather, I can get into the beats, but I'm not really in love with the lyrics on their own. (My tastes are generally guided by music more than lyrics- throughout this album I generally felt 'eh' about the lyrics, except when they matched particularly strong swings in the music). That said, I would like to hear mashups with more rap beats and rock lyrics, since this album was entirely the reverse