George Pringle РSalon des Refus̩s
This record pretty much ended up being almost exactly what I expected: most of it I bloody love, some I find a little too much, but in general I am really enjoying it. A lot of the songs have been loose in the wild for a while, so it’s no surprise that an album with them on it is one I like, but there’s easily enough new fun that any existing George Pringle fan will find plenty of exciting surprises.
I have seen this album reviewed as a spoken word record in a few places, where people discuss the crossover between poetry and lyric-writing, between pop music and spoken word performances and other things which I would be frankly more than a little out of my depth talking about in any but the most superficial sense. Personally, I reckon balls to spoken word and poetry, this is a pop album. The vocal may not be sung most of the time, but it does the exact same job as the vocal on any other pop record, so I don’t really see the point in treating them any differently.
George Pringle conjures a bizarre world. In part she is a dissolute, literate Sloan Ranger surrounded by rich trust-fund babies wasting away and thinking themselves important as they piss away their parents’ money, masturbating their delusions of significance to the point of chafing. Then there’s the part of it which moves in a world of wastrel art snobs, imagining and cultivating their dislocation and suffering to the point that their whole lives become vapid pieces of stylised performance art.
She conjures these images, not in the sense that she belongs in this world exactly, more that she inhabits it at a sort of uneasy distance. In fact it’s the only thing that stops you wanting to slap her: the fact that despite the free-flowing confessional of the monologues, the most conspiratorial element in the whole thing is the fuzzy implication that both you and she find the worlds she paints both uncomfortable and in some sense repellent. Imagine if your posh friend invited you to a party and you were surrounded by rich, vacuous, self-absorbed trustifarian cunts. George Pringle manages to give you the impression that she would be the girl you spoke to briefly in the kitchen, who you found oddly fascinating and who, long after the revulsion of the party itself had worn off, somehow stuck in your mind, separate from and untarnished by all you hated about the rest of the evening.
That may be an awkward explanation of how the personality of this record comes across, and it also puts a lot of words in the mouth of Pringle herself which may well not be accurate, but it’s difficult to explain otherwise.
Musically this record is at its best when the scratchy, clicking electronic backing tracks slow to a disturbed melancholia and Pringle’s vocal becomes a lament, delivered in a voice which seems to have a distressed wail bursting to break out of it at any point. Generally, I fucking love these ones. The only times I am really not that keen on the actual music are on the two tracks in the middle of the album: the ten-minute Bonjour Tristesse which doesn’t really quite manage to fill its length properly in my opinion, and the manic Pop Hit, which strays just a little too far into mental disco pop for my personal taste. That’s a pretty tiny complaint though, because all the rest of this record is bloody marvellous.
There’s just something incredibly engaging about both the style of the album and Pringle herself – or at least the persona she assumes on this record. She somehow manages to make this record charming, despite flirting with an awful lot of characteristics I could easily find off-putting. As it is though, I think Salon des Refuses has turned out almost exactly as well as I had hoped it would.
George Pringle – We Could Have Been Heroes
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George Pringle – Fellini for Prime Minister
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I have to confess that I don’t think I’d even heard of George Pringle until I’d heard SW10 on your podcast the other day.
However, I’ve been impressed enough with what I have heard on here to go and buy the album off eMusic, so thank you!
Go music riches! Her yacht in the Med can’t be far off!
Mmm. I like that quite a bit more than I thought I might. Only barely listening to the lyrics, which may help. I like music that clicks.
I like this but, at the risk of repeating (quite possibly verbatim) my comments from the last time you posted about her, I still maintain that…
1) She’d be a lot cooler if she went by “Georgie”
2) The songs do sound an awful lot like:
Saint Etienne – Finisterre http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaoFJzV-eWQ
Ben Watt feat Estelle – Pop A Cap… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3g0II40U24
Why am i so surprised you like these songs? It’s so not what I’m used to from Toad. But I like! The piano is resonant and chilling. Diversity is always a plus. Well not always, but usually. And I’m rambling. Thanks for the intro Matthew
Yep, I love it when she uses the piano.
Dev, enough with the Georgie nonsense! You’ll have tracked her down and abducted her to your basement in Poughkeepsie next.
This is no bad. I like it a lot actually, like a bourgeois Shell Suit Massacre.
I think she’d be coolest if she went by ‘Doad’.
Her descriptions of pastoral middle-class England, along with her forthright vocal delivery, remind me in an odd way of Gerard Langley from The Blue Aeroplanes; and her singing voice, when it appears, has pleasing echoes of Kirsty MacColl to it.
I suspect there’s significantly more froth than coffee here, but I think I like it more than I expected to.
Yep, I love it when she uses the piano.
Kinky. I guess we now know why Matthew is so enamoured of Miss Pringle.
(I quite like this by the way. Almost too self-absorbed, but just aware enough to avoid being really annoying.)
Blimey, paragraphs three and four have a lot of long words in them.
I have to say I hate this (album / genre). With a passion. TWoTH‘s not far behind me, either.
The amount of this crap I listen to over the course of any given month drives me fucking bananas — there’s truly nothing original in this for me whatsoever on that basis alone. Nothing to set it apart from the countless/faceless ‘soloists’ / duos pumping endless streams of this laptop bilge onto the net.
Unlistenable pish.
On that basis along? What, on the basis that your inbox is full of crap? That makes no sense.
If you get sent loads of stuff that sounds like this then you must have attracted a very weird crowd indeed. I can see you taking against her personally, especially when her personality (or persona) is such a prominent part of the music but there’s bugger-all else out there much like this that I’ve heard. Unless it’s just the actual musical backing you’re talking about.
And if you despise the genre so much you’re in no position to say whether it’s good or not, really, are you. I don’t go around saying what’s good or bad hip hop because I know fuck all about it so how would I be able to tell when all I hear is ‘hip hop, no, aaargh!’
To clarify: I find no musical value wse in this type of recording — and it is not for the want of trying. In amongst the many submissions I receive there is always always always an abnormal glut of this kind of “music” (that & the instrumental ambient noise bollocks that seems to be the compositional achievement of choice for bands/individuals running alongside this genre in the ‘experimental’ stakes these days) & I always listen to each recording probably more than I would any other style, simply because I struggle to understand its appeal.
In a way I’m determined to be proven incorrect & find that there is something of worth & note out there in this murky pool, but thus far I have found nothing that catches my ear let alone justifies the repeat listening I allow in order to satusfy the pursuit.
Don’t get me wrong. I get glitch / 8bit / laptop / whatever its tagged these days, fuck knows I’ve playlisted enough of its variations, but this sparse/uni-directional style is the farthest end of that particular spectrum & it proves to be nothing but a waste of listening time with every release that comes my way.
As for her ‘personality’ — you’re right on that score. The seriously annoying upward inflection on the end of her sentences grates & there’s more than a sense of smugness in her overall tone to make me think she’s taking under the impression she’s delivering a uniqueness that will transcend mere criticism. Regardless of lyrical ability, words alone do not an enjoyable listening experience make.
I walk away from such endeavour with the same thought every time: who the fuck granted the artist the finanace, time & energy to commit this rubbish to posterity?
I should have said on the end of the last bit:
despite my continual initial willingness & openess with each new release I walk away from such endeavour with the same thought every time: who the fuck granted the artist the finanace, time & energy to commit this rubbish to posterity?
I don’t think finance came into it – I think it was pretty much all just she herself who made the record.
I don’t entirely understand what it is that you hate, that’s all. You say that you get glitch/laptop stuff, but that you hate this kind of recording – aren’t the two the same thing?
It smacks of the same attitude I dislike in the recent efforts by Eddie Argos, to me. Pretension, contrivance, and privilege which is meant to be some in joke or hip “talent” but which have little to do with creativity or innovation.
Yeah, I can entirely see that. I don’t personally have that reaction, but I do think it’s perfectly understandable.
I am using the word ‘recording’ in this instance, rather than ‘music’, to loosely describe this end of the glitch spectrum. There is very good examples of glitch/laptop out there, but GP takes it much too far into the realms of self-indulgence & unsyncopated/erratic click clack for the sake of unsyncopated/erratic click clack.
I rather like a lot of that kind of thing – the stuff which lurches a bit and loses the beat, faffs around and then kicks back in. To the point where stuff which actually holds its rhythm all the way through now kind of bores me – I keep waiting for surprises which never come – so I guess I’m going the other way.
I find it similar to the way Tom Waits will wander away from a rhythm or a tune in the middle of a song, just to the point where you think he’s lost it altogether, and then slip straight back in perfectly. I’m not saying that this or anything else is even remotely in the same league, but I hope you take my point.
I do, entirely & I’m all for innovation & re-invention of the wheel. But I think it’s an entirely different level of ‘talent’ & intent you’re talking there with the likes of Waits. That type of composition demonstrates a willingness/ability to allow the core/root to be flexible, fluid, despite its solid underlying structure. There’s no flexibility with the likes of DP because I think the overriding need to appear ‘out there’ masks any real compositional ability. But that’s a personal opinion based on an over exposure to this kind of stuff.
TWoTH just suggested the following link as a representation of what it’s like listening to this type of “music”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYFQZFL0yoo
Hmm, well I don’t know about actual ability per se, but certainly I find the slower ones to be often a little more erratic and bit more unsettling and hence more enjoyable. Whether that constitutes flexibilty or compositional skill I wouldn’t know, but I know I like them better than most of the more upbeat numbers.
Do you think she’s trying extra hard to be ‘out there’? I don’t know. I got the impression from her gig up here a couple of years ago that she was incredibly shy, so it’s possible she’s over-played a persona as a way of shielding herself somewhat from some of the personal exposure, but I don’t really get the impression it’s much more than that.
Then again, it’s very idiosyncratic, so if you take against this record I can imagine people taking strongly against it.
Well personas are a tricksy thing to manage. Especially as a woman, I’ll venture to say and you can beat me down for calling in the sexist card. But playing thick or shy or flirty is both easier for women and more necessary as a means to sheild themselves? Is that true? And who knows if one is playing the part or just truly thick? You have to step out to reveal the truth.
Dunno myself, my latest situation faced where I had to step out of persona, I decided to come all the way out and be completley honest with the band I was interviewing. And it was the right decision, but then I had a good feeling it would be as I’d done my research. But I had “Tart” in my back pocket just in case
of course I’m no artist nor am I a performer. So take that for what it’s worth, which is damn near nothing xoxo
i love tart.
Who let Euan out drinking again?
And why didn’t they send him round my place? xo