Recent douchey stuff

1. The new MGMT record and its press
Goddamn I am so sick of hearing how the new MGMT record “doesn’t contain the triumvirate of hits that Oracular Spectacular did.” And I’m not defending Congratulations here, either. Fuck no. It’s awful. It’s stupid. It’s like the douchiest thing of the year so far. But the second douchiest thing, then, is how everybody can only say exactly one thing about it: If you want new versions of “Time To Pretend,” “Electric Feel,” and “Kids,” you’ve come to wrong place! No, that’s not the point. It may be somewhat noteworthy (and true), but it really doesn’t matter. Bands are allowed to “change direction.” What matters is the totally contrived way in which MGMT went about creating the album, self-consciously making sure that everything about it at once confuses some and endears others. Everything about Congratulations seems engineered to be a talking point for both fans and critics. And I don’t mean to condone self-conscious or contrived work. On the contrary, self-conscious music can be incredible (Vampire Weekend, most things on Drag City, etc.), but here Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser are so obviously showing their cards that it’s really just not even funny. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but something about Congratulations‘ self-consciousness is just so fucking douchey. It just gives off trying way too hard vibes, or something like that.

First there’s, yes, the fact that the album is sonically different than Oracular Spectacular and, yes, does not contain similar hits. That’s an article premise in Rolling Stone if I ever saw one! Secondly, and perhaps just as important, is the we-don’t-care-at-all-but-that’s-the-point album cover. Then there are those song titles. Those irritatingly un-oblique reference-laden song titles that just scream Oh yeah, we listen to older music. “Brian Eno” is the most obvious example of this, except that it’s actually kind of a cool song title. The big, big problem is “Song For Dan Treacy.” There are other ways to pay tribute to DIY punk legends without naming songs after them––especially if you’re ugly fucking MGMT. “Song For Dan Treacy” drips of self-conscious cred-grabbing; it’s so obviously designed to appeal to the Pitchfork writers/readers who actually know who that is/why he’s important. No one else is going to see the name, Google it, and then immediately Amazon the entire Television Personalities catalog and then claim to understand Congratulations better. And if they do, well, that’s actually a bigger problem. Also troubling is “Lady Dada’s Nightmare,” a title that aims to mock, apparently, Lady Gaga, pop, and also––what––like the Dadaists, but instead comes off as too current and too stupid to actually matter (like Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, only different). But see, now I’ve written about all of these songs, just like I was supposed to. Congratulations, MGMT. Contrived definitely works.

2. M.I.A.
What happened here? How did she get like this? Motherhood? “Paper Planes”? Too much kombucha? I really couldn’t say, but it’s bad: M.I.A. is a douche. I guess we should’ve seen this coming, but now it’s upon us and it’s unavoidable. I don’t really know where to start. Earlier this month, in and interview with NME (excerpted here by nymag.com), M.I.A. dissed (that sounds lameee, but there’s nothing else to call it) Lady Gaga, citing a number of things I’m sure Lady Gaga is well aware of/doesn’t give a fuck about, and making herself sound all the douchier in the process. When asked if TV and the Internet have destroyed “the mythology around popstars,” M.I.A. responded with this:

“I don’t know. Again, there’s Lady Gaga––people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic.”

Besides the fact she’s kind of answering, like, a different question, the things she’s saying are not great. First, I would like to meet all these people that are calling M.I.A. and Lady Gaga similar. Also, she is by no means the first person to come up with idea that Gaga is just recycling old pop ideas. That argument doesn’t really matter, either, since Gaga understands she’s kind of a retread––that’s like the point. Lady Gaga is progressive because she’s doing all of her crazy shit (like, CRAZY SHIT, however contrived it may be) right out there in the open––in the fucking mainstream––while M.I.A. is sitting left of center singing tired lyrics about activism that no one listens to anyway because of that beat. Oh, and 20-year-old Ibiza music? Of course. Who the fuck does M.I.A. think she is, the person James Murphy mocks in “Losing My Edge”? Oh wait. Yeah. Because she is.

This brings us up to speed, to the real heart of her douchiness. Despite everything––all of her posturing, mothering, participating––M.I.A. wants to be cool. And, well, she is. But she’s cool in a douchey, awful way. She has that teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling, of-course-she’s-doing-that thing going on (also see: Wayne Coyne, late-era Animal Collective, this type of thing). Basically, she needs Pitchfork. And oh is the feeling mutual. Today, M.I.A. “took over” Pitchfork’s Twitter account (they even got to make the inevitable “Pitchfork goes M.I.A.” pun) and kept everyone up to speed on…whatever was going on with her…on @pitchforkmedia. It’s all over now, but there are some memorable and douchey posts. Just looking at the page is obnoxious. Shit like:

-”go egosurfing DRINK A SHOT OF TEQUILLA spamouflaged in brandalism”
-”come be my U.S.B baby we could be digital natives A BELIEVER with citezenships”
-”i got digital cash Hactivism at its best Google Bombing with my Infotainment”
-”BORN FREE digiterati ecruiting at a nearest base OVERDRIVEN slacktivist screenagers good at neetspeak welcome”
-”R MY C/LOK KEYS REALLY REALLY REALLLLLLLLLLY OFFENDING U OK ILL TAKE THEM OFF ▖ ▗ ▘ ▙ ▚ ▛ ▜ ▝ ▞ ▟ ▀▖ ▗ ▘ ▙ ▚ ▛ ▜ ▝ ▞ ▟ ▀▁ ▂ ▃ ▆ ▇ █”

Goddammit. So that happened. And that is, as they say, douchey. Now, there’s also the matter of all of the GIF images M.I.A. and I guess “her people” have come up with to promote all of this. Here’s one right here. It’s got gold bars moving that spell out MIA, some grainy photo of some shitty car, and some other photo with M.I.A. in it and it’s all moving around for now reason except attention. This is good marketing, certainly. (We also learned that M.I.A.’s “yet untitled” third album is out June 29.) And there’s more. As part of the M.I.A.-Pitchfork thingy today, she also debuted the 9-minute video for her new “punk rock anthem” (?), the sarcastically-titled “Born Free.” The video for which is real, gritty, and violent, and might actually be sort of cool if it didn’t reek of vague third-world democracy activism and anti-Americanism.

Part II (or maybe III by now) of M.I.A.’s douchey hipsterness comes in the form of her signing on to release Sleigh Bells’ debut album on her label, Mom + Pop. Yeah, that’s just going to ruin everything. And besides which it just seems so…artificial, so teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling. Of course she’s doing that.

3. Maybe Sleigh Bells
Sleigh Bells’ debut album, Treats, is out May 11.

4. Jack Wolfe
“how is an agreement between an artist and a website douchey and/or pompous? though i can’t say i’m a fan of mia (the clash single was great!), i don’t understand all the hate on this blog. i especially don’t get how mia is superficial shit while the star of the “justify my love” video is somehow something…what… sincere?”

5. That guy who I’ve seen ask for douchey shit twice now
In the dining hall he went up to the lady and asked for horseradish. “Um hi, do you have any horseradish back there? Could you look?” Then in the library he went up to the librarian daintily holding a piece of paper in his hand: “Hi, um, do you have like a big envelope I could but this in? It’s a legal document and I don’t want it to get wet.” Fuck you. He’s in the a cappella group, too.