Last week (even though Alexa Chung was on the cover and it cost $10.oo), I bought a British Vogue at Port Authority.
In high school, Brit Vogue was my favorite Vogue, because I didn't read French and because Diana Vreeland's autobiography and a lot of other books and a night at Aspinall's and a lunch at Fortnum & Mason of shepherd's pie and banana milkshake and a Grazia magazine and a tallboy of cider had convinced me that I was destined for London, for the Courtauld and a bespoked, coldfish husband or something. I've changed my mind. London is grey and far and trashy without the BIG and convenience store of home (what I mean is: trashy but not as good at being trashy as here and also without nice malls and Walmarts and a million other things like deserts and baseball [not cricket]). And fashion magazines will never thrill me and inform me, as they did when I felt like a nervous and hopeful pre-debutante of the World; I can no longer see "blue skies ahead" in an accessories feature.
But Brit Vogue's still charming and dippy with like five Kate Moss covers per annum and a lot of fine little things you can buy at Liberty and reporting on new Airbus airplanes.
There was no interview with Alexa Chung, just four pictures of her in denim alongside an article about denim and romance of/with/in America. There was a whole lot about loving America in general, which is like 'sure YESS!' and very sweet.
A funny feature called, "Going Out vs. Staying In" imaged and styled two groups of female friends: a set of wealthy daughters-of-soandso, one of whom runs a public relations firm another who owns a new, swank nightclurrrb (our age! what?) in black leather, the other crowd, a bit younger, piling into a house in the far suburbs Upriver, models and musicians in vintage babydoll dresses and socks. The thing didn't stink of class-problems; mostly 'cause the "posh" girls were sort of Sex and the City and naff, yawn, nightclurrrb? And the girls in this Victorian house out-of-town were adorable and hip and inhabiting authentically beautiful space, principal among them a brunette called Marina who lists her influences: "Britney Spears, gymnasts, cheerleaders, anything American!" The article said her band was called Marina and the Diamonds. I looked her up on the Youtube and found:


The first is on-concept (right?) but pretty awful. The second is a big mezcla of stuff that's already happened and happened (and recently). But it's good. I like her vocal, and the EP is called American Jewels, and I guess I'm flattered. I'll pass out the next time I hear a Euro talking about American politics, but please do go on and on about our GLAMOUR (it's major.....like, TRACE CYRUS, featured below [who obv recycles a lot of British ideas but ones that kind of started as American ideas anyway and in Franklin, Tennessee and Hollywood, Orlando, and Twitter...]).

I'm by no means equipped to talk about this track with authority (unlike Petrova). But it's been in and out of my head for months and this morning it made me laugh out loud on the subway.

singles

"Sweet Dreams"
Beyoncé

Last week, my co-worker was playing a video linked from FB, some throaty, grey shoegazer with a haircut covering "Single Ladies." It was 'ick. He said, "Why is everybody raving about this?" I said, "...because they're racist." And then I watched the for-real "Single Ladies" video a few times--still good, still a call to arms not a snooze, not even a little bit. Occasionally I wonder if, we spectators get lazy about newness and give the establishment too much credit/obeisance (that "...to be pleased means to say yes" business). Sure. But Be is never not working. She works to make our lives easy, to provide us with half-familiar/half-fresh treats, soundtrackings, jams--21st Century POP MUSIC, red-blooded, healthy post-Modernism. This guy, "Sweet Dreams," the most recent single drawn from I am...Sasha Fierce (the 6th or 7th off the record since last autumn?), is Be's Gothic number, as Industrial as our bright Aughts R&B gets (cousin to Rihanna's "Disturbia") and with lyrics like, "Tattoo your name across my heart so it will remain/Not even death can make us part/What kind of dream is this?" and "Clouds filled with stars cover the skies/And I hope it rains/You're the perfect lullaby." I really dig her invocation of dreamstates. Dreams are--as soon as we become aware of them, waking--histories, passages, memories, inaccessible. This angle lends the song a deal of regret, glances backward. She opens with a loosely cast phrase, "turn the lights on," that is applied as a portion of the driving beat throughout the song. In the track's present tense, Be is no longer falling into soupy, dark love, but attempting to reconstruct and measure it 'in the light'...after.

"Sally"
Sam Sparro

I picked up this dude's album because...um...a gay teen played it for me at an American Apparel, saying, "You wouldn't believe how he looks: cute white boy with a side bang, wearing our shit." Whatever. Ain't no shame. This and the U.K. hit, "Black and Gold," are supreme and smart dance songs, despite their hipster cheese (Sparro is an Aussie living in El Lay....so....). And "Sally." I mapped out something like five music videos (starring me?) for it as I rode the train into Manhattan this morning. My favorite was a tour of the Financial District, dead at night with Christmas decorations on the lamposts, dancing in and out of empty dives and office tower porticoes in a 91/2 Weeks, off the shoulder, creamy Irish cable knit sweater and nothing else (shoes?). The lyrical take on stripper dadsums-issues is a touch ham-handed. But Sam's throwback politics are in the right place (I loathe the fourth-wave approach to sex industry-as-empowerment).

Pure redux--tragic heroines/social issues+gay soul singing+slap-happy synths, a track to get riled up to, to dance yr emotions to. Bless our hearts. Disco isn't ever gonna die again!

"romantic style in the world"

"Looks like it's gonna be another one of them hot summers."

Cycles

A late 1890's H.d.T. Lautrec rendering of the dancer Loie Fuller.

Jim Jam Jem

Whitney Say--"Hell to the Yes!"

Weekend Song

This snippet from Top Hat (1935) features interiors and bedclothes that are simply the origin of the world.