Disruption of the Purchasing Process

So back in 2011, this band called Anne released a shoegazy post-punkish album called Dream Punx. It was a cool album with short, enjoyable songs, beautiful artwork, and a title that possesses this really beautiful quality of imaginative inspiration. Totally divorced from the actual music, I read those two words - especially with the 'x' in 'Punx' - and see heavily tattooed unicorns smokin' cigarettes and playin' that game where you toss quarters on to an edifice to try to get it to stay as close to the building as possible or all the vampires from The Lost Boys wearing pastel-drenched pleather jackets and riding around on clouds instead of motorcycles. It's fucking magical. The last song - the best song on the album - is called "Punk Bike"and, like, what else kind of bike would a dream punk ride if not one made of clouds and stardust?

Feel that dreampunk magik

The next year, Anne released a two-song 7" Power Exchange (b/w "Rings"). Both songs are/were better than anything on the full-length. "Power Exchange" dances around like light beams reflecting off a glitter geyser with all the 80s morbidity of The Smiths or Depeche Mode. "Rings" is pure post-punk goth glory. You want to listen to it on headphones while wearing all black on the sunniest day of winter that's warm enough that you could wear shorts but cold enough to demand a hoodie. I fucking loved this record and listened to it to death on my way to or while walking around campus. On repeat over and over and over and over.

Dance with your head down

Three years later, and I, for the most part, totally - and uninentionally, of course - forgot about Anne. I might've been aware that they released a 7" called Jerusalem in 2013, but I don't remember if I ever listened to it - and still haven't, though I'm sure that will change after this post. In my head, Anne was over - a bright, splashy, and fleeting moment in my music-listening history. Then, as I'm writing this post about Turnover, I'm on Run For Cover's website, looking into buying the Turnover album I wavered on so much (I bought it - I love it), and see that Anne released an LP in 2014 called Pulling Chain on RFC. So I threw it (re: clicked it) into my cart, along with that Turnover tape, a Red Death live tape, and three pieces of Creative Adult wax. I didn't bother listening to it first. All I could think about was the name Dream Punx and the two songs from the Power Exchange 7".

The album's called Pulling Chain and it is so sexy. And I mean sexy in the way that it has all the attributes of fuckin'. It's the soundtrack to posh underground fuck parties that happen in luscious club spaces with fur walls and huge, plush sectional couches for optimum perpendicular fuckin'. It's Euro dance music smeared with goth fuck juice and ecstasy sparkles. Even the vinyl is this heavenly sky blue/white marble colour that seems to suggest St. Peter's got the gate open and he wants people partyin' and fuckin' in God's house.

This is the sound of two crystal balls fucking

I don't, like, actively seek out Euro club music. I'm not even sure if I had been presented with this album without "Anne" or "Run For Cover Records" attached to it that I'd even care. I clearly like this album, but how much of that is influenced by everything those two things mean to me? Does this mean that I should seek out more sexy Euro club bangers? Or am I just a victim of personal biases and branding? Should I even worry about it? I'm tryin' to rub all on my naked ass body right now, but all I can think about is my consumption habits and what informs/skewers them. That's not sexy. That's the exact opposite of sexy. That's finding your way to the posh fuck party and stopping at the door to worry about the authenticity of your path there. I definitely value that concern - the constant questioning of one's own (in)authenticity -, but I also value pleasure. Pulling Chain is a reconciliation of those two values, of recognizing the frivolity and felicity of our consumption. It's also sexy as fuck.

It happens all the time, though, if you listen to underground music/music from subcultures. We've, fortunately, stopped accusing bands of selling out, because we're also sellouts and because bands change. But often, and maybe even more often now, bands seem to transform their sound into something that abuts a genre that is so far from their original iteration that you, as the listener, have to rectify your possibly hypocritical enjoyment of it. It makes you acutely aware of the silly lines you draw. It also makes you aware of how readily you erase those lines and push them forward. Even further, it makes you cognizant of the fact that that is totally okay (at least when it pertains to what you listen to). It's a manufactured broadening of horizons, but that's the exact reason we seek out these forms of media anyways, right? We're already out here on the margins, so let's dance all over the lines we've drawn. You don't get into underground music to foreclose your tastes and preferences, though that is often the case. You rejected mainstream music for the express purpose of pushing outwards and finding new sonic experience. You just get self-conscious when the underground starts pushing back the other way, towards large-scale awareness and mass modes of entertainment. It is, however, a moment - a space - in which you share common ground with people you have previously avoided, and that's not a bad thing. And then when you show them this record and they like it? Boom! You're right back in your tower, smirking down on the garish and graceless masses as they dance to the sounds of you having known it all along.