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Date Posted: 19:52:05 11/10/01 Sat
Author: J. Bond
Subject: Maturity=clarity?

In response to the question "is Oldham on a downslide?" someone implied that those fans who are not 'with him' right now(ie. "feeling his new shit")suffer from this due to a lack of maturity(re: "I feel Will has matured and grown to be more at ease with the world"[paraphrase]). It seems, rather, that with time Oldham has become much more straight-ahead with his lyrical approach, almost to the point of banality or, worse, making the songs become observation-only sing-a-longs rather than the THERE IS through ARISE stage cryptic nuggets that allowed the listener his or her own take on the words(just me?).

Why it is so easy to dislike the bluntness of R&B "I love you baby yeah yeah" and to appreciate the akward phrasings of early Oldham(take your fucking pick of a line) is the essence behind most of the success within 'indie-music': it is not rife with obvious generalities, but 'new' ones. One that feel less like a call for listener identification than a call from YOUR(as in you, ______) long last lover.

This element, poorly explained above, is perhaps why I'm so upset with Oldham's more recent releases. JOYA, while decent musically(not really a reason why we listen to Will though, I think), is so blatantly linear in it's words(song and not) that one gets(got) the feeling they may finally understand his name changes= PALACE: elusive, hence the various incarnations still maintaining that one word, WILL: straight-forward narratives, were it a person(will) explaining there own stories, BPB:an amalgamation of both in that the PRINCE could very well live in a palace and that BILLY can also be referred to as Will and that many songs have that hammer-on-the-head lyrical approach("I SEE A DARKNESS", "JUST TO SEE MY HOLLY HOME", the song about the 'blacks') and others still achieve the PALACE characteristics supra("KNOCKTURNE", "A WHOREHOUSE", "BLUE LOTUS FEET"). Does this seem right?

Can we also assume that Will's EP GET ON JOLLY, containing lyrics written by another man in extremely blunt prose, is, in fact, an indicator of where his new lyrical stylings rest. Are we seeing the 'rootless' become 'rooted'? Are we watching the maturity of a man or the diluting? Are you reading a post that is coming off way-too-pretentious, therefore easily dissmissable?

My dear friends, I think the answer to all these 3 questions is quite simple: "Um, well, that depends."

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