Personal Jesus
Was reading the 33-1/3 book on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea and found myself profoundly irritated by a couple of references to one of the songs, “The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2.” It’s the one that songwriter/NMH mainman Jeff Mangum begins with a fervent declaration of faith: “I love you Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do.” Author Kim Cooper writes more than once about how “shocking” these lines were to Mangum’s hipster colleagues. And later, in the song-by-song-analysis section (which is incidentally a structural choice that I’m always a little leery of), Cooper refers to the Jesus Christ line as “the spot where aggressively non-Christian listeners have to make a conscious decision to stay with the music. But is the expression one of love for the Savior or for another person, punctuated by the emphatic invocation of J.C.? Jeff repeatedly made it clear that he was singing about Jesus, but the alternative interpretation is there for those who need it.”
I’m not sure who Cooper is doing the most disservice to here: herself or the band’s listeners, who are presumed to be such good little liberal humanists that they’re going to run screaming from a few simple words unless they can falsely convince themselves that hey, it’s OK, he didn’t mean it that way. Sweet Jesus! Even if such small-mindedness does exist, is it a critic’s job to excuse & abet it? (Note that I’m writing here as a more-or-less atheist, so the offence I’m admittedly taking is strictly intellectual in nature.)
It’s puzzling, too, because even if you buy that indie rock fans are cloistered (which I think is an unfair rap, but that’s another story), it’s not like there’s any shortage of Jesus talk even in the indie-friendly realm.
(Big Star’s Sister Lovers, by the way, is another one of my very fave albums, up there with Love’s Forever Changes.)
I’m not sure who Cooper is doing the most disservice to here: herself or the band’s listeners, who are presumed to be such good little liberal humanists that they’re going to run screaming from a few simple words unless they can falsely convince themselves that hey, it’s OK, he didn’t mean it that way. Sweet Jesus! Even if such small-mindedness does exist, is it a critic’s job to excuse & abet it? (Note that I’m writing here as a more-or-less atheist, so the offence I’m admittedly taking is strictly intellectual in nature.)
It’s puzzling, too, because even if you buy that indie rock fans are cloistered (which I think is an unfair rap, but that’s another story), it’s not like there’s any shortage of Jesus talk even in the indie-friendly realm.
- Neutral Milk Hotel, “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3” (buy here)
- Big Star, “Jesus Christ” (buy here)
- Violent Femmes, “Jesus Walking on the Water” (buy here)
(Big Star’s Sister Lovers, by the way, is another one of my very fave albums, up there with Love’s Forever Changes.)
posted by DW | 6.8.06
1 Comments:
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home