Re: MisK.

[greg@deming.eng.ufl.edu (Greg O'Rear)]

abm4@columbia.EDU (Andrew B Marvick) writes in the third person (as usual):
>IED was wondering when someone would finally calm down from
>the initial adolescent impulse to trash (mindlessly) Kate's new music
>long enough to start LISTENING to it -- and thus to notice, for example, the
>three "buried" spoken messages in "Lily"

Not adolescent, not mindless, but considered.  And the presence of a couple
of "buried" messages won't make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.

>   Btw, the album is inarguably the greatest piece of recorded music
>to be released in at least the last four years. [remaining hyperbole deleted]

Unlike Andy--the Oral Roberts of Love-Hounds, who sees a 900-foot-tall Jesus
in every Kate utterance--I think Jane Siberry's "When I Was A Boy" beats the
pants off "The Red Shoes".  It's just the kind of challenging, thoughtful,
and beautiful work Kate used to produce.  I used to use Kate as a yardstick
by which I judged other similar music.  The use of that standard was called
into question with "Experiment IV", faltered with "The Sensual World", and
has been rendered passe' by "The Red Shoes".  Now perhaps my new yardstick
is "Little Earthquakes", a devastatingly brilliant album, something I would
not say about either of Kate's last two albums.

Face it, Andy: Kate's human, capable of making brilliant music, and capable
of making *shite*.  It doesn't mean I like her any less as a human being
(not that I know her; maybe she's a bitch, I don't know).  It just means I'm
not going to praise her latest work if I think it's inferior.  And not just
inferior to her other work; inferior to others' work (like that of Jane and
Tori).  Maybe you take exception to me stating that she has been in a
creative decline since "Hounds of Love" and prefer to say her music has
"evolved".  OK, it has evolved into a style that I don't enjoy.  It happens.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, though; I wish I could honestly be that enthused.