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Post by billbones80 on Feb 4, 2015 20:00:17 GMT -5
After fifteen years in the music business, performing first with World/Inferno Society and Guignol, and then finding huge audiences with the likes of The Hold Steady and Against Me!, Franz Nicolay is on the verge of calling it quits. First though, there’s the matter of his remarkable new album, To Us The Beautiful! Franz talked frankly to God Is In The TV Zine, about this work of art, former bandmates and a particularly mischievous rodent… www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2015/02/02/interview-franz-nicolay/ |
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 5, 2015 4:34:01 GMT -5
This part is obviously interesting:
"To be honest, this is something that is always tricky for me to talk about, not because I have any problem with it, but because people are always trying to read stuff into what i say that isn’t there. It was a frustrating time in the band for everyone, and I left, because life is short, and I wasn’t ready to settle into a sinecure. As a friend of mine said, when you’re on a train and you realise you don’t want to go where the train is going, the only thing to do is jump off. You don’t know when you’re going to stop rolling, and you’ll probably get a little banged up, but the train isn’t going to go off the tracks. Nobody seemed shocked or dismayed, or frankly said anything about it.
(...)
I see Bobby (Drake) from time to time – we were the youngest guys in the band and road roommates. They asked me – through Bob, I guess he’s the designated Franz-whisperer – to open for their shows in Toronto a few months ago, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. I went to see them in Toronto last winter when I was living there. I figured, five years had passed, it was time to check back in. It was very cleansing for me – I felt like I got some closure, that I hadn’t been missing out on anything.
I’ve checked out the records. If I was writing reviews of them, I do have some specific criticisms, not as a former member, just as an interested party who knows their work as well as anyone. I think the doubling down on guitars is neither here nor there. I’m not sure you’d find the person who’d say “The real problem with The Hold Steady is there’s just not enough guitars”. It’s important to remember that there were almost as many people who thought keyboards ruined the band as people who missed them when they were gone. I think there was a shift in Craig (Finn)’s lyrics, to their detriment, from relatively neutral, even amused, narration of peoples’ bad behaviour – we’re all glorious fuckups – to dispenser of paternalistic advice and moralistic judgment. I am surprised when I see him getting patted on the back for writing female characters. Sure, Holly (though that’s a pretty familiar romanticization of the old Madonna/whore thing), but especially on the last record there’s an uncomfortable amount of frankly condescending and not a little contradictory (“It’s a big city, there’s a lot of love/you gotta get back out there“) versus “I’m sorry, but there’s other words than yes/why don’t you wait a while?” attitudes toward the women in the songs. It’s a problem."
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Post by orzelc on Feb 6, 2015 6:23:11 GMT -5
To be fair, there's also a shift toward explicit advice toward the guys in the songs, too-- for example, "Soft in the Center." But you can probably trace that back as far as "Stay Positive," at least, so I don't think it's that recent a shift.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 7, 2015 12:51:29 GMT -5
To be fair, there's also a shift toward explicit advice toward the guys in the songs, too-- for example, "Soft in the Center." But you can probably trace that back as far as "Stay Positive," at least, so I don't think it's that recent a shift. It's also worth remembering that Franz both played on, and (seemingly) happily sang along to lyrics like "She got screwed up by religion/ she got screwed by soccer players", large parts of Hurricane J and entire Magazines. I can't really say that Spinners or Wait A While is any more condescending. And pretty much every song on the frist three records describe both guys and girls doing stupid shit, and Craig giving his remarks on the actions. I find the criticism a bit... thin. I totally respect Franz wanting to do his own thing, and even the notion that the path Hold Steady was (and still is) on didn't interest him anymore. But his last record is probably the closest he's ever been to the sounds and style of Hold Steady. Lots of guitars, lots of backing vocals and a celebratory feel to it all. I like it a lot, but it's not a quantum leap from the straigh-forward rock'n'roll show that is The Hold Steady. |
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Post by chinaski on Feb 8, 2015 6:07:09 GMT -5
Sure, Holly (though that’s a pretty familiar romanticization of the old Madonna/whore thing), but especially on the last record there’s an uncomfortable amount of frankly condescending and not a little contradictory (“It’s a big city, there’s a lot of love/you gotta get back out there“) versus “I’m sorry, but there’s other words than yes/why don’t you wait a while?” attitudes toward the women in the songs. It’s a problem." This is a strange criticism to me. Surely two contradictory views would mean you can't take both as the same voices opinion? Or maybe 'get back out there' doesn't have to be contradictory anyway. Maybe it means get back out and doing things - 'let the city live your life for you tonight' - rather than simply jump straight back into dating. Dating isn't the only thing you can do in the world. Love in the sense of 'there's a lot of love' doesn't even have to mean relationships or sex. It can mean joy. Plus, I seriously doubt that someone who has been through a divorce sincerely believes that 'heartbreak hurts but you can dance it off' is all it takes to get over a relationship. Having said that, I do find it funny how often interviewers compliment Craig on his female characters. It's almost as if they give him credit just for writing about women. It really highlights how little that is done in rock music in any way other than as objects of lust/heartbreak. To me, the characters that appear in Hold Steady songs don't really have rigid personality traits that I'm familiar with anyway, they are more thrust into situations and react to them in ways I understand. I couldn't tell you about Holly as a person. But then I couldn't tell you about Gideon either. But I could tell you some stuff that had happened to them. EDIT: More on topic, I've not actually managed to pick up the latest Franz record yet but do enjoy his others so I will get round to it. And I always like hearing his opinions on music etc too. |
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Post by junobeach on Feb 12, 2015 11:50:11 GMT -5
To be honest, those lines he singles out do irk me on the new records.
He's entitled to an opinion like everyone, opening those horseshoe shows would have been rad.
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