Full Title - So Much Staying Alive And Lovelessness. Recorded and mixed by Graeme Gibson at Clava Studios and further gussied up with help from a plethora of fellow Chicago luminaries from Califone, Edith Frost, Isotope 217, Ugly Casanova, Boas, Owen, Pinebender, Rabbit Rabbit, Red Red Meat, Need New Body and Chicago Underground Duo. Jade Tree. 2003. Album Description
 |  | A Challenging Listen, but brilliant |  |
For those who are expecting another How Memory Works or Live in Chicago, hold your horses. Joan of Arc has grown up. Just like previous albums, Joan of Arc's So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness is a fantastic psychedelic brain trip that challenges the ideas of rhythm, melody, and coherence. But the similarities stop there. Quite simply, Joan of Arc has put out thier rock album. Upon first listen I hated this record. However I usually find that the hard to listen to records usually become my favorites after repeated listens. There is something both disturbing and soothing about Joan of Arc's seemingly random guitar meanderings, subtle beats and Tim Kinsella's neurotic, yet buttery voice. Once you allow your brain to accept the experimental nature of the music you begin to hear how brilliant it really is. It is not at all random, but a well orchestrated, complicated masterpiece that truly defies genre. It's like listening to Sonic Youth if they were really into new Radiohead with Nick Drake as the mouthpiece. For those of you who REALLY appreciate music for music's sake, or old Joan of Arc fans, challenge yourself by trying this album out and see if it doesn't grow on you. I give this CD a 4/5 for originality, and better listenability than most of thier previous albums. Great.
March 23, 2004| | | Normalating from the Deviation | |
At first listen you may be wishing that you could harken back to the Joan of Arc of 1999, and erase this memory from your head, but after repeated listenings this CD becomes something that embeds in your psyche. A bit more melodic and calm that prior releases, it does a nice job at making workable lyrics...and throws in the occasional chorus or two. Tracks 2, 6, and 11 are the highlights, melding beautiful spoken word elements on 11. Shell out the big bucks and add this to your collection.
February 10, 2004This is Joan of Arc but so different from their other albums. I really enjoyed the first four albums especially the middle three as for this, this is very different. Tim is singing more in tune, he's creating melodies, his lyrics make more sense, the album is actually structures into songs. . .in otherwords, it's all wrong. If you never liked Joan of Arc to begin with you'll like this, if you've liked Joan of Arc a lot this'll be somewhat of a dissapointment, get In Rape Fantasy & Terror Sex We Trust instead.
November 10, 2003I don't understand why anyone would like this album. In fact I'd wonder if the Joan Of Arc fans who like this record ever really appreciated their other albums at all. All their other albums were great, The Gap less so, but the first three were full of excellent melodic interesting music. This new album is so bland, dull, dead, uninteresting and worthless. You might as well listen to an Oasis album.
March 5, 2003 | | Junkmedia Review- Pretentious or challenging? You decide | |
Calling Joan of Arc a "band" is something of a misnomer. They've always seemed like more of an art project than your standard rock group. Joan of Arc songs lurch in all different directions: some sound impossibly complex, others willfully tossed off. Tempos change frequently and without warning, guitars weave and wind around each other, and random noise seeps in through the cracks. Over it all, Kinsella moans, croons, and howls lyrics about linguistics, trash culture, and obscure French films. Is it any wonder he's half-jokingly said his band plays "music that no one likes"?
But people do like Joan of Arc, and there are a lot of worthwhile, adventurous ideas happening all over Lovelessness. "The Infinite Blessed Yes" is a beautifully drifting tune that almost feels poppy despite its odd time signature and impenetrable lyrics. She said you can't be so quietly gay / Cuz I already am and no one will ever let you keep anything they know you have. And "Perfect Need and Perfect Completion" has an almost straightforward (although still a bit oblique) narrative, revealing a movement away from the too-smart-for-his-own-good approach that has plagued other Kinsella releases. Perhaps most interesting is "Mr. Participation Billy," in which the singer details random acts of violence over a jaunty piano melody. Never has anyone sung "he got his pelvis smashed with a baseball bat" so sweetly.
Whether you find Kinsella's brand of experimental pop insufferably pretentious or delightfully challenging (I find it a bit of both), you have to give the man credit for his vision. Indie rockers are often content to run their sound into the ground, content to play things safe. But Joan of Arc seem to work without a net, allowing their impulses and instincts to guide them, no matter what the consequences. The ride may be a bumpy one, but that doesn't mean its not exhilarating.
Tyler Wilcox
February 10, 2003
Junkmedia Review February 19, 2003
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