Avril Lavigne isn’t so much a chick with a guitar as an idea of a chick with a guitar, a positioning-strategy-as-artist that wedged her fully-clad persona between the sweaty, saccharine-porn gyrations of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the turn of the millennia. This was ideal for moms and daughters everywhere, the former who needed to stop her offspring from dressing in assless chaps for Halloween, and the latter who needed the emo-go-girl affirmations that can only be bestowed by someone who a) thrashes a guitar, b) wears Converse, and c) aggressively applies eyeliner.
In the post-grid, YouTube-is-the-new-MTV chapter of media, Lavigne is also testament to the durability of “image management,” a dark art that less successful chicks with guitars might ought study should they aspire to 200m streams on the GooTube. Watch “Girlfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. The video isn’t so much a visualization of a song as it is the careful transformation of a product, like Tide becoming “Tide with Baking Soda.” Lavigne still targets her young audience with a cool-girl-steals-nerd-girl’s-boyfriend storyline, but she also bashes out the song in high-heels, fishnet stockings, and a carefully groomed application of “motherf#cking.” Ironically, the glam-brat routine is a makeover of “serious Avril,” the singer-songwriter persona her management tried to upsell for her second album, Under My Skin.
As a Canadian, it’s hard not to note (and possibly celebrate) Lavigne’s commercial success—she’s done more for our GDP than either the Liberal or Conservative governments—and the lineage she joins, from Celine to Shania to Sarah et al. Is she talented? Possibly. The problem with branding (or solution, depending on where you stand) is that it erases the imperfections that reveal whether something is authentic. We may never now “what” Avril Lavigne “is.” But then, why do we have to go and make things so complicated?
Along with Feist and The Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara are THE reason Canadian tourists don’t get shot in foreign countries. They’ve made us too cool to kill.
Hailing from the oil patch and now splitting their time between Montreal and Vancouver, the alt-rock sisters have released five albums in 10 years—an accomplishment that is 31% more impressive than, say, designing a new car or Beijing Olympic stadium, if only because the twins are just 28. They’re also signed to Neil Young’s label which adds at least another 13% more to the impressive factor and ensures their kick-ass rock-a-tude will get smarter and deeper while their hairstyle remains butch and carefully unkempt.
Now, while the girls a) know how to rock, b) sing great harmonies, c) write their own material, and d) hang with Death Cab, they sometimes e) sound whiney and f) encourage bad manners through dumb lyrics like “I’m not unfaithful/but I’ll stray.” (Kids: don’t listen to that crap.) However, this can be easily forgiven by turning up the volume on I Bet it Stung and kicking things over. Rock on.
When I first prepared my list of sixty-or-so chicks with guitars, I jotted down Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics tune “Savage” from the album of the same name, not so much for it’s “guitarness” (although it does feature some fine wailing by Dave Stewart in the last bit) but rather it’s “chickness.” It’s one bitch of a song, all tense and cruel, and, well, savage.
Since Lennox doesn’t really a) play guitar or b) write much of her material, I figured I’d have to find some hook to include her on the list, perhaps rare concert footage of her belting away on a Gibson or penning lyrics at her Steinway. But as I trolled the web and my vinyl collection in vain, I was struck by something far more important about the Diva…and it hit me as I was staring at a picture of Madonna.
When you think about it—and I have thought about it in case you don’t care to—Annie Lennox and Madonna are the Wright Brothers of modern women’s music, inventors and explorers who hacked the emerging global media machine and soared by screwing with our notions about gender and sexual politics. If Gloria Steinem spent the ‘70s explaining women wanted a) equal rights and b) equal pay, Medusa and Madge spent the ‘80s letting us know that a) some of us want to abuse you and b) it feels so go inside. By the time Sarah McLachlan and Co. strode across the stage at Lilith Fair in the ‘90s, finally shattering the boys-only radio and touring cabal, they walked in the pop-glitter wake of Lennox and Ciccone, entrepreneurs that used Reuters and Viacom to tell the world that sisters are, indeed, doing it, doing it.
Sinead O’Connor doesn’t immediately spring to mind when you say “chicks with guitars.” She doesn’t live in the American Northwest or sing duets with Emmylou Harris, and—if memory serves me—never performed at Lilith Fair. She also tore up a picture of the Pope on TV, something that doesn’t appear in the “chicks with guitars” etiquette handbook.
Yet, the girl rocks on a six string, writes wickedly smart lyrics, and has, rather famously, a voice you could pick out from an Irish chorus line. She’s also irregularly more fascinating than your average singer-songwriter: a crippling depressive who found the strength to assault the Catholic church, a woman who became ordained as a Priest, an Irish traditionalist who found redemption through reggae. O’Connor’s life and work is oddly feminist and epic, as if Jane Austen smoked a doobie and penned The Odyssey. And on the bookshelf of life, her story would make the raging nothingness of Kurt Cobain his generation’s Jabberwocky—all noise, no reason, and plain silly.
I have loved much of O’Connor’s work and admired much of her life, but no song gets me yelling and screaming like “No Man’s Woman,” her polemic about love, gender, and the solidity of faith. I had planned on linking to an MP3, but finding none, discovered the video on YouTube. How odd it is: out of sync, melodramatic, a bit clumsy at times. But also occasionally stunning, if not for O’Connor herself then the image of her as bridesmaid, tattered and lumbering through Dublin, dying and then reborn through music.
I noticed the Be Good Tanyas back in 2003 when Arnold Advertising still worked on the VW account and made great ads with music from the likes of Nick Drake and Charles Mingus. They designed an awesome music sampling site (“Pods Unite,” to promote the Beetle’s iPod integration) that featured the “hobo-erotic” sounds of the Tanyas, an Americana trio from Vancouver that features the mesmerizing voice of Frazey Ford who, like some vocal gymnast, manages excruciatingly beautiful harmonies with her partners Samantha Parton and Trish Klein.
As LastFM will tell you, the band’s most popular song is The Littlest Birds, a blue grass soliloquy about—what else—sad hearts and wandering ways. But my favorite is Light Enough to Travel, a zippy number that finishes with the curious line “had to throw down my accordion/to get away from the police.” (It also begins with a line that many Blastees have experienced first-hand: “Wound up drunk again on Robson street.”)
The Tanyas announced this year they were going on hiatus to reboot, leaving music producers from the shows “Weeds” and “The L Word” in a tizzy to find compatible music to accompany Mary Louise Parker getting high or Jennifer Beals getting laid. Likely they’ll turn to Po’Girl, another Vancouver-based acoustic band dabbling in Americana/alt-country that thankfully includes, from time to time, Trish Klein from the Tanyas on banjo and vocals.
I came across The Like through the color-drenched photos of industrial designer Ross Reyes, who spends his spare time capturing the moody life of LA in general and the indie band scene in particular. That’s one of his photos above.
The trio of girls are relatively new (their first album was released only three years ago), but they’ve got a sweet, smart sound that I attribute to the fact that they’re vegetarians (presumably, if they ate hormone-laced meat like everyone else, they’d be more aggressive and wind up sounding like bands from Detroit).
Release Me is my favorite tune. I’ve played it far too often, if only to enjoy the final harmony. Ladies, you’ll appreciate the song’s canny take on relationship flip-flops.
i wish you knew that i’m not the one for you
you’re not the one for me
and i can’t stand it
after all i put you through
you’re still just stuck like glue
why don’t you run from me
cos i can’t leave you
before i break your heart
release me
mine is such a sorry state
i gave my heart away
when i could love with grit and guts and reckless unrestraint
those were the days
i wish you knew that i’m not the one for you
you’re not the one i need
and i can’t stand it
after all i put you through
you’re still just stuck like glue
why don’t you run from me
cos i can’t leave you
before i break your heart
release me
you’re a boy that i could love
and all i do is run
and still i keep you hoping someday soon our day will come
and it never does
i wish you knew i’m not the one for you
i’m just a sad excuse for what you long for
and after all i do
i’m still just stuck like glue
why don’t you run from me
cos i can’t leave you
before i break your heart
release me
nothing ever changes
people never change
so passion turns to sheer compulsion
and love it turns to hate
i wish you knew i’m not the one for you
you’re not the one for me
and i can’t stand you
after all you put me through
i’m still just stuck like glue
why don’t you run from me
cos i can’t leave you
before i break your heart
before it breaks my heart
before you break my heart
release me
release me
release me
release me
Any list about chicks with guitars has to start and end with Patty Griffin, the scrawny but oh-so-powerful Maine native who, by all accounts (and by “all” I mean “my”), is Springsteen’s heir apparent.
My introduction to Griffin was her second album, Flaming Red, a blistering set of tracks that included “Tony,” a song that Warren Hodgson cranked every day for a month at Animatics, the agency in the 90’s where I came to love all things internet. (Rod Zylstra, a good friend and frequent foil, claims he introduced me to Griffin, which is both an indication that a) everyone wants to claim something about Griffin, and b) he is a petty man.)
Griffin released five more albums after Flaming Red, all increasingly quieter and personal. Each one has added several gems to her repertoire, and each one has further defined her unique take on love, loneliness, pain, and redemption. Like many fans, I’m waiting for the day she releases another “loud” album, but I’ll take anything she gives and bless the lord she’s alive.
Chicks with Guitars is a weblog about a) chicks with b) guitars. Often, its about pop culture, punk feminism, and the curious nature of modern music. Occasionally, it links to free MP3s. Sometimes, it’s entertaining. Rarely is it important.
