“While Hopper’s words can shine a light on anything from Chance the Rapper to the commodification of Kurt Cobain, it is when she is writing about women’s work in music that she truly thrives. Whether she is listing examples of the special vitriol reserved for young women in rock (Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift) or praising the brutal honesty of Mecca Normal singer Jean Smith, her convictions are palpable.” — Kerry Cardoza reviewing Jessica Hopper’s book “The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic” (2015, Featherproof Books)
The article referred to appeared in the Chicago Reader circa 2006.
It was subsequently re-published
in the book “Best Music Writing 2007”
(Da Capo Best Music Writing)”
October, 2007.
by Jessica Hopper
In Jean Smith’s hands, a concept album
about Internet dating becomes an unsparing
investigation of what it means to be an
independent woman.
Mecca Normal
The Observer
(Kill Rock Stars)
Mecca Normal’s new album, The Observer, is
hard to listen to. Not for the usual reasons–I
don’t mean it sucks. What makes it tough going
is the same thing that makes it great: subtitled
“A Portrait of the Artist Online Dating,” it’s so
mercilessly honest and personal it’s hard to
believe it can exist in the pop-music marketplace.
A concept album about Jean Smith’s romantic life
as a single woman of 45, it develops a grim,
intimate picture of the solitary struggle for
connection that doesn’t go easy on anyone–not
Smith, not the men she dates, and certainly not
the audience. The pop canon is full of songs
about romantic longings and failures, so that
we’ve been conditioned to expect certain story
arcs, delivered in each genre’s codified language
–blues and its back-door men, hip-hop and its
baby mamas, rock and its lonely motel rooms.
There’s pleasure in having our sufferings and
hopes reaffirmed, however approximately, by such
archetypes. But Mecca Normal, the Vancouver duo
of Smith and guitarist David Lester, have spent two
decades hammering away at the musical and
social conventions that mainstream culture goads
us toward as listeners and as people. They’re
overtly political artists–anarchist-feminists both,
they’ve developed a traveling workshop called “How
Art and Music Can Change the World”–and their
loose, abrasive, drumless songs don’t rest easily in
any genre. And even coming from them The
Observer is startling.
When we listen to music it’s natural to try to relate to
the singer’s experience or inhabit it as our own, but
getting invited along on Smith’s blind dates and
hookups is discomfiting to say the least–as a
storyteller, she skips the niceties and just plunks
everything down on the table. “He tries to put the
condom on / He curses / I try to see what he is
doing,” she sings in her low, acidic croon. “But I’m
pinned beneath him / I hear him stretching the
condom like he’s making a balloon animal.”
All but a couple of the album’s 12 songs are
connected to its basic theme of relationships
between the sexes, and half are diaristic synopses
of actual dates Smith went on with men she met at
Lavalife.com. She’s a keen, literate lyricist, prosy
rather than melodic–right now she’s at work on her
fourth novel–and her attention to detail and
detached, acerbic tone make The Observer a
particularly apt title. Though each diary song is a
separate scene, with each man allowed his own
particulars, they’re unified by Smith’s blunt portrayal
of herself–we learn about her as a date, not just an
artist, and she makes a messy, inconsistent
impression, veering from cynical and judgmental to
petulant and needy.
On the album’s centerpiece, the 12-minute “Fallen
Skier,” she skips between snippets of dinner
conversation and an internal monologue about her
date, a 47-year-old student and recovering addict
who describes himself as a “fallen waiter/ski bum/party
guy.” From the moment she says “guy,” drawing it out
and accenting the word, you can tell she’s mocking him.
She repeats his story without sympathy, sounding
frustrated, almost disgusted: “I feel I’m with a boy,
a very young boy / He’s only been away from home
for 27 years / Only 27 summers, 27 winters / Partying
and skiing / I guess that’s why he hasn’t gotten
anything together yet / I don’t think he realizes it, but
his life has gotten away from him.” When he seems
concerned that her band might play hardcore punk,
she makes a half-indignant aside that lightens the
mood: “I stand, a middle-aged woman in a
fantastically subtle silk jacket / Hush Puppies / Curly
hair blowing in the wind / And this guy’s fretting over
the possibility / That I’m actually Henry Rollins.” But
almost immediately her complaints begin to
boomerang, telling us as much about her as they do
about him. “He never asked the name of my band,”
she says, “never tried to touch me.” Suddenly she
sounds vulnerable, even wounded–though her date’s
clearly wrong for her, she can’t keep herself from
wanting to be interesting and desirable to him. When
she hugs him good-bye at the end of their chemistry-
free evening, it’s unclear which one of them she’s
trying to console.
The Observer is a harsh toke, but it’s compelling on
all fronts–Smith’s lyrics force you to think about
loneliness, need, and bad dates, but the songs are as
engrossing as they are exhausting. Her voice flits and
dips like a plastic bag in the wind, moving from a
moany sort of sing-speech to a deep, silky quaver to a
thick shrill trilling, and she often drawls her words like
she’s trying to fill the room with distended consonant
sounds. The self-explanatory album opener, “I’m Not
Into Being the Woman You’re With While You’re
Looking for the Woman You Want,” is a glowing
example of the interplay between her vocals and
Lester’s guitar, which is equally distinctive and
powerful.
On “To Avoid Pain” the duo toys with early-60s pop
country as Smith hee-haws like a half-drunk Brenda Lee,
trying to talk herself down on the way to a first-time
hookup: “Take a city bus / To a downtown hotel / I don’t
feel weird / I don’t feel weird / Ask me / Ask me / Ask
me if I do.” Then, as a dark, discordant synth tone
rises out of the music, she eagerly proclaims a
dubious victory over her own unease: “Soon enough
it’s true-ooo!”
On “I’ll Call You” Lester’s buzz-saw guitar gallops
around Smith as she reads a fake personal ad–her
version of what a truthful guy would say–that sounds
like it was placed by a member of the Duke lacrosse
team. “Attraction Is Ephemeral,” which provides the
most complete picture of Smith and what she’s
about—the way she begins to doubt her own doubts,
wondering if she’d be able to spot genuineness in a
man even if it were there–is also the most musically
moving track on the album. It’s the most romantic
too—or rather, it’s most explicitly about romance, or
at least the yearning for it—though in typical Mecca
Normal fashion, it opens up from there, addressing
gender and class inequality, patriarchy, and how
they can really ruin a date.
In press releases and online materials, Smith
provides links to photos she’s used in her dating
profile, including shots where she’s posing in her
underwear and others where she’s wearing nothing
but the ribbon in her hair. But given how unpleasant
The Observer makes her dating life out to be, it’s hard
to argue that the pictures are just Liz Phair-style
exhibitionism–if you’re gonna use sex to sell records,
you don’t usually linger on the vulnerability that
intimacy requires.
In the band bio Smith notes her reluctance to make an
album about dating–as evidenced by the fallout late
last year over the book Are Men Necessary? by New
York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, romance is a
loaded topic among the feminist cognoscenti, perhaps
because it’s considered unseemly or irresponsible for a
feminist to openly admit to wanting or needing
something from men (or caring enough to be
disappointed with them). Dowd claims that successful
men don’t want competition from their partners, and
thus tend to date or marry down, choosing women who
are younger, less educated, and less accomplished.
Though she makes her argument largely with
generalizations, as opposed to Smith’s nuanced
particulars, both writers are suggesting the same
thing–that independent women wind up alone.
Smith is forthcoming about the concessions she makes
for intimacy–while she holds to her standards with men
who aren’t good enough, she swallows her pride and
sells herself out to others who don’t have much idea
who she is or much interest in finding out. But her
artistic integrity never wavers, and throughout it’s clear
she knows herself and understands the choices she’s
making. It’s a brave act for her to admit that she quietly
shushes the “difficult” parts of herself in order to
connect with men: she is airing a common secret of
women’s lives.
Cover design and self-portrait by Jean Smith
Mecca Normal 