Word: cle
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...progressive, prolific Wellwoods - prolific in both writing and childbearing, Olive and Humphry have a brood of seven - and their artsy friends and acolytes form the core of Byatt's novel, and they are an invigorating bunch. Fin de siècle England was bursting with new ideas and beliefs (socialism, suffragism, anarchism, free love), and Byatt's characters are exuberant participants, joining, lecturing, writing, rebelling, and navigating the fallout when their experiments (particularly in the free-love category) come to grief...
...believe.”)—they all make Morisset’s film and Arcade Fire a little less accessible. The group produces some fantastic music, but they too often resort to trading on their mystique. Their onscreen mawkishness and their fin-de-siècle peasant costumes cultivate an image designed to endear them to the white middle-class (it bears mentioning that the film’s only nonwhite characters are a quartet of black female singers hired to sing backgrounds on a track). Arcade Fire may not be in love with the modern world...
Plenty hard, it seems, since somewhere in the course of our fin de siècle excess, we corrupted the culture of contrition as well. Public apologies now play like vaudeville: the extravagant remorse of disgraced televangelists, the snarled "I'm sorry" of celebrities who exude regret at being caught rather than being wrong, the artful admissions of politicians who want credit for their confessions without any actual cost. We've learned to peel them apart with tweezers, find the insincerity and self-interest: If I caused any offense (you thin-skinned morons), I regret it. And so apologies...
...most recently, Rihanna; the hi-hat and cowbell have lingered. They’re less and less surreptitious. With the recent digital release of reissues by artists like Russell, the sensibilities of those early innovators are more relevant now than ever. This last fin de siècle saw the rise and fall of Britpop (Oasis, Blur) and the Post-Punk Revival/New York Rock Rennaissance (The Strokes, The Libertines). Both movements suffered from the perception of having valued nostalgia over relevancy, or even quality. When Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas sang, “I’ve got nothing...
...previously wispy arrangements. “To Go Home,” the album’s first single and the eponymous highlight of M. Ward’s newest EP, is a case in point. Pitching up and down like a creaky fin de siècle roller coaster, the rollicking Daniel Johnston cover exemplifies Ward’s newfound balancing act. Offsetting the pounding drums, which swell repeatedly to (almost) fist-pump-inducing crescendos, Ward’s throwback vocal style, with support from singer Neko Case, reminds listeners of older, gentler, “pre-war?...