Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Res’ How I Do Listen to “Golden Boys” from the album below, buy it here and read about it after the jump.
My sister Sara and I used drive to high school, 35 minutes each way, in our shared car. It had a tape player. I would make tapes; she got one of those converter things for her CD Walkman. We agreed to listen to the radio and Fiona Apple. She really liked Fleetwood Mac (all eras), I really liked Man is the Bastard. We didn’t mesh much. So sometimes one person got to own the stereo and the other sucked it up. I was meaner then about taste, less open, and Sara probably played a lot of things I like now (and also a lot of Melissa Ferrick) and Res’ How I Do is among them.
I bought this for four dollars at Other Music a few months ago after I found out Santi White wrote all but one of the songs. I remembered the album cover from Sara’s high school copy, but couldn’t place the songs in my mind. Then I put it on and I remembered them all. This record sounds like sunglasses look, that same functional calming. Her voice is a life accoutrement turned necessity. I just got some prescription sunglasses and my eyes have crutched impossibly hard without them, gawky squint. But I was fine without them. Things are better with Res, if not necessary, fine without her. Where do you draw that line, what’s good enough? I would not have thought it would be Res. But maybe it’s not Res, specifically, just her ambient aura and vague idea.
Another editor directed me to a brief article by then editor-in-chief Knox Robinson on Res in FADER number eight. She’s mentioned by name once. “Funny how How I Do could maker her feel like Nothing Matters, since the music was saying So Much, had so much to it, as if each track had been ripped open and stuffed with four times the sound than was almost bearable. There was too much music in it to describe or label—and how were they going to market this, anyway?—yet each song came together to convince you there was no moment other than this one.” It’s that feeling of constant weighty ephemera, that all moments are both infinitesimal and excruciatingly crucial, that Res’ music relays; the soundtrack to everything. “We know the truth about you” she sings accusatory in “Golden Boys,” and it’s the we that’s stirring trouble. She’s not speaking for herself, it’s on behalf of all of the other Reses who aren’t singers, but are there with her, their stance echoed by their neo-soul figurehead. “There’s girls like me, who sit appalled at what they see,” she says, and it feels so open. There’s not any ego, just a brazen and swift takedown. I like that. It’s good when someone has your back and it’s good when someone wants to stand up for you. Sometimes it’s good to let someone else have the spine, you know? We can stand huddled behind you, but go lead, it’s not for us. I was an 18-year-old boy when this came out. All I wanted to do was go to college and mosh, I didn’t really want any help. Now I don’t like help much more, but at least I know its place.
Related:
- March Is Schnipper Month: Y and Z
- March Is Schnipper Month: D
- March Is Schnipper Month: J
- March Is Schnipper Month: M
- March Is Schnipper Month: C
- posted on Apr 22, 2008 in MP3 / STREAMS
- tags R&B, Res
