Occasionally, copywriters paint themselves into corners. Years ago, some Michigan salaryman decided Kellogg's Wheats were just too large to handle for an accelerating American culture. Born soon were the Mini-Wheats, painted in glucose shellac for a still further accelerating American culture.
As time passed, the old culture-accelerating pedal was kept firmly to the floor, and before long, Americans demanded a cereal that could at least fit on a spoon or be poured directly into a mouth held agape. Kelloggs' marketing department already had their Mini-Wheats; where could they go from there? Consulting the office Thesaurus, Kellogg's thinktankers fiddled with Bantam Wheats, Lilliputian Wheats, Teeny Wheats, and Microscopic Wheats. Caffeine-burned and frustrated, they finally realized they'd exasperated their Wheats scale decades earlier. The marketers threw in the towel and went with "Spoonsize." Lesson learned: consider the future before throwing adjectives at a product.
If only I'd taken more Marketing classes or gotten past page four of Tony the Tiger Was Hunted and Killed for the Medicinal Purposes of His Ground Penis: The Downfall and Mis-Marketing of Kellogg's Cereal in Late 20th Century Asian Markets, I might have learned from this modern fable in regards to my continual critical relation to Joan of Arc. Live in Chicago, 1999, the predecessor to The Gap, struck me as "horrible," "abysmal," and perhaps, "the worst record I've ever heard." How could I fail to consider another album?!
Yet, Tim Kinsella and Joan of Arc are back with the minimal, random The Gap. Live in Chicago, 1999 was certainly "abysmal," but that word implies a "bottomless," "fathomless," or "infinite" depth of horrible. How can one proceed further than the infinite? But let's skip all this classification and reification of "horrible" and cut to the chase: Joan of Arc make unlistenable faux-art records.
Tim Kinsella has embraced ProTools editing and David Grubbs in a similar technology/hero fetish as Harmony Korine with his digital camcorder and Dogme 95 directors. Both jet-haired, unwashed-looking pretenders name-drop John Cassavetes and Assata Shakur-- Kinsella in the title to The Gap's brief drone instrumental, "John Cassavetes, Assata Shakur, and Guy Debord Walk into a Bar..."; Korine in his tossed-off, cut-and-paste "novel," A Crackup at the Race Riots-- while wrapping their hollow ideas in whatever formless movement currently licks the lobes of the Village Voice.
Lightweight absurdity runs throughout their work with intended irony, but true humanity is never injected to raise the work even a half-notch above pure absurdity. Thus, song titles like "(You) [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] as (I) [You] Can", despite whatever in-jokes or winking, merely frustrate. "Another Brick at the Gap (Part 2)" (there's no part one) and "United Colors of the Gap" similarly hint at satire, but offer quiet wank. The silhouettes against white that comprise the record's packaging fittingly sum up its empty ingredients.
There are two discernable songs on The Gap-- the first and the last-- which are interchangeable. Gentle, haphazard acoustic and/or clean electric guitar pickings trickle over rodent percussion. With the aid of computer editing, the music's spinal matter is spread even thinner. Consider it the first Free Emo record. "Freemo," if you will. The scatterbrain blips and digital hum follow no pattern which would imply a floating, associative stream-of-consciousness concept. But the music is being associated to nothing other than overused post-rock/emo clichés, and is arguably unconscious to begin with.
"(You) [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] as (I) [You] Can" abruptly cuts into awkward silence throughout. The sound of sneakers in a dryer rumbles underneath. Welcome to the future! Of music! Somewhere in the middle of the utterly indistinguishable tracks 3 to 7, a lifelike police siren rises. Perhaps Tim Kinsella realizes his crime, but it's neither amusing or interesting. Jeremy Boyle, playing the "Computer," erodes each track into near nothingness, which is frankly a step up from the previous record. Kinsella's lyrics remain refreshingly absent for the most part.
Joan of Arc comprise a tiny, relatively new niche in underground music. A so-called "art band" on a disrespected, bleached, college-boy pop label that impresses few Wire subscribers, the Arc will never shake their whiny emo roots. Nor do they deserve to. Kinsella might remain the token "difficult" artist in the indie pop collection of University students, but Joan of Arc are as Chicago, low-class, unknown, and unappetizing as Green River cola. The Gap will be their Spoonsize Horrible album.
