Mecca Normal
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.
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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.”
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.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jean Smith.
