Grand Duchy‘s “Silver Boys” toes the line between vapid and pretentious. It’s the perfect song for practicing your signature walk on the runway sidewalk*, as it transports you back to a 1960s era devoted to art, glamour, community and, er, drugged-out orgies. You guessed it (or maybe you didn’t). The song’s about Andy Warhol and The Factory.
It took me a while to get into this track, and I’m still not sure whether my love’s more guilty pleasure or legitimate musical appreciation. My instincts are telling me to lean towards the latter. After all, this is a side project by Pixies‘ frontman Black Francis and his wife Violet Clark, and their transparency about the lack of hipness is quite refreshing. Says Clark:
“There’s more energy left in the music if you’re not picking it all apart with your brain, worrying about whether what you’re doing is ‘cool’ or not. I have decided that ‘cool’ has no place in what we’re trying to do or achieve. What is ‘cool’ anyway?”
Exactly! In a world full of people trying to be “cool” or “edgy”, you’ve got to respect someone who can just dork out and make everything so obvious it’s almost painful. Truthfully, I was going to say the video for “Silver Boys” takes away from the experience, but you know what? They’re having fun, and this song is just that—pure fun.
* Not that I would know anything about this.
