happy yr enjoying the record.
first off, wow! thank you for such a great post with so much info! i honestly thought this post was gonna get instantly buried, so posts like this are a wonderful surprise.
I loved Priests from the jump—the Radiation/Personal Planes 7" came out and I was all in right away. Everything they did from then through Nothing Feels Natural was fantastic, and I'm glad I got to catch them live a few times.
The Seduction of Kansas was a big step down I thought, and then the band essentially ended. The first LP from Taylor's other band Flasher came out a while before that, and while I didn't love that either I liked it more.
see, this is where one of those hot takes i mentioned earlier comes in... Priests was always a band i respected way more than i actually
liked. as someone who's most formative years were shaped heavily by discovering the riot grrrrl movement, i immediately felt Priests on a deep level and connected with it quickly... even had a friend suggest Priests to me because they knew i was into that kinda shit. but i just never really found them wonderful on a musical level, though it should be noted that in recent years i've found myself listening to far less rock music, so that could have played into it.
I was hopeful for Barbarism even though I didn't like the singles, because I thought K.A.G. could still have something up her sleeve. But it's just not my thing. This kind of floaty, amorphous industrial art pop isn't my bag at all. I listen to a ton of ambient and sound collage, so my problems come more when musicians make stuff that splits the difference. All of this sounds to me like it can't decide whether to be a song or a sketch and satisfies as neither. All told I really don't like the direction Greer dragged Priests into at the end, and I don't like this. Wishing her the best though. (EDIT: after posting I realized everybody else was using they/them and worried I'd screwed up her pronouns but no, Katie uses she/her pronouns.)
very fair points! i can totally respect your experience with the record, and i could imagine it would be really frustrating for it to not connect when you've loved the stuff they've done before so much and have just felt it connecting with you less and less as they continued.
i personally can't get enough of when music feels like an atmosphere you exist in, or a little world you live in, so the interplay between more rigid and more abstract song structure kind of blurs the line for me and makes it really thrilling to be in for a while. but to each their own!
and i just generally try to use neutral pronouns until i know someone's preferred pronouns, just to avoid assumption, which was the only reason i was using they/them! appreciate the info on the proper pronouns, good to know moving forward!
Meanwhile all 3 other Priests seem to be doing well:
They all boost each other's current bands and work and are friendly, while none of them have mentioned Katie's work and have distanced themselves from her since the breakup...can't help but make one speculate about who the party at fault is for their dissolution
Daniele is in a handful of bands, Taylor has a new Flasher album out that's getting good reviews, and Gideon is in this funkier band now (with the drummer from Ex Hex) that's opened for Gang of Four at some shows.
yeah, even just as a casual fan near the end of their lifespan, it was obvious there were battling artistic and stylistic drives in the group and it was kinda barely holding itself together. in my humble experiences in imploding bands, i find that those kinds of fractures are usually the most charged and damaging ones, but i don't know enough about the people involved to really talk about why they aren't friends anymore... regardless, it is interesting to note, and considering how different this sounds from what they made before, it's at least pretty clear something had to give for Katie to be able to go this far out on a record.
ooo, that's all cool to know! i'll have to check some of those out, especially Gideon's new band... opening for Gang of Four is pretty rad, even if they aren't as cool as they used to be lol
hm, the singles got coverage at NPR, Stereogum, Pitchfork, more. Pitchfork will probably review it this week. Seems to me like it's gotten as much coverage as any other record.
okay, i'll admit that point was, like, 50% based on me seeing not much post release coverage/reviews (and totally forgetting Pitchfork mentioned the record because i don't care much about them lol), 50% me just wanting to be a little bit of a catty shithead, so feel free to disregard lol
