"Hi!"Listening to new Grizzly Bear Friend EP (now streaming at their MySpace), and methinks that it is better when they actually make songs and not amorphous "arrangements." I don't know why their reading of Spector-Goffin-King's bizarre Crystals curio "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" is somehow exempt from filing in the postmodern "haw haw how very ironically droll of you" bin . Frankly, I don't care what you say about "He Hit Me", even Spector-Goffin-King knew when the record came out (and resoundingly flopped) in '62 that whatever statement it was trying to make, it wasn't making it loudly and clearly enough to avoid coming off like a creepy paean to domestic violence as domestic bliss - which wasn't their intention, nor is it Grizzly Bear's in resurrecting the tune. Pitchfork honcho Ryan Schreiber - who has a review byline for what must be the first time in ages, at least that I've noticed - countenances this, dismissing the song as having "been retread to death as an ironic staple of anyone trying way too hard to be subversive." He then goes on to say
Fortunately, I was able to work past my biases and hear how Grizzly Bear reshape the Goffin/King flop as liberally as they do their own material: Writing in their own psych-drenched passages, the band reimagines the song's bouffant-haired innocence as a baroque-pop experiment redolent of the Zombies, the Hollies, or the Left Banke.Frankly, I've never heard the "bouffant-haired innocence" in the Crystals' original; perhaps that's just because the song's lyrical content seems to augur producer Phil Spector's impending slide into control-obsessed megalomania. However, I also don't hear where Grizzly Bear are deviating from Spector's original altogether too much - certainly not enough to coin their version a re-imagining - yeah, there's a slight psych freak-out (particularly slight when you consider the nature of a real psych freak-out), but it's certainly not any more baroque than the original. If anything it's Spector's version of the song that's way left-field, at least if you consider the fact that he was angling to get his record into the Top 40; all Grizzly Bear's done is put it on a (remarkably well done) stop-gap EP that, in the grand scheme of things, nobody's going to hear.
"He Hit Me" is a bit like Disney's controversial Song of the South in that, though it may be compromised content-wise, it's still such an important artifact, both technically and culturally, that it can never quite be banished from the popular consciousness. For his part, Spector, whose genius and accomplishments (as well as those of Gerry Goffin and Carole King) are what keep the record vital, has shown no inclination to disavow the song or withdraw it from the market. I suppose that Grizzly Bear's recontextualization does make the song more enjoyable and less discomfiting - ironic distance and all of that - but it's also worthless. I don't mean that as a criticism; given the strange and powerful singularity of the original article, it's merely a statement of fact.
