The Best in Order of Preference

1. “Late,” Florrie
2. “Super Ultra,” Charli XCX
3. “Cold Summer,” CJ Hilton
4. “Warrior,” Queen of Hearts
5. “Skitszo Pt. 1,” Colette Carr
6. “Iconic,” Icona Pop
7. “True,” Solange
8. “Cityswitch,” SRH
9. “Ghost,” Sky Ferreira
10. “Against the Wall,” Kat Graham

The release of an EP has become a rite of passage in pop music. It’s meant to mark an artist’s readiness for greater things, while defining how that artist wants to be seen by his or her public.

In the pre-download days, the music industry didn’t have much use for EPs. They were neither here nor there. It must not have seemed worth it—all the paper, plastic and aluminum it took to convert five castoff tracks into a marketable product.

But EPs have now been embraced by the demoralized, declining music industry, precisely because the format is flyover country. There’s no recognized history of past success, no tradition associated with EPs. Failures go unnoticed amid that flat terrain.

Many of the artists who made notable EPs in 2012 probably won’t become pop superstars. But they were successful in this particular year, in this particular format, because unlike major-label moneymakers and TV talent show contestants, the recordings were made to justify their claim on an audience’s attention and did so, even if just for the length of a few tracks.

Stuck neither here nor there, they devised a destination for themselves and went there. And it turned out to be somewhere worth going. To me, that’s pop.

Florrie.

‘LATE,’ FLORRIE
“Late” is Florrie’s third and final EP before her major-label debut, expected to drop sometime this year. All three were produced by Xenomania, the British pop production outfit where Florrie was once house drummer.

She has also been a model, and there is something of a runway attitude about these four tracks. Even more than in “Introduction” and “Experiments,” the first two Florrie EPs, the songs here march out fiercely to meet you.

“Late” goes way beyond ambition, aesthetic and commercial. These songs are so focused and tightly wound they suggest that, for Florrie and her collaborators, the pursuit of pop perfection has become an idée fixe.

Indulging Xenomania’s famous penchant for toying with song structure, Florrie builds ecstatic melodies out of chants that initially seem lightweight (e.g., “I shot him down-down-down-down-down-down,” “You gotta earn every inch of my body, babe”).

But if the songs on “Late” have a common “theme,” it’s that Xenomania’s pop vision—which Florrie incarnates—is not to be trifled with. The polish and sharpness of this sophisticated EP render totally irrelevant the question of how seriously we’re meant to take it.

That’s because Florrie and Xenomania prize sincerity over seriousness. The final track, “To the End,” clarifies the sense of moral purpose behind their embrace of what’s commonly labeled disreputable. Florrie calms the culture’s Fear of Music as she intones, “Who knows what the future holds? Better do what you’re told … I will only bring you happiness.”

When I started this piece I found myself writing the same story everyone else has about the emergence of President Clinton as the star of the 2012 election cycle. His incredible Democratic convention speech made the arguments on behalf of President Obama better than the candidate himself – leaving pundits speechless and the party faithful hungry for more. And by cleverly extending his speech into the local evening news, he grabbed millions of viewers otherwise disinterested in politics.

The Obama cultivation and inclusion of Clinton in his reelection effort is no real surprise. Recent polling shows that 68 percent of Americans view Clinton favorably – 18 points higher than President Obama and more than 50 points higher than Congress. President Clinton oversaw the greatest economic expansion in recent history, creating 22 million jobs under his watch. But it’s not just his record that is appealing. Democrats appreciate the Clintons more in hindsight because they remember not only his ability to connect with voters, and enthusiasm for the Party faithful – but also his political acumen. Everyone misses the old days, when no one was above a good partisan fight, but politics wasn’t nasty or mean.

If Obama’s embrace of President Clinton is inherently logical, the opposite could be said about Mitt Romney. At first glance, it is stunning to think that the GOP nominee would ever see any advantage in playing up Clinton. But it was the best option he had.

While the GOP faithful still hold President Ronald Reagan in the highest esteem–and Mitt Romney referred to Reagan during the GOP primary–Reagan’s presidency was almost 25 years ago. A nice chunk of the electorate just isn’t familiar with Reagan, and think of him more as an historical figure rather than relevant to the politics of today. So while invoking Reagan might work with seniors, Reagan is not a useful standard-bearer for the voters Romney needed to reach.

Of course, Mitt Romney’s campaign also knew they couldn’t associate with President George W. Bush — the person most Americans still believe wrecked our economy and got us entangled in an unnecessary war in Iraq that cost us dearly in both lives and monies. Romney has gone out of his way not to discuss George W. Bush, and Romney is quick to change the subject if the Bush Presidency comes up.

So that left Clinton as the ‘go to’ guy. Romney may have made the calculation that Obama and Clinton had too much baggage between them to ever join forces. He was wrong.

I also believe that Romney may see much in common with President Clinton: a former governor with a focus on creating jobs; a politician who worked across the aisle when necessary, and a politician who believes he can triangulate himself in the model of Clinton. The Clinton association for Romney is about appealing to the middle, about beginning perceived as moderate. But here’s where Romney miscalculated.

The politics of the Great Recession are very different than in the Clinton era. In our hyper-partisan, Internet-fueled news cycle, Romney’s attempts to grab the middle just aren’t credible. Voters are paying more attention to the details than ever before. In the Bush years, they felt they were sold a false bill of goods – and they are now sensitive to Romney’s blatant flip-flops, like claiming credit for the auto bailout and now supportive of leaving Afghanistan in 2014 — that are spin rather than moderation.

We are now days way from determining the next President of the Untied States, and this is arguable an even more important election than 4 years ago.  We have two very different choices for president with very different ideas about government.

While both candidates have tried to associate themselves with President Clinton, only one can do so with credibility. There is a reason Bill Clinton is happily packing his schedule full of events to help re-elect President Obama, which I’m certain Clinton is enjoying. He knows that America cannot afford a President who says one thing, but will do another.  We had 8 years of that recipe and it was a disaster.

I know Bill Clinton, and Mitt Romney is no Bill Clinton. And the good news is the American people know it too.

Most recently, Clyde Williams was a congressional candidate for CD 13.  He served as National Political Director at the Democratic National Committee under President Barack Obama, Domestic Policy Advisor to President Bill Clinton, a Vice President at the Center for American Progress, and as Deputy Chief of Staff of the U S Department of Agriculture. You can follow him on Facebook@clydewilliams2012, on twitter@clyde2012.

In 2012, we will continue to develop into a dynamic, forward-looking neighborhood that attracts the best talent and innovation from all over the world. Our residential population will keep growing in the years ahead. As such, the residents of Lower Manhattan need to fight for their fair share. We all have to join together and organize in order to get the services and support this community deserves…I look forward to representing Lower Manhattan on the City Council in 2012 and, as always, I am humbled and honored to serve this community.

Emmerich’s destruction derby is extended through multiple subplots that string together the Chicken Little geologist, a divorced-dad novelist (John Cusack) and his estranged family, an end-of-days radio kook (Woody Harrelson) and, oh yeah, another black President of the United States (Danny Glover). The president’s daughter (Thandie Newton) is involved with saving the Louvre’s art treasures—key to a government conspiracy plot that involves Princess Diana’s death and the secret construction of modern-day arks.

2012’s narrative is super-banal and so are its special effects. All the crumbling and explosions that looked so cool in the TV commercials go by extremely fast. Videogame style replaces logic and physics. It lacks the imaginative weight of the disasters Spielberg visualized in War of the Worlds that conveyed a scary sense of reckoning. For critics who objected to Spielberg’s evocation of 9/11, Emmerich’s catastrophes are blame-free. They also lack the subversive, psychological pull that made WOTW and Final Destination 3 so magnificently surreal, powerful and cathartic.

King of the Dumbed-down blockbuster, Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) confuses asinine storytelling with populist escapism. He’s more manipulative than craftsmanly—always saving dogs, killing off low-wattage co-stars and stretching credulity to the point that, to give in, commits one to the illicit destruction of cinema. Strangely, Emmerich’s shamelessness parallels Richard Kelly’s enervated take on sci-fi horror in The Box, another over-long genre botch.

Kelly, king of dumbed-down nihilism, takes a short Twilight Zone TV episode, “Button, Button,” and extends it unendurably—to the point that there’s no longer any moral snap to the story of an American couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) accepting a million dollars to activate a box that will kill a stranger.

Of course, Kelly’s into serious grim-reaping, unlike Emmerich’s hackwork, but they both get the same demoralizing result. Each film features a scene where a child is isolated from its parents and tormented with possible abandonment or death. Kelly literalizes it by detailing the child’s sensory deprivation, and that’s essentially what Emmerich does to the popcorn audience.
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2012
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Runtime: 158 min.

The Box
Directed by Richard Kelly
Runtime: 116 min.

Get Armond White’s new book Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles from resistanceworkswdc@yahoo.com