Snort more tour support and then have a drink…
It goes without saying that The Streets’ appeal can be summed up in Mike Skinner’s laconic delivery, recounting with stultifying clarity the banal details of his life as an ascendant celebrity. Unlike Beck’s primed-for-prime-time demeanor thinly disguised by his careless what-me-worry veneer, Skinner engages in auto-critique to deconstruct his unhappy consciousness with a meta-concept album.
Like Debord’s aphorisms about celebrity, Skinner’s track by track commentaries prove that the only tangible difference between us and them is power and vacations. This one-sided interview is what Terry Gross/Fresh Air ought to expose: that the received notions we have about “the creative process” are mystifications meant to romanticize procrastinations and vice and elevate them intellectually. Because Skinner chooses not to dissemble for his audience, what you see is the unvarnished essence of his work: sheer boredom.
The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living says as much as can be said about the new album. In some respects, that this album is less exciting than the previous two is something of a triumph. He’s not naming The Unnamable, nor is it Flaubert, but bearing Mark E. Smith’s cross is no easy task either.