musical interlude: marisa anderson ‘gorgeously visceral’ instrumental guitar

Anderson, from Portland, Oregon, is a rare female adherent to the “American primitive” style of guitar playing (though she may reject the label) – a pretty yet emotionally fraught fingerpicking, shot through with the blues. Hers is often delivered on an electric guitar, adding a gorgeous rough irreverence. She’s stepping up to the Thrill Jockey label after a number of self-released albums, with Cloud Corner the first track – a whimsical wall of echoing melody – to emerge. guaridan, written by benbeaumont.thomas@theguardian.com

well, that’s a journalists perspective… personally, i think a proper editor would have found a conflict between ‘pretty’ and ‘rough’, and deleted the former, while, substituting for ‘rough’, gorgeously visceral. and i have no doubt that she would reject: ‘american primitive’… and rightly so! so why use it if she would reject it? at least without making a case for using it… and it’s very difficult to imagine such a case. and, ‘emotionally fraught’? i guess only women are ‘emotionally fraught’. isn’t music exactly about that? would you say that, the sex pistols, or, the rolling stones, or madonna, or any musician at all, were emotionally, ‘un-fraught’?

and just to be clear: i’m a straight man writing this. your comments offend a large percentage of men precisely because you, ben beaumont thomas, offend their mothers, or sisters, or girlfriends, to be churlish about it. not to mention their male siblings, fathers, uncles and gay nieces and nephews, queer parents and grandparents, and even the sexual complexity of pet dogs. it’s terrible when the guardian fails.