The Non-Pornographers
March 16, 2007
The critic and Abercrombie and Fitch auteur Slavoj Zizek once declared, “if we show ‘the thing itself,’ we necessarily lose what we were after.” He was talking about pornography, but the point holds: desire is desire only when it’s deferred; we want what we can’t have. A tired maxim, maybe, but the possibility of love is perhaps the pop song’s ideal subject: if returned affection makes us complacent, and unrequited love makes us bitter, certain bands were born to cover that euphoric space between. The Shivvers were one: formed in Milwaukee at the end of the ‘70s, the short-lived band produced some of pop’s most ecstatic portraits of, among other things, phone calls, preemptive nostalgia, and falling in love. On “Please Stand By,” singer Jill Kossoris, accompanied by a smattering of giddy handclaps, urges us to “please stand by for”—wait for it—“love.” Love, to paraphrase, is just around the corner, and maybe it should stay there: “I want you by my side / don’t want to wait for it,” she sings, but the waiting sounds so good.

If the Shivvers possess a certain jolly messiness—a few ragged edges, something to wrap themselves with in the cold Wisconsin winter—the Split Enz reside comfortably on the opposite end of the metaphoric meteorological spectrum. A hit in New Zealand, 1980’s “I Got You” is clean, sunny, and jubilantly uncertain. “Look at you, you’re a pageant / you’re everything that I’ve imagined,” they waver, and then the song soars: “I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened.” A standard confession, of the kind the Finn brothers do so well, and it works, as they repeat the admission over and over. The song hardly moves at all—there’s no arc, no giving in or giving up, just the chorus, and the chorus again. They revel in the moment, just like we all do: why make up your mind when indecision is this glorious?\

Elizabeth Gumport | 8:00 am