We are living after the end of the end of history—both in the sense that Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 theory of a democratic finish line has come and gone, and that it feels disconcertingly like we’re living through the end times themselves, alive after everything and left to make a life in the wreckage that optimism left behind. We are living post- everything: post-liberalism, post-language, post-hope. On “Culture,” Greg Freeman adds two more to the list: post-culture and post-rock-and-roll. The current moment, he says, is simply beyond analogy. When all our words are “plagiarized before they’re written,” as he puts it on “Loser’s Prize,” even art itself begins to feel mind-numbingly futile. Everything that’s worth saying has already been said, but if we say nothing at all…
Tag Archive: Greg Freeman
Greg Freeman’s 2022 debut album, I Looked Out, doesn’t really begin with a song — just sound. True to its placeholder title, opener “Horns” is 44 seconds of sheer noise: a trio of static-y clarinet, saxophone, and trumpet stretching to an earsplitting, nails-on-a-chalkboard crescendo.
Everything sounds distorted, like it was tracked on an old tape recorder that had been submerged underwater, including the song’s sole “lyric,” the record’s titular phrase. Hearing Freeman speak it, his vocals muddled and tone tentative, you get the sense you’ve stumbled upon something private, a relic you were never meant to discover.
The slow-burn success of I Looked Out has only heightened that feeling. Without backing from a PR campaign or major publications,…