Jay Farrar

turpentim wrote:Wow. What an idiot. I tried to figure out a way to email the reviewer or the site administrators, but couldn’t find any way to do it. Hopefully they’ll realize the error and suffer the appropriate embarrassment.

Tim in the ATL

I found him on twitter and notified him. I'm sure his defense will be that he never explicitly said Farrar wrote the lyrics, but whatever, he obviously didn't do his homework.

I found another review that makes the same assumption, that the lyrics to Rebel Girl were written by Jay Farrar.

"Then there’s Rebel Girl, a song about a "thoroughbred lady" who "brings courage and pride to the fighting rebel boy", that comes across as patronizing and condescending."

From: 13th Floor, a New Zealand site.

amzie wrote: I had more of an issue with "speaking his peace." I believe the expression is "speaking his piece." Though possibly intentional?

You are correct. It should be "piece". (I doubt it's intentional. I'd bet a simple typo.)

So the writer should have said the awful Joe Hill lyrics. Farrar chose to cover the lyrics of that song, which was a bad choice. Just the title alone is cringeworthy in this day and age. Visions of Norma Rae aren't relevant today, though I liked that movie. And she would have barfed at being called a "rebel girl."

I had more of an issue with "speaking his peace." I believe the expression is "speaking his piece." Though possibly intentional?

Wow. What an idiot. I tried to figure out a way to email the reviewer or the site administrators, but couldn’t find any way to do it. Hopefully they’ll realize the error and suffer the appropriate embarrassment.

Tim in the ATL

Now that we all have access to the album I know these aren't so interesting. However, I still have been keeping an eye out (and am puzzled by the absence of a Pitchfork review).


This guy gets this part glaringly wrong (as these lyrics are NOT Jay's): " However, for every time Farrar sings something pithy and incisive, as in "Reality Winner" and the title track, there's another tune where his sloganeering is a bit too obvious for its own good, and "Rebel Girl" represents some sort of nadir in his catalog, a fawning tribute to some proletarian heroine that includes the flat-out awful line, "That's the rebel girl/To the working class/She's a precious pearl."

And there isn't any excuse for this as AllMusic has a "credits" section.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/union-mw0003245363