Green Gartside, the man behind Scritti Pollitti, is the subject of a profile in today’s New York Times.
“White Bread Black Beer” — the title refers to his starch-and-Guinness regimen, and to the notion of “white bread” pop, which he has often defended — prompts a facile question. If the band’s early work was about dismantling pop, and then the mid-80’s phase was the apotheosis of pop, then what’s the new album about?
Mr. Gartside drew a deep breath and shifted into theory. He spoke of the impossibility of free will and truth; of neo-pragmatism, the philosophy sometimes associated with the philosopher Richard Rorty; of the unfair critical “privileging” of rock over pop, and the ways in which truly popular music hasn’t answered the logic of late capitalism in the same predictable way that the indie-rock tradition has. One glimpsed the porcupine he must have been as a younger man: combative, sardonic, high-strung.
Podcast: Rip it Up & Start Again (Post-Punk)