Let Me Get What I Want is of course a reference to The Smiths’ 1984 song “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.” As Pitchfork points out, the lyrics on the album are taken from Smiths-inspired poems in Franco’s poetry book Directing Herbert White: Poems.
A press release notes that the LP, as well as its accompanying film, will focus on “three characters as they weave through the dark ways of high school: love, death, and dreams,” reports Consequence of Sound.
Franco elaborated on these ideas further, telling Rolling Stone: “High school is a time of longing for the unattainable. We dream big, but we’re still too young to make anything significant happen. At least I was too immature and sensitive to be the person I wanted to be. ‘You Are Mine’ is about one teenager dreaming about another, even though they’ll never be together.”
O’Keefe added: “Transforming James’ poems to songs took on it’s own creative process which was a new direction for me. Because the words weren’t written by me, I had to take on the character of the individual whose perspective I was singing from. ‘You Are Mine’ like many of the songs on Let Me Get What I Want expresses experiences that were relatable to my own high school experience, and therefore I had a lot of my own emotions to pull from.”
The band’s Soundcloud bio further clarifies the forthcoming project within the context of the duo’s overall ethos: “While sampling has been an established and prevalent method of modern music making, Daddy’s approach moves beyond the ‘art of sampling’ into the act of appropriation. Not just appropriating a genre of music, but the moments it inhabits, and the characters that embody it.”
In the case of the dark, broodingly pulsating “You Are Mine,” the duo is taking appropriation to the point of reverent appreciation, as they take on a Smiths-inspired post-punk sound to new, more garagey heights.
Let Me Get What I Want follows a number of EPs the duo released after forming in 2011 that are still streaming on their Soundcloud.
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