Women -- "Heat Distraction"

In my film course here at Rutgers, we are studying Dada, which was an art movement dating back to the late teen's to the early twenties. The main idea behind Dada was to, according to Wikipedia, "ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world." This is to say that what was produced from this movement was attempting to destroy what was defined as "art," "literature," or, in the case of my studies, "film." You may be asking how this relates to this post. I will explain.

Women, a Canadian "art-rock" band, seems to be, to me at least, influenced heavily by Dada. Music snobs may shake their heads with this, but I can explain. The music of bands like The Velvet Underground and early Pink Floyd, which are bands that sound strikingly similar to Women, was highly influenced by Dada. Therefore, the music of Women is strikingly similar to the art of Dada. Maybe this is a stretch, but who cares? It's an interesting connection. "Heat Distraction," one of the highlights from Women's second record, Public Strain, which is receiving a great deal of critical acclaim, is one of my favorite songs of the last couple of months. It has many of these bizarre, dark, very out of place notes, but yet they work so brilliantly on this song. This is not a song you could see yourself really liking. Honestly, Women should be annoying to listen to, but they captivate my ears more than nearly any other band around today. Women seem to be destroying what we define as popular music by writing brilliant songs that sound nothing like what we call "popular music," just like Dada did to the high art of it's day. Whether or not you agree with my hypothesis doesn't really matter, but I still will highly suggest you listen to Public Strain, or at least check out "Heat Distraction." I am really diggin' it.

Women - Heat Distraction by leafhouse