All Those Dirty Looks

Louis XIV “Finding Out True Love Is Blind” – Since Louis XIV market themselves as another one of those “REAL rock and roll” bands, and as such will mostly be written up by people beholden to that bad boy mystique, it seems rather unlikely that any of their press will call them out on the tossed-off sexism and casual racism in this song. Just to be clear, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with lust, and I’m not about to get all Laura Mulvey on you and go on about the “male gaze,” but the lyrics in this song cross a line from flirtatiousness to insulting, hyper-objectified misogyny.

The song wants to be the rock and roll equivalent of Raekwon’s “Ice Cream” or maybe a dirtier version of David Lee Roth’s cover of “California Girls,” but it seems more like some smarmy guy at the bar hitting on every woman that walks by, believing himself to be a rakish scoundral when he’s really just a desperate creep. If this song was intended to be sung from a character’s point of view, it would be a brilliant parody, but given the band’s general aesthetic (hot naked chicks are all over their website and album packaging – all skinny white girls, mind you, even though this song pays lip service to variety) and that the lyrics are written from the perspective of a travelling rock band, it just comes across as overcompensation from a band that seems a little too eager to prove their sexuality.

Nevertheless, this is a well crafted rock song; significantly better than the overwhelming majority of their competition in the nu-sleaze rock game. It’s not hard to imagine this tune working like a charm and getting the band laid every day of the week on tour – even if you ignore the lyrics, the song is all sexual tension and strutting confidence. I think that any persona of confidence is a construct to some degree, but not everyone is so transparent in promoting their own myth. (Click here to pre-order it from Insound. The band is playing a show tonight with Tommy Sunshine at Sin-é in NYC.)