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The Ringer article is surprisingly good. Many of the recent Elfman interviews have kind of rehashed the same stories that Elfman has been telling for years and years. (Such as... did you know Danny composed the Batman theme IN AN AIRPLANE BATHROOM??), but the Ringer article kind of condenses everything efficiently and doesn't spent a lot of time on the familiar anecdotes.
Agreed! It's not surprising when one notices the writer is Tim Greiving, one of our best film music journalists today. 
One bit that really surprised me was that Burton had originally planned to bring David Newman onto PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE until the idea of hiring Elfman came up. I don't think I had read that before.
Makes total sense though, given their FRANKENWEENIE collaboration. Bummer for Newman, who I'm sure would have continued to do a great job working with Burton.
Yavar
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I think it's exciting that he put all this together and had the energy and vision to do so. I also find it to be kind of an energy-sucking black hole that takes more than it gives.
Maybe it's the Tim Grieving article I read, but basically what I see and hear is someone grappling with self-loathing who hasn't taken responsibility for it, so they throw those feelings out onto others to do the dirty cleanup work that they themselves are not willing to do.
The obvious paradox is all this unexamined anger is giving him the energy to be creative, and that's great, especially in the rare moments like "True". But on the whole I don't walk away from this feeling like the artist has given anything, more that they're taking up a disproportionate amount of space. Similar thing with Jim Carrey and his political art... like, A LOT of people who aren't famous do that same kind of art and a lot of people who aren't famous also do this kind of music, all in obscurity. So why is it Carrey and Elfman get praised for it?
Which brings me to self-awareness - typically artists create, seemingly out of nowhere, but usually as you get older you gain a greater self-awareness so that you are better able to see how sharing your art is a give-and-take relationship. Some artists share their work with a few people, and some with nobody but themselves - but the act of sharing is very much a collaborative act, which breaks down if the artist doesn't care about their audience. If that's truly the case as the Tim Grieving interview suggests, why not just keep it to yourself then?
"Big Mess" is sold and marketed and promoted, so if that wasn't the case, would Elfman still have done this in total obscurity?
Hence the importance of considering the give and take between the audience and the artist. For me personally, I'm not fully seeing the mutual benefit here and I'm not interested in being a dumping ground for someone else's inability to take responsibility for their feelings.
But, as I started with, I think it's very inspiring and exciting that he put this all together, and it has a lot of shades of creativity that I have always appreciated Elfman for + some fun heavy metal vibes I haven't heard in a while. The aforementioned critique also describes the risk with this kind of work, and so it's also admirable that Elfman took that risk, so there's that at least.
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