http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTEgI-virsY
This year, these are things that won't be memories or articles or song associations for some time — not until I can ruminate will they become important life-building events. Still, this song might be a theme song for the first improv shows I did here at college in front of an audience, just a semester ago. I know I'll have more to say in a few years; I'll be able to attribute more to this song, to say what it got me though, to, away from; here, it's just an association, no context. Memories need fermenting before they can be strung up like negatives and inspected.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Soul Flower (Remix) — The Pharcyde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oo2XO_ub18
Compare this to the original, another similar, good, but very, very different song. Stil, the vibe here is amazing, a sunny day and a smile and a swing in your step all in one, complete and self-sure and brilliant, carefree. It's ambitious rap, and it's totally justified in how amazing it is.
Talking about hip-hop with a friend of mine, it becomes apparent that one of the reasons it's often inaccessible is that it's incohesive. Each line of poetry is tonally and rhythmically related to each other, but often they don't form a strict story, the way songs often do. It's free-form, live-as-thought, clever and cheeky and relevant as hell.
Compare this to the original, another similar, good, but very, very different song. Stil, the vibe here is amazing, a sunny day and a smile and a swing in your step all in one, complete and self-sure and brilliant, carefree. It's ambitious rap, and it's totally justified in how amazing it is.
Talking about hip-hop with a friend of mine, it becomes apparent that one of the reasons it's often inaccessible is that it's incohesive. Each line of poetry is tonally and rhythmically related to each other, but often they don't form a strict story, the way songs often do. It's free-form, live-as-thought, clever and cheeky and relevant as hell.
Twistin' the Night Away — Sam Cooke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSoPeZMHMf4
This song, as the boundary between jazz/swing/bop to rock'n'roll. Not rock, but not big band; there's a showmanship that befits real rock'n'roll, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and maybe the Temptations. Maybe more R&B.
This song, tied to my parents' joint 50th birthday parties; there was a playlist, full of decades of music, from the old to the new; a retrospective through their lives. I got a copy of the playlist, and this song stuck. It's so modern in its sensibilities; it starts with a tag, it balances equal time of vocals and not, even within verses; there's a horn callback; it's swung but steady; it's dance music, endlessly danceable, soulful and happy and charmed and perfectly befitting of my parents' great big party, full of dance and food and alcohol. I went to bed at ten.
This song, as the boundary between jazz/swing/bop to rock'n'roll. Not rock, but not big band; there's a showmanship that befits real rock'n'roll, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and maybe the Temptations. Maybe more R&B.
This song, tied to my parents' joint 50th birthday parties; there was a playlist, full of decades of music, from the old to the new; a retrospective through their lives. I got a copy of the playlist, and this song stuck. It's so modern in its sensibilities; it starts with a tag, it balances equal time of vocals and not, even within verses; there's a horn callback; it's swung but steady; it's dance music, endlessly danceable, soulful and happy and charmed and perfectly befitting of my parents' great big party, full of dance and food and alcohol. I went to bed at ten.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
ILLYTAL — The ILLZ (Portishead Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHjcaBvJVqQ
I thought The ILLZ was a big, famous old rapper that Portishead got a hold of and remixed; some research shows the opposite; Portishead is the bigger of the two groups, and Delgis Mustafa, a brilliant young rapper, got a hold of it and chopped it up for his own use. As such, it's brilliant, not a sample but a complete remaster, new content, context and meaning; clever and sharp and lyrically impressive, but gets more credit for fooling me, sounding like an old master whose vocals had been stolen and set to other backgrounds. Phenomenal.
I thought The ILLZ was a big, famous old rapper that Portishead got a hold of and remixed; some research shows the opposite; Portishead is the bigger of the two groups, and Delgis Mustafa, a brilliant young rapper, got a hold of it and chopped it up for his own use. As such, it's brilliant, not a sample but a complete remaster, new content, context and meaning; clever and sharp and lyrically impressive, but gets more credit for fooling me, sounding like an old master whose vocals had been stolen and set to other backgrounds. Phenomenal.
Can't Keep It In — Cat Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zT2YU6-cB0
Tied again and again to travel; this, I showed to a friend who wanted music, asked for something with dynamics, that grew from simplicity into exquisite complexity; this, I showed my mother, driving south along the Henry Hudson parkway, passing 168th and Fairway, rediscovering old Cat Stevens from her youth; this, I listened to on the bus up to Bear Mountain, psyching myself up for my last Spirit Day; this, on the plane high over Pennsylvania coming home to New York for the first time; this, driving in the car to Illinois for the first time. Activity releases emotion; transportation is activity without the visceral, cathartic motion of exercise When we move, our souls are jetlagged behind us; the way to keep up is with music, to feel at such heights as you would if you had to walk the whole way.
Tied again and again to travel; this, I showed to a friend who wanted music, asked for something with dynamics, that grew from simplicity into exquisite complexity; this, I showed my mother, driving south along the Henry Hudson parkway, passing 168th and Fairway, rediscovering old Cat Stevens from her youth; this, I listened to on the bus up to Bear Mountain, psyching myself up for my last Spirit Day; this, on the plane high over Pennsylvania coming home to New York for the first time; this, driving in the car to Illinois for the first time. Activity releases emotion; transportation is activity without the visceral, cathartic motion of exercise When we move, our souls are jetlagged behind us; the way to keep up is with music, to feel at such heights as you would if you had to walk the whole way.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Lover's Lane — Squirrel Nut Zippers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ssP8Uy0QI
Senior year, midtown, 34th street and eighth avenue, maybe — industrial area, near the bus terminal and the subway junctions, old shipping docks and new porn stores, there's a little swing dance place two flights up with a view over the nighttime Hudson. I'd just begun to do swing dance in public, coerced and convinced and encouraged and finally broken through the fear and apprehension into social dance, thrilled, walking to the subway, riding home with a joy in my heart, listening to SNZ, dancing all along the street, a thursday night with school the next day, it's 1am, but I didn't care — I'd found it.
Senior year, midtown, 34th street and eighth avenue, maybe — industrial area, near the bus terminal and the subway junctions, old shipping docks and new porn stores, there's a little swing dance place two flights up with a view over the nighttime Hudson. I'd just begun to do swing dance in public, coerced and convinced and encouraged and finally broken through the fear and apprehension into social dance, thrilled, walking to the subway, riding home with a joy in my heart, listening to SNZ, dancing all along the street, a thursday night with school the next day, it's 1am, but I didn't care — I'd found it.
Heroes and Villains — Beach Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgSgOTxcEMk
This is an enigma – the Beach Boys sing about cars, girls, surfing, the beach, cars, girls, the beach, more cars. They have a set, they stick to it, it's perfect. They're a snapshot of culture and history and geography; they'll never not be Cali in the '60s.
But there are exceptions — Pet Sounds is a big one. There's a lot more issues on Pet Sounds. It's the sound of Brian Wilson dealing with abandonment issues, depression and sorrow and the need to expand his life. And Heroes and Villains, not even on Pet Sounds, is the most different. It's about... it's a Gabriel García Márquez novel, about a Carribean town, deserting your family; about seduction and time and mistakes; it invents baroque pop as a genre; it's just different. And I don't know what to make of it, but it's gorgeous and fantastic and layered, and layered and layered and layered.
This is an enigma – the Beach Boys sing about cars, girls, surfing, the beach, cars, girls, the beach, more cars. They have a set, they stick to it, it's perfect. They're a snapshot of culture and history and geography; they'll never not be Cali in the '60s.
But there are exceptions — Pet Sounds is a big one. There's a lot more issues on Pet Sounds. It's the sound of Brian Wilson dealing with abandonment issues, depression and sorrow and the need to expand his life. And Heroes and Villains, not even on Pet Sounds, is the most different. It's about... it's a Gabriel García Márquez novel, about a Carribean town, deserting your family; about seduction and time and mistakes; it invents baroque pop as a genre; it's just different. And I don't know what to make of it, but it's gorgeous and fantastic and layered, and layered and layered and layered.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Col — Morcheeba
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYPra-5tfeo
There is a quality to this sort of music; it is deliberate, cold, sterile, but overwhelming with emotion and detail and intent; it tells a story, or gets across a mood, or a time and place, as I try to do — but it does so with such force, fueled by this need to communicate, as though it can't be kept inside any more — these are songs that come across well to newcomers. All media can be repeated — TV is the least rewatchable. Movies, often. Books, almost always. But music, I have to. I can't take it all in on the first listen. Part of the fun is learning the patterns of music and letting the song itself remind you of the pattern and then deliberately lead you astray; to be surprised by the bridge; to remember and misremember the lyrics, to suddenly realize what a song is about — this is a property I think is unique. Col struck me immediately as important, but only after many listens do I appreciate it for what it is — a eulogy.
There is a quality to this sort of music; it is deliberate, cold, sterile, but overwhelming with emotion and detail and intent; it tells a story, or gets across a mood, or a time and place, as I try to do — but it does so with such force, fueled by this need to communicate, as though it can't be kept inside any more — these are songs that come across well to newcomers. All media can be repeated — TV is the least rewatchable. Movies, often. Books, almost always. But music, I have to. I can't take it all in on the first listen. Part of the fun is learning the patterns of music and letting the song itself remind you of the pattern and then deliberately lead you astray; to be surprised by the bridge; to remember and misremember the lyrics, to suddenly realize what a song is about — this is a property I think is unique. Col struck me immediately as important, but only after many listens do I appreciate it for what it is — a eulogy.
Bad Day — R.E.M.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3SSegq9USY
R.E.M. has ever baffled me, something like poetry, with political words but impossibly opaque intentions; liberal, perhaps, with a touch of hippie in there. Michael Stipe's lyrics are perfect in verse, structure, rhyme, tonal poetry that folds in upon itself, wry and smart and succinct, with no easy answers or explanations. This song is about the media, ostensibly — in reality, it's about the joys of listening to tight, smart, rhyming lyrics; the tonality of a fine voice and complementary chords. It's a pop song — the timbre stirs a desire and the lyrics fulfill it. But rather than the lyrics being too simple, too vague, they're instead inscrutable. Some of R.E.M.'s earlier stuff is just thick as all hell, and it's hard to tell if, like good poetry or hip-hop, it means something, it's worth pursuing and understanding, or if it's just poetry, rhyming and carrying on, with form but no content.
R.E.M. has ever baffled me, something like poetry, with political words but impossibly opaque intentions; liberal, perhaps, with a touch of hippie in there. Michael Stipe's lyrics are perfect in verse, structure, rhyme, tonal poetry that folds in upon itself, wry and smart and succinct, with no easy answers or explanations. This song is about the media, ostensibly — in reality, it's about the joys of listening to tight, smart, rhyming lyrics; the tonality of a fine voice and complementary chords. It's a pop song — the timbre stirs a desire and the lyrics fulfill it. But rather than the lyrics being too simple, too vague, they're instead inscrutable. Some of R.E.M.'s earlier stuff is just thick as all hell, and it's hard to tell if, like good poetry or hip-hop, it means something, it's worth pursuing and understanding, or if it's just poetry, rhyming and carrying on, with form but no content.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Daylight / Nightlight — Aesop Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_W_x3nclY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLG4gP16LRY
This duet of songs is, together, a phenomenal work, in any medium — as rap, fast and hard, it's difficult to parse — but phenomenal nonetheless. It's a diptych, two works designed to complement each other. Each stands apart, but Nightlight is a dark parody of Daylight, which is an idealistic Nightlight, which... etc. Compare the lyrics side by side — no, go do it, use google, I'll wait.
The production is similar but with contrast; the lyrics are mirrors, the tempo is the same, his done and flow is the same on each track. The idea is so brilliant, it's amazing nobody had done it before. Because it exists within its own self-reflective universe, I don't really have any associations with a place or time — it's more like a book or a film, in that respect. It exists in and of itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLG4gP16LRY
This duet of songs is, together, a phenomenal work, in any medium — as rap, fast and hard, it's difficult to parse — but phenomenal nonetheless. It's a diptych, two works designed to complement each other. Each stands apart, but Nightlight is a dark parody of Daylight, which is an idealistic Nightlight, which... etc. Compare the lyrics side by side — no, go do it, use google, I'll wait.
The production is similar but with contrast; the lyrics are mirrors, the tempo is the same, his done and flow is the same on each track. The idea is so brilliant, it's amazing nobody had done it before. Because it exists within its own self-reflective universe, I don't really have any associations with a place or time — it's more like a book or a film, in that respect. It exists in and of itself.
Oh No! — Dear and the Headlights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Nm_ahnUgo
Each of these mid-tempo songs from high school is a different portal, a different facet of the outwardly-relaxed-with-a-subcurrent-of-anxiety mood that undercut most of the post-pubescent years, a passivity laced with hyperactivity that manifests in relationship drama and serious plans for the future; wildly variable project ideas, composition and destruction and all the other billions of words that have been written about puberty. This one is uniquely self-aware; he doesn't even begin to keep it together; the song becomes wailing and crying, constrained only by meter; an anthem to the joy and horror of tying your life to someone else's; this, a basic function of adulthood, as the fresh hell a young boy finds himself emerging into.
Each of these mid-tempo songs from high school is a different portal, a different facet of the outwardly-relaxed-with-a-subcurrent-of-anxiety mood that undercut most of the post-pubescent years, a passivity laced with hyperactivity that manifests in relationship drama and serious plans for the future; wildly variable project ideas, composition and destruction and all the other billions of words that have been written about puberty. This one is uniquely self-aware; he doesn't even begin to keep it together; the song becomes wailing and crying, constrained only by meter; an anthem to the joy and horror of tying your life to someone else's; this, a basic function of adulthood, as the fresh hell a young boy finds himself emerging into.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Luxury Condos For the Poor — Double Dagger
DoubleDagger - Luxury Condos For the Poor
I don't think I remember any live musical performance I've ever seen more vividly as this song in October 2011. Double Dagger is renowned in hometown Baltimore - the infectious energy of their live performances is half their reputation. Unwittingly, I attended their last concert after nine years as a staple of Charm City's unorthodox music scene - certain to be an emotional experience for band and audience alike. I personally had never heard Double Dagger, only vaguely recognized the name, decided to go for lack of superior Friday-night plans. I had practically zero expectations. But god damn.
It was like walking in on a supernova. However many people were in there - a few dozen, a hundred, two hundred - didn't matter. Just one terrific churning of energy, a single undulating mosh of people and screams and arms (with elbows). I've got this incredibly lucid snapshot in my mind of Nolen Strals wrapping his limbs around a support pole, his sunburn-pink face screaming into the microphone. The cramped venue felt completely inadequate to contain the enthusiasm of the crowd or the band; nothing malignant, nothing hateful at all, just the force of hot-blooded people who loved the shit out of their city and its music. I can't ever hear this song without being immersed in all of it again.
Kill The Director — The Wombats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrBYrZsp8tY
This song is just SO BRITISH. It's deliberate, even, with soaps and Eastenders and the line about carrots from the last World War, and Bridget Jones. This band is marketing itself to British folks as being British, native, local, important and big; to Americans as being British, foreign and unusual and clever. And it is — it's traditional pop-punk, swaying and shrinking and exploding into dynamics; a steady drum, shouted call-and-response, it's all very by-the-numbers — not a bad thing. Its numbers make it listenable, fun, exciting. These guys who want to look like kids are in a smart, marketable band that wants to look like a little punk startup, and it works for them.
It's just SO BRITISH.
This song is just SO BRITISH. It's deliberate, even, with soaps and Eastenders and the line about carrots from the last World War, and Bridget Jones. This band is marketing itself to British folks as being British, native, local, important and big; to Americans as being British, foreign and unusual and clever. And it is — it's traditional pop-punk, swaying and shrinking and exploding into dynamics; a steady drum, shouted call-and-response, it's all very by-the-numbers — not a bad thing. Its numbers make it listenable, fun, exciting. These guys who want to look like kids are in a smart, marketable band that wants to look like a little punk startup, and it works for them.
It's just SO BRITISH.
Round Here — Counting Crows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAe3sCIakXo
Another misplaces attachment to this song — I'm twenty-something, living in Boston, maybe, somewhere in the Northeast with warm buildings and a cold outdoors, maybe I'm postgrad or working, doesn't matter — I have a vision of just malaise, maybe from Good Will Hunting, and I'm not unhappy but I'm incomplete, the music's emptiness and the winter and this weird distant city, not my own New York but somewhere else; I go to concerts and the shows reflect it; it's a college town, but the college rock bands play 90s music, my god, I wasn't even alive in the 90s; this isn't my dream, this is somebody else's; this is the plot of Portlandia, except they're thrilled with it, and I'm dreaming; maybe this was a dream I had on that trip to Philadelphia? And this is the song — a complete life, cohesive and not without its benefits, but not mine, not mine at all.
Another misplaces attachment to this song — I'm twenty-something, living in Boston, maybe, somewhere in the Northeast with warm buildings and a cold outdoors, maybe I'm postgrad or working, doesn't matter — I have a vision of just malaise, maybe from Good Will Hunting, and I'm not unhappy but I'm incomplete, the music's emptiness and the winter and this weird distant city, not my own New York but somewhere else; I go to concerts and the shows reflect it; it's a college town, but the college rock bands play 90s music, my god, I wasn't even alive in the 90s; this isn't my dream, this is somebody else's; this is the plot of Portlandia, except they're thrilled with it, and I'm dreaming; maybe this was a dream I had on that trip to Philadelphia? And this is the song — a complete life, cohesive and not without its benefits, but not mine, not mine at all.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want — The Smiths
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtKBwuOtntw
This is an even weirder cases, a song set firmly in memory as having some sort of nebulous attachment to high school or whatever, but I can't for the life of me remember when. It's a song from an era I wasn't alive during, made famous to people other than I through a movie I haven't seen; I didn't know who the band was for ages, I didn't (don't) typically enjoy the melancholy whining that this genre presents; it's wonderful musically and endlessly listenable, addictive and short and sweet, as all the best, and it's earwormed its way into my life without context, without attached memories, without purpose, and that fascinates me.
This is an even weirder cases, a song set firmly in memory as having some sort of nebulous attachment to high school or whatever, but I can't for the life of me remember when. It's a song from an era I wasn't alive during, made famous to people other than I through a movie I haven't seen; I didn't know who the band was for ages, I didn't (don't) typically enjoy the melancholy whining that this genre presents; it's wonderful musically and endlessly listenable, addictive and short and sweet, as all the best, and it's earwormed its way into my life without context, without attached memories, without purpose, and that fascinates me.
Rapping 2 U (feat. Lakutis) — Das Racist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnC8Hm8GxNc
This is the best sample I've ever heard. I'm going to say it again: this is the best sample I've ever heard. In case you missed it, the words 'best sample' back in that first sentence were a link to the sample itself. Here it is again.
It's brilliant because it sees the source material and edits out the bad parts. The song itself quickly becomes too busy and incoherent, with bass and chorus and drums. But the sampler (here, Sha-Liek the Engineer) takes only the good part, like an intelligent hunter who knows they don't need to use every part of the animal. The lyrics of the rap song, while good, are nowhere near as impressive as the sample.
Like, dang.
This is the best sample I've ever heard. I'm going to say it again: this is the best sample I've ever heard. In case you missed it, the words 'best sample' back in that first sentence were a link to the sample itself. Here it is again.
It's brilliant because it sees the source material and edits out the bad parts. The song itself quickly becomes too busy and incoherent, with bass and chorus and drums. But the sampler (here, Sha-Liek the Engineer) takes only the good part, like an intelligent hunter who knows they don't need to use every part of the animal. The lyrics of the rap song, while good, are nowhere near as impressive as the sample.
Like, dang.
I Was A Kaleidoscope — Death Cab For Cutie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Ju5TsynaY
All these early 00s indie rock records I first heard in middle school are geographically tied. So much music is; to an era or to a place or a subculture; Death Cab is from Washington state and the Pacific Northwest; they are tied to so much of middle school and exploring the city for the first time; the last days of sledding in Riverside Park as a child, the first days of Union Square / Washington Square Park, of navigating the subways; the last days of legos and television and the first days of trying to actually put myself out in the world; the growing sense of discomfort with staying in for a whole day, even in the winter; I had to find things to do; I had to listen to more energetic music, and this was always it. Even if the lyrics and vocals are softer and more low-key than some, there's a driving rhythm; it had to have been, to survive the dreary Northwest.
All these early 00s indie rock records I first heard in middle school are geographically tied. So much music is; to an era or to a place or a subculture; Death Cab is from Washington state and the Pacific Northwest; they are tied to so much of middle school and exploring the city for the first time; the last days of sledding in Riverside Park as a child, the first days of Union Square / Washington Square Park, of navigating the subways; the last days of legos and television and the first days of trying to actually put myself out in the world; the growing sense of discomfort with staying in for a whole day, even in the winter; I had to find things to do; I had to listen to more energetic music, and this was always it. Even if the lyrics and vocals are softer and more low-key than some, there's a driving rhythm; it had to have been, to survive the dreary Northwest.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Kid for Today — Boards of Canada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=65J9JTlsTfE
I'm always mystified by the timbres of this song. They're all so subdued, so ephemeral that none of them sticks out squarely, and yet there's something emergent when they all combine; it's hard for me not to get chills at the 5:01 when the cycle of the song blooms into something more sudden and intense. It's by all means a simple piece, one that I can listen to in almost every situation and feel like it "fits": long drives, late night walks, sitting in bed staring at the ceiling, consorting with friends, whatever. It's the beauty of songs without lyrics, with less-clearly defined themes and sentiments - one can attach their own meanings and memories to it and make it "theirs" in an individual way. Boards nails these kinds of songs, with blurry synths and drums that seem more organic than electronic.
If I had to take a stab at the ever-slippery question of what this song is "about", I'd probably point to the title; it's about slowing things down, making things simple, being a kid again for the day. And maybe that's why I find it so germane to everything I do, and why I feel like it's a song almost anyone could connect to: everyone was a child once, everyone had a time where things were simpler.
I'm always mystified by the timbres of this song. They're all so subdued, so ephemeral that none of them sticks out squarely, and yet there's something emergent when they all combine; it's hard for me not to get chills at the 5:01 when the cycle of the song blooms into something more sudden and intense. It's by all means a simple piece, one that I can listen to in almost every situation and feel like it "fits": long drives, late night walks, sitting in bed staring at the ceiling, consorting with friends, whatever. It's the beauty of songs without lyrics, with less-clearly defined themes and sentiments - one can attach their own meanings and memories to it and make it "theirs" in an individual way. Boards nails these kinds of songs, with blurry synths and drums that seem more organic than electronic.
If I had to take a stab at the ever-slippery question of what this song is "about", I'd probably point to the title; it's about slowing things down, making things simple, being a kid again for the day. And maybe that's why I find it so germane to everything I do, and why I feel like it's a song almost anyone could connect to: everyone was a child once, everyone had a time where things were simpler.
Furr — Blitzen Trapper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtlcHiSHTE
It's an awful thing that all the folk I know is modern folk; my concept of a genre rooted firmly in the past is, itself, rooted firmly in the present. I know about old folk: Dylan and Wainwright and such; I also know modern folk, like The Decemberists, Andrew Bird, Band Of Horses, Bon Iver, even R.E.M.
What defines this genre? It's about nature and its effect on the human psyche: how rural living is, what it's like to live subject to the seasons; a past-oriented culture, rather than the present, hedonistic suburban culture or the modern, forward-facing industrial culture. It's about and set in the country; it uses naturalistic imagery, but it is nostalgic, a return to the past. As such, 60s folk has no greater claim; after all, real folk music is indigenous. The music of my great-great-grandparents, Polish folk songs and shanties and such. Bob Dylan has no more claim to it than Bon Iver.
So why am I ashamed?
It's an awful thing that all the folk I know is modern folk; my concept of a genre rooted firmly in the past is, itself, rooted firmly in the present. I know about old folk: Dylan and Wainwright and such; I also know modern folk, like The Decemberists, Andrew Bird, Band Of Horses, Bon Iver, even R.E.M.
What defines this genre? It's about nature and its effect on the human psyche: how rural living is, what it's like to live subject to the seasons; a past-oriented culture, rather than the present, hedonistic suburban culture or the modern, forward-facing industrial culture. It's about and set in the country; it uses naturalistic imagery, but it is nostalgic, a return to the past. As such, 60s folk has no greater claim; after all, real folk music is indigenous. The music of my great-great-grandparents, Polish folk songs and shanties and such. Bob Dylan has no more claim to it than Bon Iver.
So why am I ashamed?
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Rock the House — Gorillaz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlmM88zzbY
I recently posted about Nujabes' Thank You, which also samples John Dankworth: here, it's much more obvious. I'm more taken aback by the different contexts and how they change the sample. The former makes it sound very jazzy, smooth and laid-back; the processing on the latter makes it sound more funky and up-beat.
I have lots to say about Gorillaz — the popularization of sample-based music, brilliant lyrics and a subtle multimedia experience which never quite came to fruition; a race-blind hip-hop; the combination of what seems like kids' animation with adult content; and, in particular, the role of the band Blur. I think I just said most of it, though, so... yeah. Enjoy this weird, weird video.
I recently posted about Nujabes' Thank You, which also samples John Dankworth: here, it's much more obvious. I'm more taken aback by the different contexts and how they change the sample. The former makes it sound very jazzy, smooth and laid-back; the processing on the latter makes it sound more funky and up-beat.
I have lots to say about Gorillaz — the popularization of sample-based music, brilliant lyrics and a subtle multimedia experience which never quite came to fruition; a race-blind hip-hop; the combination of what seems like kids' animation with adult content; and, in particular, the role of the band Blur. I think I just said most of it, though, so... yeah. Enjoy this weird, weird video.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Boston — Augustana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ASJBXu8tNo
It's always distressing when a pop song is good. We want pop to be shitty, because it's easy to explain — this is a simple, four-chord pop song, with a produced instrumental featuring piano, maybe a buzzy 90s guitar, a guy with long hair singing about lost love or something; there's a riff, we all know the chorus but none of us know the verse. But this is an exception — it's all of these things, it's anthemic and cathartic and all the other ics, but it's good. I don't have any particular explanation. The lyrics are less vapid than I'd expect; the arrangement is tasteful and not overwhelming; the emotional content is vivid without being preachy. It just works. Comparatively, this is a triumph.
It's always distressing when a pop song is good. We want pop to be shitty, because it's easy to explain — this is a simple, four-chord pop song, with a produced instrumental featuring piano, maybe a buzzy 90s guitar, a guy with long hair singing about lost love or something; there's a riff, we all know the chorus but none of us know the verse. But this is an exception — it's all of these things, it's anthemic and cathartic and all the other ics, but it's good. I don't have any particular explanation. The lyrics are less vapid than I'd expect; the arrangement is tasteful and not overwhelming; the emotional content is vivid without being preachy. It just works. Comparatively, this is a triumph.
More Than A Feeling — Boston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSR6ZzjDZ94
Oh god, that word, 'classic'. I'd never really intently listened to the lyrics before; it was always just one of those songs I just knew from experience; it was on Scrubs once, I heard it on the radio, it was part of my knowledge but never garnered my attention. I knew Boston was a band, I knew it was a great song, but... I don't know. There's a sweet spot for music, where it's not popular enough that you can just ignore it, but it's not totally off your radar. I love this song, I'd cheer for it on the radio, but I could never analyze it. It's an anthem hit, it's feel-good, but I wouldn't listen to it for comfort or advice. It's just... there.
Oh god, that word, 'classic'. I'd never really intently listened to the lyrics before; it was always just one of those songs I just knew from experience; it was on Scrubs once, I heard it on the radio, it was part of my knowledge but never garnered my attention. I knew Boston was a band, I knew it was a great song, but... I don't know. There's a sweet spot for music, where it's not popular enough that you can just ignore it, but it's not totally off your radar. I love this song, I'd cheer for it on the radio, but I could never analyze it. It's an anthem hit, it's feel-good, but I wouldn't listen to it for comfort or advice. It's just... there.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Sultans of Swing — Dire Straits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB3b1W6rEDw
It's easy to write about modern electronic music because modern music has no context. It exists as music; we listen to the chords and comment on the production. Of course, you can do that for older music too, but it's sort of missing the point. The reason we listen to old rock'n'roll is because it has context, value, history — whether that is a function of the music itself or a device of the time passed between may always be a mystery. Not to say all old music is political; Sultans of Swing, in particular, is only about the one band and their lives; it doesn't claim to be a great statement; it's technically proficient and a pleasure to listen to. But I cannot imagine modern music being written in such a tone.
It's easy to write about modern electronic music because modern music has no context. It exists as music; we listen to the chords and comment on the production. Of course, you can do that for older music too, but it's sort of missing the point. The reason we listen to old rock'n'roll is because it has context, value, history — whether that is a function of the music itself or a device of the time passed between may always be a mystery. Not to say all old music is political; Sultans of Swing, in particular, is only about the one band and their lives; it doesn't claim to be a great statement; it's technically proficient and a pleasure to listen to. But I cannot imagine modern music being written in such a tone.
Don't You (Forget About Me) — Simple Minds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A
For a song written for and tied irrevocably to a movie, this song actually
For a song written for and tied irrevocably to a movie, this song actually
Mole — The Mountain Goats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW8WJrb0XmY
There's a moment in this song — 1:24, I think, and then strongly at 1:57— where this ghostly, horrid piano comes in, elevating the song from acoustic guitar and voice to acoustic, bass and voice, to, suddenly, this incredible, desolate landscape of — well, it's an aesthetic reaction to a combination of things. I think it's evocative of a large, empty room; of a single, lonesome pianist; its sudden intrusion is like a dam bursting; it is a moment of both great importance — this must be said — and great isolation — only this can be said, I must be louder than the rest — and it breaks my heart. The song is about waking up from a coma, I think, and this one moment has tricked me into listening to the song three, four, five repetitions at a time, and it's just... listening to it now, it's quieter than I remembered. Maybe I wasn't expecting it. These songs are like visual poems; each comes quicker the second and third time, but they have this ethereal quality that resists analysis. I love them so.
There's a moment in this song — 1:24, I think, and then strongly at 1:57— where this ghostly, horrid piano comes in, elevating the song from acoustic guitar and voice to acoustic, bass and voice, to, suddenly, this incredible, desolate landscape of — well, it's an aesthetic reaction to a combination of things. I think it's evocative of a large, empty room; of a single, lonesome pianist; its sudden intrusion is like a dam bursting; it is a moment of both great importance — this must be said — and great isolation — only this can be said, I must be louder than the rest — and it breaks my heart. The song is about waking up from a coma, I think, and this one moment has tricked me into listening to the song three, four, five repetitions at a time, and it's just... listening to it now, it's quieter than I remembered. Maybe I wasn't expecting it. These songs are like visual poems; each comes quicker the second and third time, but they have this ethereal quality that resists analysis. I love them so.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Thank You (feat. Apani B.) — Nujabes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnba1fKRNZo
I've written about Nujabes in other articles, but never about him directly — he has a distinctive sound, but he doesn't write his lyrics and he doesn't write the instrumentals — he samples. As such, he is a curator; it's easy to attribute the music to him, but it's much easier to look at the individual artist (incidentally, Apani B., who I've never heard of before, absolutely kills it here), and his samples of Gypsy Queen — Part Two and Modesty Blaise (which I guarantee you know), while brilliant for their selection, are nearly unedited; how much credit can I really give him? I love his output, I love the music he puts out, but it's... is it creation? Apani B. wrote the lyrics, which are what I listen to with intention; the instrumentals are large bands full of people, written and arranged and produced by someone else uncredited; what did Nujabes do? Not to say I could do it, but... what work of his can I talk about?
But I do love his choices — his choice of vocalist, his choice of sample — and that's enough, I think. Everything about the creative process is choices. If I praise another artist, it's for their choices — in lyric, instrumentation, all the same. He's just a content aggregator, a modern musician. Perhaps undeserving of the same claims to talent, but certainly not to fame.
I've written about Nujabes in other articles, but never about him directly — he has a distinctive sound, but he doesn't write his lyrics and he doesn't write the instrumentals — he samples. As such, he is a curator; it's easy to attribute the music to him, but it's much easier to look at the individual artist (incidentally, Apani B., who I've never heard of before, absolutely kills it here), and his samples of Gypsy Queen — Part Two and Modesty Blaise (which I guarantee you know), while brilliant for their selection, are nearly unedited; how much credit can I really give him? I love his output, I love the music he puts out, but it's... is it creation? Apani B. wrote the lyrics, which are what I listen to with intention; the instrumentals are large bands full of people, written and arranged and produced by someone else uncredited; what did Nujabes do? Not to say I could do it, but... what work of his can I talk about?
But I do love his choices — his choice of vocalist, his choice of sample — and that's enough, I think. Everything about the creative process is choices. If I praise another artist, it's for their choices — in lyric, instrumentation, all the same. He's just a content aggregator, a modern musician. Perhaps undeserving of the same claims to talent, but certainly not to fame.
Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid) — Sufjan Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAJCUGD6FtM
2011, Spirit Day in high school; I have a new album (eight years old, but new to me) and, stuck in a window seat, too early in the morning, I begin to listen to it. It's a long trip, the bus is hot but the outside is horrid and dreary; I press my cheek up against the glass and let the temperature difference flow through me. Flint begins, and it sets in; we drive north through upstate New York, approaching Bear Mountain; my friends from the city, set against this weird landscape, familiar and repetitive but still novel every time. And the song is melancholy and beautiful and slow — and I fall asleep, waking up at the end of the album, when we arrive. I don't remember any of the songs, but on second listening, everything is strangely familiar, inherently false jamais vu.
2011, Spirit Day in high school; I have a new album (eight years old, but new to me) and, stuck in a window seat, too early in the morning, I begin to listen to it. It's a long trip, the bus is hot but the outside is horrid and dreary; I press my cheek up against the glass and let the temperature difference flow through me. Flint begins, and it sets in; we drive north through upstate New York, approaching Bear Mountain; my friends from the city, set against this weird landscape, familiar and repetitive but still novel every time. And the song is melancholy and beautiful and slow — and I fall asleep, waking up at the end of the album, when we arrive. I don't remember any of the songs, but on second listening, everything is strangely familiar, inherently false jamais vu.
Blue Shift — Lemaitre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqkzR0sdtuU
More music devoid of context, but with nothing to suffer from it. Dance music, Norwegian indie-electronica, disco and tech, combining the 70s and the 00s, real vocals and fake vocals, choirs and things repressed into the background, swelling in and out, this music is theatrical; it has nothing to declare or communicate, it only wants to entertain and be fixated upon, one riff repeated endlessly for four minutes until it ends, and your ear possibly wants more, enough to listen again, perhaps, enough to seek out other sons; it has to stay interesting, but it has to stay predictable, and it in that sense is very much pop music; none of this strange Scandinavian indie sweetheart scene, not even disco; it's not feel-good, it's not feel-at-all, it's not thinking-music, it's go-on, go-on, keep-doing-what-you're-doing everything-is-fine, and it swells and sweeps you off your feet and carries you away.
More music devoid of context, but with nothing to suffer from it. Dance music, Norwegian indie-electronica, disco and tech, combining the 70s and the 00s, real vocals and fake vocals, choirs and things repressed into the background, swelling in and out, this music is theatrical; it has nothing to declare or communicate, it only wants to entertain and be fixated upon, one riff repeated endlessly for four minutes until it ends, and your ear possibly wants more, enough to listen again, perhaps, enough to seek out other sons; it has to stay interesting, but it has to stay predictable, and it in that sense is very much pop music; none of this strange Scandinavian indie sweetheart scene, not even disco; it's not feel-good, it's not feel-at-all, it's not thinking-music, it's go-on, go-on, keep-doing-what-you're-doing everything-is-fine, and it swells and sweeps you off your feet and carries you away.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors — Radiohead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9L5zbaQML0
MOMA, 8th grade. I've just had a music dump from my cousin Derek, full of Radiohead and Counting Crows, the albums Amnesiac and August and Everything After. My family and I are at the museum, looking at weird modern art, the kind that matches the album art; this song comes on and I am hypnotized; I wander away from my family to sit in one of the big spaces, the antechambers, looking at weird shadows and giant forms of architecture, listening to bleeps and clicks and synths and not needing to know what it all means, but realizing right then and there, on the spot, that this would be one of these stuck moments; the entire album would be tied irrevocably to the clean, clinical feeling of an art museum, perhaps the entire discography.
MOMA, 8th grade. I've just had a music dump from my cousin Derek, full of Radiohead and Counting Crows, the albums Amnesiac and August and Everything After. My family and I are at the museum, looking at weird modern art, the kind that matches the album art; this song comes on and I am hypnotized; I wander away from my family to sit in one of the big spaces, the antechambers, looking at weird shadows and giant forms of architecture, listening to bleeps and clicks and synths and not needing to know what it all means, but realizing right then and there, on the spot, that this would be one of these stuck moments; the entire album would be tied irrevocably to the clean, clinical feeling of an art museum, perhaps the entire discography.
So Serious — Electric Light Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_83KIChT_FU
2010, Upper West Side of Manhattan, winter months, January or February, maybe, a few days after the first of the month; 7pm, maybe, but the sun's already set, walking west from Central Park West and 79th street when the weather is good enough (read: not hailing) to try and take the 1 home. It's cold and my new glasses are fogging; I have tiny earbuds, but the walk feels infinite. I've been doing some kind of astro work — depending on the year, it's either abysmally easy or incredibly hard — and my brain is full of mush, and I let my body take over, trudging through the snow, usually, three, four days a week, trying to get home and fudge through my homework, full of sentimentality about the universe in general, full of thoughts of star formation or maybe train delays. This song is stuck to that time — there can be no reason.
2010, Upper West Side of Manhattan, winter months, January or February, maybe, a few days after the first of the month; 7pm, maybe, but the sun's already set, walking west from Central Park West and 79th street when the weather is good enough (read: not hailing) to try and take the 1 home. It's cold and my new glasses are fogging; I have tiny earbuds, but the walk feels infinite. I've been doing some kind of astro work — depending on the year, it's either abysmally easy or incredibly hard — and my brain is full of mush, and I let my body take over, trudging through the snow, usually, three, four days a week, trying to get home and fudge through my homework, full of sentimentality about the universe in general, full of thoughts of star formation or maybe train delays. This song is stuck to that time — there can be no reason.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
How You Remind Me — Nickelback (Motown cover)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KzP4bC1Ypg
I think the fundamental issue with a band like Nickelback is that, on some base level, they're a fine band. The songs, judging lyrically, chord sequences, riffs and structure and presentation and theatricality, it's all fine — or at least sub-par. But nothing about the songs themselves are bad. It's something else — the in-your-face production, or maybe Chad Kroeger's name or face or hair.
But to take the songs themselves and transform them into another genre, to take the fine lyrics and fine chords and fine riffs and dynamics and transplant them into Motown, an incredible kind of music, that's brilliant. That's open-heart surgery. That's incredible. And it works! The lyrics sound more significant, or at least less vapid. The instrumentals are basically the same, but the change in instrumentation and production makes all the difference. Let this be a lesson.
I think the fundamental issue with a band like Nickelback is that, on some base level, they're a fine band. The songs, judging lyrically, chord sequences, riffs and structure and presentation and theatricality, it's all fine — or at least sub-par. But nothing about the songs themselves are bad. It's something else — the in-your-face production, or maybe Chad Kroeger's name or face or hair.
But to take the songs themselves and transform them into another genre, to take the fine lyrics and fine chords and fine riffs and dynamics and transplant them into Motown, an incredible kind of music, that's brilliant. That's open-heart surgery. That's incredible. And it works! The lyrics sound more significant, or at least less vapid. The instrumentals are basically the same, but the change in instrumentation and production makes all the difference. Let this be a lesson.
Radio Ga Ga — Queen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t63_HRwdAgk
Lady Gaga takes her name from this song. Radiohead take their name from the Talking Heads song of the same name. Between the Buried and Me is named after the lyric from the Counting Crows song Ghost Train. The Kooks are named after David Bowie's Kooks. The Mountain Goats are named after Screamin' Jay Hawkins' Yellow Coat. The Rolling Stones are named after Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone. The Beatles are named as a parody of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets. Green Day is a euphemism for a day spent smoking weed — a joke I entirely missed. Joy Division is named after a fictional Nazi whorehouse. Led Zeppelin is a tasteless, wonderful Hindenburg joke. Phoenix is named after the Daft Punk song of the same name. Portishead is just the name of a town. R.E.M., The Pixies, Evanescence, and The Grateful Dead were all chosen at random from a dictionary.
Skrillex is Sonny John Moore's old AIM username.
Lady Gaga takes her name from this song. Radiohead take their name from the Talking Heads song of the same name. Between the Buried and Me is named after the lyric from the Counting Crows song Ghost Train. The Kooks are named after David Bowie's Kooks. The Mountain Goats are named after Screamin' Jay Hawkins' Yellow Coat. The Rolling Stones are named after Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone. The Beatles are named as a parody of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets. Green Day is a euphemism for a day spent smoking weed — a joke I entirely missed. Joy Division is named after a fictional Nazi whorehouse. Led Zeppelin is a tasteless, wonderful Hindenburg joke. Phoenix is named after the Daft Punk song of the same name. Portishead is just the name of a town. R.E.M., The Pixies, Evanescence, and The Grateful Dead were all chosen at random from a dictionary.
Skrillex is Sonny John Moore's old AIM username.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Lisztomania — Phoenix (Shook remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbVaJ5kl7s
Shook (one of my favorite remix artists) takes Phoenix's Lisztomania and makes it more French, more disco-poppy, more dance hall, more syncopated and synth-y, more sparse and reverb, stripping it down to its minimalist essentials, the choralized vocals; it builds back up a bassline, a clav synth, and claps, and pretty much nothing else. And you get this portrait of a song which has been torn open, ribs exposed, and you can see how it works; the song swells properly as the bridge leads into the chorus; the bassline mirrors the repetitions, and the song trudges along nn-ts, nn-ts like a good disco song, connecting another remix bridge between time periods, dragging the past out into the light, examining the stuff Phoenix is made of.
Shook (one of my favorite remix artists) takes Phoenix's Lisztomania and makes it more French, more disco-poppy, more dance hall, more syncopated and synth-y, more sparse and reverb, stripping it down to its minimalist essentials, the choralized vocals; it builds back up a bassline, a clav synth, and claps, and pretty much nothing else. And you get this portrait of a song which has been torn open, ribs exposed, and you can see how it works; the song swells properly as the bridge leads into the chorus; the bassline mirrors the repetitions, and the song trudges along nn-ts, nn-ts like a good disco song, connecting another remix bridge between time periods, dragging the past out into the light, examining the stuff Phoenix is made of.
Whenever I Breathe Out, You Breathe In — Modest Mouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0eWHu2aAofI
Every once in a while you'll be in a situation where you hear a song at the perfect place and time; one of those moments where you momentarily wonder if some higher power is tailoring your iPod's current shuffle music tastes to the rest of your life. I was listening to this song this weekend, driving the three hundred-odd miles between Rochester and Baltimore, a trip that cuts directly through the heart of rural Pennsylvania: roads twisting endlessly through wooded hills, dilapidated farmhouses, rusty F-150s, advertisements for advertising and more "adult video outlets" than you can hope to count. All punctuated by the occasional strip mall with the same array of stores. It probably helped that my mind had staled after the first hundred miles, but the song seemed to correlate precisely with what I was seeing: mountains and valleys dwarfing the meager settlements within, while those same buildings tarnished the beauty of the setting they were set against. Positives and negatives, cancelling out to nothing. My eyes glazed over, I tapped my fingers to the anesthetic guitar strokes, and I drove on mindlessly for a while - not angry, not depressed, but not feeling anything at all.
Every once in a while you'll be in a situation where you hear a song at the perfect place and time; one of those moments where you momentarily wonder if some higher power is tailoring your iPod's current shuffle music tastes to the rest of your life. I was listening to this song this weekend, driving the three hundred-odd miles between Rochester and Baltimore, a trip that cuts directly through the heart of rural Pennsylvania: roads twisting endlessly through wooded hills, dilapidated farmhouses, rusty F-150s, advertisements for advertising and more "adult video outlets" than you can hope to count. All punctuated by the occasional strip mall with the same array of stores. It probably helped that my mind had staled after the first hundred miles, but the song seemed to correlate precisely with what I was seeing: mountains and valleys dwarfing the meager settlements within, while those same buildings tarnished the beauty of the setting they were set against. Positives and negatives, cancelling out to nothing. My eyes glazed over, I tapped my fingers to the anesthetic guitar strokes, and I drove on mindlessly for a while - not angry, not depressed, but not feeling anything at all.
Back Stabbers — The O'Jays
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTeLePbB08
This song is a glitch in my own personal history: it got tied to an unrelated event and cannot be untied. I must have been listening to it in the car when I was young, listening to motown on the radio; I must have gotten out of the car, taken the elevator up one floor... definitely the elevator, maybe I had groceries? And I stepped out of the elevator, and — boom, the moment before the elevator door opens, the reflective border of the elevator door, and then the mirror over the table with the plastic flowers on the floor landing, that's the moment. Just before the door opens. From time to time — something like 10% of the time, in the year before I left home — I would find myself humming this song to myself. Just a stuck memory, triggered by a specific place and instance. Never getting on the elevator; never getting off at a different floor, never with stairs or any elevator in any other building. But getting off the elevator in my building on my floor, this song pops up. It got stuck.
This song is a glitch in my own personal history: it got tied to an unrelated event and cannot be untied. I must have been listening to it in the car when I was young, listening to motown on the radio; I must have gotten out of the car, taken the elevator up one floor... definitely the elevator, maybe I had groceries? And I stepped out of the elevator, and — boom, the moment before the elevator door opens, the reflective border of the elevator door, and then the mirror over the table with the plastic flowers on the floor landing, that's the moment. Just before the door opens. From time to time — something like 10% of the time, in the year before I left home — I would find myself humming this song to myself. Just a stuck memory, triggered by a specific place and instance. Never getting on the elevator; never getting off at a different floor, never with stairs or any elevator in any other building. But getting off the elevator in my building on my floor, this song pops up. It got stuck.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Magic — Ben Folds (UChicago Voices In Your Head cover)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zLOnDnFpw
The winter between 2011—2012; I am stranded at a train station on the NJT, trying to make my way back to New York City. The sun set a while back; my backpack is high and dry, but the rest of me is soaked in snow. The trains are delayed; my train comes but skips the station. I have enough time to make it home, sure; and enough iPod battery as well. But my phone is dead, and I'm hungry and broke. And when the train comes, it whisks me through industrial towns and over swamp and underground, and there are lights and homes of towns I couldn't name, and this song is playing, and I experience frisson — sustained, continuous awareness, a heightened sense of being, fueled by hormones, hunger, exhaustion, anxiety, and this music, this incredible music, had I really never heard a cappella before this? Had I really never heard this song before? What have I been doing, where have I been? In this spark, this moment of enlightenment, everything else seems dull: going to school the next day and suffering through US History is dull, eating lunch in the lunchroom is dull, and only by listening to the song again can I bring back a small fraction of the butterflies in my stomach.
The winter between 2011—2012; I am stranded at a train station on the NJT, trying to make my way back to New York City. The sun set a while back; my backpack is high and dry, but the rest of me is soaked in snow. The trains are delayed; my train comes but skips the station. I have enough time to make it home, sure; and enough iPod battery as well. But my phone is dead, and I'm hungry and broke. And when the train comes, it whisks me through industrial towns and over swamp and underground, and there are lights and homes of towns I couldn't name, and this song is playing, and I experience frisson — sustained, continuous awareness, a heightened sense of being, fueled by hormones, hunger, exhaustion, anxiety, and this music, this incredible music, had I really never heard a cappella before this? Had I really never heard this song before? What have I been doing, where have I been? In this spark, this moment of enlightenment, everything else seems dull: going to school the next day and suffering through US History is dull, eating lunch in the lunchroom is dull, and only by listening to the song again can I bring back a small fraction of the butterflies in my stomach.
Psyche feat. Martina Topley-Bird — Massive Attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8yaVSLJVLA
Early fall 2011, I am studying for my SAT IIs, taken entirely too late. I find a cold, impersonal cafe up in Columbia, at 120th and Broadway, too far north for the hustle and bustle; it's enclosed, warm; it has food. But it has very high ceilings and large dangling sharp metal sculptures; the chairs are uncomfortable and the people are awkward. I sit there from 9:00pm to 12:00pm most nights for a week or two, studying; there's no internet for non-Columbia students. I go over old physics I really should have known; old algebra tricks, trig and some precalc, graphing by hand; none of it hard, but all worth a look. Occasionally I'll text someone, the human contact is reassuring. This is my music — like the environment, it is functional. It is of human design, but it exudes a sense of robotic efficiency, like a professional businessman in a cafe in Germany, perhaps — all business. I forget that my bed is just a few blocks away, and the isolation gets me to work.
Early fall 2011, I am studying for my SAT IIs, taken entirely too late. I find a cold, impersonal cafe up in Columbia, at 120th and Broadway, too far north for the hustle and bustle; it's enclosed, warm; it has food. But it has very high ceilings and large dangling sharp metal sculptures; the chairs are uncomfortable and the people are awkward. I sit there from 9:00pm to 12:00pm most nights for a week or two, studying; there's no internet for non-Columbia students. I go over old physics I really should have known; old algebra tricks, trig and some precalc, graphing by hand; none of it hard, but all worth a look. Occasionally I'll text someone, the human contact is reassuring. This is my music — like the environment, it is functional. It is of human design, but it exudes a sense of robotic efficiency, like a professional businessman in a cafe in Germany, perhaps — all business. I forget that my bed is just a few blocks away, and the isolation gets me to work.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Northern Sky — Nick Drake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11X5WljnFA
Like the Second Discourse, Nick Drake seems to be disillusioned with civilization; these songs are about nature and wildlife, about the sky and the seasons, about harvests and the days of the week and a simpler time, perhaps idyllic, perhaps idealized. The songs are folk, of course, and they are about magic and holiness in everyday life, focusing on the exceptional moments in a dreary life. They are confessional and strange and sad, but also deeply hopeful, happy and expectant and naive, Rousseau as a bard, linked for me with a week I spent in the suburbs, practically the country for me, reading (trying to read) Tolkien and listening to Nick Drake, reading a Greek language textbook, trying to imagine what it might be like to be just a little bit older.
Like the Second Discourse, Nick Drake seems to be disillusioned with civilization; these songs are about nature and wildlife, about the sky and the seasons, about harvests and the days of the week and a simpler time, perhaps idyllic, perhaps idealized. The songs are folk, of course, and they are about magic and holiness in everyday life, focusing on the exceptional moments in a dreary life. They are confessional and strange and sad, but also deeply hopeful, happy and expectant and naive, Rousseau as a bard, linked for me with a week I spent in the suburbs, practically the country for me, reading (trying to read) Tolkien and listening to Nick Drake, reading a Greek language textbook, trying to imagine what it might be like to be just a little bit older.
Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace — The Mountain Goats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-zZJu6LKI
I often find my ability to communicate what I hear in this sort of music outpaced — there are so many things here that are transplendent, holy and quiet and surreal and perfect, not peaceful and not even polished, but... evocative, perhaps. Piano is better at it than acoustic guitar is better at it than most everything else — it pauses you where you are and makes you listen, it can't be danced to, albiet slow danced. What it's about matters, but not right now. Maybe on the fourth or fifth listening, it'll matter. It's not happy or sad; it's contemplative, low-tempo, and very present, written and performed with care. This is music that lasts, written without urgency, but about pressing issues, with a driving need. Perhaps to communicate, perhaps to purge.
I often find my ability to communicate what I hear in this sort of music outpaced — there are so many things here that are transplendent, holy and quiet and surreal and perfect, not peaceful and not even polished, but... evocative, perhaps. Piano is better at it than acoustic guitar is better at it than most everything else — it pauses you where you are and makes you listen, it can't be danced to, albiet slow danced. What it's about matters, but not right now. Maybe on the fourth or fifth listening, it'll matter. It's not happy or sad; it's contemplative, low-tempo, and very present, written and performed with care. This is music that lasts, written without urgency, but about pressing issues, with a driving need. Perhaps to communicate, perhaps to purge.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Wii Channel Song Vs. "Tipsy" by J-Kwon
[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wy3iCGi7u8[/embed]
Let's for a moment psychanalyze; what sort of person would create something like this? Who would take the theme music from a loading screen, something innocent and ubiquitous, made for children, suitable for all ages, animated and mass-marketed, unable to offend, unable to communicate, the musical equivalent of the smiley face icon; who would listen to this and think: "Y'know what'd be dope? Let's chop this up and put Tipsy over it."
Tipsy is nearly ten years old, for Christ's sake. This is brilliant.
Let's for a moment psychanalyze; what sort of person would create something like this? Who would take the theme music from a loading screen, something innocent and ubiquitous, made for children, suitable for all ages, animated and mass-marketed, unable to offend, unable to communicate, the musical equivalent of the smiley face icon; who would listen to this and think: "Y'know what'd be dope? Let's chop this up and put Tipsy over it."
Tipsy is nearly ten years old, for Christ's sake. This is brilliant.
Red Right Ankle — The Decemberists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwkmPKsctQ
I don't know folk music, really. I know the genre of folk music, music written and recorded to sound like older music, written with Americana heritage, that goes alongside Ichabod Crane and pumpkins as symbols of fall in the northeast, things I'm tangentially aware of but seem never to have experienced — and when I have, they don't much count, they're exceptional and rare, the way that vacations seem. I've gone apple-picking, but it wasn't a part of my childhood the way perhaps it ought have been. And this is folk music, simple and repetitive and with provocative lyrics, sad and uptempo and with a definitive story — emotive but not emotional. The Decemberists are an art band; they reach for many goals and hit some of them, but this is one they hit, powerfully.
I don't know folk music, really. I know the genre of folk music, music written and recorded to sound like older music, written with Americana heritage, that goes alongside Ichabod Crane and pumpkins as symbols of fall in the northeast, things I'm tangentially aware of but seem never to have experienced — and when I have, they don't much count, they're exceptional and rare, the way that vacations seem. I've gone apple-picking, but it wasn't a part of my childhood the way perhaps it ought have been. And this is folk music, simple and repetitive and with provocative lyrics, sad and uptempo and with a definitive story — emotive but not emotional. The Decemberists are an art band; they reach for many goals and hit some of them, but this is one they hit, powerfully.
Blue Bicycle — Hauschka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKAKBrWesU
Instrumental music, bold and dramatic and powerful, with sweeps and swells, building and releasing like waves on the ocean, carrying no emotion of their own but amplifying preexisting ones a thousandfold, through a natural lens, the currents of the music, strings and edited piano and tonal clashes, dissonance, is it classical? It's not nearly traditional enough. What am I to think? It's pumping along, climbing and dashing and releasing, like riding a bicycle — there we go, that's the name — and the streets rush by, sometimes different from each other but with the same structure, the same sense of knowing where you're going, riding and driving, passive and active, dramatic not out of danger but out of presence, pressing nervousness, a need to get where one's going, what's taking so long, how am I only at 86th street? I was supposed to be there by now! And time slows and speeds up — the song lasts an eternity on first listen, it's five minutes, that's so looooong! And it slows to a halt, parks, dismounts.
Instrumental music, bold and dramatic and powerful, with sweeps and swells, building and releasing like waves on the ocean, carrying no emotion of their own but amplifying preexisting ones a thousandfold, through a natural lens, the currents of the music, strings and edited piano and tonal clashes, dissonance, is it classical? It's not nearly traditional enough. What am I to think? It's pumping along, climbing and dashing and releasing, like riding a bicycle — there we go, that's the name — and the streets rush by, sometimes different from each other but with the same structure, the same sense of knowing where you're going, riding and driving, passive and active, dramatic not out of danger but out of presence, pressing nervousness, a need to get where one's going, what's taking so long, how am I only at 86th street? I was supposed to be there by now! And time slows and speeds up — the song lasts an eternity on first listen, it's five minutes, that's so looooong! And it slows to a halt, parks, dismounts.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Echo — Foxes (FIXYN remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aemEQYNZkyY
This sort of music — it's remix music, certainly, processed into next week, built up from real voices and instruments, a history of record scratching and repurposing, distorted until nothing is recognizable but the true music theory behind the music — contrapuntal motion, syncopation, dynamics and style, without the pesky instrumentation that live music demands. Cheating? Maybe. But also far more freeing, with time to dote over every smidge, time enough to process and mix and create rhythms that weave in and out of real music. I don't care about the culture around it or the context or even the song itself, but the sorts of people who create this music are praiseworthy, innovative, the musical equivalent of academics, so caught up in music that they can't help but take new tracks and really think about them.
This sort of music — it's remix music, certainly, processed into next week, built up from real voices and instruments, a history of record scratching and repurposing, distorted until nothing is recognizable but the true music theory behind the music — contrapuntal motion, syncopation, dynamics and style, without the pesky instrumentation that live music demands. Cheating? Maybe. But also far more freeing, with time to dote over every smidge, time enough to process and mix and create rhythms that weave in and out of real music. I don't care about the culture around it or the context or even the song itself, but the sorts of people who create this music are praiseworthy, innovative, the musical equivalent of academics, so caught up in music that they can't help but take new tracks and really think about them.
Overtime — Cash Cash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ftfVUTzM4
I don't care about any of this song past the 0:08 mark, but let's talk about the first eight seconds. The subtle swell out of dimness, raising into the treble as the drums hit, giving a sense of rhythm, the simple riff already, at the 0:04 second mark, already varying, playing off itself, subverting whatever tiny expectations we've built in the four second the song's been on — not even — until the hit at the end, showing that this was a precoda, the introduction to a song, like candy before a meal.
And the rest of the song doesn't disappoint, but... damn, those first eight seconds.
I don't care about any of this song past the 0:08 mark, but let's talk about the first eight seconds. The subtle swell out of dimness, raising into the treble as the drums hit, giving a sense of rhythm, the simple riff already, at the 0:04 second mark, already varying, playing off itself, subverting whatever tiny expectations we've built in the four second the song's been on — not even — until the hit at the end, showing that this was a precoda, the introduction to a song, like candy before a meal.
And the rest of the song doesn't disappoint, but... damn, those first eight seconds.
Basket Case — Green Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY
As ever, context is everything — coming out of virtual obscurity, in an era that didn't need more punk music, Green Day mysteriously flourished, bringing musicality to a genre that rejected musicality, bringing vocal harmonies and technical proficiency and incredible raw energy. Ignore their future for a second — the messy rock opera American Idiot! And pretend 21st Century Breakdown never even existed. Alone, Dookie, coming out of left field in 1994 — it was sudden and shocking, really, truly unexpected — and lighthearted, serious topics and a tongue-in-cheek, teenagers and hell-may-care, perhaps vaguely political, vaguely disinterested in pop culture, written about the frontman's very real panic attacks and anxiety disorders, but transformed through this vibrant, vital resurgence of punk into a chart-topper.
As ever, context is everything — coming out of virtual obscurity, in an era that didn't need more punk music, Green Day mysteriously flourished, bringing musicality to a genre that rejected musicality, bringing vocal harmonies and technical proficiency and incredible raw energy. Ignore their future for a second — the messy rock opera American Idiot! And pretend 21st Century Breakdown never even existed. Alone, Dookie, coming out of left field in 1994 — it was sudden and shocking, really, truly unexpected — and lighthearted, serious topics and a tongue-in-cheek, teenagers and hell-may-care, perhaps vaguely political, vaguely disinterested in pop culture, written about the frontman's very real panic attacks and anxiety disorders, but transformed through this vibrant, vital resurgence of punk into a chart-topper.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Thriller — Imogen Heap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxrIBCwyk80
There is only so much praise I can lavish on an artist, but Imogen deserves all of it — her music is controlled, tasteful, graceful, well-composed and well-arranged, like all good electronica — her vocals are perfect, processed and trying far harder than she needs to. She has an amazing voice and an amazing sense of rhythm and tone without even the computer in between us. And her normal work — she is most famous for Hide and Seek, processed within an inch of its life. But this, an MJ cover, is pure — nearly entirely her real voice and piano, and it's gorgeous and perfect and I cannot get enough of it.
There is only so much praise I can lavish on an artist, but Imogen deserves all of it — her music is controlled, tasteful, graceful, well-composed and well-arranged, like all good electronica — her vocals are perfect, processed and trying far harder than she needs to. She has an amazing voice and an amazing sense of rhythm and tone without even the computer in between us. And her normal work — she is most famous for Hide and Seek, processed within an inch of its life. But this, an MJ cover, is pure — nearly entirely her real voice and piano, and it's gorgeous and perfect and I cannot get enough of it.
A Paw In My Face — The Field
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_KmNsGoXHk
This is, like, microhouse, maybe? Techno, but minimalist, ambient, something or other. Axel Willner is intent on finding one great timbre, a loop that sounds great, just so warm and inviting, and playing it over and over as a variety of chords, maybe some syncopated drum clicks and shakes in the background, until it feels like driving and driving and driving — sometimes the clouds break and the sun shines through, sometimes the corn fields end and you see a city — at the 1:30 mark or so it gets interesting-er, but only a step up again, and then — back to regular. The transitions aren't transitions to anything; we stick on the transition, loop over and over, become intimately familiar with the structure of the song, until just the point of irritation, until it clicks away into the next one.
This is, like, microhouse, maybe? Techno, but minimalist, ambient, something or other. Axel Willner is intent on finding one great timbre, a loop that sounds great, just so warm and inviting, and playing it over and over as a variety of chords, maybe some syncopated drum clicks and shakes in the background, until it feels like driving and driving and driving — sometimes the clouds break and the sun shines through, sometimes the corn fields end and you see a city — at the 1:30 mark or so it gets interesting-er, but only a step up again, and then — back to regular. The transitions aren't transitions to anything; we stick on the transition, loop over and over, become intimately familiar with the structure of the song, until just the point of irritation, until it clicks away into the next one.
Song 2 — Blur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbBvKaM6sk
In praise of simplicity, form, structure: Song 2 is the second song off the album Blur, it's 2 minutes and 2 seconds long; it has 2 choruses, 2 verses, 2 bridges; it took minutes to record in the studio; it has a simple, meaningless riff and simple meaningless lyrics; the members of the band went on to do bigger and better things, but the song became incredibly popular — so incredibly popular that it outshines (in America) almost everything else Blur ever did, ignoring that the frontman left to form Gorillaz, ignoring the nearly twenty albums they made — and this was made intentionally to be careless, a purposeful departure from pop music with clever lyrics, this was a parody and an homage to and of American grunge, rock, intended to shock and be unique and different and a departure from any other work the band had done before.
In praise of simplicity, form, structure: Song 2 is the second song off the album Blur, it's 2 minutes and 2 seconds long; it has 2 choruses, 2 verses, 2 bridges; it took minutes to record in the studio; it has a simple, meaningless riff and simple meaningless lyrics; the members of the band went on to do bigger and better things, but the song became incredibly popular — so incredibly popular that it outshines (in America) almost everything else Blur ever did, ignoring that the frontman left to form Gorillaz, ignoring the nearly twenty albums they made — and this was made intentionally to be careless, a purposeful departure from pop music with clever lyrics, this was a parody and an homage to and of American grunge, rock, intended to shock and be unique and different and a departure from any other work the band had done before.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Modesto — Beck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aDVJCgx6wQ8
When people are crying and laughing at the same time, it's usually because they find something so funny they're brought to tears. Beck's odes to America's dustier corners usually bring me around the other way - by being so pitiably sad that I can't help but laugh. Modesto and innumerable others like it in Hansen's catalog marry the dismal and the absurd: "unglued, depressed / the meatloaf in my chest" is emblematic of the myriad contradictions and idiosyncrasies at play here. But they go on and populate the song to such a degree that it's almost like the twin threads of humor and despair aren't merely related, or even conjoined - they're the same thing. It's a very Beckishly bizarre juxtaposition in the way it's written, but the inseparability of sorrow and comedy is a much more broadly human concept. I listen to this song and hear myself chuckling side-by-side with that gut-feeling of empathy for the singer's misfortune. It's a parody of a tragedy, like an off-kilter episode of This American Life about suburbia's best-humored deadbeats. And it ends with him "choking on a breathmint".
How woefully, hilariously fitting.
When people are crying and laughing at the same time, it's usually because they find something so funny they're brought to tears. Beck's odes to America's dustier corners usually bring me around the other way - by being so pitiably sad that I can't help but laugh. Modesto and innumerable others like it in Hansen's catalog marry the dismal and the absurd: "unglued, depressed / the meatloaf in my chest" is emblematic of the myriad contradictions and idiosyncrasies at play here. But they go on and populate the song to such a degree that it's almost like the twin threads of humor and despair aren't merely related, or even conjoined - they're the same thing. It's a very Beckishly bizarre juxtaposition in the way it's written, but the inseparability of sorrow and comedy is a much more broadly human concept. I listen to this song and hear myself chuckling side-by-side with that gut-feeling of empathy for the singer's misfortune. It's a parody of a tragedy, like an off-kilter episode of This American Life about suburbia's best-humored deadbeats. And it ends with him "choking on a breathmint".
How woefully, hilariously fitting.
Kaini Industries — Boards of Canada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm388S1889s
This song seems to have taken a page out of Borges' book: rather than construct an elaborate story with characters, plots, dialogue, themes and symbolism, he would write only the plot outlines, and then a literary criticism by someone who had read the full story; the brilliance would shine through, but without the trappings of literary constructions. Similarly, this song is just the bare riff, a simple, perfect melody with no need for introduction or denouement, unadorned. It's uniquely musical, no need for timbre or lyrics or meaning — there's no authorial intent to derive, no mood to be extracted, just a mathematical series of rhythms and harmonies that sound good together, for some definition and value of 'good'.
This song seems to have taken a page out of Borges' book: rather than construct an elaborate story with characters, plots, dialogue, themes and symbolism, he would write only the plot outlines, and then a literary criticism by someone who had read the full story; the brilliance would shine through, but without the trappings of literary constructions. Similarly, this song is just the bare riff, a simple, perfect melody with no need for introduction or denouement, unadorned. It's uniquely musical, no need for timbre or lyrics or meaning — there's no authorial intent to derive, no mood to be extracted, just a mathematical series of rhythms and harmonies that sound good together, for some definition and value of 'good'.
WTF? — OK Go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zJw9varYE
Back in 2009 — this was ninth grade for me, god DAMN — this was the most inventive, cutting-edge music known to middle school boy, a techy pop song in 5/4, with a high-tech music video, inventive and fun and energetic and brilliant, exultant and thrilled in itself — in touch with cultural acronyms, hip without trying terribly hard to be "in touch with the kids", made entirely out of good-natured fun.
No, really, go look up some other OK Go videos on YouTube or whatever. This is all they do. Their first hit, the treadmills thing that went viral in 2006 on a very early internet, and they've been doing the same shit ever since. God bless OK Go.
Back in 2009 — this was ninth grade for me, god DAMN — this was the most inventive, cutting-edge music known to middle school boy, a techy pop song in 5/4, with a high-tech music video, inventive and fun and energetic and brilliant, exultant and thrilled in itself — in touch with cultural acronyms, hip without trying terribly hard to be "in touch with the kids", made entirely out of good-natured fun.
No, really, go look up some other OK Go videos on YouTube or whatever. This is all they do. Their first hit, the treadmills thing that went viral in 2006 on a very early internet, and they've been doing the same shit ever since. God bless OK Go.
Monday, April 8, 2013
In Your Eyes (Extended Mix) — Peter Gabriel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5sgYYE-J3w
To find out suddenly that one of your favorite songs, imbued with significance over many years, played on repeat, sometimes laughed, cried over; company on train rides and slow dances and drenched in adolescent hormones; to know a hundred other people who all attribute the same significance to this song, so regarded it's nearly scripture; to find out that this song, a song I once recognized from the triangle line alone, able to hear the treble on the speakers in a Starbucks through another song I was listening to, to be jolted to attention by a mere fraction of this song; to find out that this one song I'd been listening to for all these years was but a part of another, longer song, a deconstruction thereof, beginning and ending with extra content, isolated motifs from the height of the song — the sudden, deep, in your eyes that first appears around the 1:12 mark, the verses at the climax sung in Wolof — to disassemble a pop song whose parts have never been dissociated — and better yet, for it to be done not as sacrilege, but as part of the original intention, like finding a new book of the New Testament — I cannot express.
To find out suddenly that one of your favorite songs, imbued with significance over many years, played on repeat, sometimes laughed, cried over; company on train rides and slow dances and drenched in adolescent hormones; to know a hundred other people who all attribute the same significance to this song, so regarded it's nearly scripture; to find out that this song, a song I once recognized from the triangle line alone, able to hear the treble on the speakers in a Starbucks through another song I was listening to, to be jolted to attention by a mere fraction of this song; to find out that this one song I'd been listening to for all these years was but a part of another, longer song, a deconstruction thereof, beginning and ending with extra content, isolated motifs from the height of the song — the sudden, deep, in your eyes that first appears around the 1:12 mark, the verses at the climax sung in Wolof — to disassemble a pop song whose parts have never been dissociated — and better yet, for it to be done not as sacrilege, but as part of the original intention, like finding a new book of the New Testament — I cannot express.
The High Road — Broken Bells
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mkr19RSG6k
Another group it took me ages to really pick up on, notice, familiarize myself with. It's so hard to keep up with everything modern; all books, television, movies, music; we're expected to have opinions on things which we haven't yet seen, can't've yet seen, and we're judged by them; by how well we keep up. We know all about a famous movie, have a pre-formed opinion, before we ever see it. Broken Bells is this way — I know the singer from The Shins; I know the producer, Danger Mouse. I knew about the album, I was familiar with the art and some of the tracks, even the general tone of the album, without ever having really heard it.
But the intro is still — damn, that intro.
Another group it took me ages to really pick up on, notice, familiarize myself with. It's so hard to keep up with everything modern; all books, television, movies, music; we're expected to have opinions on things which we haven't yet seen, can't've yet seen, and we're judged by them; by how well we keep up. We know all about a famous movie, have a pre-formed opinion, before we ever see it. Broken Bells is this way — I know the singer from The Shins; I know the producer, Danger Mouse. I knew about the album, I was familiar with the art and some of the tracks, even the general tone of the album, without ever having really heard it.
But the intro is still — damn, that intro.
Don't You Evah — Spoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqWSGenyE0
I don't know much about Spoon — they're modern, probably, but have a simple, timeless sound that could be 90s, 80s even. They're muddled and obscure lyrics, clear drums and guitars, harmonies and timbre over content. I don't know what motivates the singer, other than the desire to create something appealing. In that sense, this music becomes very hedonistic — and it's about these sorts of things, too. It only wants to dance, but it's not dance music so much as energy music. There's an underlying sense of things happening, constantly, of being a theme of progress and discovery and recanting of stories, of the past, the future, etc — and yet, here I was, thinking that the song was indicative of Spoon, only to find out it's a cover.
So now I don't know what to think.
I don't know much about Spoon — they're modern, probably, but have a simple, timeless sound that could be 90s, 80s even. They're muddled and obscure lyrics, clear drums and guitars, harmonies and timbre over content. I don't know what motivates the singer, other than the desire to create something appealing. In that sense, this music becomes very hedonistic — and it's about these sorts of things, too. It only wants to dance, but it's not dance music so much as energy music. There's an underlying sense of things happening, constantly, of being a theme of progress and discovery and recanting of stories, of the past, the future, etc — and yet, here I was, thinking that the song was indicative of Spoon, only to find out it's a cover.
So now I don't know what to think.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Listening Wind — Peter Gabriel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2omdkdk2k
An entire album — Scratch My Back — of sublime, beautiful, prolonged and slow covers of songs from the past thirty years or so — some modern, some ancient, from Bon Iver to Bowie, Radiohead to Regina Spektor to Paul Simon. And they're all so, so wonderful, but Listening Wind is the largest jump up from weird, etherial Talking Heads song to something transcendental, updating the timbre and tone for modern listeners, making it slow and dramatic and tense, a horror movie of a song — is the man building a bomb? What is going on? Who's being driven away? And it builds in tension and harmony and beauty, the determination of the man and the strings and the soft horn in the back swelling until you can't break away, you stop what you're doing and stare, thousand-yard-stare, out the window, and it builds and builds and builds, and the song is so quiet and gentle, Peter Gabriel is soothing, but the music is not, like a horror soundtrack, building in swells and sweeps, always harmonic, — and then it breaks out, and you're left hanging over a canyon, only echoes.
An entire album — Scratch My Back — of sublime, beautiful, prolonged and slow covers of songs from the past thirty years or so — some modern, some ancient, from Bon Iver to Bowie, Radiohead to Regina Spektor to Paul Simon. And they're all so, so wonderful, but Listening Wind is the largest jump up from weird, etherial Talking Heads song to something transcendental, updating the timbre and tone for modern listeners, making it slow and dramatic and tense, a horror movie of a song — is the man building a bomb? What is going on? Who's being driven away? And it builds in tension and harmony and beauty, the determination of the man and the strings and the soft horn in the back swelling until you can't break away, you stop what you're doing and stare, thousand-yard-stare, out the window, and it builds and builds and builds, and the song is so quiet and gentle, Peter Gabriel is soothing, but the music is not, like a horror soundtrack, building in swells and sweeps, always harmonic, — and then it breaks out, and you're left hanging over a canyon, only echoes.
People Like Us — Talking Heads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNcjWdHD6GQ
True Stories was a movie by David Byrne, and then an album by Talking Heads, and I'm not sure if it even matters which was first — I only know the album, but I think it's fascinating that the same song exists as sung by a very young John Goodman.
Moreover, this is a song about the midwest, at least for me — it's vaguely country, but modern and 80s and nihilistic and resigned to the life given, modern America and strip malls and blue collar jobs and a — what's the opposite of romanticized? — version of American life around the turn of the century, the second one — the songs are from 1986, but they're still relevant, maybe not paranoid enough. But they're incredible and terrifying, about a brand new world, full of appearances and reflection and navel-gazing, progress and technology and ignorance, and I feel the meaning chasing me around, trying very hard to tell me something just out of reach.
True Stories was a movie by David Byrne, and then an album by Talking Heads, and I'm not sure if it even matters which was first — I only know the album, but I think it's fascinating that the same song exists as sung by a very young John Goodman.
Moreover, this is a song about the midwest, at least for me — it's vaguely country, but modern and 80s and nihilistic and resigned to the life given, modern America and strip malls and blue collar jobs and a — what's the opposite of romanticized? — version of American life around the turn of the century, the second one — the songs are from 1986, but they're still relevant, maybe not paranoid enough. But they're incredible and terrifying, about a brand new world, full of appearances and reflection and navel-gazing, progress and technology and ignorance, and I feel the meaning chasing me around, trying very hard to tell me something just out of reach.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Help I'm Alive — Metric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoK63Bk7pgw
I won't write an essay here on the topic of gender in music — I'm not nearly well-versed enough, and, frankly, it's been done. I will say that the few female vocalists I do enjoy are generally either Jazz, Trip-Hop, or Rock'n'Roll. There are some genres where I know female vocalists exist, but I don't enjoy them (modern pop, rap, alt-rock, etc). I can probably name only a few female vocalists off the top of my head, actually... Ella Fitzgerald, Blondie, the woman from Fleetwood Mac, Metric (above), The Go! Team...
Oh my god, is that all I can list? I know the names of male singers from named bands (Thom Yorke — Radiohead, etc) but rarely the names of female singers from named bands (... — The Decemberists? I know Colin Meloy.) Oh! Imogen Heap. This still isn't that many.
Doesn't Massive Attack have female vocalists? Guest vocalists. And, uh, Morcheeba, Portishead! All the associated trip-hop acts.
Oh dear.
I won't write an essay here on the topic of gender in music — I'm not nearly well-versed enough, and, frankly, it's been done. I will say that the few female vocalists I do enjoy are generally either Jazz, Trip-Hop, or Rock'n'Roll. There are some genres where I know female vocalists exist, but I don't enjoy them (modern pop, rap, alt-rock, etc). I can probably name only a few female vocalists off the top of my head, actually... Ella Fitzgerald, Blondie, the woman from Fleetwood Mac, Metric (above), The Go! Team...
Oh my god, is that all I can list? I know the names of male singers from named bands (Thom Yorke — Radiohead, etc) but rarely the names of female singers from named bands (... — The Decemberists? I know Colin Meloy.) Oh! Imogen Heap. This still isn't that many.
Doesn't Massive Attack have female vocalists? Guest vocalists. And, uh, Morcheeba, Portishead! All the associated trip-hop acts.
Oh dear.
Fall Right In — Beach Fossils
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMvhso9O1io
Beach Fossils evoke a nostalgia for an era I don't know I've every truly known or gotten enough of — those rare, fleeting moments of summer rain, or beach days on vacation, when things are in stasis and could go on like so for ages. It's gentle and timid, but there's an underlying current of horror and desperation to it — the implication that, as good as things are at the moment, they'll turn bad later — nothing else can compare. The evening will bring disappointment. And the album art, even — a window on a house, a baseball, frozen in time — it's a wonderful photograph, but the implication is that the baseball is about to break the window — and the songs are all about that, about a wonderful, joyous period in someone's life, and they can't just step back and appreciate it. It's malaise and — no, not depression, but exultant praise of monotony. It is especially confusing to think that, when I first listened to it, it reminded me of things that hadn't happened yet; yet, listening to it now, it reminds me not of the past, but of the circumstances of that first listening, in mid-January of last year, in the deep winter.
Beach Fossils evoke a nostalgia for an era I don't know I've every truly known or gotten enough of — those rare, fleeting moments of summer rain, or beach days on vacation, when things are in stasis and could go on like so for ages. It's gentle and timid, but there's an underlying current of horror and desperation to it — the implication that, as good as things are at the moment, they'll turn bad later — nothing else can compare. The evening will bring disappointment. And the album art, even — a window on a house, a baseball, frozen in time — it's a wonderful photograph, but the implication is that the baseball is about to break the window — and the songs are all about that, about a wonderful, joyous period in someone's life, and they can't just step back and appreciate it. It's malaise and — no, not depression, but exultant praise of monotony. It is especially confusing to think that, when I first listened to it, it reminded me of things that hadn't happened yet; yet, listening to it now, it reminds me not of the past, but of the circumstances of that first listening, in mid-January of last year, in the deep winter.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Misery — Big Troubles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uctff64tYI
I guess this is a prevailing trend in modern pop — this sort-of-indie, sort-of-60s vibe, fuzzy and lo-fi and heavily produced to look under-produced; four-four songs with simple chords and echoey vocals, happy music with a steady beat, but depressed or understated vocals. But it meanders and dawdles — there's no ambition, and there shouldn't be. It's a song for stasis, again — there's no room for improvement, it doesn't want to improve, it doesn't want anything. It's a stubborn and sad song, and it's entirely purposeful. Yet, instead of repulsed by the song's attitude, we are instead seduced by instrumentation, arrangement, fuzzy deep bass and echoes and an inviting sound landscape. It becomes easy to lose yourself in this music and tune out the world. This, I think, makes it dangerous.
I guess this is a prevailing trend in modern pop — this sort-of-indie, sort-of-60s vibe, fuzzy and lo-fi and heavily produced to look under-produced; four-four songs with simple chords and echoey vocals, happy music with a steady beat, but depressed or understated vocals. But it meanders and dawdles — there's no ambition, and there shouldn't be. It's a song for stasis, again — there's no room for improvement, it doesn't want to improve, it doesn't want anything. It's a stubborn and sad song, and it's entirely purposeful. Yet, instead of repulsed by the song's attitude, we are instead seduced by instrumentation, arrangement, fuzzy deep bass and echoes and an inviting sound landscape. It becomes easy to lose yourself in this music and tune out the world. This, I think, makes it dangerous.
Tenderloin — Tilbury
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnwOvjYOepk
A story, and I don't know. I can't know. I think they're from Iceland; all the documentation is translated badly — it's based on a short story named Tilbury, perhaps? By an author named Þórarinn Eldjárn. Perhaps the video elucidates; I know the song has content and confessional tones, I know the song is light alt-rock; I know the song drifts and shivers and shimmies between being light and dark, his voice is gorgeous and surreal; the song marches along restlessly; the strings and synths are beautiful and the bass is steady; I don't know what it means, and it doesn't matter. I know the end comes too soon.
A story, and I don't know. I can't know. I think they're from Iceland; all the documentation is translated badly — it's based on a short story named Tilbury, perhaps? By an author named Þórarinn Eldjárn. Perhaps the video elucidates; I know the song has content and confessional tones, I know the song is light alt-rock; I know the song drifts and shivers and shimmies between being light and dark, his voice is gorgeous and surreal; the song marches along restlessly; the strings and synths are beautiful and the bass is steady; I don't know what it means, and it doesn't matter. I know the end comes too soon.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Bizarre Love Triangle — New Order (Vitamin String Quartet cover)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnNOkJ6ysBA
Let alone my personal history with this song — played twice a week, three weeks a year, six years — imbued with emotional and adolescent significance far beyond its origins or means — the formative soundtrack of my summers throughout middle and high school — it remains, in its original form, drastically understated; the chords and lyrics could have been so much more than they are; this, the VSQ cover, elevates it, finds the platonic form of the music and brings it into such complexity and gorgeous arrangement; it reflects and references the original, but it works and soars and improves on it by far; I would rather listen to it than the original at the moment. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for string quartets.
Let alone my personal history with this song — played twice a week, three weeks a year, six years — imbued with emotional and adolescent significance far beyond its origins or means — the formative soundtrack of my summers throughout middle and high school — it remains, in its original form, drastically understated; the chords and lyrics could have been so much more than they are; this, the VSQ cover, elevates it, finds the platonic form of the music and brings it into such complexity and gorgeous arrangement; it reflects and references the original, but it works and soars and improves on it by far; I would rather listen to it than the original at the moment. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for string quartets.
Baby Be Mine — The Jelly Beans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tRS9u43x-A
Another serious oldie, this one 49 years old this year — never made it big, peaked at #51; the group, The Jelly Beans formed in Jersey City; existed for three years, recorded two hits, disappeared. This is old east coast R&B — there's no legacy, they don't tour, no best of albums. The label was a niche label, making mostly this sort of music — this must have been an industry, forty, fifty people who crossed paths in 1963 or 1964 in New Jersey to make this one song — and then all went their separate ways, some of them continuing to sing or record or mix, some of them leaving music behind — some of them had training, their parents wanted them to become musicians, some of them didn't — some of them, this was a stop on the way to glory, some of them, this was the best they ever had — some of them, they think about this song every day, some of them never think about it at all. Music (at least the music that lasts) is permanent in that way. Not everything we write or do or say will be remembered on charts, but our musical memory is far more detailed.
Another serious oldie, this one 49 years old this year — never made it big, peaked at #51; the group, The Jelly Beans formed in Jersey City; existed for three years, recorded two hits, disappeared. This is old east coast R&B — there's no legacy, they don't tour, no best of albums. The label was a niche label, making mostly this sort of music — this must have been an industry, forty, fifty people who crossed paths in 1963 or 1964 in New Jersey to make this one song — and then all went their separate ways, some of them continuing to sing or record or mix, some of them leaving music behind — some of them had training, their parents wanted them to become musicians, some of them didn't — some of them, this was a stop on the way to glory, some of them, this was the best they ever had — some of them, they think about this song every day, some of them never think about it at all. Music (at least the music that lasts) is permanent in that way. Not everything we write or do or say will be remembered on charts, but our musical memory is far more detailed.
Shook — Emancipator (Mobb Deep X Sigur Ros)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVEwemk-TRU
Sigur Ros has never quite done the trick for me; I need my music to have driving rhythms, even if it's ambient; nothing downtempo for me. When I first heard this around a year ago, I thought it was merely a remix some Sigur Ros song; when it kicks into high gear around 1:01, it is transfixing, chopping and filtering and switching between vocals and chants and backgrounds, two layers of already indistinct gibberish further removed from context, built into a layered quilt of texture and sound — and then the rap section begins at 2:00, another minute later. The lyrics are unrelated; I love the contrast between the abrasive, violent lyrics and the peaceful backgrounds, mediated by a chopped midtempo beat, made of Sigur Ros but made to fit Mobb Deep. The two artists have never — will never — meet or collaborate, but somebody (Emancipator, here) thought they should, and they were right.
Sigur Ros has never quite done the trick for me; I need my music to have driving rhythms, even if it's ambient; nothing downtempo for me. When I first heard this around a year ago, I thought it was merely a remix some Sigur Ros song; when it kicks into high gear around 1:01, it is transfixing, chopping and filtering and switching between vocals and chants and backgrounds, two layers of already indistinct gibberish further removed from context, built into a layered quilt of texture and sound — and then the rap section begins at 2:00, another minute later. The lyrics are unrelated; I love the contrast between the abrasive, violent lyrics and the peaceful backgrounds, mediated by a chopped midtempo beat, made of Sigur Ros but made to fit Mobb Deep. The two artists have never — will never — meet or collaborate, but somebody (Emancipator, here) thought they should, and they were right.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Green Grass Stains on Wrangler Jeans — Happy Apple
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlZS8mNJ4PA
There's this cohort of musicians out in the mid west near the twin cities who all work with each other in different configurations. The Bad Plus is the the most well-known, but there are countless others: Gang Font, Buffalo Collision, The David King Trucking Company, Golden Valley IS NOW, Halloween, Alaska, CAR-LOVE. And they're all different and awesome even if there are an overwhelming number of them. It's like listening to the same musicians in different shades. What if the Bad Plus was freer and a little (dare I say) jammier? Listen to Buffalo Collision. What if they were less acoustic and had that modern-electric feel to them? Listen to Happy Apple. What if you took the often complex Bad Style and boiled it down to the basics where players had to really be economical? Listen to Golden Valley IS NOW.
It's hip.
There's this cohort of musicians out in the mid west near the twin cities who all work with each other in different configurations. The Bad Plus is the the most well-known, but there are countless others: Gang Font, Buffalo Collision, The David King Trucking Company, Golden Valley IS NOW, Halloween, Alaska, CAR-LOVE. And they're all different and awesome even if there are an overwhelming number of them. It's like listening to the same musicians in different shades. What if the Bad Plus was freer and a little (dare I say) jammier? Listen to Buffalo Collision. What if they were less acoustic and had that modern-electric feel to them? Listen to Happy Apple. What if you took the often complex Bad Style and boiled it down to the basics where players had to really be economical? Listen to Golden Valley IS NOW.
It's hip.
Get Lucky (Astre Edit) — Daft Punk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mh9eJJ8cKsU#!
Daft Punk — I speak from a tiny, tiny experience with them and their library — inhabits that range of sound that, if you know the source, you can tell it's sampled; if you don't, it's pure sound, from tabula rasa, no identifiable synths or strings or what. It's all just full tones and sweeps and fast glitches, and it's too much to parse or understand; maybe it's voice, or it was voice, or maybe it'd be clear if I could understand the french accent buried underneath layers of processing; the background was once drums, filtered and chained through 808s and reverbs and compressors; now they're just flittering hits and withdrawals of bass and treble tones, a crash or a pound or a bump here or there. With any experience in pop music, this is perfectly normal, but imagine someone a hundred, two hundred years listening — the chords and rhythms are rational enough, but the arrangement is beyond imagination. What does another hunded hold?
Daft Punk — I speak from a tiny, tiny experience with them and their library — inhabits that range of sound that, if you know the source, you can tell it's sampled; if you don't, it's pure sound, from tabula rasa, no identifiable synths or strings or what. It's all just full tones and sweeps and fast glitches, and it's too much to parse or understand; maybe it's voice, or it was voice, or maybe it'd be clear if I could understand the french accent buried underneath layers of processing; the background was once drums, filtered and chained through 808s and reverbs and compressors; now they're just flittering hits and withdrawals of bass and treble tones, a crash or a pound or a bump here or there. With any experience in pop music, this is perfectly normal, but imagine someone a hundred, two hundred years listening — the chords and rhythms are rational enough, but the arrangement is beyond imagination. What does another hunded hold?
I'm Writing a Novel — Father John Misty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9w1O7mu8Yog
Fear Fun occupies a familiar and yet unique space in the vast expanses of the indie folk-rock-country jumble. It's well-instrumented and melodically interesting stuff, obviously, but also imbued with an individual spark; Joshua Tillman's songwriting is simultaneously self-deprecating, consciously ironic, vividly descriptive and just plain funny. I'm Writing a Novel comes off to me as an intersection of a snarky fuck-you to the world around him (he's writing one, he says, "because it's never been done before") with a genuine confession of sorts; the imagery conveys acknowledgement of his shortcomings, his plight. What is his plight, exactly? There's not quite enough elaboration to tell, but it hardly matters: it still feels like I'm looking through one-way glass at this man, witnessing him as he truly is. Tillman said about the album that he's uninterested in "any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality", having found a voice that earnestly articulates the smart-ass he is at heart. It's not only weird and whimsical; it's unabashedly, almost nakedly true to the artist himself.
"I like humor and sex and mischief", he states plainly in an interview. And, seriously, don't we all?
Fear Fun occupies a familiar and yet unique space in the vast expanses of the indie folk-rock-country jumble. It's well-instrumented and melodically interesting stuff, obviously, but also imbued with an individual spark; Joshua Tillman's songwriting is simultaneously self-deprecating, consciously ironic, vividly descriptive and just plain funny. I'm Writing a Novel comes off to me as an intersection of a snarky fuck-you to the world around him (he's writing one, he says, "because it's never been done before") with a genuine confession of sorts; the imagery conveys acknowledgement of his shortcomings, his plight. What is his plight, exactly? There's not quite enough elaboration to tell, but it hardly matters: it still feels like I'm looking through one-way glass at this man, witnessing him as he truly is. Tillman said about the album that he's uninterested in "any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality", having found a voice that earnestly articulates the smart-ass he is at heart. It's not only weird and whimsical; it's unabashedly, almost nakedly true to the artist himself.
"I like humor and sex and mischief", he states plainly in an interview. And, seriously, don't we all?
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers — Why Do Fools Fall In Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=q96ylFiQK_I#t=135s
This song (which begins at 2:15) is fifty-seven years old right now; by the time I have oldies of my own, this'll be some kind of super-oldie, an oldie for my parents, pop music for perhaps my grandparents, although maybe a little after their time. And yet the chords and rhythms are recognizable; the horns and breaks and harmonies are nothing particular; it's rock, maybe, but it has swing horns and jazz bass; lindy hop rhythm and doo-wop vocals, a vocal group with big band backing. This was before records had genres; there was simply the music being made now and the music that was written before. It was all good music — you either followed or you didn't. It pleased everyone. And you hear echoes of it — particularly the Jackson 5, Diana Ross, and the Beach Boys, perhaps most of Motown.
This song (which begins at 2:15) is fifty-seven years old right now; by the time I have oldies of my own, this'll be some kind of super-oldie, an oldie for my parents, pop music for perhaps my grandparents, although maybe a little after their time. And yet the chords and rhythms are recognizable; the horns and breaks and harmonies are nothing particular; it's rock, maybe, but it has swing horns and jazz bass; lindy hop rhythm and doo-wop vocals, a vocal group with big band backing. This was before records had genres; there was simply the music being made now and the music that was written before. It was all good music — you either followed or you didn't. It pleased everyone. And you hear echoes of it — particularly the Jackson 5, Diana Ross, and the Beach Boys, perhaps most of Motown.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
True Thrush — Dan Deacon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=k0_AEJnpWzA
My mind seems to be wired such that most songs have a kinetic element that manifests in my mind when I listen to them. Heavily and intricately textured ones, like True Thrush, are a particularly vivid experience; Deacon's half-synthetic loops overlap and coalesce, interweaving like dense underbrush (I always think of a jungle when I listen to this song). It's one of those songs that feel very genuinely like an adventure: like it's pulling you through a tunnel made of shimmering synths and distortions before thrusting you into a vast, open chorus ("spread those wings wide and take me along" are about as fitting as lyrics get). Whistles and wobbling layers almost mimic the sounds of wildlife, as if the whole song were some blithe electro-safari. And above all, there's a palpitating sense to the whole thing: a dependable in-and-out that for five minutes seems to restore a reasonable rhythm to lifestyles whose paces often seem beyond our control. It's therapeutic without taking itself to seriously, and that's what pulls me to it again and again.
My mind seems to be wired such that most songs have a kinetic element that manifests in my mind when I listen to them. Heavily and intricately textured ones, like True Thrush, are a particularly vivid experience; Deacon's half-synthetic loops overlap and coalesce, interweaving like dense underbrush (I always think of a jungle when I listen to this song). It's one of those songs that feel very genuinely like an adventure: like it's pulling you through a tunnel made of shimmering synths and distortions before thrusting you into a vast, open chorus ("spread those wings wide and take me along" are about as fitting as lyrics get). Whistles and wobbling layers almost mimic the sounds of wildlife, as if the whole song were some blithe electro-safari. And above all, there's a palpitating sense to the whole thing: a dependable in-and-out that for five minutes seems to restore a reasonable rhythm to lifestyles whose paces often seem beyond our control. It's therapeutic without taking itself to seriously, and that's what pulls me to it again and again.
Glycerine — Bush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOllF3TgAsM
The first year I went to summer camp, I saw a TV advert for Buzz Ballads, a 90s rock compilation CD; I was taken aback by music totally unlike what they'd play on the radio, unlike what my parents listened to; unlike what my friends knew. I looked up some of the songs and listened to the 30-second iTunes samples; spent $14.85 on 15 of the 99c tracks. These became my first trigger songs; they would perfectly recall the people and places of that first summer at Mount Holyoke college in Pennsylvania; the layouts of the classrooms and dorms and mess halls; where we'd sit in the dining halls and the styles of furnitures; the low lighting of pre-war college architecture and the smell of old wood; the titanic rainstorm that hit partway through and stranded us in one of the academic buildings for the better part of a day: the feelings of confusion and lovesickness and homesickness that would surface during the dances. The songs weren't about these things at all, but Glycerine came closest.
The first year I went to summer camp, I saw a TV advert for Buzz Ballads, a 90s rock compilation CD; I was taken aback by music totally unlike what they'd play on the radio, unlike what my parents listened to; unlike what my friends knew. I looked up some of the songs and listened to the 30-second iTunes samples; spent $14.85 on 15 of the 99c tracks. These became my first trigger songs; they would perfectly recall the people and places of that first summer at Mount Holyoke college in Pennsylvania; the layouts of the classrooms and dorms and mess halls; where we'd sit in the dining halls and the styles of furnitures; the low lighting of pre-war college architecture and the smell of old wood; the titanic rainstorm that hit partway through and stranded us in one of the academic buildings for the better part of a day: the feelings of confusion and lovesickness and homesickness that would surface during the dances. The songs weren't about these things at all, but Glycerine came closest.
Little Room — The White Stripes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OqveSybH0A
It's okay for songs to be short, sweet and to the points; if something is minimal enough, distilled down to only its riff, only its chorus, only the parts that the artist thinks are exceptional, it's sometimes only seconds, a minute at most; lots of songs are repetitive in an attempt to become earworms, but those that don't have to are often cut down, short, exceptional, memorable. Most folk songs live on in tiny riffs; most pop songs are known in the public consciousness only by their choruses or hooks: this is the purpose of hooks. But The White Stripes know better: mostly real, old, roots rock, blues rock, garage rock; lo-fi, often drawing on New Orleans big-band and jazz overtones; theatrical and dark and angry, but always romping: Little Room is a synopsis, a triple distillation, and it sticks.
It's okay for songs to be short, sweet and to the points; if something is minimal enough, distilled down to only its riff, only its chorus, only the parts that the artist thinks are exceptional, it's sometimes only seconds, a minute at most; lots of songs are repetitive in an attempt to become earworms, but those that don't have to are often cut down, short, exceptional, memorable. Most folk songs live on in tiny riffs; most pop songs are known in the public consciousness only by their choruses or hooks: this is the purpose of hooks. But The White Stripes know better: mostly real, old, roots rock, blues rock, garage rock; lo-fi, often drawing on New Orleans big-band and jazz overtones; theatrical and dark and angry, but always romping: Little Room is a synopsis, a triple distillation, and it sticks.
Communion Cups and Someone's Coat — Iron & Wine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HND2P_ezkag
I wrote an entire passage here, and my internet cut out, and it was lost. But that's what this song is about — the future and the present, making plans and having them come to pass only part of the time; the unpredictability of the future and the discontent of the present. The song dances around you long enough to make eye contact, and then breaks it, whisking away again, never happy in one place. It doesn't remind me of any given place or time, merely of plans I'd made: visions of the past and how we deal with the discontinuities that arise when the future and present don't coincide. And the song is about that: how the past is often beside the point, and the future beyond it.
I wrote an entire passage here, and my internet cut out, and it was lost. But that's what this song is about — the future and the present, making plans and having them come to pass only part of the time; the unpredictability of the future and the discontent of the present. The song dances around you long enough to make eye contact, and then breaks it, whisking away again, never happy in one place. It doesn't remind me of any given place or time, merely of plans I'd made: visions of the past and how we deal with the discontinuities that arise when the future and present don't coincide. And the song is about that: how the past is often beside the point, and the future beyond it.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Testify — Xaphoon Jones (Radiohead X Kanye West)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz-8B6pl19g
These are figureheads, Kanye West and Thom Yorke; men revered for their outward appearance, a carefully cultivated pop-culture balancing act between not caring how one is perceived and very, very much caring. Kanye is more braggadocio, and Thom is more punk-rocker in attitude, but together they complement each other; the fierce, unrepentant timbre of Kanye West and the smooth-at-first but abrasive, jangly ballads of Radiohead; they build a complete, cohesive world where the two have always coexisted together. And Kanye's Touch The Sky is about death and achievement and human ambition, and Radiohead's Reckoner is about death and some of these same things; they're sister works, both products of the same mindset in modern society, written by famous, wealthy men who feel some factor of discontent.
These are figureheads, Kanye West and Thom Yorke; men revered for their outward appearance, a carefully cultivated pop-culture balancing act between not caring how one is perceived and very, very much caring. Kanye is more braggadocio, and Thom is more punk-rocker in attitude, but together they complement each other; the fierce, unrepentant timbre of Kanye West and the smooth-at-first but abrasive, jangly ballads of Radiohead; they build a complete, cohesive world where the two have always coexisted together. And Kanye's Touch The Sky is about death and achievement and human ambition, and Radiohead's Reckoner is about death and some of these same things; they're sister works, both products of the same mindset in modern society, written by famous, wealthy men who feel some factor of discontent.
Decade — Esbjörn Svensson Trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKzIiCZu9_A
There's something elusive about the present, and every once in a while I manage to slip out of it; to see the world around me as though it were some romanticized past; New York became the street of Buenos Aires in the 1920s, full of mystery and wonder; no more construction, no subway logistics. The night air held possibility and an infinity of people, some of whom were having the same frisson, the same transcendence. I get it late at night, mostly; obscurity and shadow let my imagination take over; I get it in crowds of people, or on the train aboveground, or in a new part of the city.
I can't claim that Decade is about that feeling, but it is for me.
There's something elusive about the present, and every once in a while I manage to slip out of it; to see the world around me as though it were some romanticized past; New York became the street of Buenos Aires in the 1920s, full of mystery and wonder; no more construction, no subway logistics. The night air held possibility and an infinity of people, some of whom were having the same frisson, the same transcendence. I get it late at night, mostly; obscurity and shadow let my imagination take over; I get it in crowds of people, or on the train aboveground, or in a new part of the city.
I can't claim that Decade is about that feeling, but it is for me.
King of Assmilk Flowers — Gnarlo (Tyler the Creator X Neutral Milk Hotel)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul6jekqd6nA
A gnarlo mashup of Neutral Milk Hotel's King of Carrot Flowers with Tyler the Creator's Assmilk. Like all good mashups, it adds much-needed context to both songs. They are seemingly unrelated; King is about Anne Frank and her explorations of love and prepubescent sexuality; it's taboo and sweet and slightly uncomfortable, but also terribly sentimental. Assmilk is classic OFWGKTA, vulgar and violent and stunningly clever; its trespasses of good taste, its homophobia and misogyny and horrible violent imagery must be forgiven as part of its camp, its self-awareness, its intentions to shock; underneath all this it's a fucked-up exploration of sex and sexuality, and so the two songs do go together. Assmilk gains far better backing instrumentation; King gains an edge. Together they are magical — who thought to combine these, but also functional, wow, this works!
A gnarlo mashup of Neutral Milk Hotel's King of Carrot Flowers with Tyler the Creator's Assmilk. Like all good mashups, it adds much-needed context to both songs. They are seemingly unrelated; King is about Anne Frank and her explorations of love and prepubescent sexuality; it's taboo and sweet and slightly uncomfortable, but also terribly sentimental. Assmilk is classic OFWGKTA, vulgar and violent and stunningly clever; its trespasses of good taste, its homophobia and misogyny and horrible violent imagery must be forgiven as part of its camp, its self-awareness, its intentions to shock; underneath all this it's a fucked-up exploration of sex and sexuality, and so the two songs do go together. Assmilk gains far better backing instrumentation; King gains an edge. Together they are magical — who thought to combine these, but also functional, wow, this works!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)