I know that there are those of you who don't get this band. Too depressing, you say. But I'm a student of 19th-century poetry, and this sort of nuanced melancholy is right up my alley,
So on this unofficial last day of summer -- with that back-to-school turning-a-new-page stuff hanging over all of our heads -- here's a haunting track from the 2005 album Plans.
Right off the bat, we know we're in yearning territory -- "I want to live where soul meets body." Because, we have to infer, he doesn't at present live there. Despite the perky beat, the shush-shush drum track, all that stuff about bathing in sunlight and cool water and being fresh and new -- that's just wishful thinking.
The reality? "Cause in my head there's a Greyhound station." Now, anyone who's ever spent time in a Greyhound station knows how desperate that sort of place is. Sure, he's sending his thoughts off to various destinations, but the underlying scuzz cannot be erased. Not even by the lame guitar solo in the break. (Or by the next verse, which is classic gravedigger stuff -- "turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels"? ";"our filthy hands can wash one another's" -- yowza!).
But then -- hey presto -- Ben Gibbard pulls a rabbit out of a hat: "I do believe it's true / That there's are roads left in both of our shoes." That's such a seductive line to me, working that sweet highway metaphor for all it's worth. Even if it's followed by the slightly death-wish-ish "If the silence takes you / Then I hope it takes me too." (Shades of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark"). And even more important -- the melody of that hook is a total ear-worm, with an incantatory, hypnotic quality -- it's been haunting my brain for weeks.
Sure, the song is tinged with melancholy. But what sticks with me? The positive message of that "roads left in both of our shoes" hook. The dream-weaving third verse, where he declares, "You're the only song I want to hear / A melody soaring through my atmosphere." That soaring "where soul meets body" refrain, And yes, those groovy Burt Bacharach-esque "Bada bada ba bas" in the bridge. Raindrops keep falling on my head, but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red.
Who doesn't feel down sometimes? Death Cab's giving us a road map for climbing back out of the hole. Which is sometimes exactly what we need.
Monday, December 10, 2012
My Top Ten Albums of 2012
Ten days, ten albums. No particular order -- hey, it was hard enough whittling it down to ten! Mumford & Sons: Babel "Hopeless Wanderer"
I loved it when Ray Davies started doing bluegrass and country music on Muswell Hillbillies, so I'm naturally a sucker for the Mumfords. What's not to love when hipster indie Brits forge their own peculiar Americana sound, full of banjo and acoustic guitars and Salvation Army brass? They're like O Brother Where Art Thou? meets Martin Amis, full of post-modern angst and old-time religion.
Just to prove that 2009's Sigh No More wasn't a fluke, here comes their wonderful new album Babel. And -- because this is what I do -- here's one track to hook you in.
Remember that old song"The Happy Wanderer"? (Fal-de-ree, fal-da-ra, fal-de-ree, fal-da-ra-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha). This tune is its flip side, trading in jaunty optimism for desperate passion.
It's a sort of love song, I guess, as the singer clings wildly to the person who has redeemed his sorry soul: "You heard my voice / I came out of the woods by choice" and, later, "you brought me out from the cold." "Now, how I long to grow old" he adds, giddy with the idea that he actually has something worth growing old for.
But we've left Simplistic Pop Love Songs soooooo far behind. He's not looking for easy answers -- in fact, he wants the complexities to remain. "So leave that click in my head," he begs in the tentatively loping first verse. "The words that you said / Left a clouded mind and a heavy heart," he says, adding, "But I was sure we could see a new start." Ah, new starts -- the eternal promise of pop music. But the lyrics are barely out of his mouth before he's dragged down again. In the second verse, he admits, "I wrestled long with my youth" and "When I lose my head, I lose my spine." This is one conflicted guy -- you gotta admire the chick who can solve his head games. The Indie Songwriter's Handbook requires this kind of anti-hero angst, but I have to say, Marcus Mumford pulls it off convincingly. As he charges into the fiercer energy of the chorus, he pleads with real conviction, "Hold me fast, / Hold me fast / Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer."The little ragged edge to his lead vocal makes it even more poignant, as he flails against the mounting scrum of acoustic guitar and banjo. (Who said that acoustic instruments couldn't rise to the grandeur of rock?) Of course the Anglophile fangirl in me adores the broad A of that oft-repeated "hold me fast." It's the sexiest thing in this song, kinda like the "I really fooked it up this time" line in "Little Lion Man" from the Mumfords first album. Those are the peculiarly Mumfordian touches that endear this song to me.
There's a reckless romanticism to this chorus, the tempo veering almost out of control, the acoustic instruments scrabbling wildly to keep up. He knows he's a guy who sometimes flies off the deep end. That's why he needs a lover who will keep him grounded, a steadfast lover who's just as intrigued by the clicks in his head as by his more obvious attributes. Isn't that what "for better, for worse" is all about?
In the final chorus, he vows "I will learn, / I will learn / To love the skies I'm under." I'm not one-hundred-percent buying that. Listen to the weary flogging beat of "skies I'm un-der" -- this guy still isn't sure he can do it. But with her help, he's gonna try. And if that ain't love . . .
Saturday, August 28, 2010
"Ready To Start" / Arcade Fire
Okay, so my guest blogger for the summer got sidetracked, and now he's going back to school and I've lost him for the next few months. Nevertheless, I have one thing to thank him for -- he gave me his copy of the new Arcade Fire album The Suburbs, and I'm helplessly -- helplessly, I tell you -- in love with this track.
Mostly, I have to admit, it's that chorus -- the progression of the "if I was" clauses: "If I was scared / I would / If I was bored [later changed to "pure"] / You know I would / If I was yours..." and the pregnant, yearning pause before he concludes "but I'm not." This is just eating at him, that he can't get this girl. Forget that pose of hipster disaffected cool; he wants her. But is he willing to stand on the precipice, risk everything, to get her? Maybe yesterday, but today he's finally ready to move past that. It's a huge step, and this song just vibrates with fear and trembling resolution.
He knows the world is full of risks. There are the businessmen who will drink his blood (notice how craftily they add "like the kids in art school said they would" -- no knee-jerk prejudices here!). He's willing to bow down to the emperor, even though he knows the guy's got no clothes. But he won't pretend he feels alright, even if she knocks on his door; it may be stepping out into the dark, but he's finally got the courage to stand on his own two feet.
Don't you remember that moment -- when you finally realize that the person you've idolized has feet of clay? It's a liberating moment, but scary too. For once, Arcade Fire justifies the Springsteen-like anthemic build-up of their songs; it's simply the sound of a guy mustering his courage to confront a brave new world. The buzzy clutter of sound behind Win Butler's vocals makes supreme sense -- he's still fighting his way past all those hipster-approved attitudes. Now, at last, he's ready to start sounding like himself.
Personally I never liked Arcade Fire's earlier albums; this one has completely turned me around. And I know it's a monster hit (I usually hate the monster hits); I know that the indie world feels betrayed that these guys have gone mainstream. Of course they'll make a ton of money with this record, play the Garden, top the charts. So what? WAKE UP, PEOPLE!! When the music's good, it's good. Why should the "indie" label have to mean "only minimal, underground success"?
This album seems to me like Arcade Fire's coming of age record, the one where they prove they've got the goods. I don't blame them for being scared -- they've got no place to go from here but down.
Still -- you know what? I'm laying my money on these kids.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Tuesday Guest Blogger
"We Used to Wait" / Arcade Fire
Welcome allto the first post in a series by me, Hugh. I will be posting weekly in a similar fashion to my mom.
Ever since the release of Arcade Fire's first Arcade Fire EP in 2003, a dedicated fan base has grown up around them, always craving new songs. While their music has always been accessible, their trademark sound is not overly commercial, but dramatic baroque pop. Having gone platinum on their two previous LPs, the chances are that more platinum records will be won with their third studio album, The Suburbs, which is set to be released August 2nd. Perhaps they will finally win a Grammy award, having been nominated for both Funeral (2004) and Neon Bible (2007).
Until August, all we Arcade Fire fans have to satisfy our cravings is this new single, "We Used To Wait," which has just broken into the rotation on BBC radio. Of course, the minute it appeared it spread around the internet like crazy. At first "We Used to Wait" does not sound like a typical Arcade Fire song -- it's more stripped-down, with more dynamic changes. Singer Win Butler begins with piano chords that will make a shiver run up your spine. The use of a piano is a constant in Arcade Fire's music, so it seems that the band is easing the listener back into a familiar realm with the nuanced sound.
Drummer Jeremy Gara switches between stressing the off-beat and stressing the down-beat, which makes the meter one of the most exciting elements of the song. Yet unlike Band of Ruffians or Vampire Weekend, where the drumbeat is complex, the drums here are minimalist.
Then the full orchestration comes in, adding strings and guitars for an upbeat sound in contrast to the minor-key verse. Back-up singers join in, like a circle of friends supporting the singer. The effect is like sunshine breaking through the clouds. The guitars, which are generally not significant instruments on an Arcade Fire track, add embellishments that dance above the piano line. With a regular line-up of seven musicians, Arcade Fire can call upon many instruments to build up a dramatic, joyous sound. As a result, what began as a song of longing turns into a song of hope.
As always with Arcade Fire, the lyrics are crucial. In the verse, the key is minor and the lyrics are in the past tense, as Win Butler sings, "I used to write/I used to write letters, I used to sign my name/I used to sleep at night." But in the bridge the repeated phrase "We used to wait" implies both longing and yet a sense of progression. In the chorus, the lyrics take a turn towards levity, signifying a brighter future.
Being able to combine dark emotions with a pleasing sound is one of Arcade Fire's strengths. What makes this song distinctive is the dynamic change in mood between verse and chorus, a fuller exploration of their musical capabilities. Now I really can't wait to hear the new album, if their songwriting has taken another major step forward. I hope you enjoy this song and it makes you curious to listen to more of their music!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
"Skin and Bones" / Motion City Soundtrack
Another song with a title that sounds like a Kinks song, but isn't. This one's from a different band, though -- another new album I reviewed for Blogcritics. Of course, I have written about this band here before (and here too). But a new album deserves another post.
I first saw Motion City Soundtrack a couple summers ago, sandwiched in between the Hush Sound and Panic at the Disco (yes, my pre-teen daughter picked the concert) on the Honda Civic Tour. The other bands were peppy and entertaining, but -- sigh! -- I immediately fell irrationally in love with Motion City Soundtrack. Snarky lyrics and a lead singer in nerd glasses will always do that to me. (Remember Elvis Costello?) I realized then that I'd been listening to them on my kids' iPods for months; their insanely catchy, revved-up melodies were already familiar.
I'd never bothered to listen to the lyrics, though, and once I did, Motion City Soundtrack leapfrogged right into this tiny cadre of artists I consider My Guys. Membership in that elite corps is very selective; it's more that just really really really liking their music. I become convinced that I get where they're coming from, and that if we ever met, they'd appreciate that I was one of their Special Fans.
I can't predict who goes in that door and who doesn't, mind you. Why should Keb' Mo' be there and not Amos Lee? Why Death Cab for Cutie and not the Decemberists? Why Ben Folds and not Ben Harper? Why Fountains of Wayne and not the Shins? Why the Old 97s and not My Morning Jacket? Why John Hiatt and not John Prine? Why Amy Rigby and Jill Sobule but not Aimee Mann and Jenny Lewis? (because it's not just guys . . . .) Why the Kinks and not the Beatles? Why Nick Lowe and not Graham Parker? (Okay, that one I get...)
But back to Motion City Soundtrack. In a sea of power pop, punk-pop, and indie-emo bands, these guys really stand out, not just for their clever lyrics but for their psychological insights. The characters in MCS songs tend to be misfits, insecure losers, but they're brilliant losers with a huge vocabulary and a shrink's eye for the betraying gesture. On this fourth album, My Dinosaur Life -- their graduation to the big leagues of a Major Label -- they even dare to move beyond paranoid love songs to consider the universe.
Yes, the universe. This entire song is a meditation on the purpose of life. (Maybe Justin Pierre watched one too many Richard Attenborough documentaries on the Discovery Channel.) Uptempo it may be, underlaid with a cheese-grater guitar strum, but the melody is yearning and anxious, as the protagonist mulls over the Big What-Ifs. Such as: "What if there's nothing more to me / I'm just skin and bones, there's no mystery?" Or "What if there's no way to explain / Things like deja vu and acid rain?" Or "What if there's nothing more to us, / We're just carbon dust, we're just pixie dust?" And the most important one, cradled in a lush set of vocal harmonies: "Will we be all right, left alone tonight?" That little-child sense of vulnerability, that fear of the surrounding void, is heart-wrenching.
Yet accompanying those abstruse philosophical queries, the sound is raw and fierce, like a shield of electric guitars, loud bashing drums, and a moog synthesizer (just right for that sci-fi underlayer). That punk-flavored aural assault is like a chainsaw, cutting through the complacency of day-to-day existence. By the song's end, they still have no answer -- only the fellowship of back-up vocals and that protective chain-mail of sound. But at least they've asked the question.
It takes courage to wade out into the void. It takes nerve not to go for the easy, comforting answer. I'm so proud of My Guys.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
"Holiday" / Vampire Weekend
In my household, I have to say, we were awaiting Vampire Weekend's second album with bated breath. Their 2008 debut was one of those rare things that everybody in our family loved like crazy -- every time it came on the radio, we'd all cheer. And although my son Hugh was the one who first introduced us to this spunky world-pop crew, for this second album I was the one who scored the goods first, by reviewing an advance copy it for Blogcritics.
Hugh and I went to see them Sunday night at this spectacular converted movie palace uptown, its interior a gilded riot of Moorish and Oriental decoration (it's the same place Reverend Ike used to preach). They are just as engaging live as I expected -- animated and enthusiastic, executing these complex songs with crisp professionalism. There wasn't a wasted note in the evening. What I couldn't appreciate beforehand was what a great singalong band this is -- the audience was all over those catchy refrains, dancing in our seats and having a simply fabulatastic time.
"Holiday" is always a promising title for a song (think the Kinks' "Holiday" and "Holiday Romance," Nick Lowe's "Time I Took A Holiday") and this breezy track lives up to its peers. Loaded up with ska, pulsing along like a speeding car, it has a deliberately tinny sound that somehow just feels like a beach vacation to me.
Not just a holiday, but "the best one of the year" -- a desperately needed getaway in the depths of winter, "when I'm counting on my teeth" (chatter chatter chatter). I'm guessing the Caribbean ("our republic on the beach"), that favorite long-weekend escape for privileged Northeasterners, the usual characters for this gang of Ivy League Columbia graduates. Jeez, that takes me back. I recall the anxiety of those crack-of-dawn flights, all the touseled blond children, the sets of matching suitcases, on President's Day break -- that long February weekend when it seemed no Manhattan private-school family would dare not fly south. Our kids always felt spectacularly unsurprised when they ran into school friends at the resort's kids club (colonialism is NOT dead). And then you'd meet the same kids skiing at Deer Valley or Vail over the March vacation, like clockwork. Yet I have to admit, identifying with these scenarios is part of Vampire Weekend's appeal for me.
But really, who wouldn't enjoy this recklessly catchy little song? "I’ve got wheels, I’ve got Cutter spray / And a healthy sense of worth," lead singer Ezra Koenig declares; "Half of me is the gasoline / But the other half’s the surf." Even when when the song floats away from its moorings in the bridge (something vague about a naive girl who turns vegetarian during the Iraq invasion), I'm ready for that percussive single-note synth riff to start up again, cruising back up the beach. This song may be edged with thoughts of bombs, with a nagging fear, but it still bursts out of the gate with dizzying joy. Listen to Ezra's little falsetto whoops; they may be ska or Afropop or Bollywood, but they're definitely not bland conventional pop.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
"Magic Marker" / Monsters of Folk
I bought this CD in early October, but I lent it to my college-age son -- and presto, just like magic, it disappeared into his music collection. I finally retrieved it at Thanksgiving, but by then I was deep into a self-induced Kinks coma and couldn't listen to anything else. In fact, thanks to the hangover from Kinks Month, I still haven't been able to listen to much new music lately. But I left Monsters of Folk on rotation on my CD player, and this week it suddenly jumped into the forefront. I'm digging it now, just as I suspected I would.
Background: Monsters of Folk is what's nowadays called a "side project" -- what we used to call a "super group" -- composed of Matt Ward (who records as M. Ward), Jim James from My Morning Jacket (herein given the endearingly goofy pseudonym Yim Yames), and Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes. I already had all of them on my iTunes, but I'd never have thought of mixing them together -- Bright Eyes' breathy pop cleverness, My Morning Jacket's rootsy earnestness, and M. Ward's snarky existential indie-folk seem to live in different realms. The first few spins, I felt compelled to tag each song as a Matt song, a Conor song, or a Yim song. But now I've relaxed into its overall genial vibe -- their collaboration seems more like Travelin' Wilburys than, say, Little Village -- and as each talent steps up to the mike, I can enjoy his distinctive idiom for what it is.
"Magic Marker" -- one of the Yim songs -- feels like the heart of the album for me. It's such a mellow, retro-sounding song, the first time I heard it I thought it was a cover of some well-loved old favorite (from some reason, I keep imagining it's late Graham Parker). Acoustic, with a gently rollicking rhythm, it pours out like maple syrup on pancakes. Like a lot of James' songs, the lyrics are a little opaque, but I like that; that laidback simplicity is deceptive.
There's something deeply reassuring about the chorus: "Ordinary don't mean nothin' no how / Look what's ordinary now." (I imagine Yim, in his flannel shirt and beard, flicking around the TV channels in disgust.) Who would want to be "normal" in a world where Lady Gaga and Russell Brand can appear on network TV? And I love the chorus's next image: "It's got a magic marker stain / On its face and it needs a shower." I can look around my desk right now and see papers defaced where some Sharpie has bled through. It's a striking visual detail that perfectly defines the soiled, spoiled nature of modern culture. Yim may be a Young Codger, but he's awfully sincere.
The first couple of verses baffle me, as if I just stumbled into an ongoing conversation. He's talking about some "frozen kid" (himself?) who's feel ostracized; it seems that he's gone out on a limb to impress somebody (a girl?) -- as he puts it, "All the freaked-out measures / I took, tryin' to make you sick of smilin'". But in the third and fourth verses, he hits his stride, with his central image of a Tootsie Roll Pop: "There's something sweet waiting in the center / Taste and see. . . . How many licks does it take to get / To the center where there's something sweet." Underneath all the poses, he promises her, is something geniune and wonderful; he's urging her to work a little to find his real self.
Okay, so that's all there is to it. Two arresting images -- the Magic Marker bleed-through and the Tootsie Pop -- and that dumbstruck remark "Look what's ordinary now," which gets repeated over and over, in Yim's hushed and husky vocal. Every verse more sounds get layered in -- another guitar, a dobro, a bass, synths, backing vocals, finally even drums -- but it remains gentle and light. With a minimum of fuss, Yim spins us through the shallowness of modern relationships, the tackiness of our mass culture, and the importance of being real -- and all without one bit of preaching or poeticizing. That hook seems so gentle, but it ingratiates itself until you wake up singing it. Like I said, syrup on pancakes. It's a winner.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
"Heretics" / Andrew Bird
I forget how this song leaked into my iTunes -- I think it was on some radio station sampler ID, or maybe a cache of free MP3s I was sent for ordering tickets through TicketBastard. I'm just enough of a sap to actually listen to every track on things like that. After all, if it hadn't been for a Starbucks compilation album, I'd never have re-discovered Nick Lowe (who in turn led me to John Hiatt and Ron Sexsmith and Robyn Hitchcock and about half of the music currently on my iPod...).
Apparently I liked "Heretics" enough for it to survive several periodic iTunes purges (I'd have 10,000 songs on there if my laptop didn't have such a small hard drive). But I can't say I was gobsmacked by it; it's not like I ran off to buy all of Andrew Bird's albums. No, this song crept up on me, riff by riff, phrase by phrase. For months I would look at that lone Andrew Bird track on my iTunes list and wonder, "How does that one go?" Or it would shuffle up while I was exercising, and, baffled, I'd go into contortions to read my iPod screen. Other days, I'd hear a fragment of it in my mind, over and over, and be stumped trying to remember which song that was.
Then again, simple-minded catchiness isn't always the point, is it? Bird, who's 36, is a bit of a musical chameleon, constantly evolving from his roots as a classical violin prodigy through jazz and trad folk into indie-rock. This song comes from his 2007 album Armchair Apocrypha, which layers a host of musical influences into a dense tapestry of sound, with verbose, cryptic lyrics. His songs (I've downloaded a few now) wash over you, slip into the side door and tease your brain.
On one level, "Heretics" seems to be speaking as The Voice of His Generation, but on another level, it's tentative, riddling, unwilling to commit (come to think of it, that sums up his generation, doesn't it?) Though he begins grandly -- a long musical lead-in, building from a lone guitar riff up to a dense electronic wall of sound with a chorus of ahh-ooooohs -- it's thrown off kilter by a raga-like motif of strings, sliding around drunkenly. And then Andrew begins talk-singing in a breathy voice: "Born host through our tongues / To sing a song about it / Held our breath for too long / Till we're half sick about it." He's no major vocalist, that's for sure, but then neither was Bob Dylan; the earnest, amateur charm of Bird's voice makes it oddly persuasive.
This is no rebel statement; he sounds almost plaintive as he asks, "Tell us what we did wrong / Then you can blame us for it / Turn a clamp on our thumbs / We'll sew a doll about it." (Sew a doll? Yep, that's how the lyrics page of his fan site transcribes this. Quirky image; it combines skinny-jean geekiness with voodoo.) "We're so in doubt about it," he laments, and "How about some credit now / Where credit is due?" In the second bridge, he stops singing entirely to exclaim, "Wait just a second now / It's not all that bad / Are we not having fun?" But the question is very much a question.
There's no story, no neat three-verse-and-a-chorus design, just a string of arresting phrases -- like "You're making mountains of handkerchiefs / Where the mascara always runs" and "You know the kind of sign you hang on the door / Saying, "We'll be back." What a crack!" I feel hypnotized by the chorus: "Thank God it's fatal / Thank God it's fatal / Not shy / Not shy and fatal, not shy and fatal / Thank God." The chorus's melody, ping-ponging between two close notes, and the shifting accents of the beat -- it's almost incantatory. I forget to ask, "What is fatal? What's shy?"
"Heretics" isn't what you'd call a pub singalong; its most seductive quality is those interweaving textures, the woozy ebb and flow of its eclectic musical effects. (As Bird himself confessed in a blog written for the New York Times, "I’m really an instrumentalist who sings words and if you care to pay attention you might enjoy them.") Somehow Andrew Bird reminds me of Sufjan Stevens, whose songs I can never remember either. The brilliance of their music is never in question. And yet somehow, I don't think it'll ever touch me the way I'm touched by "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass," "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You," or "Waterloo Sunset." That's just me... Heretics sample
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
"Why Modern Radio is A-OK" / Roman Candle
So just how DO we learn about new music? I remember having my ear glued to the radio when I was a kid, drinking in every new release the DJs touted -- a listening strategy that could be surprisingly satisfying, if you had a decent local station. Naturally that station would be attuned to your musical tastes; those tastes were molded by the station in the first place. College years were no problem, either; we were in and out of our friends' rooms, rifling through their record collections (a milk crate full of well-loved LPs, those with gatefold covers in front for easy access when it was time to roll a joint).
Nowadays, though, you really have to work at finding new music. I think that's why my kids restlessly trawl around the internet -- they've got to chase YouTube links and MySpace band sites to find music they like, often a hit-or-miss proposition. Just about the only way I get turned on to something new these days is when somebody whose taste I trust tells me to listen to something (lacking such friends in my day-to-day life, I find them on the internet). Meanwhile, the record companies have their heads up their backsides, pouring all their promotion into proven moneymakers and taking no chances with new talent.
A wonderful young band like Roman Candle is so likely to fall through the cracks. Their first album (The Wee Hours Review) languished on the shelf for nearly 3 years before it was released. Meanwhile they toured relentlessly, opening for quality acts like Aimee Mann and the Indigo Girls and the Psychedelic Furs, captivating audiences wherever they played. When the album finally came out in 2006, critics raved, but did Roman Candle become a household name? Nope. By all rights their superb new album, Oh Tall Tree in the Ear, should make them stars at last, but I'm too cynical to expect miracles like that.
So it should come as no surprise that Roman Candle's personnel -- brothers Skip and Logan Matheny, plus Skip's keyboardist wife, Timshel -- would have a cynical take on this themselves. The evidence: track 3 on the new album, "Why Modern Radio Is A-OK," a nifty bit of talking blues. The setting is deliberately lowbrow, as befits their twangy rootsy sound (they started out, after all, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina): "I was down at my favorite watering hole / With a buddy of mine that was out on parole / And we were flipping through the jukebox, / Talking how we’d been and how we are." I love the casualness of that scene; these aren't music geeks, they're just guys in a bar. The parolee gets a notion to play some Neil Young, an artist he'd learned about from a friend in prison. Our singer, however, panics: "Now he didn’t know, but while he was in jail, / I’d had my heart broken by a woman too wondrous to tell / And we‘d fallen in love to half the songs that jukebox played." I can just see this scene unfolding, can't you?
The action comes to a peak: "So when he flattened his dollar on the side of the machine / and I saw “Comes a Time" come on the karaoke screen / I realized there was a couple things I had forgot to say." The visceral heave is palpable. Then they launch into the chorus: "Don’t play Neil Young / Don’t play Van Morrison / Just let some high school emo band start versing and chorusing / Because there’s no way it will break my heart as far as I can see." (That Morrison/chorusing rhyme kills me.) The irony makes me giggle-- here's a guy singing his heart out, like a born follower of Neil or Van, saying he doesn't want to hear them? Ah, yes, because they're real, they touch the heart, and right now he can't handle that. With a deft twist, his last line slams the satire home: "And that’s why modern radio is A-OK with me."
The music itself is straightforward, a jovial bar-band rollick -- guitar, drums, organ, and Skip Logan's earnest, down-to-earth vocals. That title line practically begs the audience to sing along. I described this as "talking blues," and it does echo early Dylan -- that harmonica interlude is no accident -- but it also makes me think of Don McLean's "American Pie," that radio hit you could not escape in the winter of 1972. And like "American Pie," it name checks a list of musical greats -- John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, "Johnny and June" (Cash and Carter), even Merle Watson (no doubt chosen for the rhyme, "They just trade some Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham for a broke-down Datsun"). His bar companion the ex-con begins to wax poetic, urging him to "think of a winter afternoon when you fell in love / And ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls." But our heartbroken hero is too raw to appreciate the poetry: "Now my buddy rattled on till an hour'd gone by / And I thought to spit a mouthful of Beam in his eye."
Such a deft little piece of irony, and a great way to honor their musical heroes, artists whose music isn't soulless and tiny-hearted. Roman Candle may be a young band, but they've paid their dues, and they respect the masters who came before them. These guys sure sound like the real deal to me. So why doesn't modern radio know about them? Hmmm?
Sorry, I've been away for a few days, packing my eldest up and sending him off to college. (Wistful moment, eh?) One of his last requests before we left home was for me to do a blog post on Grizzly Bear, one of his favorite new bands. How could I refuse a last request like that? And then, lo and behold, when we got to campus, there were posters all over advertising a Grizzly Bear concert in two weeks. That totally seems like the big finger from the sky pointing out that he's gonna love college.
I think Hugh first discovered this band when they were opening for Radiohead (Hugh has incredibly good ears for new music; he has a history of liking opening acts better than the headliners). At any rate, they're one of those groovy Brooklyn indie bands that all the hipster kids know; their first album,* Yellow House, won all sorts of kudos. This song is from their second,* released this year, which has the weird name Veckatimest. Don't ask me.
Hugh and I were on a Fleet Foxes kick this summer (and just for the record, I was the one who bought that CD first, Hugh, so make sure you didn't take it to college with you). The first thing he told me about Grizzly Bear is that they're into vocal harmonies, just like Fleet Foxes -- that was a hook I couldn't resist. I've also seen them referred to as psych-folk, and that intrigued me too, promising all sorts of Robyn Hitchcockian delights. Well, the psych part I get, with the gauzy, floaty textures of this song, the ebbing and flowing waves of vocals pouring over a loose-jointed syncopation. The lyrics aren't quite as deliciously absurd as Hitchcock's, but they're appealingly disjointed, tentative fragments of inarticulate phrases flung like frisbees into the wall of sound. (Here's the chorus: "Would you always / Maybe sometimes / Make it easy / Take your time.") Another thing I love about this song is the way they layer on a wall of sound and then periodically arrest the process -- the musical equivalent of biting their nails -- peeling the song back to the bare essentials: bass, drums, that pulsating electric piano. (Repeat after me: the piano is a percussion instrument.) It's an intensely textured song, and right now I'm into texture.
I have to say, the band I most think of when I listen to this song is the Smiths. In my book, that's a HUGE recommendation. Maybe it's the odd harmonic intervals that the singer hits, leaping up to his falsetto range; but I think it more that emotionally fragile quality, that neurotic yearning that Morrissey made his trademark. The singer is clearly agonizing over a relationship that's threatening to fizzle. At the end of every verse, he reiterates, "Just like yesterday / I told you I would stay." What can't she get about that promise? Phrases like "a routine malaise" and "momentary phase" edge nervously into the verses, and in the last verse he frets, "Every time you try / Quarter half the mile."
Modern relationships are so much work, dammit, and all too often it's only one half of the couple that's doing all the work. We ladies like to think it's usually us doing the heavy lifting, but along come these skinny-jean males with the glossy, floppy hair, who protest that they're the ones doing the emnotional heavy lifting. And maybe they are, maybe they are. So long as they can harmonize like this, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
* If you don't count the solo album Ed Droste put out before he formed an actual band.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
"Ragged Wood" / Fleet Foxes
I guess it's good that there aren't so many record stores around anymore. Whenver I do walk into one, I'll impulse buy a dozen CDs at once, often on the flimsiest pretexts -- like, I heard one track on Sirius radio and liked it. (Of course, I'm probably more susceptible just because walking into a record store is such a rare event now.) That's how I acquired this debut album by the Fleet Foxes -- which then sat on my desk, unopened, for three months. No offense, guys, I just was overloaded.
By the time I finally listened to Fleet Foxes, I couldn't remember what they sounded like -- so when this gorgeous thing burst upon my ears, it took me totally by surprise. With Hollies-like harmonies and a rootsy, folk-inflected vibe (they almost outdo the Decemberists in their arty English ballad lyrics), they're much more romantic than I'd expected.
The third track on the album, "Ragged Wood" is a sweetheart. It hits you right off with a wall of harmonized vocals -- "Whoa-oh-oh" -- for a split second I think it's gonna be Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time," that's how classic that doo-wop opening is. (Maybe it's the reverb, too -- taking a page from My Morning Jacket, boys?) But once the verse gets under way, we're in folk territory, with Robin Pecknold freewheeling through a jaunty melody: "Come down from the mountain, you have been gone too long / The spring is upon us, follow my only song." Vintage pastoral, that. They're not afraid of using metaphor, that's for sure: "Settle down with me by the fire of my yearning," he urges her. "You should come back home, back on your own now" -- Pecknold's plaintive vocal sells this for all it's worth. I like the fact that it's the woman who's roaming here, the man who's fretting by the fireside (shades of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Be Home Soon," one of the sexiest songs ever.) "Darling, I can barely remember you beside me," he sighs in verse two. We're talking urgent.
The song structure is more jazzlike than traditional pop, though. After two verses, they shift into a bridge, the reverbed vocal harmonies sounding almost a cappella over a light finger-picked guitar. And they're going full-bore poetic: "In the evening light, when the woman of the woods came by / To give to you the word of the old man" -- wait, who are these people? He doesn't explain, nor does he explain the characters in the next couple: "In the morning tide, when the sparrow and the seagull fly / And Jonathan and Evelyn get tired." But seeing the old people in twilight, the young lovers at dawn, has a lovely poetic resonance; it's like he's tracing the arc of his own relationship. And if his girl doesn't get home, they'll never get to be the old folks in the picture.
Morphing into an instrumental break, the song hushes down to a simple syncopated guitar lick (I love how it circles dizzily around, repeating like a tic), gradually layering on vocal ohs, then a bass line, then cymbals. By the time we get the whole drum kit, they've shifted into yet another melody, a series of cautiously climbing chord shifts -- with harmonized vocals, naturally -- "Lie to me if you will / At the top of Barringer Hill." (I'm assuming there's a girl somewhere who knows Barringer Hill perfectly well.) Then the melody crests and spills over, "Tell me anything you want, / Any old lie will do / Call me back to you." Oh, he's helpless in love, all right. Mama likes that.
Jeez, if these guys are this distinctive-sounding on their first album, I can't wait to see where they go next. No wonder they generated such viral My Space action and drew concert crowds way before they even secured a record deal. Who needs label PR when you've actually got a sound?
I guess I knew Blink 182 had broken up. I mean, I knew one of the guys split to form Angels & Airwaves, while the other two had become +44.And then there was the news of drummer Travis Barker in that awful plane crash, with horrible burns covering his much-tattooed body. I figured that was it for Blink 182. Not exactly the end of civilization as we know it.
When the news of Blink 182’s re-forming hit the airwaves, I barely noticed.But you see, my daughter is 14 and can’t go to rock concerts by herself – and the opening acts for Blink’s reunion tour were Panic! At the Disco and Fall Out Boy. So there I was, a week ago, jammed into the ComCastCenter outside of Boston, six rows back from the mosh pit. Panic! was adorable as usual (though they’re in the midst of a schism themselves), and even Fall Out Boy was surprisingly engaging. I’d have been happy if we’d left the concert after FOB. But who knew Blink 182 would be so fantastic? I was completely mesmerized. This is a band of only three guys – count ‘em, three – but thanks mostly to Barker’s truly insane drumming, their sound is so big, so brash, so hopped up, it felt like a whole punk orchestra. While he thrashes around on the drums, bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge peel off a few riffs and trade off whiny, neurotic vocals – the perfect expression of teen angst. They rip into their songs – hits like “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things” and “Adam’s Song” – twice as fast and thirteen times louder than they are on the albums, with goofy non sequiturs for stage banter.
The thing is, despite that headbanging sound these guys really are good songwriters.Their lyrics absolutely nail what it feels like to be 14 and insecure, while the jerking rhythms and yowling refrains tap into the pent-up frustrations of adolescence. Being the kings of punk pop, of course, they can’t stray too far from toilet humor and inarticulate rage, but they do get “serious” every once in a while – like this song from 2001’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Tom DeLonge – who seems to be their chief songwriter – wrote this one, about (no kidding) his parents’ divorce, seen from the point of view of (naturally) the kids.
It starts off with the apt metaphor of a house: “It's hard to wake up / When the shades have been pulled shut / This house is haunted / It's so pathetic.” This is a family in emotional lockdown; no wonder the kid’s depressed. I love how Hoppus sings the verse, breathless and earnest, over a tentative, almost folky guitar riff. But no one’s asking him how he feels, and his voice begins to sound strangled as he says, “I'm ripe with things to say / The words rot and fall away” – a deft bit of image development there, eh? “If a stupid poem could fix this home,” he adds bitterly, “I'd read it every day.”
Then DeLonge explodes into singing the chorus, sneering “So here's your holiday / Hope you enjoy it this time” – hitting those aspirate h’s with real venom. “You gave it all away,” he lashes out at his parents, adding “It was mine / So when you're dead and gone /Will you remember this night, twenty years now lost?”
Back to Hoppus, notching it down for verse two, like the kid’s repressing his emotions for fear of combusting the situation further. “Their anger hurts my ears,” he complains – you can almost see him bury his head in his arms to shut it out. “Been running strong for seven years / Rather than fix the problems, they never solve them.”Seven years is a long time in a kid’s life, plenty long enough to see the patterns of a relationship. “If this is what he wants and this is what she wants,” he wonders, the melodic phrases circling warily, “Then why is there so much pain?”
And the answer? DeLonge blasts into that chorus again, pouring out all his fury. This is how it feels, he remembers; this is how it feels. And it’s still raw.
Well, I for one am curious to see what these guys will do next – how they’ll solve the question of growing up and still remaining true to their punked-up roots.I suspect that they split to search for new musical directions, but Barker’s accident shocked them back to their foundations. (They looked deliriously happy to be playing together that night.) But there’s enormous talent there, and they’d better do something with it. The Clash never got a chance to; Kurt Cobain never gave Nirvana a second chapter; look at what Paul Weller’s been doing since the Jam. Blink 182 may be the guys to finally solve this equation. I’m rooting for them. Stay Together For the Kids video
Saturday, April 11, 2009
"Kids" / MGMT
I've been in a dreadful musical funk lately; somehow all I feel like doing is curling up in a fetal position and listening to the same few Kinks and Beatles songs over and over. (That and Al Kooper's I Stand Alone album -- go figure.)
But today, while on a long car trip in the rain, this number broke through all the dreck on Sirius/XM's Alt Nation channel. Or, at any rate, its mesmerizing electronic dance hook did -- I love how it marches up the scale, tripping into the tiniest bit of syncopation at the end; it's a total ear worm.
Though it's only been around for few months, this song already has a complicated history. NME named it the best single of 2008, and the band is suing the president of France for ripping it off for some campaign appearances. I gather there are several covers of it already, though, jeez, I can't imagine it without this exact same arrangement.
Naturally, the meaning of the song is foggy -- clarity and storytelling are verboten in the indie world. It does flirt with developmental psychology, addressing a growing child "Crawling on your knees toward it / Making momma so proud." Wikipedia tells me the song was written about Mother Love Bone's late front man, Andrew Wood -- hello, WHO? I have no idea who that is, so that really doesn't help me much.
Still, the loose-limbed groove of this song can't be denied. It's perky, and at the same time stiff and robotic; it's also strangely melancholy, as those repeated musical phrases strain toward the same high notes again and again. "Control yourself," the chorus warns; "Take only what you need from it / A family of trees wanted / To be haunted" (nice internal rhyme there, and nice play on the family tree image).
So who are MGMT? They're a duo from Brooklyn, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, with all the right indie connections (opening for Of Montreal and Radiohead, appearances at SXSW, Bonnaroo, and Glastonbury festivals, etc). I've listened to the rest of this album, Oracular Spectacular, and there's plenty of other diggable songs there as well.
And yet, and yet...my interest is already fading fast. The idea of discovering a new band, let alone one this young and trendy, wears me out totally. (Blame it on the funk.) Will this process of discovering new bands never end? Can't I just, you know, listen for the millionth time to Muswell Hillbillies and Revolver?
Officially, the reason I haven't posted in a week and a half is because I have been snowed under with work and I've been dealing with some medical issues. The real reason? It's just been so damn hard to slot back into life after a week in London. It wasn't just any week in London, either; it was a week of special insider Beatles tours and Kinks experiences that completely turned my head around. Not to mention the media blitz for the new film The Boat That Rocked about 1966 and the phenomenon of Radio Caroline -- a film immersed in all the music I love best -- which opened in the UK five days after I left, but who knows when it'll finally be released in the US? (August 28th, according to the film's website. Bloody hell. In what universe do they imagine that American fans aren't dying to see this movie?) My head was filled with music, all right, but it was all the music I've already written about here. Think of it as a musical cul-de-sac.
Nevertheless, I knew that eventually a song would break through my mental logjam -- and it was this track by Vampire Weekend. I'm pretty sure it got inserted into my brain by the film I Love You, Man --a delight from start to finish, which I highly recommend--which I know had at least one Vampire Weekend song on the soundtrack, if not this one. (It was "Oxford Comma" and "Campus", if you need to know.) Doesn't matter; once the Vampire Weekend thing gets let out of the gate, it has a way of taking over with me.
Truth to tell, the thing that's stuck in my brain is the hammering keyboard riff that runs through this song; that, and the insinuating refrain "Walcott, / Don't you know that it's insane /Don't you wanna get outta Cape Cod / Outta Cape Cod tonight." The rest of the song is liberally sprinkled with Cape Codian name checks, like "Hyannisport is a ghetto" and "fuck the women from Wellfleet" and "Mystic Seaport is this way." Having spent five glorious summers on Cape Cod (in Osterville, but we drove around everywhere while we were there), this triggers all sorts of knee-jerk responses in me.
The tune -- if you can call it that -- repeats incessantly from one verse to the next, and in the end it's the syncopation more than the melodic line that gives it the hook. (Okay, maybe it's the way the lyrics mesh with the syncopation.) Irrelevant. It's just a fantastic earworm, when you put together that keyboard riff (why does this sound to me like nighttime driving in the rain?) and the coaxing desperation of Ezra Koenig's vocals. Then they throw in a string quartet, and some bashing drums, and I'm sucked in. Sure, it seems dislocated and a bit alienated. What else is indie music about?
Are these guys really this smart, or was the brilliance of this first album just dumb luck?
"You Don't Love Me" / The Kooks 28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS
Okay, so I'm writing about the Kooks again--wanna make something of it? I like this young band, with their cheeky retro BritBeat sensibility. They may have released this song in 2006, but it isn't all bogged down by irony and bogus postmodern lassitude. It's about a guy who's in love, and it's not working out for him, and he's upset about it -- what a refreshing throwback.
I love songs that start in mid-argument: “But you don’t love me the way that / I love you,” he sings, in a mournful mumbly tone (though the jaunty syncopation and thrusting guitar strums save it from sounding mopey or bitter). It's like he's been listening to her go on and on, blah-blah blah, and now finally he's getting a word in edgewise. He already knows that the relationship's doomed, and he's even willing to blame her: “Cause if you did, girl, you would not / Do those things you do.” (I love the two-beat pause between lines, the way it makes you wait for the other shoe to drop.) Going even further, he claims that she does this stuff on purpose, just to toy with his affections: "You kill my heart just to see if /I will rise / Above your anger and / Above your lies." It's like she's the sorority sister of that girl in the Buzzcocks song the other day -- a real bitch on wheels.
And furthermore -- since they're talking about it -- he has another bone to pick, in the bridge: "And all I see of you / Is when you're 'not so busy.'" As the line soars up into his falsetto range, the doubled vocals put this "not so busy" line in quotation marks -- that's what she calls it; but he's not buying it. He comes back in a short punchy line, "Oh, you're not so busy!", his vocals curdling angrily. Do we think she's seeing somebody else behind his back? I bet he does, and I bet she is.
Up to now, this has sounded like a doormat boyfriend finally speaking up for himself. If she's really this mean, why is he still with her? In verse two, though, he adds a little depth, with a poignant line: "You turned my life around / For that I am glad." For just a minute, I wonder if he's going to back down, but then, with a few more fierce grating strums, he girds his loins: "However much I love you / This love is getting bad." (Weak glad/bad rhyme, but it's the closest he's come yet to breaking things off.
I don't think he's totally made up his mind to leave her, though. In the second bridge he switches back and forth, complaining about "the words that only you could use" and then swearing "But you know you'll always be my girl, girl." And the fadeout (the track I'm listening to is the acoustic Live at Abbey Road version) is him fretting over and over, "But you don't love me, you don't care!" He hits that word "love" with such intense frustration, and peters off in a lonely wail on "care" -- poor guy. He's a hopeless romantic, isn't he? He wishes she'd change, and he knows she won't, but he wishes she would...it's the essence of being Unhappy In Love.
"Love's Not a Competition (But I'm Winning)" / The Kaiser Chiefs 28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS
Modern indie bands seem to avoid love like poison. I bet if you did a database search through the titles of songs written in the last 10 years (if you had nothing better to do with your time), you'd find an incredible drop-off in the use of the word "love." Even when they mention it, they seem all freaked out about it. Take this 2007 track by the Kaiser Chiefs, that industrious bunch of lads from Leeds. They’re paying lip service to the old ideas of romance, but what they’re dealing with is anything but.
“I won’t be the one to disappoint you / Anymore,” singer Ricky Wilson starts off, in his earnest and sincere register, set against some spacy synth riffs. The rhythm’s edgy, all off the beat, and the line jumps around in anxious diminished fourths and minor thirds. I usually think of Kaiser Chiefs as hard-punching rockers (“Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby RUBY”), but this is sinuous run-on stuff--I can almost hear Morrissey singing this, or Style-Council-era Paul Weller. “I know, I’ve said all this and that you’ve heard it / All before,” he concedes, but he’s focused on gamesmanship: “The trick is getting you to think that all this was / Your idea.” Earnest and sincere he may sound-- but he's scheming too, planning his getaway.
The way he alternates long lines with short lines, it’s like we’re only hearing his side of the dialogue. I reckon she’s the one who's come up with this self-help platitude, something out of an advice column in Woman's Own, telling him “Love’s not a competition.” He obediently parrots that back to her, but he just has to add, “but I’m winning.” Which makes the whole thing moot.
“I’m not sure what’s truly altruistic / Anymore,” he says wearily in verse two; he'd like to be good-hearted and selfless, honest. But all her score-keeping and balance-weighing overshadows every move he makes.I’ve seen so many people – men as well as women – load this onto relationships; god, do I know how he feels. (That thing you said, or did, or didn't do, three days ago -- and you're still paying for it.) “Love’s not a competition but I’m winning,” he says again, but then he admits, “At least I thought I was, but there’s no way of knowing.” This couple has so much baggage, they can’t help but disappoint each other. Nothing’s holding them together but this fierce spirit of one-upsmanship.
Now, it's true that the rock singer gets the last word; he gets to tell his angle, and the woman is hung high and dry. I bet she has her side of the story too -- he could very well be an insensitive pain in the ass. But that's beside the point; the bottom line is, they're making each other miserable. So why are they still together? How can they call this "love"?
These guys have got human psychology down all right, but it's not exactly heart-warming information. I doubt this song is gonna get played a lot at wedding receptions.
Mining the Fifties and Sixties is one thing, but what about 21st-century love songs? Well, they’re a little harder to find, but here’s one I rooted up in my daughter’s CD collection. She made me promise not to call it “emo” – apparently that’s the kiss of death for any self-respecting alt band these days – so I won’t call it that.*
These guys in Hellogoodbye look about 12 years old and they’re really cute—in fact their lead singer, Forrest Klein, kind of has a Buddy Holly look going (and you know I’ve always been a sucker for rockers who wear glasses). Though they seem infatuated with electronica, beneath the tech effects lies a pretty catchy ska-flected sound. Most of this perky syncopated track is just Forrest and a trippy ukulele (or is it mandolin?), and it’s totally sweet.
This isn’t exactly a Happy In Love song—the love is still new and insecure, and it seems to be a long-distance relationship, always a shaky proposition. (“Oh, your heart may long for love that is more near / So, when I'm gone these words will be here / To ease every fear / And dry up every tear / And make it very clear” – it cracks me up, how he uses those multiple rhymes like nails to tack down this love.)Reading Hellogoodbye’s history, I see that members keep quitting to go back to college, so I’m guessing they’re in that demographic where long-distance romance is common. And as we all know, the biggest threat to long-distance love is close-at-hand hook-ups.
These guys still believe in love at first sight – there’s plenty of conviction in lines like “Oh, it is love / From the first time I set my eyes upon yours thinking / "Oh, is it love?" (Inverting the “is” and “it” is pretty nifty word play, isn’t it?) Frankly, I don’t know many guys who ask themselves if a relationship is love, not until they’re hopelessly backed into it – but hey, whatever. I’m sure this line of reasoning sells more records to the female teen listener.
They do get a lot more physical than Buddy Holly ever did, constantly talking about holding her tight and longing to feel her embrace and pressing his lips against hers. “There is still a bit of your skin / That I've yet to have kissed” he remarks – yowza.
And to sew up the girl market, Forrest slows the song down to add, wistfully, “Oh say, wouldn't you like to be older and married with me? / Oh say, wouldn't it be nice to know right now that we'll be / Someday holding hands in the end.” I know how I felt when I heard the Beach Boys pursue this same logic years ago in “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” – I was ready to sign up. (Hoping, of course, that it would be Dennis Wilson and not weird Brian who’d appear on my doorstep). The Beach Boys, though -- they never had a singer with glasses.
I've got me a nice pile of shiny Christmas CDs to work through, and right at the top is this new thing from Ben Folds, Way To Normal. It's a pretty wondrous thing from start to finish, full of that peculiar Ben Folds mix of keen-edged social satire and bittersweet tenderness. Folds really has become our poet of middle-class suburban American life, just like Ray Davies was for English suburbs forty years ago; he chronicles our neurotic consumer culture with a suitably jaundiced eye. Anybody who wants to get a good dose of snarkiness only has to listen to "The Frown Song" or "The Bitch Went Nuts," or his Elton John tribute "Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head" to know that Ben lets no one off easy.
Later on in the CD, however, he gets more reflective, winding up with this heartbreaking track. Like Elvis Costello's "Long Honeymoon," or like Ben's own "Annie Waits," it's written from a woman's perspective, but it's not the Kylie of the title -- Kylie never appears in this song at all, in fact. She's just a name on a phone message slip that our heroine finds among her husband's things, reading: "Kylie is calling from Connecticut / She says you've got the number." That's all the note says, but once she's seen it, the wife can't get it out of her mind.
"She believes there are things you shouldn't know about / When you've been married for 35 years," Ben tells us. Wow, these people have been married for 35 years? Not likely subjects for a rock song -- but then, Ben Folds' music isn't really rock. This track is mostly just Ben's nasal everyman tenor and a piano, although, granted, Ben Folds' piano is as good as an orchestra (I can't think of anybody but Joe Jackson who can take the piano in so many directions). The melody strains urgently upward when he sings out Kylie's name, but otherwise it hurries around fretfully, brief little breathless surges of anxiety, while his fingers churn restlessly up and down the keyboard. How else should a song about despair and disappointment sound?
And soon the plot thickens. Our nameless (and neglected, I'll bet) heroine plays this don't-ask-don't-tell game for her own reasons: "And her heart belongs to a man that she hadn't seen / Since a magical night when the children were small." How do you read that line? Is there an old lover in her past? That would explain why she can smell infidelity in that simple note. But another possibility strikes me: Is that man she hasn't seen for so long her husband -- or rather, the side of her husband that she loves, which has long disappeared? I can't tell you which of those two options makes me sadder.
Ben knows it's sad, and he starts to layer on shimmery bursts of drums, then melancholy strings; by the musical interval, it's morphed into movie soundtrack music, with emotion-wringing dissonant cellos, the whole moody works. Overdone? I don't think so; it just shows that he takes this ordinary woman's silent misery seriously. Meanwhile, she goes on agonizing: "It keeps coming back as she's reading old letters / That she left in the closet with the pictures she cherished / That she kept to herself for a good 30 years." What a fruitless little hell she's driving herself into.
There's a whole world in this song; a whole life in it. And yet nothing really happens --a woman reads a slip of paper and then broods about it. How Ben Folds manages to pack so much into this tiny event astounds me; there's all sorts of melodrama trying to rush in and take over, but he manages to keep it just out of reach. (I have to admit, this song makes "Eleanor Rigby" look positively cheesy.) Above all, I marvel that he invests so much in a scenario about a middle-aged suburban housewife. But after all, why not?
"The Future Freaks Me Out" / Motion City Soundtrack
"I'm on fire / And now I think I'm ready / To bust a move . . . ." It's not exactly this whole song that's been in my head -- just this impetuous, dissonant, frantic opening. Justin Pierre jumps right into this with no intro, and hardly any instruments behind him; the words make him sound all Mr. Confident, but just listen that anxious yelp on "ready." "Check it out, I'm rocking steady," he insists, but he's tripping over his own rapid-fire words. If indie angst's what you after, look no further than Motion City Soundtrack.
There's this girl in the song, Betty, that he's involved with -- which is a polite way of saying they're hooking up (they're sure not in love). "I try to compensate her lack of love with coffee cake," he tells us, "Ice cream and a bottle of ten dollar wine she says hey." Then we get a whiff off their disjointed slacker conversation -- "I’m footloose in my Velcro shoes / What’s up with Will and Grace? / I don’t get drum and bass" -- no wonder he ends that verse with "The future freaks me out." If my life were this random and pointless, the future would freak me out too.
Verse two, beneath the thrashing beat and the hard-edged synths, is poignant: "Betty can’t quit carving question marks in my wrist / How come we’re so alone / We waste away the days with nicotine and television samples / From an era we hate to admit we embrace." He knows he's a misfit, that he's not going anywhere, but turning his life around would just take so much effort. "We fail to represent / We fail to be content / We fail at everything we ever even try to attempt" -- man, this song would be depressing if it didn't have so much spunky energy.
So why are they even together? Because he's on fire, and he's ready to bust a move, and she's available -- and hooking up with her is better than being alone. In fact, she's totally undemanding, narcotized by sugar and caffeine and junk pop culture. This is Sex With No Strings, and though he knows it's worthless, anything's better than being lonely. Self-pity creeps in for a moment: "Betty it’s so hard to relate / To the whole human race / I don’t know where to begin." Jeez, they're coming close here to having a Simon & Garfunkel moment -- ah, but that's just the sugar crash talking, and luckily it soon goes south. "Betty, I’m a dreamer / I’m not a vicious schemer / Oh Betty won’t you.. ah fuck it." Trying to solve the meaning of life requires more focus than he can muster.
This song is from their 2003 debut album, I'm In the Movie. In a sea of emo soundalikes, these guys had their own dark and snarky groove going from Day One, apparently. They actually seem to have some existential perspective on life, though it probably sails over the heads of most of their fans. It's nice to see someone in the indie pack with a little wit. The Future Freaks Me Out sample
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
"She Moves In Her Own Way" / The Kooks
This song has been haunting me lately, and sometimes when I find myself humming it, it takes a minute for me to recall what decade it dates from -- that's proof of how well these guys channel the 60s Beat sound. I thought it was just me, but then today on the supermarket muzak, right between Freda Payne's "Band of Gold" and Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes," up popped this catchy-as-hell track by the Kooks. Talk about your instant classics . . .
So even though I've already writtten about the Kooks here, I've got to give them an encore. The version I have on my iTunes, actually, isn't the album track from 2006's Inside In/Inside Out -- it's an acoustic version, from the Kooks' appearance on that Live At Abbey Road TV program. (Some day I've really got to watch that show.) The simpler recording works better, I think; the essence of this song is its crisp, light-hearted bounce. Its skiffle-like backbeat rhythms, the exuberant octave jumps in the melody, were born to be sung over guitar strums. (A ukelele would even work, come to think of it.)
I have to admit, the subtext of this song is baffling. Does he love the girl he's singing about/to? He can't even get his pronouns straight -- sometimes she's "you," sometimes she's "she" -- or are there two girls in the picture? In the verses, she sounds like a pain in the butt, with her "tiresome paper dreams," her "tempered furs and spangled boots," her attempts to "pull his strings" ("So at my show on Monday / I was hoping someday / You'd be on your way to better things" -- that sounds like he'd be glad to get rid of her). But in the chorus he insists, "Well, uh oh, I love her because she moves in her own way / But uh oh she came to my show just to hear about my day." Hmm, now he seems to dig her.
If this is the same girl he's talking about both places, she's really got him in a tailspin. At one point, he tells her, "So won't you go far / Tell me you're a keeper"; in the last verse he's saying, "Yes I wish that we never made it." Or is he talking there about wishing the band had never become famous? Beats me. Way too many young songwriters think they can dash off opaque lyrics, full of you-had-to-be-there references, and expect their listeners to go along for the ride. Someone needs to go take Ray Davies' songwriting course and learn a bit about song structure and clear storytelling.
But this song is just too perky to be about a girl he hates, or about a suffocating relationship, or the perils of show-biz fame. The minute it comes on, I get caught up in that happy-go-lucky beat; Luke Pritchard's boyish tenor delivery is intensely likeable (I can't help hearing a little Peter Noone in his guttural accent, though it's probably more like the Arctic Monkeys than like Herman's Hermits).
Still, those 60s echoes keep coming through. When he sings "moving on to better things," immediately I think of the Kinks' "Better Things"; the line about "It's not about your make-up / Or how you try to shape up" calls up the Beatles' "For No One" ("she wakes up / she makes up / she takes her time and doesn't feel she has to hurry / she no longer needs you"). Even that "paper dreams" phrase evokes the old Traffic song "Paper Sun" (with a melodic nod to "Coloured Rain" as well). These guys clearly know their early BritPop classics; I just don't think this is accidental.
Between the lazy navel-gazing lyrics and the footnotable references to other music, this track is a whole lot more postmodern than it seems. It's got way more style than substance. Still, as we used to say on American Bandstand, it has a great beat and I can dance to it. And when it comes to rock & roll, hey, that's mostly what counts. She Moves In Her Own Way sample
