Basically by rule, pure dance albums are not meant to be listened to in headphones. You're supposed to hear these tracks EQed through a DJ's board and pumped out a stack or three as you scuff soles on a dance floor. And when you hear it that way - with or without some substance help - it's far removed from the headphone sound.
This can make it difficult to gauge how "good" a dance album can be when you take it away from its proper environs. Can you make enough different and interesting beats to make an album that's an enjoyable listen at home, where the flashiest dance move might only be a toe tap?
English duo Disclosure have come pretty close to doing just that on "Settle," a debut that has gone to No. 1 on British charts and peaked at 38 thus far in America. So there's little chance of denying their mass appeal. Given that the closest I usually come to this musical circle is dance rock like Franz Ferdinand or mash-ups with danceable elements like Girl Talk, I'm in new territory, but I had to see what the fuss was about, and if that appeal reached me like it has so many others.
Instead of going sample-heavy, Disclosure opted to stuff their album was guest vocals. Eight of "Settle's" 14 tracks have a credited feature in their titles, and those turn out to be the album's strongest tracks, typically. "Latch," "White Noise," "You & Me" and "Help Me Lose My Mind" are all stand-outs and feature guest vocals from Sam Smith, Aluna Francis of AlunaGeorge, Eliza Doolittle and Hannah Reid of London Grammar, respectively. They also form a set of bookends, sandwiching a midsection of the album that loses most of the momentum the first handful of tracks establish.
"Stimulation" pulses and buzzes, but never really goes anywhere. "Second Chance" has a chopped vocal sampling that doesn't really seem to jive with its mishmash of backing instruments. "Grab Her!" manages to be fun, but suffers from the same affliction as "Stimulation" in that the track never takes you anywhere, and so you're left to float in sound that just becomes background ambiance after a couple minutes.
Pardoning the less-than-stellar midsection, there's quite a bit to like on "Settle." The album mixes it up, but not quite enough to keep some tracks from blending into the background and losing bits of interest. There are a handful of tracks I'll come back to - I enjoy the hell out of "Latch" - but it might take a dance floor and a host of attractive people to get me into the rest.
Grade: 7.0/10
Friday, June 21, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Top 10 Albums of 2013 (So Far)
2012 is a tough musical act to follow, but so far, 2013 is holding its own. Here's a collection of my 10 favorite albums from the year's first half, sorted by artist. And the greatest thing about this list? There are nearly three times as many not listed that could each stake a claim near the top by year's end, and that's before the rest of the year even gets its turn.
Ain't music grand?
Everything Everything - Arc
Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob
Crossing over from folk to dancepop isn't a journey you see many artists make. I mean, I sure don't, anyway. But we find ourselves here with sisterly duo Tegan and Sara Quin doing just that, releasing an album of synthy goodness that hails as a noticeable departure from their previous work. It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that something out of the norm for a group seven releases in would sound so polished and confident, but the sisters pull it off with aplomb. Standouts include "Goodbye, Goodbye" and "I'm Not Your Hero."
Torres - Torres
I'm many, many listens deep in this self-made debut from Nashville singer/songwriter Mackenzie Scott and still can't figure out if she's actually 22 or someone well older. The themes and emotion with which she delivers the songs framing those themes belie her age; they make her seem wizened. In truth, given autobiographical songs like "Moon & Back" and "Don't Run Away, Emilie," you have little reason to doubt that weathered wisdom. This is one of the most assured debuts I've listened to in a long time; it's open-hearted and sad and touching and frightening and intimate and personal. Listen to it through headphones and let it envelop you.
Young Galaxy - Ultramarine
It's hard to start an album with three better songs than the trio that introduces "Ultramarine," a four-hit combo that sets the stage for a strong album, even if it peaks a little early. But it's not as if everything turns to sad after "New Summer," far from it. "What We Want," "Out the Gate Backwards," "In Fire" and the rest of the album hold all of their water just fine, thank you very much. "Ultramarine" is a very summery album, meant for the sun.
Don't see your favorite here? It may yet find its way atop the list by year's end. And take heart: there's still a whole half of the year left for things to change.
Ain't music grand?
Everything Everything - Arc
A quartet of eccentric Englishmen got together and made an album that's got touches of modern British rock in its more pop-leaning hooks (a bit of everything from Arctic Monkeys to Muse). Singer Jonathan Higgs leans on his falsetto to carry the majority of the album's tracks, and once that style and your ears get acquainted, the album becomes a fun listen, especially through the first four songs.
Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
If Everything Everything are a bit delightfully weird, Foxygen are...well, just sort of weird weird. There's definitely charm in there, but with Sam France's vocals reminding you more of Lou Reed than Alex Turner and odd lines like "the aliens and armory backboned her cigar store" sprinkled throughout, "We Are..." may resist your attempts to get familiar. But persistence pays off, especially with the closing flourishes like the ones on "Shuggie" and "Oh Yeah."
Local Natives - Hummingbird
A lot of what made Local Natives' 2009 "Gorilla Manor" so endearing was how much fun everyone involved seemed to be having on it. Tracks like "Sun Hands" and "Camera Talk," filled with joyous shouting and exuberant piano mashing over pounded drums, were immediately winning and captivating. It seems a bit of an odd choice, in that light, for Local Natives to dial things back and refine the more serious side of their music on "Hummingbird," a release just as strong as "Gorilla Manor" but for wholly different reasons. It's emotional and sincere, deprived of exuberance but shimmeringly pretty in its execution, thanks to strong vocal work from Taylor Rice and Kelcey Ayer.
Mikal Cronin - MCII
A collection of immediately accessible, poppy fuzz-rock tracks that sure sound like the exploits of a converted punk songwriter. There's enough to tap your toes to while still feeling you can bob your head and drum on your desk at the same time. Standouts "Weight" and "Shout It Out" will give you your pop fix; "Change" and "See It My Way" will indulge the more rocking side of things; and "Don't Let Me Go" balances things out with a more casual vibe.
The National - Trouble Will Find Me
Expectation is a difficult thing to conquer. It had been three years since The National released "High Violet," an excellent album that marked the beginning of the band's emergence into the "big time" and transcendence from indie act to Barclays Center headliner. It makes to look at this year's "Trouble Will Find Me" as one of the year's most hotly anticipated record's in my book, given my penchant for the band and the impossibly long three-year wait. The band draws criticism for being deliberate and being far from immediately accessible, but patience in uncovering each of Matt Berninger's lyrics and the complex construction of each song (even if delivered simply) pays off in spades. As it always has with this band.
Phosphorescent - Muchacho
Sometimes, imperfection is what makes a thing great. In this case, it's Matthew Houck's occasional vocal cracks that make some of the tracks on the wonderful "Muchacho" stick with you. They add emotional flair to "Song For Zula." Heck, even the very first vocal note on "Down To Go" is slightly cracked. Really, it almost sounds off-putting when described that simply, but Houck's tortured and weathered vocal style is what sets "Muchacho" apart and part of what makes it such a memorable record, and that's not even scratching the surface of the song construction and instrumentation, varying from bar-closing piano dirges to the spirit-raising "A Charm / A Blade" and wonderfully manic "The Quotidian Beasts."
Sigur Ros - Kveikur
The typical M.O. for Sigur Ros is to craft sweeping, gorgeously ambiance with their music, a familiar build that ran out of magic on their last release, 2012's "Valtari." Down to a trio from a quartet, Jonsi Birgisson and Co. have made a darker, more ominous album in "Kveikur." That said, the album isn't without its high points either - "Rafstraumur" is the best example - and it's something of a redemption in the face of "Valtari," far more reminiscent of the transcendant "Agaetis Byrjun" than anything more recent.
Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob
Torres - Torres
Young Galaxy - Ultramarine
Don't see your favorite here? It may yet find its way atop the list by year's end. And take heart: there's still a whole half of the year left for things to change.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Review: Queens of the Stone Age - "...Like Clockwork"
Six years of quiet has a way of letting some of the neon glow out of a band. So it's been for Queens of the Stone Age, the musical Megatron composed of members of Kyuss, Soundgarden and Screaming Trees, plus an extended residency from Dave Grohl. QotSA has spent the six years since 2007's "Era Vulgaris" in recycle mode, re-issuing their self-titled debut and "Rated R," and touring them for a couple years in the interim. There was some splintering; lead singer Josh Homme joined Them Crooked Vultures, Dean Fertita joined Jack White's Dead Weather and drummer Joey Castillo left the band.
But, if the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Suede have shown anything thus far in 2013, it's that old dogs still have plenty of potential for new tricks. Whether those tricks turn out to be any good, well, that's far from a sure thing.
One personal knock against QotSA that I've held is I often found a lot of their tracks indistinguishable from the next. There was a sleepiness around their brand of metal that I found hard to full enjoy or become enveloped in. Still, I felt I owed it to my curiosity to investigate "...Like Clockwork," and I can't say I'm emerging on the other side all that disappointed.
There's a bit of the woozy-metal feel to opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," but it's mitigated with a few jolts - think of a "kick," a la "Inception" - of guitar and tempo shift that scrape some of the sleep off the tracks eyes. And it stays awake for a few tracks. New drummer Jon Theodore's straightforward percussion keeps "I Sat By the Ocean" moving, while the slow cook of "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" may slow the fuse's burn, but doesn't interrupt it.
Middle tracks "My God is the Sun" and the guest-laden (Elton John??) "Fairweather Friends" are the album's stand-outs, powerful, anthemic (by QotSA standards) tracks that seem to put the band's members at their best throughout. And the antithetical, grimy shuffle of "Smooth Sailing" punctuates the album's strongest stretch. Unfortunately, the 11 1/2 minutes of the album's final two tracks do little to carry on the momentum, with "I Appear Missing" tending to meander and bury an otherwise interesting guitar hook and the title track closer, a brooding piano ballad that leads into a swirl of guitars that tries to climax but never quite gets there, feeling out of place.
Fans of the band's more traditional stylings should leave feeling satisfied. "Clockwork" is a good mix of old and new, but it feels lacking in ambition and seems to fall short of whatever bar it has set, as if it wanted to be more and just couldn't quite reach the summit.
Grade: 7.75/10
But, if the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Suede have shown anything thus far in 2013, it's that old dogs still have plenty of potential for new tricks. Whether those tricks turn out to be any good, well, that's far from a sure thing.
One personal knock against QotSA that I've held is I often found a lot of their tracks indistinguishable from the next. There was a sleepiness around their brand of metal that I found hard to full enjoy or become enveloped in. Still, I felt I owed it to my curiosity to investigate "...Like Clockwork," and I can't say I'm emerging on the other side all that disappointed.
There's a bit of the woozy-metal feel to opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," but it's mitigated with a few jolts - think of a "kick," a la "Inception" - of guitar and tempo shift that scrape some of the sleep off the tracks eyes. And it stays awake for a few tracks. New drummer Jon Theodore's straightforward percussion keeps "I Sat By the Ocean" moving, while the slow cook of "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" may slow the fuse's burn, but doesn't interrupt it.
Middle tracks "My God is the Sun" and the guest-laden (Elton John??) "Fairweather Friends" are the album's stand-outs, powerful, anthemic (by QotSA standards) tracks that seem to put the band's members at their best throughout. And the antithetical, grimy shuffle of "Smooth Sailing" punctuates the album's strongest stretch. Unfortunately, the 11 1/2 minutes of the album's final two tracks do little to carry on the momentum, with "I Appear Missing" tending to meander and bury an otherwise interesting guitar hook and the title track closer, a brooding piano ballad that leads into a swirl of guitars that tries to climax but never quite gets there, feeling out of place.
Fans of the band's more traditional stylings should leave feeling satisfied. "Clockwork" is a good mix of old and new, but it feels lacking in ambition and seems to fall short of whatever bar it has set, as if it wanted to be more and just couldn't quite reach the summit.
Grade: 7.75/10
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Review: The National - "Trouble Will Find Me"
One of the questions I ask myself the more I listen to a song or album is: "am I being fair?" It seems tough to project an objective air about something you so openly profess your love for, as I have on a few occasions with the National, a band that has been a staple in my library for nearly (only) seven years.
With the release of their sixth LP, 4AD's "Trouble Will Find Me," I began asking myself that question even before I heard a word. Would I be fair to this record and judge it on its own merits, or would my history with the band color my glasses rose and render objectivity impossible? Fortunately, I think I've been able to hear this record objectively, and can evaluate it as impartially as I hoped I would be able to.
Opener "I Should Live In Salt," a tune Matt Berninger penned about his brother - and documentarian - Tom, starts off with an element immediately unusual to the band: strummed guitar chords. Brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner have a penchant and preference for picked notes, so to hear a strummed acoustic open a National album feels like it'd be indicative of a sea change.
In reality, though, that's pretty far from the truth. "Trouble" continues on the path "High Violet" began to blaze three years earlier: a more expansive sound in production, metered energy with moments of soaring emotion. Sufjan Stevens's influence was fairly evident on "High Violet," and more than a few of the vocal harmonies on "Trouble" evoke the feeling that he had something to do with it.
Singles "Demons" and "Don't Swallow the Cap" follow up, with the former packing more punch than the latter, especially once comfort sets in with its unusual time signature (me not being an expert, I can't recall if it was decided to be 8/7 or 7/4 or something else entirely). That trend continues into "Fireproof," the album's weakest track, which doesn't meander but doesn't ever get any more interesting as it goes.
What saves the album from a downward spiral starting right then and there is "Sea of Love," arguably the album's finest track, as the next to play. It serves as a transition that brings us out of the album's prologue and into the heart of the order. Energized by some trademark Bryan Devendorf drum rolls and a (restrained) yelling Berninger quizzing a "Jo," (or "Joe?") "what did Harvard teach you?"
"Trouble's" second half is pretty emotionally evocative, even by National standards. Berninger's smoother, post-smoking voice has a softer feel to it, and rarely has he seemed more vulnerable than on tracks like "I Need My Girl," the "oldest" of the album's tracks with live performances dating back to 2011. "This Is the Last Time" feels like the signature National song of the post-"Boxer" era, a calm starter that blossoms around Berninger's heart-on-sleeve lyrics until the frontman is shouting "I won't be vacant anymore / I won't be waiting anymore" as a proclamation of recovery...only to have the song grind to a halt as he confesses, "Jenny, I am in trouble."
Each of the album's second-half songs have a signature characteristic (or more). "Graceless" and its traded drum hits; "Slipped" and its poignant tag "I'll be a friend and a fuck-up, and everything / But I'll never be anything you ever want me to be;" "Humiliation" and its woozy lyrical drift; "Pink Rabbits" and its wonderful piano hook; and "Hard to Find" with its perfectly executed Sharon Van Etten cameo.
All of these things are solid elements and make for strong songs. They remind the listener that yes, this is the National you're listening to, but not quite the National you've grown up with. There is no "Mr. November" or "Fake Empire" on this album, no song that immediately registers as something really important and with limitless repeat play potential.
It's funny how that's the standard now with this band, and the one against which they'll be judged for as long as they continue to make music. If that's perceived as a slight, it's only because there are no fatal flaws on this album. There are flaws, to be sure, and those flaws are a bit more noticeable than those on the previous three albums. Its high points register about as high as the pinnacles of those previous albums, though, and "Trouble Will Find Me" will belong in the discussion of the year's best albums.
Grade: 9.0/10
With the release of their sixth LP, 4AD's "Trouble Will Find Me," I began asking myself that question even before I heard a word. Would I be fair to this record and judge it on its own merits, or would my history with the band color my glasses rose and render objectivity impossible? Fortunately, I think I've been able to hear this record objectively, and can evaluate it as impartially as I hoped I would be able to.
Opener "I Should Live In Salt," a tune Matt Berninger penned about his brother - and documentarian - Tom, starts off with an element immediately unusual to the band: strummed guitar chords. Brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner have a penchant and preference for picked notes, so to hear a strummed acoustic open a National album feels like it'd be indicative of a sea change.
In reality, though, that's pretty far from the truth. "Trouble" continues on the path "High Violet" began to blaze three years earlier: a more expansive sound in production, metered energy with moments of soaring emotion. Sufjan Stevens's influence was fairly evident on "High Violet," and more than a few of the vocal harmonies on "Trouble" evoke the feeling that he had something to do with it.
Singles "Demons" and "Don't Swallow the Cap" follow up, with the former packing more punch than the latter, especially once comfort sets in with its unusual time signature (me not being an expert, I can't recall if it was decided to be 8/7 or 7/4 or something else entirely). That trend continues into "Fireproof," the album's weakest track, which doesn't meander but doesn't ever get any more interesting as it goes.
What saves the album from a downward spiral starting right then and there is "Sea of Love," arguably the album's finest track, as the next to play. It serves as a transition that brings us out of the album's prologue and into the heart of the order. Energized by some trademark Bryan Devendorf drum rolls and a (restrained) yelling Berninger quizzing a "Jo," (or "Joe?") "what did Harvard teach you?"
"Trouble's" second half is pretty emotionally evocative, even by National standards. Berninger's smoother, post-smoking voice has a softer feel to it, and rarely has he seemed more vulnerable than on tracks like "I Need My Girl," the "oldest" of the album's tracks with live performances dating back to 2011. "This Is the Last Time" feels like the signature National song of the post-"Boxer" era, a calm starter that blossoms around Berninger's heart-on-sleeve lyrics until the frontman is shouting "I won't be vacant anymore / I won't be waiting anymore" as a proclamation of recovery...only to have the song grind to a halt as he confesses, "Jenny, I am in trouble."
Each of the album's second-half songs have a signature characteristic (or more). "Graceless" and its traded drum hits; "Slipped" and its poignant tag "I'll be a friend and a fuck-up, and everything / But I'll never be anything you ever want me to be;" "Humiliation" and its woozy lyrical drift; "Pink Rabbits" and its wonderful piano hook; and "Hard to Find" with its perfectly executed Sharon Van Etten cameo.
All of these things are solid elements and make for strong songs. They remind the listener that yes, this is the National you're listening to, but not quite the National you've grown up with. There is no "Mr. November" or "Fake Empire" on this album, no song that immediately registers as something really important and with limitless repeat play potential.
It's funny how that's the standard now with this band, and the one against which they'll be judged for as long as they continue to make music. If that's perceived as a slight, it's only because there are no fatal flaws on this album. There are flaws, to be sure, and those flaws are a bit more noticeable than those on the previous three albums. Its high points register about as high as the pinnacles of those previous albums, though, and "Trouble Will Find Me" will belong in the discussion of the year's best albums.
Grade: 9.0/10
Why I Love This Song: "Call Your Girlfriend"
Thirty-six hours ago, I was unaware that Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" existed, but a fellow member of the Philadelphia Sports Internet Club, Mark Magowan, posted a video of Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam doing a pastiche of the dance from the original music video. I watched it, and when I spent the next evening driving through the night from my home in Madison, Wisconsin, to Columbus, Ohio, I pulled up Spotify on my phone and listened to this song about 25 times, headbanging and fist-pumping my way down I-70 like a Germanic synth-pop version of Tony Hale in the iconic Volkswagen commercial.
I am not a Robyn fan. I've been aware of her existence for some time, but before Thursday night, I had never listened to a single second of any of her original compositions. The only time I'd ever heard her sing before this week was upon viewing her and Jenny Wilson's overtly cheeky and earnest piano cover of Saul Williams' "List of Demands." And it was okay, but such an aggressive, angry political protest song loses something when two women from the socialist utopia that is Scandinavia do a cover version that would have been right at home as the B-side to "Let's Get Together" from the original Parent Trap. But I digress.
My life is now all about "Call Your Girlfriend." I love it. And here's why.
I am not a Robyn fan. I've been aware of her existence for some time, but before Thursday night, I had never listened to a single second of any of her original compositions. The only time I'd ever heard her sing before this week was upon viewing her and Jenny Wilson's overtly cheeky and earnest piano cover of Saul Williams' "List of Demands." And it was okay, but such an aggressive, angry political protest song loses something when two women from the socialist utopia that is Scandinavia do a cover version that would have been right at home as the B-side to "Let's Get Together" from the original Parent Trap. But I digress.
My life is now all about "Call Your Girlfriend." I love it. And here's why.
- It starts with the chorus. Seven beats and then right in--no pretension, no buildup, just recognizing that you've got a great hook that's the emotional and melodic center of the song and going all-in pre-flop with it.
- For that matter, you could say that this song has two choruses--the "Call your girlfriend / It's time you had the talk..." that the song starts with, then the "The only way her heart will mend / Is when she learns to love again..." There's not a whole lot of buildup (which is not to say the song is devoid of dynamic contrast), but I absolutely adore the chorus and appreciate that this song just plays it over and over instead of watering it down with less interesting material.
- I really like the subject matter. It's advocating a straightfoward, elegant way of dumping your main squeeze for your side piece. Not that I advocate such things, but I imagine it's a complicated emotional situation that's boiled down, in "Call Your Girlfriend" to a very simple directive. It's like if Paul Simon hadn't promised 47 more ways to leave your lover than he could actually deliver.
- The transition from the first chorus to the verse is the kind of transition that great pop songs are made of. Moving from the airy, spaced out chorus to a very rigid verse is a very kinetic, mechanical experience, like changing gears while driving--you can almost feel the beat shift, like it's dropping you from space into something regimented.
- Which leads into the real reason I love this song: the contrast between upbeats in the chorus and downbeats in the verses. It comes out in the video, how the dance moves from long, sweeping movements to short, stabbing movements.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Why I Love This Song: "Driftwood: A Fairy Tale/A Gentleman Caller"
My favorite album of all time is Arcade Fire's Funeral. No. 2 on that list is Cursive's The Ugly Organ, a 2003 emo/pesudo-hardcorey/indie rock concept album about empty sex and emotional abuse that seemed a lot more profound to me when I bought the record as a 17-year-old than it does now.
But I still absolutely adore that album, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me to this day. But I will tell you why I love tracks seven ("Driftwood: A Fairy Tale") and eight ("A Gentleman Caller"), which constitute the Ruth and Gehrig of this record.
"Driftwood" is, pretty much, the story of Pinocchio set to a musical score that makes you confused about whether the tingling you get is an itch to dance or just your skin crawling.
The continuing rhythmic theme in this song comes in with the strings immediately. That [1+2...+4...] beat goes from cello to guitar to bass to drum set and then carries on in some combination of those instruments throughout the song.
And that's creepy as shit.
Because that rhythmic pattern is what you'd expect to find in a song by, like, Black Kids or Of Montreal, you know, a synthy, danceable beat that you serve some weird semi-erotic lyrics and a bitchin' bass guitar line the way you'd serve a good steak with mixed greens, a baked potato and a glass of red wine. But in "Driftwood," that beat is continuously moving through the dynamic layers like a dolphin jumping out of the water, and it's weaving in and out of some sneakily dark layered vocals and an absolutely menacing cello. It makes you want to dance, but not really sure how to. Not unlike the motions of a marionette.
Lyrically, it's a pretty straightforward song that gets a little heavy-handed at times, even if the recurring chorus of "My arms, my legs, my heart, my face..." bounces over the aforementioned theme quite nicely and conveys the sense of astonished self-awareness you'd expect from a newly-animated toy.
But the real payoff comes in one of my favorite crescendos in modern rock, a four-measure buildup to screaming desperation (around 2:26 in the video, though you'll have to click through to YouTube) that contains two of my favorite musical devices: the running, progressively-louder eighth-note drum hits, then the stinger and the beat of silence, after which the song reaches its full climax, when the astonishment turns to distress--"Now I wonder how I was made! Now I wonder how I was made!" and so on.
Then the song ends and you get about a minute's worth of background white noise.
Then the start of "A Gentleman Caller."
I'm not, like, immensely interested in the first half of this song, except that you probably ought to be aware that it's coming, because the minute-long mumbled interlude after "Driftwood" might put you to sleep. Then you get tossed directly into, well, a song that's pretty onomatopoetic.
The first minute and a half or so of "A Gentleman Caller" sound like a musical interpretation of the lyrics, a cheating drunkard of a man coming home and getting into a shouting match with his girlfriend. You can almost hear the broken lamp and the point where they stop caring about waking the baby.
"Driftwood" is in a fairly subdued, brisk walking pace 4/4, while "A Gentleman Caller" starts out noisy and between the wild fluctuations in volume and instrumentation, starts to make you a little seasick. It's violent, it's angry, it's absolutely irrational.
Then it turns into something completely different.
Around a minute and a half in, everything drops out except the guitar, then the cello, and instead of the sweeping, noisy, menacing violence of the first 85 seconds of the song, we get quiet, even eighth notes, then the cello, which, for the past song and a half, had been in your closet, waiting for you to fall asleep so it could jump out and eat you, switches to series of warm, swelling, legato countermelodies. And one by one, all the other instruments come in in one majestic, hopeful swell, like the end of RENT except without being abjectly terrible.
I fell in love with this record when I was about 16 years old, and over the past decade (the album turned 10 years old last month), it's stuck with me because it is a dark, cynical and for lack of a better word ugly story. It's about shallow, angry, selfish people who yell at people who don't deserve it and wake up in strange places having fucked people they don't like very much. It takes a dim view of humanity, not because it's a profound, transcendent statement, but because it's cynical. And in this case, I mean cynical in the manner suggested by the author Joe Klein, who wrote "Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre."
I wouldn't accuse Cursive frontman Tim Kasher of being particularly intelligent or insightful. Cursive has never done anything approaching the quality of The Ugly Organ before or since, and in every interview setting I've seen him in, he comes off as thinking he's a lot more clever than he actually is. Listen to The Ugly Organ and you'll think less of people. Listen to Domestica or Happy Hollow and you'll think less of the people who wrote The Ugly Organ. This record makes me feel bad when I listen to it. It's pessimistic and angry and if I had it on vinyl I'd have worn straight through it because I am a pessimistic, arrogant, angry, selfish person who doesn't think very highly of other people in general.
But 90 seconds into "A Gentleman Caller," it's different. For the first time, you get genuine tenderness. Optimism. The cello turns from menacing (which is not an exaggeration--you feel like that thing is out to get you for the first seven tracks and change) to hopeful. After seven songs of pettiness, insults, violence and sexual manipulation, you get an apology. And as the crescendo reaches its climax, you get the line that becomes a refrain that carries over to the ten-minute finale of the album, "Staying Alive." It's aggressively simple and feverishly optimistic. It's the line a child would write, because it's direct and offers an almost naively hopeful outlook. I've been murmuring this little bit to myself for ten years, and sometimes it's true, and sometimes I think it's because you can't be truly pessimistic and truly spiteful and truly angry without anything to compare it to.
But whatever the reason, after seven and a half songs of darkness and manipulation and fucking and screaming and throwing lamps, you get this:
"Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, the worst is over."
But I still absolutely adore that album, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me to this day. But I will tell you why I love tracks seven ("Driftwood: A Fairy Tale") and eight ("A Gentleman Caller"), which constitute the Ruth and Gehrig of this record.
"Driftwood" is, pretty much, the story of Pinocchio set to a musical score that makes you confused about whether the tingling you get is an itch to dance or just your skin crawling.
The continuing rhythmic theme in this song comes in with the strings immediately. That [1+2...+4...] beat goes from cello to guitar to bass to drum set and then carries on in some combination of those instruments throughout the song.
And that's creepy as shit.
Because that rhythmic pattern is what you'd expect to find in a song by, like, Black Kids or Of Montreal, you know, a synthy, danceable beat that you serve some weird semi-erotic lyrics and a bitchin' bass guitar line the way you'd serve a good steak with mixed greens, a baked potato and a glass of red wine. But in "Driftwood," that beat is continuously moving through the dynamic layers like a dolphin jumping out of the water, and it's weaving in and out of some sneakily dark layered vocals and an absolutely menacing cello. It makes you want to dance, but not really sure how to. Not unlike the motions of a marionette.
Lyrically, it's a pretty straightforward song that gets a little heavy-handed at times, even if the recurring chorus of "My arms, my legs, my heart, my face..." bounces over the aforementioned theme quite nicely and conveys the sense of astonished self-awareness you'd expect from a newly-animated toy.
But the real payoff comes in one of my favorite crescendos in modern rock, a four-measure buildup to screaming desperation (around 2:26 in the video, though you'll have to click through to YouTube) that contains two of my favorite musical devices: the running, progressively-louder eighth-note drum hits, then the stinger and the beat of silence, after which the song reaches its full climax, when the astonishment turns to distress--"Now I wonder how I was made! Now I wonder how I was made!" and so on.
Then the song ends and you get about a minute's worth of background white noise.
Then the start of "A Gentleman Caller."
I'm not, like, immensely interested in the first half of this song, except that you probably ought to be aware that it's coming, because the minute-long mumbled interlude after "Driftwood" might put you to sleep. Then you get tossed directly into, well, a song that's pretty onomatopoetic.
The first minute and a half or so of "A Gentleman Caller" sound like a musical interpretation of the lyrics, a cheating drunkard of a man coming home and getting into a shouting match with his girlfriend. You can almost hear the broken lamp and the point where they stop caring about waking the baby.
"Driftwood" is in a fairly subdued, brisk walking pace 4/4, while "A Gentleman Caller" starts out noisy and between the wild fluctuations in volume and instrumentation, starts to make you a little seasick. It's violent, it's angry, it's absolutely irrational.
Then it turns into something completely different.
Around a minute and a half in, everything drops out except the guitar, then the cello, and instead of the sweeping, noisy, menacing violence of the first 85 seconds of the song, we get quiet, even eighth notes, then the cello, which, for the past song and a half, had been in your closet, waiting for you to fall asleep so it could jump out and eat you, switches to series of warm, swelling, legato countermelodies. And one by one, all the other instruments come in in one majestic, hopeful swell, like the end of RENT except without being abjectly terrible.
I fell in love with this record when I was about 16 years old, and over the past decade (the album turned 10 years old last month), it's stuck with me because it is a dark, cynical and for lack of a better word ugly story. It's about shallow, angry, selfish people who yell at people who don't deserve it and wake up in strange places having fucked people they don't like very much. It takes a dim view of humanity, not because it's a profound, transcendent statement, but because it's cynical. And in this case, I mean cynical in the manner suggested by the author Joe Klein, who wrote "Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre."
I wouldn't accuse Cursive frontman Tim Kasher of being particularly intelligent or insightful. Cursive has never done anything approaching the quality of The Ugly Organ before or since, and in every interview setting I've seen him in, he comes off as thinking he's a lot more clever than he actually is. Listen to The Ugly Organ and you'll think less of people. Listen to Domestica or Happy Hollow and you'll think less of the people who wrote The Ugly Organ. This record makes me feel bad when I listen to it. It's pessimistic and angry and if I had it on vinyl I'd have worn straight through it because I am a pessimistic, arrogant, angry, selfish person who doesn't think very highly of other people in general.
But 90 seconds into "A Gentleman Caller," it's different. For the first time, you get genuine tenderness. Optimism. The cello turns from menacing (which is not an exaggeration--you feel like that thing is out to get you for the first seven tracks and change) to hopeful. After seven songs of pettiness, insults, violence and sexual manipulation, you get an apology. And as the crescendo reaches its climax, you get the line that becomes a refrain that carries over to the ten-minute finale of the album, "Staying Alive." It's aggressively simple and feverishly optimistic. It's the line a child would write, because it's direct and offers an almost naively hopeful outlook. I've been murmuring this little bit to myself for ten years, and sometimes it's true, and sometimes I think it's because you can't be truly pessimistic and truly spiteful and truly angry without anything to compare it to.
But whatever the reason, after seven and a half songs of darkness and manipulation and fucking and screaming and throwing lamps, you get this:
"Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, the worst is over."
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
On The National, or Accepting Symbiosis
I might as well explain myself.
Everyone has a favorite band. Even if you won't publicly commit to just one, you have just one that rises above all others. Maybe you don't consciously realize it, but one day it'll click. It might come as a soft realization, dawning on you slowly, gradually, like a warm blanket pulled up to your neck on a December night.
In my teenage phase, my favorite bands were Incubus and Muse. I enjoyed louder music - had a stint with Linkin Park in heavy rotation, to boot - and those two bands spoke to me loudest. At first, Incubus was the head of the pack. I had multiple screen names with some variation of their name in them (and still use them as spam e-mail addresses to this day). They were one of the headliners at the very first concert I ever attended: a Y100 FEZtival (RIP). "Morning View" was my jam, a collection of the kind of airy, atmospheric elements you hear in the softer, shoegaze-y indie of today with a good deal of fuzzy, power chord punch. The lyrics were about a step-and-a-half down from Colin Meloy's hyper-literacy while managing to safely tread above the surface of Taking Back Sunday and that style of meaningless lyrical platitudes.
I would use the 10 minutes given to me by "Just a Phase" and "11am" to fall asleep many nights, my oversized boombox plopped on the floor beneath my desk beside my bed. In the days when I'd pack a Walkman-type CD player in my backpack for the walk home, I'd love the energy of "Under My Umbrella," and still begrudge Rihanna for co-opting the phrase years later.
Then Muse slowly took over. Introduced by a former high school band mate of Baumann and I (yes, we were in a high school band and yes, recordings of our music still exist if you can find them but no, that's not a challenge), it didn't take me too long to fall in love with their bombast. Granted, this is "Absolution"-era Muse, who were still being taken somewhat seriously while being charmingly ridiculous. I spent hours and hours learning the bass part to "Hysteria." I maintain that, to this day, "Plug In Baby" from 2001's "Origin of Symmetry" is the best song they've ever done. And will ever do.
The first mp3 player I ever owned was a Rio 600, which held 32 MB. By the time I was a senior a couple years later, I had upgraded to a Creative Nomad Zen Jukebox, a box as clunky as its name. But "Plug In Baby" was a fixture on that thing, especially during photography class when I was spending time dipping prints in various chemicals.
All of that sets the stage for college, where my penchant for energetic music allowed me to immediately take to The New Pornographers in 2005, with discoveries of now-mainstays like Ben Folds and Belle and Sebastian coming around the same time. None of that, though, quite compared with the impact a certain album would have on me in the spring of 2007.
In cruising through various music boards, I'd noticed an album called "Boxer" by this group called The National was coming up fairly frequently, tossed in with the likes of The White Stripes' "Icky Thump," Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" and Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible." The latter three I had heard plenty of. But this other group? Not a peep. Arcade Fire and The White Stripes got some limited radio exposure, with Bon Iver quickly circulating through my small college campus so that nearly everyone I knew seemed to have at least heard a snippet or two. But nothing from The National.
Curious, I fired up iTunes and navigated to the album's purchase page, looking to check out some 30-second samples. I didn't linger for long enough on the bytes of "Fake Empire" and "Mistaken For Strangers," as I was only half-listening anyway despite there really being enough to enjoy in those clips, but track number three seemed to grab me and didn't let go.
It was a haunting opening 30 seconds of a track called "Brainy," punctuated with some of the most authoritative drums I'd ever heard, probably because they weren't being drowned out by guitars or loud vocals. It ate at me. The dipping and diving guitar plucks amid those marching drums, Matt Berninger's mournful "uh huh" that coincided with the preview's fade out. I was immediately transfixed, and I had to buy the album.
So I did. At first, I was a little underwhelmed. You see, the big trick with The National is that the vast majority of their stuff lacks immediate appeal; the complexities and subtext of everything they put into a song can force them to be "growers," taking time to be fully accepted for what they are in your musical brain. And so the more I listened to "Boxer," the more I began to hear and understand lyrics, to process Berninger's malaise and relate it to my own. It was far from happy music, but it felt so relatable. And, to be fair, even though everything about the album isn't instantly likable, it has its share of memorable lines:
Everyone has a favorite band. Even if you won't publicly commit to just one, you have just one that rises above all others. Maybe you don't consciously realize it, but one day it'll click. It might come as a soft realization, dawning on you slowly, gradually, like a warm blanket pulled up to your neck on a December night.
In my teenage phase, my favorite bands were Incubus and Muse. I enjoyed louder music - had a stint with Linkin Park in heavy rotation, to boot - and those two bands spoke to me loudest. At first, Incubus was the head of the pack. I had multiple screen names with some variation of their name in them (and still use them as spam e-mail addresses to this day). They were one of the headliners at the very first concert I ever attended: a Y100 FEZtival (RIP). "Morning View" was my jam, a collection of the kind of airy, atmospheric elements you hear in the softer, shoegaze-y indie of today with a good deal of fuzzy, power chord punch. The lyrics were about a step-and-a-half down from Colin Meloy's hyper-literacy while managing to safely tread above the surface of Taking Back Sunday and that style of meaningless lyrical platitudes.
I would use the 10 minutes given to me by "Just a Phase" and "11am" to fall asleep many nights, my oversized boombox plopped on the floor beneath my desk beside my bed. In the days when I'd pack a Walkman-type CD player in my backpack for the walk home, I'd love the energy of "Under My Umbrella," and still begrudge Rihanna for co-opting the phrase years later.
Then Muse slowly took over. Introduced by a former high school band mate of Baumann and I (yes, we were in a high school band and yes, recordings of our music still exist if you can find them but no, that's not a challenge), it didn't take me too long to fall in love with their bombast. Granted, this is "Absolution"-era Muse, who were still being taken somewhat seriously while being charmingly ridiculous. I spent hours and hours learning the bass part to "Hysteria." I maintain that, to this day, "Plug In Baby" from 2001's "Origin of Symmetry" is the best song they've ever done. And will ever do.
The first mp3 player I ever owned was a Rio 600, which held 32 MB. By the time I was a senior a couple years later, I had upgraded to a Creative Nomad Zen Jukebox, a box as clunky as its name. But "Plug In Baby" was a fixture on that thing, especially during photography class when I was spending time dipping prints in various chemicals.
All of that sets the stage for college, where my penchant for energetic music allowed me to immediately take to The New Pornographers in 2005, with discoveries of now-mainstays like Ben Folds and Belle and Sebastian coming around the same time. None of that, though, quite compared with the impact a certain album would have on me in the spring of 2007.
In cruising through various music boards, I'd noticed an album called "Boxer" by this group called The National was coming up fairly frequently, tossed in with the likes of The White Stripes' "Icky Thump," Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" and Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible." The latter three I had heard plenty of. But this other group? Not a peep. Arcade Fire and The White Stripes got some limited radio exposure, with Bon Iver quickly circulating through my small college campus so that nearly everyone I knew seemed to have at least heard a snippet or two. But nothing from The National.
Curious, I fired up iTunes and navigated to the album's purchase page, looking to check out some 30-second samples. I didn't linger for long enough on the bytes of "Fake Empire" and "Mistaken For Strangers," as I was only half-listening anyway despite there really being enough to enjoy in those clips, but track number three seemed to grab me and didn't let go.
It was a haunting opening 30 seconds of a track called "Brainy," punctuated with some of the most authoritative drums I'd ever heard, probably because they weren't being drowned out by guitars or loud vocals. It ate at me. The dipping and diving guitar plucks amid those marching drums, Matt Berninger's mournful "uh huh" that coincided with the preview's fade out. I was immediately transfixed, and I had to buy the album.
So I did. At first, I was a little underwhelmed. You see, the big trick with The National is that the vast majority of their stuff lacks immediate appeal; the complexities and subtext of everything they put into a song can force them to be "growers," taking time to be fully accepted for what they are in your musical brain. And so the more I listened to "Boxer," the more I began to hear and understand lyrics, to process Berninger's malaise and relate it to my own. It was far from happy music, but it felt so relatable. And, to be fair, even though everything about the album isn't instantly likable, it has its share of memorable lines:
- "Turn the light out, say good night / no thinking for a little while / let's not try to figure out everything at once"
- "Well, you wouldn't want an angel watching over you / surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch / another uninnocent, elegant fall / into the unmagnificent lives of adults"
- "Tired and wired, we ruin too easy / sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave"
- "Hold ourselves together with our arms around the stereo for hours / while it sings to itself, or whatever it does / while it sings to itself of its long lost loves"
- "They're gonna send us to prison for jerks / for having vague ideas of the way to turn each other on again"
It's a collection of complete and utter sobriety, and it was music on a personal level that I'd never experienced before. Intrigued, I looked the band up and found their back catalog, including 2005's "Alligator." Another collection of tunes of adult musings, this time with a raw edge to many of the songs. "Lit Up" finds Berninger ridiculing the "lowlife of the party," the "bad blood for everybody" right before he assures everyone "I'm in control, and I believe," immediately rendering him the drunk guy trying to "untie Manhattan." Similarly, the protagonist of "Baby We'll Be Fine" is entrenched in a rut of adulthood and mired in a failing relationship, which is an awesome combination I myself lived through last year. So, even before my reality merged with his, I found myself connecting on a human level to Berninger. Everything about what he sang above the music played by the Dessner and Devendorf brothers felt so wizened that I couldn't help but let the music embrace me in a hug that so many of Berninger's personas could have used. It also doesn't hurt that their (arguably, of course) best song comes from that album: "Mr. November."
Things only deepened with 2010's "High Violet," a collection of songs more finely produced than the rest of The National's catalog but no less urgently somber, if that descriptor can somehow be used. There's some humor in it ("sorrow's a girl inside my cake" on "Sorrow") and there's some faulty self-awareness ("I still owe money / to the money / to the money I owe" on "Bloodbuzz Ohio"), but through it all, you somehow manage to feel as if Matt Berninger is singing about some part of you and telling your story, not just his or his characters'. After all, who can't relate to the line "all the very best of us / string ourselves up for love?"
This band tells stories people don't want to hear in a way they do want to hear. They lay bare on the table everything that's ugly about the things that come with more complex feelings and relationships and adult life. You can enjoy this music if you're in high school, but you can't relate to it. Not yet. And I say that not condescendingly but in an excited way, one that makes me really happy for those of you who've managed to pick up on this band at a younger age than I did. You've still (maybe) yet to go through the realization of having these songs hit you on some level you didn't know music could hit, and for that, I'm envious of you.
These are the songs that act as reference material for life experiences. They'll never be a huge, mainstream, commercial success - in fact, the level of fame they've achieved now is far higher than I thought this kind of music would support - but then, most things in life aren't bubblegum pop and starry-eyed love affair-type events. They just aren't. They're sometimes visceral and brutal, sometimes lovely, sometimes drunk and woozy and sometimes just melancholy, but they're always real. Nobody captures that feeling better than this band, and I'm unsure any other band ever will.
This band tells stories people don't want to hear in a way they do want to hear. They lay bare on the table everything that's ugly about the things that come with more complex feelings and relationships and adult life. You can enjoy this music if you're in high school, but you can't relate to it. Not yet. And I say that not condescendingly but in an excited way, one that makes me really happy for those of you who've managed to pick up on this band at a younger age than I did. You've still (maybe) yet to go through the realization of having these songs hit you on some level you didn't know music could hit, and for that, I'm envious of you.
These are the songs that act as reference material for life experiences. They'll never be a huge, mainstream, commercial success - in fact, the level of fame they've achieved now is far higher than I thought this kind of music would support - but then, most things in life aren't bubblegum pop and starry-eyed love affair-type events. They just aren't. They're sometimes visceral and brutal, sometimes lovely, sometimes drunk and woozy and sometimes just melancholy, but they're always real. Nobody captures that feeling better than this band, and I'm unsure any other band ever will.
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