Some Songs Considered

July 8, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Today (Watch Me Shine)” - Everlast
(Words/music: Erik Schrody, available on Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, Tommy Boy 1998)

Everlast’s musical resurrection made for a great story in 1998 – former hip hop footnote has heart surgery and comes back with an acoustic guitar. Looking back, a hip hop / folk crossover seems like a frat boy’s dream (and if I hadn’t heard Asher Roth, I might have imagined him singing something like), but Everlast made it work because it wasn’t a simple addition problem. While his peers were making rap-rock into a perpetual headache (DJ Lethal, Everlast’s partner in House of Pain, was in Limp Bizkit after all), Everlast interpreted this meeting of the genres in a different way by looking at a common ancestor. Rather than make a “rap-rock” record, he made his interpretation of a blues record by drawing on his background in rock and hip hop, using his songs as an opportunity to spin stories like an old blues singer. Yes, it’s not a pure blues record (and the album has its fair share of both rap and rock too), but it’s closer to the blues than it is to Crazy Town.

“Today (Watch Me Shine)” feels like a blues song thematically. Lyrically, it’s Everlast addressing us from “the other side” of his near-death experience with a carpe diem demeanor. In addition to preaching with his gruff voice, it has the feel of a blues song. It has a deliberate tempo and even has a sort of “call and response” echo at the end of the lines. He adds in some distorted guitar and some beat boxing, but these simply just give the song a couple different textures – at the heart of the song is Everlast’s promise to “shine.” It’s a pleasant and somewhat uplifting track among a collection of stories of the downtrodden. Rather than using the blues to dwell on his hard times, he uses his album (and really, his second act as a performer) to share his new outlook on life.

July 7, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Possession” – Sarah McLachlan
(Words/music: Sarah McLachlan, available on Fumbling Towards Ecstacy, Arista 1993)

When Sarah McLachlan retires to the Canadian countryside, the Lilith Fair will be the biggest part of her legacy. While the fair was fodder for jokes (and, in retrospect, helped fill playlists in Starbucks nationwide), it provided a tremendous spotlight for female musical acts. These days, she’s most commonly seen in those super depressing (which I guess means “super effective”) commercials for the ASPCA with all the sad looking animals. These commercials use her song “Angel,” a piano ballad mourning someone who recently died. It’s a song that’s become a convenient pop-cultural requiem, popping up whenever someone needs to soundtrack a montage of the recently deceased (and sure enough, someone on YouTube made a video for Michael Jackson using this song). As someone who believes that a song contains many meanings to many people, I’m fine with this even if I think it’s a superficial interpretation. McLachlan’s revealed in interviews that she wrote the song for deceased Smashing Pumpkins touring musician Jonathan Melvoin after overdosing on heroin. Looking past the titular line, the song describes someone who buckles under his addictions – specifically, someone who only finds peace when they have passed on. This makes sense in the context of Jackson (or even those poor rescued animals), but perhaps not for someone’s great grandmother who dies of natural causes. Then again, who am I to judge – we all have our own demons, and that’s just my reading of the song.

Still, my point is that McLachlan gets lumped in with the rest of the Paste Magazine, Starbucks counter adorning singer-songwriters singing middle of the road songs, but many of McLachlan’s songs run deeper than face value. Take “Possession” – a song famously written based on letters McLachlan received from a stalker. It can be read as a song about obsessive love, which naturally some people will interpret as “passionate love” or “unrequited love,” but McLachlan fills her song with so many charged words and phrases. The narrator feels “betrayed,” “trapped,” and finds truth “enslaved” and wants to “kiss you so hard” and “take your breath away.” McLachlan fills the arrangement with minor chords and electronically affected drums that give the song an icy feeling almost like it’s the stranger making eyes at you from across the room. McLachlan’s vocals are strong but largely stay in the safe area in her vocal register, however, when she lets her voice climb to the top of her range on key lines (the “I won’t be denied” line in particular), it underscores some of the more disturbing parts of her lyric. It’s a song that, like a prospective disturbed lover, doesn’t reveal all of its secrets right away. If it came out fifteen years later, it would have been quoted all over Facebook walls and AIM away messages. I’d like to blame them, but it’s darkly seductive and hides its pathos well. Sure, interpretation lies in the individual, but make sure you read the details closely before making that next mix tape for a potential romantic interest.

More on Sarah McLachlan: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 6, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Red Rain” – Peter Gabriel
(Words/music: Peter Gabriel, available on So, Geffen 1986)

Generally, pop music uses rain as a setting rather than as a force of nature. In these songs, rain is an impediment to the day’s activities or an obstacle to overcome. It’s something to stand in, travel through, or keep us indoors. When it steps out of the background, rain often serves as a cleansing agent – something to wash over us - or as a manifestation of the doldrums. The Jesus and Mary Chain (and later Garbage) even equated rain with happiness, or at least happiness buried within a bittersweet memory. Rarely is rain the thing causing floods, erosion, or other types of destruction. When it is, it’s not called by its name – it’s a storm, or a hurricane/tsunami, but rarely rain. Thus, when “rain” pops up in a song title, most of the time it’s the source of a slight bummer or occasionally a setting for some grand romantic statement or introspection.

Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” sounds like the exception to this generalization. From the opening moments of the song, something sounds unsettling. In between declarations of being surrounded by this red rain, Gabriel details a series of dreams where he helplessly witnesses someone (the “you” in the song) suffering. He keeps returning to the sea yet still can’t remedy the situation. It’s either a series of reoccurring dreams – where Gabriel’s narrator keeps coming up short no matter how much he hurries or whatever he tries to do – or a prolonged torture outside of his control. Gabriel sounds anguished as he sings – not overtly tortured as if he experienced the pain himself, but rather helpless and frustrated by his dreams. He chooses to use rain as the manifestation of this suffering, but it feels like he’s drowning in guilt. Perhaps it’s guilt for being helpless in dreamland, or perhaps the guilt prompted the dreams. Regardless, the choice of “red rain” suggests a deluge of pain, one that’s drenches him beyond his control. It’s a despondent, anguished song on an album best known for songs associated with sweeping romantic gestures (“In Your Eyes”) and overt sexual come-ons (“Sledgehammer”).

As frequent commenter Jerad would point out, R.E.M. covered this song during a radio session in the 1980s (and is available on the In the Attic collection of rarities I.R.S. put out in the late ‘90s). In between two songs from Reckoning, Michael Stipe sings the chorus of the song and one other line – “I come to you defenses down / With the trust of a child.” This line is Gabriel’s final attempt to rid himself of the “red rain” – since all the extra effort did nothing to stop the suffering, he submits himself to the person in pain (and in doing so, suggests to me that he’s the one causing the suffering). Stipe’s selection of the line shares the same feeling of submission and works in a similar way. R.E.M.’s medley begins with “Time After Time,” a song that suggests a relationship damaged by the same fight over and over. The medley ends with “So. Central Rain,” a song about regret over eroded dreams. Both Stipe and Gabriel end up in the same place – after the rain, they’re left vulnerable and regretful. While Stipe apologies in the aftermath in his medley, Gabriel seems happy enough just to be able to put his umbrella away.

More on Peter Gabriel: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 5, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Fewer Broken Pieces” – David Bazan
(Words/music: David Bazan, available on Fewer Moving Parts, Barsuk Records 2007)

Bands break up all the time, but we still shrug our shoulders at band breakups when the band in question is essentially a single person’s creative output. When David Bazan announced that Pedro the Lion was disbanding, it prompted a few puzzled looks since it was primarily his project. Bazan tackles this directly on his first solo EP, turning the awkward conversations with friends about “going solo” into a song asserting his control. Bazan makes a fair point at the center of the song – “fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces,” namely that fewer individuals involved with a recording means fewer people to placate. Even though he wrote nearly 90% of the Pedro the Lion songs, Bazan authored and performed all of the songs on his EP – a first in his recording career. Even if it sounds like it could have fit in on the last Pedro the Lion album, Bazan now owns every single second of the recording – every note, every word, every stray sound.

Aside from Bazan’s astute observation (even if it’s a bit of an oversimplification), I’m drawn in to the casual reference he makes to “David Byrne on Bob Costas.” I can’t find the clip online, but a message on a Talking Heads board summarizes the conversation Byrne and Costas had in 2004, placing Byrne as the “focal point of the Talking Heads and the outlet from which all artistical [sic] talent flowed from.” In this context, it’s easy to see why Bazan would look to shed his Pedro the Lion moniker – since he garnered all of the credit for his band, he may as well take it. While Bazan surrounded himself with capable musicians, I’m not sure it’s quite the same as the Talking Heads. Yes, like David Byrne, Bazan was the creative core of the band, but in the studio Bazan bore a greater burden than Byrne. Byrne also had much bigger egos to contend with, sharing writing credits with his bandmates and often producer Brian Eno. It’s a slippery slope – Byrne might have been the primary songwriter and creative influence, but he doesn’t become famous without his band (or Eno’s guidance, probably). Bazan, on the other hand, was the natural focal point of his band. In his case, he was taking complete ownership of what was 95% his in the first place. Byrne went off on his own to show how he could shine independently (and, arguably, has succeeded). If Bazan has anything to prove by going solo, it’s to himself.

More on David Bazan: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 4, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Montage” – Trey Parker
(Words/music: Trey Parker, available on Team America: World Police OST, Atlantic 2004)

Team America: World Police took what South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone do on their TV show and made it bigger. They created a work of biting, often brilliant satire and did their best to hide it behind an antiquated Saturday morning medium (in this case, marionettes) and a ton of crude humor. It works for a few reasons – like all good satire, it works both at face value and reading deeper. It also works because it doesn’t target one single group. Parker and Stone value common sense above all (and seem to lean towards libertarianism, but I digress) and dig in against anyone regardless of affiliation, fame, or social standing. It makes it hard to stay hurt when they mock your ideology and immediately move on to target someone else.

Team America worked as well as it did (or as well as it did when I saw it five years ago) because it tossed out darts in every conceivable connection – regardless of your personal stance, the film was bound to hit on something to laugh at sooner or later. Much of the focus was on the film’s characters and Parker and Stone’s lampooning of extreme American patriotism (and also the equally zealous America left), but Team America also works as a parody of action movies in general. Like the best satirists, Parker and Stone lampoon action movies by playing by the genre’s rules. This is where the music, Parker’s specialty, comes into play – the songs in the movie hit on all the familiar themes – the jingoistic country ballad, the over-the-top theme song (and subsequent “bummer” remix), and a heartbreakingly hilarious ballad Kim Jong-Il sings about being lonely. “Montage” is the most self-conscious song in a movie that tries its best to hide all of the winks and nods behind loud explosions. Appropriately enough, it’s the perfect montage song (so perfect that Parker recycled it from the skiing episode of South Park) – if you block out the montage-by-numbers instructions Parker sings about, it sounds exactly like a 1980s action movie montage, complete with pulsing synthesizer, a chorus of backup singers, and Parker’s vocal tics for emphasis. Personally, the “fade out” bit at the end captures the song’s spirit perfectly – it flawlessly executes the cliché as it describes why every montage ends with a fade out. By doing so, Parker makes us simultaneously laugh at the joke and marvel at what might be the perfect montage song.

More on Trey Parker: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 3, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Hurricane Jane” – Black Kids
(Words/music: Black Kids, available on Partie Traumatic, Almost Gold / Columbia 2008)

In roughly just a year, Black Kids went from obscurity to oversaturation. This is remarkable on its own, but becomes even more absurd when noting that their debut album came at the end of this stretch. Pitchfork discovered their Wizard of Ahhhs EP on Myspace and turned this very young band into the most desired band at CMJ 2007. What followed made perfect sense in retrospect – a band with a wonderful four song demo EP wasn’t road tested and received lukewarm reactions from the same people who eagerly downloaded their EP. It was, as the Specials put it, “too much too young.” The band needed time to find their footing and catch up to where expectations demanded they should be. Unfortunately, Black Kids had to grow in the spotlight, and when they went through the things that most young bands experiences (short sets, clumsy performances), the backlash began. Still, they deserve a lot of respect for taking Pitchfork’s non-review in stride and (as of last August) becoming a fun, lively band in concert.

It probably didn’t help the band’s case that almost all of their best songs on their debut album came from this demo EP. However, the versions on Partie Traumatic reflect the growth the band experienced over their year in the limelight. With Suede’s Bernard Butler behind the board, “Hurricane Jane” becomes far more precise; the guitar line sounds more defined yet still retains similar reverb from the original. The most notable change occurs when the band slides from this main riff into the verse and from the verse into the chorus – it’s a superior mix where each of the instruments holds its own with the others. It’s not simply a higher recording budget, though; the band sounds more confident, switching from a low key groove in the verse into the looser and freer chorus. Yes, there’s a charm to the EP version of the song, but the album version of “Hurricane Jane” will fit in perfectly with the other feel-good pop songs on your summer mix. Above all, this is a band that’s having fun – and if we expected anything more than a fun, slightly campy record from this band, then we only have our lofty expectations to thank for our disappointment.

More on Black Kids: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 2, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Radar Love” – Golden Earring
(Words/music: Barry Hay and George Kooymans, available on Moontan, MCA 1973)

The words in “Radar Love” detail a weary driver trying to find motivation for completing his long and arduous trip to his love. It could also be about the song “Radar Love” itself – the main character finds himself driving faster and faster with thoughts of his love, his wish for his trip to end, and the music pumped out of the radio. Aside from the time-space ramifications, “Radar Love” could be the song this guy’s listening to as he’s speeding off into the sunset. Long regarded as one of the great “driving songs” of the classic rock era, I’m sure that plenty of us have had that same moment in the car where “Radar Love” comes on and the accelerometer slowly climbs. Aside from being a song about driving fast, “Radar Love” feels perfect for those long stretches of open highway where the car stereo is our only company.

Radar Love achieves this “turbo boost” (or, as the song suggests, the “voice in my head that drives my heel”) by the way it builds up to the chorus. Even though the song maintains the same galloping tempo the entire song, it feels like it’s speeding up as the song builds up to the free-wheeling chorus. The prominent bass line helps to create this effect and makes the song sound like it’s constantly trying to catch up with the steady drumming. Every time the song adds a new layer – whether it’s the horn section or the brief bits of lead guitar in the verses, it feels like another car pulling along side us threatening to pass in front of us. Just as the song feels like it’s racing to the chorus, we steadily (and in my case at least, subconsciously) push our foot down just a little bit more. Even once the chorus ends and the song starts building again, we’re never given the cue to slow down; instead, we start accelerating again as it builds back up. By the time the chorus hits, I’m ready to sing along, paying little attention to how fast I’m speeding by the other cars. I’m just not entirely sure why the song’s called “Radar Love,” as the radar gun will be the exact thing that ruins this party.

More on Golden Earring: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 1, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Join Together” - The Who
(Words/music: Pete Townshend, available on Thirty Years of Maximum R&B, MCA 1994)

“Join Together” evokes mixed feelings in me as someone who things about music. As a song, “Join Together” doesn’t belong among the Who’s best songs yet sits right at the top of their second tier. The mouth harp and the penny whistle near the end makes it a little goofy, but overall it’s a fine rock single propelled along by Keith Moon’s start/stop drumming. I’m talking about the ideas that the song presents about the role of music. “Join Together,” released as a single in 1972, was part of Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse project – a rock opera (that later became the songs on Who’s Next) about a dystopian future where music was the only refuge from a large, internet-like “grid” that all of humanity was connected to (Wikipedia probably explains it a little better). The song suggests that music, in particular live music, serves as a uniting force. I wholeheartedly agree with this idea; concerts provide an opportunity to leave behind the stress of our everyday lives and join a bunch of strangers for a night of music we all love. I’m a fairly friendly guy, but I’m much more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a concert than I am in the supermarket. Even if we have similarities in both instances (“oh, you like peanut butter too?”), there seems to be a more immediate and natural connection with strangers with music as a common ground. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has compared live music to religious services in a number of interviews, and undoubtedly he’s talking about the communal aspect of these shows – how a group of people can put everything else aside for an evening to “join together” with everyone else.

So I’m on board with the song’s main idea, but I’m not as quick to buy the first line in the last verse - “It’s the singer not the song / that makes the music move along.” In the context of Townshend’s Lifehouse, the band is the essential uniting force. However, taking “Join Together” as a mission statement makes accepting this line a bit tougher for me. Over the last six months, I’ve been looking at individual songs and tried to figure out what makes them tick (or, at least, why I like them). Occasionally, I slip into a tangential story, but I try to return back to the song. Yes, I’ve talked a lot about specific performances or interpretations, and I agree that sometimes a song becomes better with the right performer behind it – it’s hard to doubt that certain people “own” certain songs, whether they wrote them or they’re covering them. I’d also like to think that the opposite is true – that certain songs (to a degree) transcend performance. Of course, it’s possible to butcher even the best songs, but some songs don’t need a specific performer’s gift in order to fulfill it’s potential. Perhaps it’s just the right chords or the right melody sequence. Maybe it’s the song’s ability to tap into something about our shared human existence. Regardless, just as there are performers that make certain songs sound better, there are certain songs that transcend their singers. If the singer makes the music move along, the song is the essential roadmap – and without a set of directions, the singer’s going nowhere.

More on The Who: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

June 30, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Teenage Wristband” - The Twlight Singers
(Words/music: Greg Dulli, available on Blackberry Belle, One Little Indian 2003)

Greg Dulli gets tons of credit for being an “interpreter of songs” because he has a way of taking a song, ripping out the essence of the original, and rebuilding around it. The Twilight Singers’ She Loves You album pulls together songs from all corners of popular music from George Gershwin and Nina Simone to Bjork and Mary J. Blige. Dulli manages to unite these disparate songs under a single aesthetic vision – marrying his soulful yet gruff vocals with arrangements that create dramatic tension. He’s as much of a storyteller as he is an “interpreter.” His albums, whether with the Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, or Gutter Twins, tend to feel episodic rather than wholly linear. Each song feels like its own short story with Dulli investing all of his energy into making each one worthy of individual attention. When put together, these songs describe a character – whether it’s Dulli himself, an invented persona, or something else entirely – and reflect the many (often conflicted) sides to this person.

The second Twilight Singers album Blackberry Belle was a tribute to the director Ted Demme, a friend of Dulli’s who died suddenly. Appropriately, these songs find Dulli at his most cinematic; his best songs always burned so bright that they seem destined for the silver screen, but Dulli and his band brings them to another level on this album. The opening piano line in “Teenage Wristband” plays like a prologue – it could be the jingling of car keys or the gentle hum of the motor firing up. By the time Dulli starts singing, the song is moving on all cylinders. Pop songs using a car as an escapist fantasy are a dime a dozen, but few have felt as large or desperate as “Teenage Wristband.” The arrangement feels almost cinematic in its size and shine; while it borders on melodrama, the bright piano, electronic drums, and Dulli’s desperate singing makes the song sound like the 75th minute of teen drama – right around the part in the fourth act where the protagonists finally get everything together and run off. The whole thing feels like it’s running on pure emotion – from the jammed arrangement to the narrator’s persistence to leave right at this moment. They might burn out before they ever get where they want to, but it will be a hell of a glow until they peter out.

More on The Twilight Singers: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

June 29, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“It’s About Time (Live on 120 Minutes)” - Evan Dando
(Words/music: Evan Dando and Tom Morgan, available on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live, Atlantic 1998)

The Lemonheads, Evan Dando’s band, are best know for a cover song (“Mrs. Robinson”) and this week just released an album of covers. It’s a shame that Dando’s legacy will likely be associated with a cover song because he wrote songs that are just as good as the songs he covered. This performance of “It’s About Time” recorded for 120 Minutes showcases one of Dando’s lesser known songs. He makes the song’s guitar riff heavier on the backbeat, but otherwise Dando focuses solely on the guitar and vocals. Even without his band, Dando manages to pull off all of the subtle shifts in the song. Specifically, he exaggerates the dynamics by bringing the song to a near whisper and building back up (the original version relies on the drums to drive the volume back up). Dando’s always known how to play to his band’s strengths, whether it was using Juliana Hatfield’s backing vocals sparingly or writing driving yet melodic songs when members of The Descendants were his backing band. However, in this solo setting Dando can’t hide anything behind these flourishes. Instead, the focus lies strictly on Dando’s voice and his song. “It’s About Time” stays engaging even without the band’s muscle largely because it’s an interesting composition. Sure, it’s not the same without Hatfield’s high notes on the final chorus, but Dando’s solo version for 120 Minutes showcases the skill in his songwriting. It’s important to know how to use your band’s strengths to complement your songs, but even the most skilled musicians will fail without solid material. Evan Dando wrote some of the best power pop in the early 1990s, but I’m afraid he’ll only be known for ushering in the era of the punk cover of bygone classics.

More on Evan Dando: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

About the Blog

Links

SSC on Twitter

Elsewhere on the web

Meta