Some Songs Considered

“Time Capsule” – Matthew Sweet
(Words/music: Matthew Sweet, available on Altered Beast, Volcano 1993)

I’ve mentioned my pedestrian guitar playing abilities enough times in this space, so I’ll spare you the details.  I only bring it up because I realized a few days ago that in certain instances where I’m trying to figure out something about a song, I’ll turn to my guitar.  Maybe deep down I’m a tactile learner, but sometimes I can better understand a chord progression by playing it than by staring at letters on a page.  Sometimes, it’s a matter of playing around with the voicings by playing a specific variation of a chord.  Most of the time, however, the exercise ends with frustration aimed toward my clumsy fingers and a hat tip toward the songwriter. 

Matthew Sweet’s “Time Capsule,” one of my favorite Sweet singles, led me to my guitar a few nights ago.  Many times, the very precise strumming pattern in the rhythm guitar part sounds like something I could handle (I know better than to even attempt to try to emulate one of the lead guitar parts on a Matthew Sweet record).  So I pulled up a transcription of the song, fixed the tuning on my strings, and spent ten minutes or so trying to make my guitar sound anywhere close to the recording.  I eventually settled on a “draw” – I could play just enough to hear the changes, but couldn’t put more than a few bars together at a time.  There are a surprising amount of chords in this song, and not just in the little run leading into the chorus.  Sweet’s songwriting genius lies in this deceptive simplicity; specifically, Sweet has a knack for making a somewhat complex arrangement feel less complex on the surface.  “Time Capsule,” built around these gently repeating phrases, feels like it should be an easy song to put together.  However, after taking a look at all the pieces, the craftwork reveals itself. 

More on Matthew Sweet: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Get Off This” – Cracker
(Words/music: Davey Faragher, Johnny Hickman, and David Lowery, available on Kerosene Hat, Virgin 1993)

The charm in a Cracker record generally come from its quirks, and “Get Off This” has its share of odd wrinkles.  From using a talk box in the song’s opening to some of David Lowery’s odder associative lyrics, the weirder edges give the song a slanted swagger.  Lowery sings with such confidence and enthusiasm that it’s easy to buy into his perspective even if the images seem surreal the first time around (or, in the case of this song – images that move quickly before being deciphered). 

However, to write off “Get Off This” solely as a string of jokes or a novelty misses the big picture.  The goofiness only works because it’s a well-written song.  Lowery’s vocal cadence compensates for his odd images by giving his vocals an interesting rhythmic quality; even if he’s hard to decipher, it’s fun to listen to him.  And some of the choices that seem odd at first – the talk box or the chorus of “las” near the end, for instance – end up serving the song well.  The talk box cuts takes what might have been a lead guitar line on another song and turns it into an odd yet catchy melodic line running through the track.  By the time the “las” kick in at the end, I don’t particularly care what Lowery’s singing because I’m singing along to the best of my ability. 

More on Cracker: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Hang On to Your Ego” – Frank Black 
(Words/music: Tony Asher and Brian Wilson, available on Frank Black, 4AD / Elektra 1993) 

Maybe it’s the fatigue of a long work week setting in, but I can’t really think of a lot of Beach Boys cover songs.  Yo La Tengo fuzzed their way through the surfy “Little Honda” and Petra Haden gave “God Only Knows” a beautifully multitracked a capella treatment a few years ago, and there’s Frank Black’s cover posted above.  I’m sure there’s more, and I’m sure you can point me in their direction.  There’s plenty of love and respect for the Beach Boys out there, but not a lot of cover songs it seems.  I wonder if this comes from a respect for the recordings just as much as the songs.  Perhaps the vocal harmonies seem daunting, and an attempt to perform the song might not feel right without the expanded instrumentation.  

Perhaps Black’s choice of song – a slightly obscure one – makes this cover more effective than others.  “Hang On to Your Ego” became Pet Sounds’  “I Know There’s an Answer” after a lyric change to scrub the song of any potential references to Brian Wilson’s experiments with hallucinogens.  Frank Black’s version hums along with pulsating synthesizers and breaks only for his distorted guitar.  The heavier instrumentation gives the song a little bite and Black’s general tone even gives the song this strange diabolical feeling – one appropriate for a song that hits at losing one’s mind.  Regardless, Black’s cover works for me, and it might be because I’m more familiar with the Beach Boys’ “I Know There’s an Answer.”  In a way, Black grabbed onto a Beach Boys song that wasn’t already tied up in their mythology, sensing enough room for his interpretation to exist.

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

“Atlantic City” – The Band
(Words/music: Bruce Springsteen, available on Jericho, Rhino 1993)

This Levon Helm led version of “Atlantic City “ threw me for a loop the first time I heard it. I know Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by reputation as some of his starkest songs with some of his darkest characters. So hearing the brightness of the accordion and mandolin on the Band’s version caught me off guard. For a song where the narrator turns to gambling as a desperate solution to problems, The Band’s version sounded too bright. It sounded more like a leisurely afternoon on the boardwalk than terse moments inside a casino.

So I went back to Springsteen’s recording and found his original version closer to this one than I remembered. Sure, this isn’t the inspired, determined protagonist associated with a lot of his later work, but the main character in “Atlantic City” isn’t completely devoid of hope. He tempers his observation that “everyone dies” with the hope that “everything that dies someday comes back.” Whether it’s what he wants to believe or it’s a true sign of faith, hope remains nonetheless. Even some of the sonic details in the Band’s version that I found surprising – specifically the mandolin and the harmony vocals – exist in Springsteen’s recording too. Whether Springsteen plays a mandolin or an acoustic guitar in its upper register, a string instrument accompanies him the same way his double-tracked vocal harmonizes with him during the chorus. Levon Helm and his bandmates did what good covers often do by highlighting certain aspects of the original. As a result, it creates a distinctly unique version of the song that differentiates itself while still paying tribute to the original.

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

“Candy Everybody Wants” – 10,000 Maniacs
(Words/music: Dennis Drew & Natalie Merchant, available on MTV Unplugged, Elektra 1993)  

My iTunes library on my current computer goes back to July 2007.  “Candy Everybody Wants” is the song that’s been played at least once (an embarrassingly large percentage of my library has a playcount of zero) that went back the furthest until moments ago when I played it.  The suggestion is that I went two and a half years without listening to the song, and that’s not likely true; I may have heard it on Pandora or it may have played on my iPod on one of the times where my music didn’t sync (not to mention clicking on another song before it ended).  Regardless, I haven’t heard it a lot since July 2007 and that makes me kind of sad.  

The melody in “Candy Everybody Wants” suits Natalie Merchant’s voice well.  Merchant’s rich tone serves it well while still giving her a few minutes to show her vocal strengths, particularly at the end of the verses.  Lyrically, the song tangentially addresses the debate about content in the mass media, specifically whether the entertainment industry should be ashamed for glorifying sex and violence or whether it’s merely listening to and providing for its audience’s demands.  The whole thing, the melody, the assortment of stringed instruments, and the subject are all pleasant – certainly charming and clever, but not in a particularly outstanding way.  I suppose this is how I could go from July 14, 2007 to today without having heard the song; it’s the kind of song that might lose its charm when in constant rotation.  While two and a half years is too long, in this case absence made my ears grow fonder.

More on 10,000 Maniacs: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Divorce Song” – Liz Phair
(Words/music: Liz Phair, available on Exile in Guyville, Matador 1993)

A literature professor introduced me to Joseph Cornell and his boxes.  Cornell would create tiny surrealist “worlds” in the boxes, combining found objects together often in a maneuverable, interactive way.  The thing that stuck the most with me about Cornell and his boxes was the way he described the construction of his collages, specifically how he believed the objects conversed with each other in these microcosms.  The meaning of the collage (if meaning could be derived, I suppose) came not from the tally of the objects, but from the imaginary dialogue created by putting these objects in proximity of each other.  Moreover, author Stephanie Zacharek takes the magic of these objects one step further, suggesting that Cornell’s collections of trinkets made his audience acknowledge “that “things” are not always just things; they can also represent the parts of ourselves we want most to secret away from the world. The treasures we hide in messy boxes under our beds are simply stand-ins for those we hide in the corners of our hearts.” 

I often think of mixes, whether made on a tape, a CD, or a playlist, the same way.  When assembling a playlist of songs that my friends know (or, even for myself), I’m amazed at the new things I discover in these songs.  Even more startling is when the selections of songs unintentionally reveals something about myself.  For instance, a few years ago I made a CD for a grad school friend as a way of starting a discussion about music.  From the little I knew about her, I assembled songs that I thought she’d like and that she probably didn’t know (or didn’t remember).  Right in the middle of the mix was “Divorce Song,” one I chose as being representative of the less sensational parts of Exile in Guyville (and for the great harmonica break at the end).  Of course, after spending a little time listening to the mix, I realized that “Divorce Song” encapsulated how I felt at the time.  On the obvious level, I was at the end of a long-term relationship that fizzled out, but it was the mix of rejection, bewilderment, and emotional fatigue that Phair described that hit close to home.  Suddenly, this epiphany highlighted all of these things in my other choices – emotional fatigue in Wilco’s “Shot in the Arm,” the melancholy narrator in Big Star’s “September Gurls,” and the heartbreak in Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” (especially in the Portastatic version I included).  It made me think of Cornell and his boxes; just as his trinkets “talked” to each other, the songs on this mix got together and sulked a little bit.  More importantly, they spoke things that I wasn’t ready to consciously think about.

For what it’s worth, I thought about the Phair song I’d include now (granted, a lot of the songs on Guyville spoke more to me then than they do now), and I think it would be “6’1”.” I have no clue what this says about me. I guess I have a mix to make.

More on Liz Phair: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Because the Night” – 10,000 Maniacs
(Words/music: Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, available on MTV Unplugged, Elektra 1993)

If it didn’t carry such a specific connotation, I’d declare “Because the Night” my favorite power ballad.  Springsteen and Smith play off their mutual strengths, specifically their flair for the dramatic and their unconventionally powerful voices.  “Because the Night” starts with a bittersweet piano line and gives the impression of a lonely piano feature before swelling and taking on the power of the full band.  Appropriately, both Springsteen and Smith take their vocal cues from their arrangement; by the end of the song, both Smith and Springsteen emote the same passion and desperation as their lyrics.  It’s this same quality that makes the 10,000 Maniacs version work for me.  Natalie Merchant has her opportunity to step into the spotlight and plays up her strengths as a vocalist.  That’s not to shortchange her band (who create a wonderful arrangement behind her, managing to elicit the necessary energy out of the unplugged arrangement), but this is Merchant’s moment in the spotlight (and let’s be honest, that’s the reason she’s the focal point in the cover photo).  Like Springsteen and Smith, Merchant builds up to her emotional climax; while she doesn’t have the same power as the other two, she compensates with the sweet sincerity in her voice.

Merchant’s version, like the original Smith version and the Springsteen version on the Live 1975 – 1985 box, climaxes during the bridge.  If the verses laid out the protagonist’s desire for her lover, the bridge drives home the extent of her longing.  Appropriately, this is the musical turning point as well as the song builds in the final few bars.  Merchant’s voice cracks slightly on the second “take me now,” and rather than feel like a bad note it almost sounds like she’s getting choked up.  Whether it’s a bit of acting or an authentic moment of emotion, it only underscores the intensity of the moment.

More on 10,000 Maniacs: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Beautiful Things” - 3Ds
(Words/music: The 3Ds , available on The Venus Trail, Merge Records 1993 and  Old Enough to Know Better: 15 Years of Merge, Merge Records 2004)

As I’m writing this, I’m on an airplane flying down to North Carolina to attend the Merge Records’ 20th anniversary celebration XX Merge.  Right now, it feels like a sort of musical pilgrimage as I”m traveling to Chapel Hill to see a few bands that I absolutely adore and a fair number of bands that I barely know.  A lot of the focus on Merge’s anniversary and their continued success ends with the conclusion that a label like Merge endures in a crumbling music industry because they focus their energy in the right places.  Rather than chase after bands with blog buzz, Merge supports music that they love.  If it were personified, Merge would be the friend perpetually proclaiming “you have to hear this” to anyone who will listen.  In short, Merge endures because they act likes fans, making it easy for fans to connect with the label.  This is how you end up blogging on an airplane heading to a five day festival with a limited knowledge of a lot of the bill strictly based on a label’s endorsement.

One of the biggest factors that earned my trust as a fan was that Merge shares a similar broad definition of “pop” music.  For example, “Beautiful Things,” a song by New Zealand’s 3Ds, never scaled the Billboard charts, yet it’s an incredibly infectious piece of popular music. Both the guitar riff and the melody stick with me for days after I listen, wedging itself into my brain the same way that the best pop songs stick to my insides.  However, “Beautiful Things” isn’t as slick as typical pop fare – the guitars fuzz at times and a mandolin joins in at the perfect moment at the end in order to add a different texture to the mix.  Rather than hide the song’s strengths – it’s simplicity and it’s melody – the band augments the song’s simple core with these instrumental touches.  The final product reaches that point where it works so well that it sounds easy (and songwriters will tell you that is easier said than done).  I hear this and marvel at how perfect the whole things sounds, yet there’s a part of me that say “I could do that” if I dedicated enough time to it.  It’s this recognition (however errant it might be, and in my case it’s probably totally false) that gives songs like “Beautiful Things” their charm.  This is the work of “normal” people rather than untouchable media icons, making the music instantly more relatable and inspiring.  Merge recognizes the beauty in songs like this and puts their weight behind it in order to have as many people hear it as possible.  It creates this kind of cycle – Merge introduces us to new bands, we love these bands and dig deeper into the label’s catalog, and some people will hear it and go start a band themselves.  Who knows – the next great Merge band could be in the audience this week, inspired to create their own beautiful things for the listening audience to consume.

More on 3Ds: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Cherub Rock (Live on Saturday Night Live)” – The Smashing Pumpkins
(Words/music: Billy Corgan, originally available on Siamese Dream, Virgin 1993)

No matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to listen to every “important” band.  There aren’t enough hours in the day to go back and re-listen to favorite records of mine, let alone discover new things.  For whatever reason, some bands just don’t stick when you first hear them.  I’m the right age to be obsessive about the Smashing Pumpkins, yet I’ve never had more than a passing interest in a lot of their catalog.  It’s strange because I have friends (and family too - the Pumpkins were my younger brother’s first favorite band) whole-heartedly devoted to this band.  I never actively disliked the Smashing Pumpkins, but I never moved beyond a cursory knowledge of their most important songs.  Maybe I was proctetcing myself from another obsession – I was deep into Nirvana and R.E.M. at the same time the people around me poured into this band, and maybe their devotion subconsciously convinced me to keep this band at arm’s length. 

In any case, I’ve come up short trying to listen to any Smashing Pumpkins album other than Siamese Dream, and to be honest it’s largely because of my love for “Cherub Rock.”  Even as the early ‘90s alt-rock wave started cresting, Billy Corgan already raised the question of authenticity.  This was the first hook for me, because when you’re sixteen questioning the authenticity of others’ intentions makes you more authentic (at least in my mind it did), so I desperately wanted to empathize with Corgan’s screed against paper-winged angels.  Now, when authenticity isn’t as much of an issue (or at least not something I need to wear on my sleeve as an emblem of battle), I’m taken in by the song’s intensity (especially in this live version, however tinny the MP3 sounds).  “Cherub Rock” springs to life like a snake uncoiling to strike its prey.  Flying into action with Jimmy Chamberlain’s forceful drumming, Corgan doesn’t pull back the attack for nearly five minutes.  Power chords follow cymbal crashes, followed by a guitar solo played with abandon.  When Corgan’s calling out the imposters, he seems to indicate that some of his peers hold back.  If Corgan’s screed is tongue in cheek (and I’m inclined not to think so), he still counters with heart-on-sleeve intensity.  For better or worse (depending on your opinion of the band, I imagine), Corgan errs on the side of passion, often with bleeding-heart lyrics.  Even if Corgan’s gone of the deep end in the last couple of years, he maximized his band’s first moment in the spotlight.  If I never get deep into this band (and, unfortunately, I think that window has opened and shut for me), I’ll still respect the way they went into battle on “Cherub Rock” with full power, ready to enlist their audience right behind them.

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

“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

“Start Choppin” – Dinosaur Jr
(Words/music: J Mascis, available on Where You Been, Blaco y Negro / Sire 1993)

J Mascis plays guitar so effortlessly that it looks like he’s barely interested in playing.  When I saw Dinosaur Jr perform last fall, he barely changed expression whether he played chords during a verse or tore through a fast-paced lead section.  Two massive Marshall stacks stood behind him like his army of sonic assault, waiting for their stoic leader to give his orders.  Mascis, now draped in long, silver hair, seems more likely to be a war room tactician than a field general.  Nonetheless, he possesses a quiet command on stage, directing his guitar to replicate the precise tone, timbre, and volume at the blink of an eye.  Sure, Lour Barlow and drummer Murph are valuable allies, but Mascis is the Supreme Allied Commander in Dinosaur Jr, calling the shots and leading the way through an assault on our ear drums.

I prefer to think of Mascis as a sonic commander rather than just a guitar hero because he does more than just shred.   He understands his strengths as a musician (and his band’s too) and writes songs that play directly to his strengths.  “Start Choppin” shows Mascis range as a guitar player by moving between the playful opening riff, the weighty post-chorus chug, and the unhinged solo in the song’s second half.  Sure, Mascis could play at full throttle for three minutes and might make it sound exciting, but he prefers restraint in his songs by offering some contrast.  He also spins a solid melody, and even if Mascis will never sing like seraphim, he keeps it in a range that makes him sound quirky and casual rather than deficient.  Lou Barlow might have a (slightly) better voice, but Mascis needs to be front and center with his compositions.  Everything he does, whether it’s the casual vocals, the graceful shifts in texture, or the acrobatic guitar parts, comes across as confidently effortless.  I’m certain that Mascis became a virtuoso only through many years of practice, but his greatest gift is his ability to make what others might twist into complex compositions into simple blasts of distorted pop.  If Mascis says to start choppin’, I’m asking where to begin.

More on Dinosaur Jr: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Round Here” – Counting Crows
(Words/music: David Bryson, Adam Duritz , Dave Janusko, Dan Jewett, and Chris Roldan, available on August and Everything After, Geffen 1993)

It would be unfair to boil the Counting Crows down to Adam Duritz and backing musicians, but it wouldn’t be too far off.  At their best, the Counting Crows craft music that follows emotional twists and turns Duritz creates with his lyrics.  It’s a credit to their musicianship that these guys fill any necessary role, whether it’s upbeat and jangly or downtrodden and reserved.  This emotional range makes August and Everything After a compelling listen – while Duritz hides behind the music occasionally, he generally bears all and lets the music reflect his mind.  While some of the later Counting Crows albums border on trite, Duritz is honest, subtle, and engaging on this album and provides a backbone for an album’s worth of wonderful songs.  While Duritz is the key figure, his band brings these songs the extra mile – he sets them up, they knock them down skillfully.

“Round Here” provides the perfect opening for this album.  It begins in a quiet, reserved way, almost tentative to introduce itself to the listener.  Lyrically, Duritz evokes images of fog, ghosts, and general anonymity.  He wants to blend in to the surroundings, but soon enough his narrator steps out from the camouflage and begins telling his story.  At his emotions bubble, the music flows behind him – rising when he’s getting back into it, falling again to start over.  When the band plays at their most aggressive (during the funk-tinged bridge), the narrator seems the most in control of the narrative.  At this point, he’s shifted from sharing his thoughts and painting details to giving advice.  Everything’s fallen into place at this moment – both band and storyteller sound at their most confident, but just like the lightning he sings about, it’s gone soon enough, leaving Duritz questioning his confidence again.  This ebb and flow serves his story better than a verse / chorus structure could.  Rather than fit his tale into a set formula, Duritz leads his listener through his mind and some of the idiosycracise and insecurities that appear throughout the album.  Every step of the way, his band is there in part as reinforcement and in part as a guide to the listener that helps to steer the ship behind Duritz.  It’s an apt introduction to both the album and Duritz’s individual stories.

More on Counting Crows: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Machine Gun” – Slowdive
(Words/music: Neil Halstead, available on Souvlaki, SBC / Creation 1993)

Words fill my life, and sometimes I resent this fact.  I love to study language and tear it apart, to analyze symbolism and specific imagery, and to obsess over using one perfect word rather than two vague words.  It was my decision to study literature, to make a career out of sharing my love of language, and to spend almost all of my leisure time reading or writing, but some days I end up verbally exhausted.  My relationship with music works on a similar arc as well.  I first fell in love with music with well thought-out lyrics back in high school when I started to branch out from music on the radio.  I’ve always loved a killer riff, but I started to seek out songs that told an interesting story or created unique images with their lyrics.  I gravitated towards this kind of music especially when I was out of school, using long car rides and spare moments to parse dense lyrics and come up with grand theoretical ideas about albums or cycles or songs.  I still love music that engages this part of my brain, but I’m finding that it’s not an everyday obsession anymore.  Starting from when I went back to school, I found myself integrating music with less of a focus on words and more emphasis on instrumentation.

Around this time, I discovered Slowdive’s Souvlaki album and immediately loved its atmospheric and almost other-worldly feel.   It’s not exactly ambient music, as these songs still retain structure and tempo; however, mood takes precedence over lyrics and song structure.  Take “Machine Gun” as an example – the song has two distinct sections (characterized by the two different sets of vocals) yet retains the same hazy, swirling feel.  Unlike its title, “Machine Gun” moves slowly and gently, filling the air with swirling synthesizers and repetitively strummed guitars.  The lyrics (which I had to look up) focus on water and drowning, and the song shares this aquatic feel, with reverb as the sonic equivalent of ripples in the pond expanding out toward the outer boundaries.  “Machine Gun” doesn’t sound like treacherous waters apt to drowning, but rather a calm lake at night – the ripples in the lake blend in with the steam rising gently into the night’s sky, feeling warm, inviting, and mysterious enough to pique curiosity to delve deeper.

More on Slowdive: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Fade into You” – Mazzy Star
(Words/music: David Rorbach and Hope Sandoval, available on So Tonight That I Might See, Capitol 1993)

At least three times over the past week, in three entirely different settings, Mazzy Star came up.  This doesn’t surprise me – I’m used to hearing colleagues reminisce about warm summer nights listening to So Tonight That I Might See, discussing how stoic Hope Sandoval looked when singing “Sometimes Always” with the Jesus and Mary Chain, or how “Fade Into You” sounds like it could be from 2003, let alone 1993.  People love “Fade into You” for its atmosphere and mood rather than any other specific element of the songwriting – it doesn’t overwhelm melodically, most people would be pressed to recite an entire line other than the title, and there’s very little in the way of traditional song structure – no verse, hook, bridge, etc.  Still, listeners flock to it and savor its subdued psychedelia a decade and a half later.  It provides affirmation that songs don’t always need to take a journey; sometimes, songs work when they plant their feet in one place and revel in their surroundings, at least when they’re this beautiful.

Perhaps we like “Fade into You” because it’s a sort of blank canvas.  While Sandoval sings beautifully, she’s suited for these understated and mellow songs rather than something loud and boisterous.  While other singers infuse their personality into their songs, Sandoval stands as a musical introvert by projecting as little of herself as possible into her song.  To be clear, this doesn’t make her songs “bland” but rather egoless – these songs are less about her than they are anyone else.  Without a specific narrative thread from Sandoval’s end, we’re free to project our own thoughts into the song, using it as a vehicle to remember specific memories or achieve a specific state of mind.  Ask someone why he or she likes “Fade into You” and you’ll likely receive a two part answer.  First, you’ll get a comment about the sound (or the “mood” or the like), and second you’ll almost always get some kind of memory – “I haven’t heard this in ages,” “this reminds me of…,” or “I have a friend who used to love this song…”  Sure, we all have our own songs with our own personal attachments, but “Fade into You” lends itself well to these recollections.

More on Mazzy Star: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Spitfire” – The Spinanes
(Words/music: Rebecca Gates & Scott Plouf, available on Manos, Sub Pop 1993)

I can remember the first time hearing some songs (or, at least, the first time when the song struck me) to varied degrees of detail; I used to know the first ten or twelve CDs that I bought and the circumstances of the purchase.  Then there’s songs where I struggle to figure out how I discovered them or when I first heard the band.  I know that I bought the Spinanes’ Manos album used (hey kids, remember used record stores?) at the now defunct In Your Ear on Thayer Street in Providence, RI (or that’s my guess at least based on the price tag on the CD case).  It had to be after I saw Rebecca Gates open for Ted Leo at a solo show at AS220, so let’s say that I found this in the winter of 2003-2004.  There, I’m a regular musical archaeologist, aren’t I?

Anyway, back to Gates opening for Ted Leo.  I remember that she performed a similar set (solo, playing an electric guitar) and that her performance style reminded me a lot of Ted Leo’s – both could play quiet, nimble guitar lines or both could play loud, jagged chords to break the mood.  Vocally, Gates and Leo were perfect foils for each other – his vocals leaped all over the map from loud shouts to soaring falsettos to rapidly fired bursts of Latin and French.  Gates’ preferred to stay in her natural lower register for the entire set, letting her vocals create a hazy sort of effect.  At points, it almost seemed like her voice provided the accompaniment to her more melodic guitar lines, which made the performance that much more interesting.

On record (at least on Manos, I have one other Spinanes record but haven’t listened since I got it), Gates and future Built to Spill drummer Scott Plouf continue in this same style – the drums and guitar lineup gives the songs a bit more muscle than a solo performance, but not quite as full sounding as a complete band.  This results in arrangements with a certain level of space – the guitars, drums, and vocals all take equal billing and stand out from each other.  In particular, the lack of a bass line makes the songs seem hollow, leaving plenty of room for one of these three elements to go off its own digression without muddling the mix.  The downside to this stripped down formula is that there’s only so much variation.  The songs are good, but they all tend to blend together by the end of the album.

For whatever reason, “Spitfire” is the song that sticks out the most from this album.  Perhaps it’s the way that the song starts with Plouf’s distinctive beat or the way that Gates scratches out those first couple of chords on her guitar.  When the verse starts, everything shifts into half time and gets a bit fuzzier.  Gates’ vocals hide behind her guitar and Plouf’s open hi-hat until the song snaps back to the original tempo just in time for the chorus of multi-tracked “spitfires” – the most distinctive element of the song.  There’s enough variation between these two sections in tempo, enunciation, and clarity, to keep it interesting and make it stand out from the rest of the songs on the album.  This is probably why I can recognize “Spitfire” immediately and strain to connect any of the others songs to the band.

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