Some Songs Considered - Posts Tagged '1998'

February 25, 2010

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“Grace, Too (Live)” – The Tragically Hip
(Words/music: The Tragically Hip, available on Live Between Us, Sire 1998)

Between the first and second verse of “Grace, Too,” lead singer Gordon Downie lays out one of the best improvised non-sequitors I’ve heard placed in a song. “Jesus Christ, a big fucking bear!” He yells, charging his words with the kind of surprise and excitement that one experience when viewing a wild animal from a safe distance. It’s appropriate for a couple reasons. First, this particular version of “Grace, Too” contains three distinct sections of improvisation and/or embellishment on the original song. There’s the opening, courteous nod to the Hip’s opening band (and how many would start their live album by mentioning another band in such complimentary terms?), one is this bear monologue, and the third is the “I was raised on TV / like so many of you I see around me” spontaneous verse over the song’s closing sequence. This sort of improvisation, even if it feels disconnected from the rest of the song, isn’t unprecedented.

More importantly, Downie’s sincerity and intensity during this “bear” line is how he operates. Once he gets going, Downie’s voice creates the bends in an otherwise linear song. His subtle vocal variations, whether sliding slightly closer toward a scream or simply shifting his cadence, also help to highlight the building intensity in the rest of the song. Downie sounds immersed in the song – and perhaps lost in his narrator, while singing – so perhaps these improvisations come from “living” these characters for a few minutes. Perhaps he imagines this song’s protagonist in a situation where he might see a giant bear. Maybe he just thought it was funny. Regardless, it somehow works, and every time I hear it I smile a little bit and make a mental note to delve deeper into the Hip’s catalogue, if only to see what other gems Downie might improvise.

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

September 30, 2009

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“Misery (Live)” – Soul Asylum
(Words/music: Dave Pirner, available on After the Flood: Live from the Grand Forks Prom, June ‘98, Columbia 2004)

I’ve walked through a lot of bookstores in my lifetime, and the sheer number of self-help books amazes me every time. It stands to reason that a lot of shelf space equals a lot of sales, and as baffling as that seems at first, a new wave in new age thought crests every few months. For example, the current pop-psychology pushes positive thinking – that living one’s life with an optimistic outlook will yield positive returns. I’m not sure if I buy that, but I see merit in the opposite side of the spectrum; specifically, a lot of people bring negativity on themselves. This doesn’t account for factors beyond one’s control; sometimes we’re stuck in awful situations with nothing else to do but wait it out or make the best out of it. However, I also see a lot of people perpetually miserable because they (either actively or subconsciously) seek out things that make them unhappy.

Dave Pirner takes this idea, turns it into a pun, and runs with it. “Frustrated incorporated,” the catchiest part in the song, turns the cliché “misery loves company” into this idea that people manufacture their own negativity. It’s a clever way of approaching this idea while maintaining a thread of optimism (“we’ll create the cure – we made the disease”). This is the essential notion in the song, especially on the After the Flood live album. Soul Asylum volunteered to perform at the prom for a town in North Dakota devastated by flooding. Their set, documented in this 2004 release, starts with a cover of “I Can See Clearly Now” and then into “Misery.” Aside from being one of their catchiest songs, its early placement in the setlist seems designed for a specific purpose – the towns experienced enough misery already and it needs to put its manufacturing resources toward the cure.

More on Soul Asylum: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

September 21, 2009

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“Teardrop” – Massive Attack
(Words/music: Robert “3D” del Naja/Elizabeth Fraser/Grantley Marshall/Mushroom, available on Mezzanine, Virgin 1998)

“Teardrop” isn’t written as a series of haikus, but it feels like it could. With the exception of a few lines at the beginning and the repeated line at the end, every line of lyrics contains five syllables (students of literature – if you know what a poem like this would be called, let me know). Even without the structure, “Teardrop” shares the meditative quality of a haiku. Even on paper, the words read like a simple poem, with the meaning coming out in the repetition. Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins repeats entire lines (“teardrop on the fire” and “fearless on my breath” specifically), but it’s the ideas that bind together her words – acts of nature (“night,” “fire,” “water,”), states of mind (“love,” “fearless(ness),” “impulsion), and physical reactions (tears, breathing, stumbling). Even though she declares that love is a “doing word,” most of the action feels internal, comparing her state of mind to the elements around her. Rather than feeling paralyzed by love, Fraser’s narrator finds strength reflected in nature, giving her the taste of fearlessness even while the rest of her being tries to catch up.

Musically, Massive Attack provides the meditative background for the protagonist’s search for solace. When repurposed as the opening music to the medical drama House, “Teardrop” feels eerie and haunting. When paired with Frazer’s poetry, it makes me think of the kind of things that haunt a person – in the narrator’s case, it might be uncertainty and hesitation. If this type of reflection might be called “confronting one’s demons,” perhaps “ghosts” – the memories of past events and actions – might be more appropriate. Regardless, it’s beautifully haunting, as the darkness gives way to the revelation achieved by meditating on an evaporating teardrop.

More on Massive Attack: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 21, 2009

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“Two-Headed Boy” - Neutral Milk Hotel
(Words/music: Jeff Magnum and Scott Spillane, available on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Merge Records 1998)

To many music fans, Jeff Magnum is their white whale, minus the whole revenge part. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea inspired obsession in fans drawn in to his weird, dreamlike world inspire by reading Anne Frank’s diaries. In the decade since the album’s release, Magnum squarely sidestepped the spotlight his album earned, becoming a recluse who made only the most sporadic appearances on stage and on record. This only fueled his fans’ fanaticism, as his periodic emergences sent music geeks into camera phone induced freakouts, trying to document this now mythical figure. While nobody doubts his existence (he appears often enough to prevent those rumors from ever starting), it’s as mammoth event when he comes up for air and sings a song, even if it’s not one of his own.

The logical question inquires why Magnum, a man who hasn’t made a record in a decade, remains a figure that many of us long to see in person. “Two-Headed Boy” shows the magnetic quality of his songs, relying on unconventional imagery to tell his stories. Much has been said about the songs, but when I listen to this album and “Two-Headed Boy” in particular, I’m struck by the arresting quality of the performance. He doesn’t have “range” in the conventional sense, yet his voice accomplishes different things at different times. He’s nasally melodic and gives his odd imagery an appropriate voice whether he’s singing or whispering. However, the moments when Magnum cuts loose and wails nearly floor me; it feels like he’s rolling his eyes into the back of his head and letting every ounce of emotion out in one burst. Somehow, these squeals sounds both entirely human and otherworldly; at first he sounds the way I think that I sound in the car when I sing along, yet I also know that he’s connecting to a deep part of his soul that few of us can reach with our songs. Most importantly, Magnum knows how to use this sparingly – the acoustic guitar accompanying him builds tension, and Magnum holds back until the most opportune times. When it hits, it’s like an emotional sucker punch that leaves us reeling yet waiting for more. He seems to accomplish so much with so little, making it understandable why so many of us are left whale watching, hoping for a sighting even if it’s fleeting.

More on Neutral Milk Hotel: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

July 8, 2009

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“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.

June 29, 2009

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“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

April 15, 2009

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“Come Sail Away” – Eric Cartman
(Words/music: Dennis DeYoung, available on Chef Aid: The South Park Album, Columbia 1998)

Styx has an incredible amount of nerd appeal – between writing a futuristic song suite, being featured in almost every Adam Sandler movie, and their canonization by South Park, they’ve made fans out of a generation that wasn’t alive during their heyday. I understand nerd appeal (and anyone who sees the number of Gizmodo posts I share in my Google Reader shared feed understands that too) but Styx never stuck with me. Perhaps The Who covered my rock opera needs, I preferred Sandler’s goofier non-musical moments, and I always had a preference for South Park’s original songs. Still, as a teenager when South Park first came on – old enough to remember when The Simpsons was taboo and still young enough to find Beavis and Butthead’s humor enchanting – I was instantly hooked. Even now, a full decade later, I still enjoy South Park as a work of biting satire. Even though they try their best to push the boundaries of taste, Trey Parker and Matt Stone tend to offer social commentary that relies on common sense rather than ideological beliefs. I often find myself using situations from the show to explain certain ideas, and honestly I’m probably not as embarrassed of it as I should be.

Anyway, “Come Sail Away” works for two main reasons. Primarily, it’s an exercise in absurdity. Trey Parker, South Park’s musical mind, gets to sing in his most ridiculous character’s voice on a song that invites him to be even more ridiculous. In the Cartman character, Parker gets to sing “Come Sail Away” as a self-absorbed egomaniac. Cartman sounds a little too comfortable in the spotlight during the first half of the song as he exaggerates his annunciation and even speak-sings a couple lines. Overall, the song pushes towards the limits of absurdity, especially when Cartman starts to squeal in frustration. Thankfully, the second half of the song saves it from being entirely Cartman’s show, as Issac Hayes’ Chef character hijacks the song for a brief minute, turning the power ballad into a funky bounce that leaves Cartman bewildered. If Parker plays to his absurdist strengths in his vocal performance, he’s also willing to take advantage of Hayes’ musical gift (an integral part of those early episodes). Additionally, as with a lot of Parker and Stone’s parodies, an element of sincerity tempers the absurdity of the performance. The song’s arrangement stays faithful to the original for most of the song aside from a couple deviations. The bridge even borrows from “Mr. Roboto,” giving a silent nod to another Styx fan (and suggesting that Parker is either a fan or did his research). It’s the appropriate vehicle for Cartman’s journey to the center of his ego, as it would take the right mix of fist-pumping rock and nerd charm to pull off a cartoon character’s signature single. In that sense, Styx seems like the perfect choice.

More on South Park: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

March 22, 2009

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“Liberation Frequency” – Refused
(Words/music: Refused, available on The Shape of Punk to Come, Epitaph 1998)

“Liberation Frequency” strikes like a coiled snake. From a distance, it sounds like a harmless track fueled by rim knocks on the snare drum and a thin sounding guitar. Still, something is awry; the whole thing sounds just a little too tightly wound. Even when the drummer opens up the beat a little bit, it feels like something holds him back, and the cries of “we want the airwaves back” sound far off. Only after being lulled in does the snake strike (and strike quickly). Everything stops except for a faint guitar lick played before the onslaught of full volume guitars, bashed cymbals, and full-throated screams. As quickly as it arrived, the song returns to the restrained bridge just like a snake waiting for it’s next victim, and even though we know it will happen again, we can’t help but move in a little too close to its space.

This song will always remind me of my first experience listening to college radio. I remember after getting my drivers’ license in 1999 that I soon discovered WNHU, a fine student run radio station based out of the University of New Haven. One of the shows I used to listen to intermittently was named after this song. Liberation Frequency and many of the other afternoon shows on WNHU filled my Plymouth station wagon with punk rock I rarely heard of (or rarely heard again, thanks to a limited income) during my high school years. Once I became involved with college radio (first at WDOM and later at WQAQ), I used to come home from breaks and recognize a lot of the same stuff that would come through our station. Even though I usually listen to my iPod in the car, I’ll turn on WNHU from time to time just to see what they’re playing. Looking back now, “Liberation Frequency” made sense as a college radio theme song. If nothing else, it was slightly less obvious that the moniker I used for a lot of my tenure. The “we want the airwaves back” made sense for a punk rock show in the early 21st century, but I think the “we don’t just want airtime / we want all the time” made more sense as a college radio rally cry. I know from my experience, being exposed to good college radio – radio produced by DJs passionate about their music, open to new songs, and not completely devoid of a personality – meant developing an addiction to looking past mainstream radio to find hidden gems and new favorites.

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

March 13, 2009

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“Enjoy the Silence” – Failure
(Words/music: Martin Gore, available on For the Masses: A Tribute to Depeche Mode, A&M 1998)

For many different reasons, “Enjoy the Silence” brings me back to the late 1990s. I discovered Depeche Mode through their Singles 86>98 collection, largely because a half hour infomercial ran on a local music channel non-stop. I spent a lot of time listening to the first disc of this collection, which compiles almost all of Depeche Mode’s essential singles (save for a couple early ones found on the Singles 81>85 collection). In many ways, this was my first introduction to 1980s alternative rock beyond R.E.M. and U2 and the handful of Cure songs I heard on the radio. When I hear Depeche Mode songs now, I’m drawn in by how dramatic they sound. The drums boom, the synthesizers sound dark and ominous, and there are some sharp dynamic changes (well, a fair amount of loud/soft contrast for the pre-Pixies/Nirvana world). Dave Gahan sang these songs in a unique way by singing with a morose tone while still projecting to the back of the room – a sort of overblown bleakness. His voice sounded like a fog filling an empty field – a dark charisma that seems unassuming until it surrounds you and demands your attention by obscuring everything else. I ate it up at fifteen because I’d never heard anything like it, and I still appreciate it now because Martin Gore knew how to write songs that played up to his band’s strengths. At his best, he hit the perfect balance of song and sulk, making these melancholy songs sound just melodic enough.

Still, I think my personal association linking Depeche Mode to the late ‘90s goes beyond my personal discovery. Many of the bands getting airplay on “modern rock radio” bore Depeche Mode’s influence. Appropriately, the For the Masses tribute album collects a lot of hard rock and electronic bands trying to channel Depeche Mode’s emphasis on musical atmosphere. While the album achieves mixed results, Failure’s cover of “Enjoy the Silence” pushes the song to its logical limits. While the original only has a slight shift in volume from verse to chorus (mostly from more elements entering the mix), Failure’s version relies heavily on these changes in dynamics, specifically by contrasting a quieter, tremolo-drenched guitar lines with the distortion-laden power chords in the chorus. Ken Andrews’ sings in a similarly monotone manner, but uses a megaphone effect to change the quality in his voice in a way that almost sounds like a second character. It’s grandly overblown and vaguely melodic, yet it pushes just enough to become anthemic. This is the kind of dark, huge sounding song that many other bands strived to achieve in 1998, and perhaps Failure achieved this because they are a skilled band (admittedly, I don’t think I know any of their other songs – please let me know if I should fix this), but perhaps they achieved this because they were working with quality material to begin with. Depeche Mode set the blueprint nearly a decade earlier, and Failure executed it in a way that their “Enjoy the Silence” rivals the original.

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

February 28, 2009

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“A New England (BBC Recording)” – Kirsty MacColl with Billy Bragg
(Words/music: Billy Bragg, available on What Do Pretty Girls Do?, Hex 1998)

I’m a relatively new convert to Billy Bragg (and to those in need of convincing, go seek the Must I Paint You a Picture collection for a strong career overview), but one of the most compelling parts of Bragg’s personality is his propensity to champion other singers. Whether it’s sharing the stage with younger performers (recently Brit singers Estelle and Kate Nash, among others), collaborating with established acts (most famously with Wilco on the Mermaid Avenue discs), or championing artists rights to own their own intellectual property, few have done more to help cultivate a creative environment in popular music over the past twenty years. More importantly, Bragg’s collaborations come across as genuine endorsements of those he works with; rather than working with high profile bands or rising singers to raise his own public image, Bragg invests his time in causes (or, in this case, performers) he believes in, offering whatever he can to help their creative growth.

Still, it’s high praise for Bragg to share perhaps his most iconic song with Kirsty MacColl, although I wouldn’t blame him if he just wanted to hear his words sung by someone with as beautiful a voice as her. MacColl, best known as the firery foil to Shane MacGowan in the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” sings “A New England” like it’s her own song, telling Bragg’s tale of teenage longing through her clear, vibrant voice. In this version, recorded for the BBC, MacColl and Bragg trade verses and create a conversational tone. While Bragg’s original sounds like a young man declaring his place in the world, this version sounds like two friends catching up on the past with each other. In particular, MacColl’s final verse (which Bragg wrote specifically for her), seems focused on the past – it’s the only of the three verses set exclusively in the past tense (where the other two verses compare the past to the present), and appropriately carries the perspective that only time brings. Even if they sound older, they still sound like they’re having fun, as their voices harmonize together and they laugh during the goofy instrumental break. I’ve never seen Bragg live, but I’m told he retains the final verse in his solo performances as a tribute to MacColl, who died in 2000.

More on Kirsty MacColl: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

February 27, 2009

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“Dry the Rain” – The Beta Band
(Words/music: Robin Jones, John Maclean, Stephen Mason, available on The Three E.P.’s, Astralwerks 1998)

Every single time this song comes up in a shuffle playlist, I think of High Fidelity. It will be virtually impossible to break that association, and even now I’m struggling to think of a semi-plausible event that would make me think of the film second. This is the song that John Cusack deliberately puts on to sell records (specifically, “five copies of The Three E.P.’s” as he tells his coworker). I’ve been patronizing record stores for more than half my life now, and I’ve always imagined this as a type of sales technique. Thinking about my own experience as a record shopper – spending a fair amount of time in the store in any given trip, in the mood to find new music – record store patrons are willing consumers. One of my favorite parts of my trip to the local record store was talking with the employees about records (or mining them for recommendations for finds from the used bin). I would often ask about something playing in the store, and sometimes I would even buy it, but I never really thought of it as a sales technique. Instead, I always considered it part of the shared music experience – “this is something I like and I want other people to experience it as well.” This is what’s missing as a result of the vanishing record store – the internet makes everything infinitely more accessible, but the social aspect has changed. Sure, there’s lots of opportunities to share music on the internet (this blog, for example), but it’s hard to replace that face-to-face interaction that comes when you set foot into the record store. I guess this is why I still seek out record stores.

In that context, “Dry the Rain” works as the perfect record store track. It starts off slowly and unassuming, preferring to slide into the patron’s subconscious rather than immediately call attention to itself. It kind of sounds like a castoff from Primal Scream’s Screamadelica album updated for the late 90s, as it starts as a sort of folk – electronic hybrid. The guitars slide up and down, the melody goes around in a circle, the beat drops momentarily – all pleasant tricks, but nothing extraordinary on its own. Around two minutes in, the drums get heavier and the rest of the track follows – the watery sounding percussion and quivering guitar lines give way to this more refined sound. In a way, the song spent the first two minutes trying out a few different ideas, the middle two minutes establishing a solid foundation, and the final two minutes soaring into the stratosphere. The song clicks when the horns, vocals, and that subtly melodic bass line lock in together and everything else falls into place – it even comes close to a sing-along moment in those final minutes. It’s the kind of song that wins you over before you’ve even realized it’s on; by the time you’ve noticed it, you’re already bobbing your head along.

This is where High Fidelity cheats – it skips right to the best part of the song, removing the buildup and skipping the auditory foreplay. Sure, allowing a six minute song to build just to preserve authenticity might not make narrative sense (although, in a movie where records are so important, it might), but couldn’t something happen in between the part when Cusack puts on the CD and the people start to groove to it?

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

February 22, 2009

“Miss Misery (Live- 1998 Academy Awards Ceremony)” – Elliott Smith
(Words/music: Elliott Smith, available on Good Will Hunting OST, Capitol 1997)

Part II: The Academy Awards Performance (Read Part I here)

Even without the Hollywood makeup, “Miss Misery” resonated with audiences, scoring Elliott Smith a deal with Dreamworks (and in the infancy of the internet, being on a major label meant more than it does now) and an Oscar nomination. Still, the notoriously reserved Smith found himself in an odd pairing during the ceremony – performing between two huge pop ballads – “How Do I Live” from Con Air and Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the Titanic juggernaut. Carl Wilson writes eloquently about this performance in his book Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste and describes the absurdity of the situation better than I would (in particular the suggestion that Richard Marx would have performed it if Smith declined), so I’ll point you toward his book (a great read) for more of the context of the performance. In March of 1998, I desperately wanted Elliott Smith to win, if for no other reason than I wanted a song I liked to beat a song I loathed (and if you were a teenage male in 1998, you would have hated that Celine Dion song too- I can now accept that it’s an exceptional piece of pop craftsmanship, but it annoyed the hell out of me then). Despite having little interest in the rest of the ceremony (that hasn’t changed – I’m writing this while the 2009 ceremony is going), I taped the ceremony in addition to watching it. I’m a relentless archivist and for the first couple years of my music obsession, I taped as many videos and performances so that I could watch them again (bless Youtube, Hulu, etc – I don’t have that kind of energy these days). I even went as far as hooking up an old VCR to my parents’ VCR to make a “master tape” (which still exists somewhere, I hope).

But I digress – I was excited to see Elliott Smith perform this song and wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss it. So I sat there, watching the ceremony because in order to tape, I had to watch the same channel (bless DVRs). I remember staying up as late as possible until I inevitably gave up and went to bed. The next day, I scanned the tape for the performance (which I guess I just missed) and the award presentation (which, of course, went to “My Heart Will Go On”). I’m almost certain (unless I saw him on 120 Minutes, which was possible, but my memory isn’t clear on this one) that this was the first time I’d seen Elliott Smith perform and I remember thinking how odd he looked standing up there by himself when everyone else had much more elaborate arrangements. I was at least expecting a band with him or something. Watching the performance now, I’m struck by a few things. First, the orchestra’s backing arrangement doesn’t sound as hokey as I thought it might have – it’s actually quite tasteful and similar to his own recorded version (and I love the tin whistle about halfway through). Also, he didn’t look as immediately nervous as I thought – it’s not until about a minute and a half in that his voice shakes (the “next door” line) – an incredibly human moment in an otherwise surreal event. It took a lot of guts for Smith to go up there and perform by himself – no other musicians, no dancers or film clips or any other visual to distract the audience. For the reserved Smith to accept the Sisyphian task of performing before Celine Dion (her performance is cut out of the Youtube clip, but just look at the orchestra before Madonna reads the nominees) and perform in front of the largest audience of his life (and, quite possibly, an audience that eclipsed all his other audiences together) is noble. In a strange way, Smith’s discomfort (search for any other performances on Youtube and you’ll see he was frequently a captivating and charismatic performer in his own quiet, understated way) goes back to his loyalty to the song. His choice to uncomfortably protect his song from the overblown Oscar-produced alternative put the song before the singer and created a memorable performance, even if it lives in the iceberg’s shadow.

More on Elliott Smith: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

February 5, 2009

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“RE:DEFinition” – Black Star
(Words/music: Tony Cottrell, Talib Kweli Green, Dante Smith, available on Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star, Rawkus 1998)

On their first (and so far, only) full collaborative LP, Mos Def and Talib Kweli took the temperature of the hip hop underground in the late 1990s; this is in the phase where hip hop became a full blown commercial phenomenon (and after Tupac and B.I.G. were gunned down). This isn’t an album of song length “samples” or odd rap-rock hybrids; Black Star seemed more in step with A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders than anything Puff Daddy produced, and as a result Black Star still sounds as relevant in 2009 as it did when it first came out.

Kweli and Mos Def are known as skillful lyricists, and use the Black Star LP as an opportunity to decry some of hip hop’s ills. Most notably, the track “Definition” calls for an end to the mounting violence in hip hop culture. The track, produced by Kweli’s long time collaborator Hi-Tek, borrows the hook from Boogie Down Productions’ “Stop the Violence” (as well as it’s overall message of disarmament). Mos Def sings the hook with a slightly reggae-tinged inflection and does such a great job that the pair modify it slightly for “RE:DEFinition,” a track that serves as the epilogue to “Definition.” On “Definition,” Kweli follows Mos Def’s lead, rapping in a tightly wound, almost metronome like flow while Hi-Tek’s stuttering drum beat and repeated guitar sample drive home the beat. It’s an appropriate mood for a song about violence; the tense beat and rapid-fire delivery almost sound like an assault. Conversely, “RE:DEFinition” slows the beat down slightly and the two MCs rhyme in a more relaxed, free-formed manner (with Mos Def now appropriating some of Kweli’s flow). The content too seems relaxed – while the first track carries weighty content, the second is more like a classic posse cut where the MCs declare their prowess, with Mos Def declaring himself “lyrically handsome,” one of my favorite lines on this entire album. The sonic texture differs too, as “RE:DEFintion” features a near content tremolo string figure. It gives the track a slightly sinister feel (especially with the electric piano that drops in an out), but even more than that it makes the track sound on the brink of unraveling at the entire time. Appropriately the song (and, in essence, this two song suite) ends with the strings finally hitting a brief legato melody only to have the beat stumble on itself. It’s an appropriate warning for hip hop (even in 2009) to watch itself, lest it self-destruct from its own vices.

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

January 28, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Crazy Mary” – Victoria Williams and Lou Reed
(Words/music: Victoria Williams, appears on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live, Atlantic 1998)

To know Victoria Williams’ music is to know her story too. In 1993, Williams was diagnosed with MS and because she made a living as a singer/songwriter, lacked health insurance. Thus the Sweet Relief Fund was born, and through two compilations (the first consisting of covers of Williams’ songs) and other efforts raises money for musicians who cannot pay their medical bills. Having endured a gap in health insurance coverage myself, I can attest that it’s not cheap for a healthy person, let alone someone with something like MS requiring plenty of treatments. Still, what seemed like a tragedy became a triumph as Williams still writes songs and performs over fifteen years after her diagnosis.

Still, it’s the story in her song that’s more important. “Crazy Mary” reads like a character sketch or a barebones short story. I’m somewhat reminded of the oddball characters Flannery O’Connor created in her stories (although I’m still not 100% satisfied with that comparison – help me out in the comments if you have a better match). The title character is the strange hermit woman in her town - if she lived in your town, she’d be the subject of childhood legends and dares to go knock on her door. Unlike the stereotypical urban legend, the narrator has seen Mary and even met her on a few occasions. Still, Mary’s voice is silent in the song – she waves her arms frantically and has “wild eyes” but never utters a word. We don’t know what drove her to the outskirts of the town or rendered her silent (and if it was a story, we’d have a slight back story at least) and we don’t quite know what happens to her at the end.

I’ve always been struck by how Williams sings the song in this version (from a compilation of live performances on MTV’s now defunct 120 Minutes). Like many, I first heard Pearl Jam’s version from the original Sweet Relief compilation and they do an admirable job with the song, but Williams tells the story like she lived it first hand. There’s the clever turn of phrase spelling out “loitering” followed by “a-llowed” and how she enters into a Crazy (Mary)-like shriek near the end of the chorus. It’s the first verse after the chorus where Williams’ performance makes the story; she quickly speaks the first two lines of the verse (kind of like her duet partner Lou Reed might have done) before leaning into the word “dreaming” just for a split second longer than any other word. Her voice lifts slightly higher just at the part where the narrator shares her dream of flight into Mary’s home. At the end of the verse, Mary’s “rising up above” her run down shack, and after hearing how a car crashed into her house in the final verse, it seems like Mary’s ascended from life into the afterlife. I might be reading too much into the biblical connotation of her name (which would strengthen the O’Connor comparison), but there’s a certain collapsing of the story onto itself at the end as the dream and reality blur. The lines repeated right after the discovery of the accident – “that what you fear the most / could meet you half way” is vague enough to refer to Mary (who despite her exile from town met her demise from one of the citizens) or the narrator (who empathizes with Mary and thus probably sees something of herself in the demise) but pointed enough to pierce the song open, leaving the scars as a reminder of Mary’s story.

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PS – I can’t decide if Lou Reed adds or subtracts to this version. I like the lead guitar he’s playing throughout the song, and at times it sounds like whimpering or wailing. His lead part sounds like a strange mutation of the blues – distorted, disoriented, and slightly disturbed. Still, his spoken (and sometimes out of time) backing vocals are kind of distracting. I almost wish they turned off his microphone and just let him play the guitar solo.

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