Some Songs Considered

“Lithium” – Nirvana
(Words/music: Kurt Cobain, available on Nevermind, DGC 1991)

If you really want to know, I have two “first albums” because I bought two at the same time.  If given fifteen minutes and a calendar, I could probably pinpoint the exact day I bought them as well.  October 1997, I was a freshman in high school and had been listening to the radio for the better part of a year.  I’d make tapes off the radio, sitting with my boom box in my room with my finger ready on the red record button, ready to commit the next song to one of my Maxell 90 minute tapes (which I have shoeboxes of).  I consumed radio (and MTV, and to a lesser extent VH-1) as much as I could until waiting to hear songs on the radio simply wasn’t enough.  So while on the way home from a family get together and a stop at a Borders’ Books, I bought an old record and a current record.  The “current” album was Oasis’ Be Here Now, a record that’s unfairly maligned even if it’s not as good as the first two, and the “old” record was Nevermind.  Looking back, 1996-1997 wasn’t that far removed from the whole grunge thing, so Nirvana still received regular play on modern rock stations (hell, they still get their fair share these days), so it makes sense that I’d buy an album that had been on my radar for years (I remember where I was when Kurt Cobain died, even if I only had a casual understanding of who he was).

Today I own an embarrassing amount of music (I measure my iTunes by months now), but back then when my money came from birthdays and babysitting my neighbors, new music never came frequently enough.  This, along with the obsessiveness of my teenage years, led to me living with albums for a prolonged period of time, and Nevermind is one that I did a considerable amount of living with.  I probably listened to it on an average of three or four times a week for the first two years I owned it.  I taught myself how to play the drums with the first half of Nevermind, and to this day I instinctively start moving my hands and feet along to certain phrases in the album (not to mention a collection of broken drum sticks from trying to play like Dave Grohl).  I haven’t listened to some of these songs in ages, but I probably know them better than songs I’ve heard multiple times in the last month as they trigger something – emotional memories, muscle memory, who knows – in me when I hear them.  This is probably one of the reasons I rarely listen to Nevermind anymore – it’s so loaded with personal associations of those painfully awkward years that’s it’s hard to hear the songs without my own personal context rising back up.

Listening to “Lithium” now, it strikes me as the perfect example of the “Nirvana sound.”  Sure it has the soft/loud/soft dynamic that everyone points out (and yes, that the Pixies did first and probably better), but there’s so much more that makes this song work.  The slinky guitar line through the verse stands out immediately as it snakes through Dave Grohl’s bright sounding ride cymbal and Krist Novoselic’s minimal yet perfect bass line.  Cobain sings in a clean and (relatively) bright sounding tone (at least compared with some of the other songs on Nevermind).  Then, with a quick click of the distortion pedal, Cobain’s guitar becomes a wave of distortion, Grohl starts bashing at his ride cymbal (the only way to get those deep, violent crash sounds), and Novoselic’s bass becomes instantly more melodic.  Meanwhile, Cobain switches from his bleak poetry to a sea of “yeahs” – content to let his melody alone ride the cresting waves of sound without words.  Some might think it’s a copout to have a lyric-less chorus, but it takes a tremendous amount of faith that the melody will keep things interesting (and it does), but it also continues with the contrast in the dynamics; the verses are subdued and somewhat morose, but when the chorus hits the mood shifts to joyous and sing-songy (almost like, uh, taking lithium as an antidepressant?).  Cobain comes out of the chorus declaring his conflicted moods – he likes it, misses it, loves you, kills you, all while declaring that he’s “not going to crack.”  After his suicide, it’s convenient to declare “Lithium” as a portrayal of Cobain’s own fragile mental state, but it’s really a case in excellent songwriting where the music and the words work together to tell a story and convey emotion.  No wonder a teenager would latch on to this.

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

“Hunger Strike” – Temple of the Dog
(Words/music: Chris Cornell, available on Temple of the Dog, A&M 1991)

I grew up on “modern rock radio,” so there’s certain songs that immediately grab my attention.  “Hunger Strike” is one of the songs I can identify from the first note, even if I haven’t heard it in months.  When I first found my way into music, I fell hard for grunge (late to the party, of course, but more on that next week) so I played through my copy of Temple of the Dog, a one off collaboration between Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron and all of the future non-drumming members of Pearl Jam (ironically, Matt Cameron became Pearl Jam’s drummer almost a decade ago, and has become the longest tenured drummer in the band) enough times to recognize the key songs pretty quickly.

“Hunger Strike” is an odd song because it doesn’t really fit into either Pearl Jam or Soundgarden’s cannon (by default, it’s become a “Pearl Jam” song, as they’ve performed it a dozen times or so over the last five years).  The riff sounds like some of the other songs on Ten, but played at a much slower, less dramatic pace than songs like “Oceans” or “Garden.”  Still, it’s not heavy enough to be a Soundgarden song, and Chris Cornell even sounds like he’s trying to sing like Eddie Vedder on this song.  Still, that guitar riff has a circular, hypnotic quality to it; it kind of sounds like waves slowly ebbing and flowing (and, to a lesser degree, has the circular quality of a fugue in classical music, like counterpoint played by a flannel quintet).  It’s soothing in a way that distorted guitars and booming drums could soothe ones’ soul.  As for the lyrics, well, it’s best not to think about them.  The lyrics seem to be a very literal take on going hungry in order to quell financial inequality in the world.  Of course, while the fat cats are eating, Cornell and Vedder just keep getting hungrier and hungrier (and they remind us of that for about 20% of the song).  Just like that circular riff, the lyrics keep repeating; however, while the guitars build on each other, the words go nowhere.  Still, it’s given us that call and response chorus – Vedder takes the low rode and Cornell rides in on the high road soon afterward.  It’s very fun to sing along to – my old college roommate Mike would sing Vedder’s part when he wanted to go eat in the dining hall, and either myself or my roommate Jim would join in with our best Chris Cornell impression (be glad you didn’t live with us during these moments).  Needless to say, I never change the radio when I hear it these days.

Then there’s the video. The song makes me nostalgic for those moments eating rough pork chops or listening to the “Flannel Five” on a Rhode Island modern rock station during summer vacation, but the video is a relic of a very specific era.  The hair, the clothes, the sullen looks off camera – they all tie this video to the early nineties and would make a pretty good “time capsule” description of that era’s aesthetics.  It’s also, almost two decades later, kind of unintentionally hilarious.  Thanks to Mike for uploading the version I remember (and as he pointed out in the comments section, the saddest beach party with Eddie Vedder’s strange downbeat swat at the 2:30 mark).

More on Temple of the Dog: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm