Some Songs Considered - Posts Tagged 'one little indian'

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A daily music blog of memories, analysis, criticism, and ramblings - soundtracked by rock, pop, hip-hop, indie, etc.

Written by Brian Wall

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August 31, 2009

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Hyperballad (Brodski Quartet Version)” – Björk
(Words/music: Björk, Nellee Hooper, Marius De Vries, available on Telegram, One Little Indian 1997)

In “Hyperballad,” Bjork’s narrator leaves her lover every morning, goes to a cliff, and tosses objects over the edge in some type of personal cleansing ritual. This narrator also contemplates her own mortality by wondering what types of sounds she’d make as she lands against the jagged rocks. She returns to her lover and says that she goes through this “so I can feel happier / to be safe up here with you.” It’s romantic in the sense that she’s confronting personal demons – materialistic obsessions, a fear of death, or whatever – in order to break down any barriers between her and her lover. It’s also kind of crazy; we might expect our partners to go for an early morning jog or a drive around the neighborhood to clear their mind rather than throwing carburetors and discarded dishware off a ledge.

This clash of emotions (put bluntly – the romantic meeting the weird), captures the experience of listening to a Bjork album; enjoying the beautiful moments means accepting (and occasionally finding beauty) in the strange quirks.

The Brodsky Quartet remix of the song only heightens both extremes. The original starts as a shadowy echo and swells along with the narrator’s storyline. However, the string quartet treatment gives the song an ironic ultra-modern feel. If the original felt like a cold autumn sunrise, this sounds like the sparsely decorated flat the couple shares. At times (perhaps when the light shines in the window), the strings and Bjork settle on a beautiful chord, only to find the strings take a quick turn toward something more dissonant. When compared with the version on Post, Bjork sounds less settled on this version. If the album cut is Bjork finding peace in her sunrise tosses, the string quartet version feels like the unsettled version that drove her to throw things in the first place. Still, both arrangements have these moments of clarity where everything locks in, Bjork sounds heavenly, and the arrangement follows suit. I suppose this is how littering off of a cliff ends up even vaguely romantic.

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

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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

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