Archives : all posts by Jordan

Washington White - "I Am in the Heavenly Way"

How deep is Washington White? As deep as the Potomac River? As deep as the Georgetown philosophy department? The White Sox bullpen?

1. Greg is studying for his GREs and when I ran into him today, I asked him how it was going.

"Well, it's actually pretty hard to make an analogy using words you don't know."
"Impossible," I said.
"Yeah."

2. My favourite records are to my record player as my conversations with acquaintances are to my mind.

3. So it occurred to me that in my conversation with Greg I made a terrible, terrible mistake, and that, as a result, my reputation (considerable and seemingly unassailable as it was) had been ruined. Now a pariah, I would have to leave Montreal as I had left so many cities before: humiliated, homeless, hungry, hoping that I would be always correct in San Francisco, or Lisbon, or Tokyo, or somewhere before the whole world finds out I'm a fraud.

4. You don't have to know any English to know that 'lived' is to 'devil' as 'peed' is to 'deep', for example.

5. Which is deep (maybe deeper than the Potomac), but not as deep as Washington White. The snowballing momentum, the insistent harping on the downbeat, the call and response of the male-female vocals all call to mind Blind Willie Johnson, a man whose depth is roughly the same as that of the universe itself. Like Johnson's "John The Revelator", "I Am in the Heavenly Way" works on an ecstatic momentum; White bangs his out of tune guitar like a coxswain bangs his drum, or a horseman cracks his whip, pushing, pushing, pushing, and after each strike, his focus and enthusiasm are concentrated and he pushes harder yet.

6. Listen to the silence after the song finishes. Though the sound has dissipated, the energy remains. Though White is gone, his performance persists, still deeply affecting seventy years later. [Buy]

***

Phil Ochs - "The Highwayman"

My roommates love this song, which means that I live in a sick and depressed household. It's probably why I'm dying of the flu right now. This kind of music is not good for your immune system. If you listen, you will likely become ill too.

Upside: perverse pleasure derived from beautifully executed tragic art.
Downside: pain and suffering.

Do what you want (though misery does love company). [Buy]

Swan Lake - "All Fires"

In "The Kugelmass Episode", a short story by Woody Allen, the magician/entertainer The Great Persky transports Professor Kugelmass into the novel Madame Bovary. This is arranged at K.'s behest, because he is in a loveless second marriage, and is in the midst of a midlife crisis. He needs something, he thinks. Perhaps an affair with Flaubert's wanton cuckolder would do the trick, he thinks. So, K. and B. start doing it, and it's great - I mean, who among us can honestly say that we've never fantasized about 19th Century French Literary ACTION? But then things start to deteriorate: B. begins to feel guilty and K. becomes exceedingly anxious about his other man status. The situation eventually becomes unworkable when Professor Kopkind, K.'s colleague, rereads Madame Bovary, and notices a new character whom he immediately recognizes as Kugelmass.

The certainty with which Professor Kopkind makes his identification is hysterical. Kopkind had always been jealous of Kugelmass, and seeing him infiltrate this great novel was simply too much. Allen's conceit is a standard post-modern gimmick, but it's the way he uses it to illuminate the petty insecurities and rivalries among lovers and colleagues that sets it apart from similar stories and makes it so deeply funny. Kopkind is so overcome by jealousy and anger that he doesn't even stop to consider the absurdity and the impossible logistics of the situation.

Similarly, in Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," it's not the project itself (a French poet, Pierre Menard, sets out to rewrite Don Quixote, word-for-word as Cervantes had done, but through his own creativity) that leaves you rolling around in an apoplectic fit of laughter, but the narrator's assertion that Menard's text (I reiterate, verbally identical to Cervantes') is "infinitely richer".

In both cases, a funny premise becomes exponentially funnier (its funniness is cubed) because a character outside of the absurd conceit treats the premise as if it's perfectly normal. And more than that, they treat the premise the same way we would if we were to believe it to be normal. That is, these situations, when peripheral characters corroborate their normalcy or everydayness, are given a kind of internal coherence in which the actors can be judged against an internal logic, not like our own. Something human is maintained and cast in the light of a very different world, so that we may see ourselves differently, from a different perspective.

I know, BLAH BLAH BLAH. I'm getting to it.

Dan Beirne and Wittgenstein say "fuck possible worlds", but Swan Lake want to do no such thing. They create a world in sound that is a negative of our own. This is Spencer Krug's fiction, but it's treated as real by Bejar and Mercer. And that's what makes it so bleak and cold. The noises they make are unfamiliar: their voices are not human, their guitars not human, their bodies, the space that they fill... yet, in its shadows and blackness, in what is left unsaid and unlit, we can sense something human in "All Fires". It is us lurking in the corners, us emerging in the penumbra.

Swan Lake shows us a claustrophobic but high-ceilinged room (everything's soaked in reverb), unknown creatures crawling (the panning trill of treble-free guitars), and a Heraclitus-like refrain ("All fires have to burn alive to live") that if anyone said to you, you'd probably start crying. What they don't explicitly show us is that they're in it together - the three of them understanding and taking as normal what we cannot. [Hold your breath til November]

***

Snowblink - "Suture"

Are you lonely? Don't be. You have a friend in tape hiss, in the background creak of wooden chairs, in the crackle and click of four-track recordings. And besides, I'm coming over later tonight, and I'm bringing S1C3R1A1B3B3L1E1 and mojitos. [Info]

Nina Simone - "Wild is the Wind"

No song better expresses the tragedy of love's transience than "Wild is the Wind". With a couple of metaphors, the song economically communicates the sensual and existential power held between lovers: "you touch me/I hear the sound of mandolins/you kiss me/with your kiss my life begins." And then, immediately afterward, with one imperative analogy, the necessary impermanence of love is recognized, at once railed against and accepted: "Like a leaf clings to a tree/Oh my darling, cling to me/For we're creatures of the wind/Wild is the wind."

The piano is the ecstasy of Simone's love. It alternates between warm jazz chords and lyrical blues scale leads, never sitting on the blue notes. The bass is the impending end. It insistently pulls the piano back after every phrase. Simone sits in the middle, in the midst of her affair, fully aware of its deciduousness, feeling everything all at once. [Buy]

Cat Power's version can be heard as a continuation of the same story. She sings the song like the leaf has already fallen from the tree, as if the subject is a matter from her distant past. The piano has no life, no hope. It alternates between C Major and A minor, ad nauseam. There is very little embellishment, almost no harmonic movement. When she sings of the sound of mandolins, she does so a cappella, accompanied only by a nearly decayed piano chord. The absence of mandolins has rarely been so striking. When she sings of the kiss with which her life begins, we are reminded of the feeling, after love, that life is somehow dulled, muted; we are reminded of the fear, or perhaps resignation, that without love's kiss, life cannot begin. [Buy]

***

Bowie's version isn't bad, but the sociopathic detachment he favoured during this period (Station to Station, Low, Heroes) is not ideal for tenderness of this sort. [Buy]

The Ronettes - "Do I Love You?"

In the middle of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", he and his band play through the song's chord progression for a full verse without a solo or any embellishment. The genius of the progression, and the earthy sounds of the clearly recorded, perfectly mixed instruments, make the interlude entirely engaging. In another one of Young's classic songs, "Cinnamon Girl", he plays an extended one-note guitar solo with such rhythmic panache that there is a sense of significant melodic movement. These are both manifestations of Young's key songwriting and arranging principle: less is more.

Phil Spector, on the other hand, is a proponent of the opposite, logically true principle: more is more. In terms of percussion, a drum kit is not nearly enough for Spector, he wants hand drums, finger-snaps and hand-claps. A standard horn section is sorely lacking and should be padded with the addition of a baritone sax, at least. Why not add church bells? In the chorus, when the Ronettes' sublime wordless vocal refrain collides with their matter-of-fact answer to the titular question, the song becomes so harmonically dense that it literally kills me every time. The lack of restraint is not limited to the musical aspect of the song, either. The lyrics are not just a testament of devotion, but a scary oath of stalkerly persistence: "I swear I'm going to get you if it takes me all my life. I'll hope and pray and dream and scheme, 'cause I'm gonna be your wife." More, more, more. Sir Thomas Moore and Morely Safer say: Well done, Spector. But Spector, not satisfied with his epic pop gem, adds a brief but stirring riff-based coda that makes it still more in every way. [Buy]

***

The Multiple Cat - "Little Pieces"

This song, like the LMP song I posted last week, was taken from Snowglobe Records' Tiny Idols Vol. 2, a compilation of rare and unreleased indie rock from between '95 and '99. 1295 and 1399, that is. Medieval indie rock. No, I kid. Mark Griffey lovingly compiled and thoughtfully annotated the collection.

Tiny Idols is notable because Griffey draws these songs from the catalogues of mostly unheard of or little known bands, and yet the quality is consistently high: a testament to the depth of the late '90s American indie rock scene. And though the styles are all over the place, there is something that unites these songs, that makes this a cohesive collection. One can hear a shared spirit of music-making for music-making's sake. For the most part, despite their talent, these musicians did not find a career in playing music. But I can't help but feel that for many of them, at least, this was not a major consideration, that they were just trying their hardest to make the best music they could, a worthy end in itself. You'd be hard-pressed to convince me that the bass player is not having a very good time here. [Info]

Early Day Miners - "Sans Revival"

Peter Gabriel's So has not, as far as I know, had a considerable influence on the indie-rock community. Yet, imagine "Sans Revival" stripped of its arrangement and production aesthetic - what you're left with sounds very much like a So-era Gabriel song. The vocal is unabashedly manipulative, pulling you in despite yourself, like the rousing romantic finale of a well-crafted Hollywood movie (I'm thinking specifically of Say Anything and the cheese-festival that is "In Your Eyes"). So has a few likable aspects, but these do not include the arrangements or production aesthetic. The Early Day Miners revise the So model in this respect, and ensure that their album will survive sans revision. Here the formerly ubiquitous John McEntire produces, and he succeeds in matching the emotion of the vocal line with the intensity of the instruments: thunderous bass, waves of chiming guitars, bell-clear notes rising out, ringing, fading back.

An open question: Since McEntire produced the record and there are no credits for arrangement, do we really have any reason to believe that the leader of Early Day Miners is anyone other than Peter Gabriel himself?

N.B. Don't send me pictures or personal anecdotes about the time you saw Daniel Burton and he definitely wasn't Peter Gabriel. I'm no Empiricist. I want analytic proof. [Info]

***

LMP - "Beautiful Noise"

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you never listen to this song on repeat. That's what I'm doing right now, and it's changing me. Since I started listening - about twelve minutes ago, now - I've cried several times, flown into one frothing, uncontrollable rage, and become interested in, subsequently mastered, and finally grown tired of archery. LMP's talent is only barely exceeded by their boundless pop ambition. There's something in this imbalance, in combination with the fact that the whole song seems slightly out of time, that makes this sweet pop treat rather madness inducing.

[From Tiny Idols Vol. 2, a compilation of obscure and out-of-print gems from the 90's indie rock scene, of which I will write more next week.]

Michael Zapruder's Rain of Frogs - "Butterfield's and Baker's"

Abraham Zapruder shot JFK with his video camera, and Michael Zapruder - probably Abraham's grandson - shot me with a gun until I died. Not literally, of course. No, I'm still alive physically, but I'm dead emotionally. And I've been that way ever since the younger Zapruder shot me with his gun. Though, it's not so much that he shot me with his gun, but that he shocked me with his gun, and that by "gun" I mean the quality of his songs. I should probably also mention at this point that I don't know what the phrase "emotionally dead" means, but that I intend it to mean that I am excited and aesthetically satisfied. Is that what it means?

Every sound and word is thoughtfully placed, every dynamic shift is carried out with precision, every sentence (both verbal and musical) is phrased significantly. The song's end is superbly taut, not offering the satisfaction of cadence. Michael Zapruder is working firmly embedded in the auteurial model of composition and arrangement, and he is a brilliant director. [Info]

***

The Curtains - "World's Most"

There is an edition of Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 that has on its cover a depiction of the book's protagonist, Oedipa Mass, dancing, her thatch of blue hair swinging out in all directions. She is wearing a matching blue mini-skirt, and a white belt. In the background, the drummer of the Paranoids - Pynchon's satirical take on California Beatles rip-off bands - plays while sporting a mop-top and a brown suit. They are both being overtaken by a tidal wave of black and white paisley swirls. Upon hearing this song I thought immediately of that cover. I thought of lazy California kids hearing the Beatles or the Byrds or the Beach Boys for the first time, and dawdling down to Sears, buying a single-coil electric guitar, warm and thick sounding, and a flimsy bass guitar, warm and thin sounding. I thought of them, in their duochrome striped shirts and scarves, trying as best they could to get their guitars in tune, and then writing songs that attempted to capture both the California sun and the teenage state of mind.

This song succeeds, not in getting the guitars in tune, but in capturing the California sun and the teenage state of mind, and it does so in a most subtle way. Like Pynchon's novel and like some of the world's best teenagers, "World's Most" is bizarre and alienated, paranoid and lonely. Yet it is still essentially a song for the beach, maybe on a day when the sun is slightly obscured by clouds and the wind from the ocean is a little bit cold. [Info]

The Theater Fire - "These Tears Could Rust a Train"

Every bar of this song exudes modesty. Perhaps the guitarist - a player of some skill - had once been accused of hotdogging, because now, though he plays confidently and with feeling, a few bum notes are thrown in for appearance's sake. Sometimes, when he slides up the neck of his guitar, he makes a sound like that of glass shattering - but not wanting to alarm us, he makes it not the sound of enormous window panes falling from the top of skyscrapers, but of bifocals falling off of a short woman's face, or maybe of little blown glass dragons falling out of a child's hand, onto hardwood floors. He loves the person who he is singing about here, but he doesn't make his love out to be of any great importance or consequence. Overall though, he thinks she's as close to perfect as someone can be (for him, anyway), except that he sometimes feels inadequate in her presence. The drummer uses a kit with only two drums and a high-hat; anything more would be like bragging, I guess. [Info]

***

Horse Feathers - "Finch on Saturday"

Hear hear! I hear Cat Power and M. Ward in the singer's voice, but more than anything else, this song reminds me of Arthur Russell's exquisite "A Little Lost". As with "A Little Lost", here the violin plays outside of all the dominant violin traditions: not as a classical instrument, nor as a fiddle, nor as part of a pop string section. Here it is a pop lead, playing slow and lovely riffs that define the song's melody. [From the upcoming PDX Pop Now! compilation]