Week 21: Porcupine Tree - In Absentia (2002)

"It's about people on the fringes, on the edges of humanity and society. […] Why are they unable to empathize? It’s sort of a metaphor - there's something missing, a black hole, a cancer in their soul. It's an absence in the soul."

-          Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree on the concept behind In Absentia, Vox Online

Progressive rock is much like pop in that it relies almost entirely on presentation. Regardless of the relative minimums of technical proficiency and sex appeal (respectively), both genres strive to present a flashy, impressive exterior with little attention spent on providing meaningful emotional content. Lots of sound and very little fury, in other words.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the tightly arranged, technically pruned sounds of present-day plastic pop was originally inspired by the similarly controlled sounds of 70s progressive rock. Granted, prog achieved that perfected sound through careful production, obsessive songwriters, and extremely talented musicians while pop simply runs raw sound through computer programs, but the end result of glossy product is essentially the same. It’s the aural equivalent of comparing a photograph of a naturally beautiful woman with light makeup to a homely woman airbrushed and Photoshopped to hell and back; the methods may be different, with prog being a playground for musicians and pop for producers, but the final images are fairly similar.

The main difference between those images, in a more complex metaphor, would be the content. Progressive rock, thanks mainly to the boundless influence of Led Zeppelin, tends to be descriptive. It’s no mistake that prog and fantasy imagery often gets linked by artists and record sleeve designers alike; the two fields are similar in that they’re trying to build extremely detailed worlds that can be marveled at by the consumer.

Songs Of The Days: Week 21

May 21: Blockhead - Carnivores Unite (Music By Cavelight, 2004)



May 22: Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind (Copper Blue, 1992)



May 23: Fountains Of Wayne - Valley Winter Song (Welcome Interstate Managers, 2003)



May 24: Fred Williams & The Jewels Band - Tell Her (single, 1965?) (not available on Spotify)



May 25: 13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me (The Psychedelic Sounds Of..., 1966)



May 26: Demon Fuzz - Disillusioned Man (Afreaka!, 1970)



May 27: Malcolm Kipe - Mr. Politician (Breakspiracy Theories, 2005)

Week 20: Jack White - Blunderbuss (2012)

“A concert is not a live rendition of [an] album. It's a theatrical event.”

“I'm so powerful on stage that I seem to have created a monster. When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man.”

-          Freddie Mercury, of Queen

Presentation of personality has been integral to music from the beginning of pop. Managing that presentation is fundamental to most musicians for two reasons: the fact that people tend to believe what people are saying, even if the words have a melody to them; and the origin of pop music in opera and musical theater. Unless one makes things very explicit indeed, people assume that a singer is their character, whether that character is a sexual misanthrope, misogynist, or sadsack suicide risk; the song is projected back onto the singer, often without a second-thought.

Starting with the second reason, the skeleton of musical theatre and Broadway is still front-and-center in pop music’s closet: one need look no further than Lady Gaga’s long-form music videos and play-like stage presentation to find evidence of this. Pop music is all about carefully developing and maintaining a public image through meticulously edited interviews, stage performances, as well as the modern-day tools of the music video and Twitter feed.

Social media, like Twitter, has made that kind of image maintenance much more labor intensive (I’m sure Lady Gaga’s PR people get paid very well), as well as far more pervasive. These artists rarely, if ever, appear to the public out-of-character; hell, I doubt most of Lady Gaga’s fans even know her real name. The image, the facsimile, has superseded the actual person it was based upon; simulacra over simulation. The pop star is loved (sometimes to frightening extremes) but the people who love them know little except for the tidbits that careful producers throw into the water like chum for the sharks.

What gives those tidbits power and flavor is the fact that they’re presented as quotes; small offerings from someone that fans view as far above them. Kanye West’s Twitter feed doesn’t get attention because of any kind of cleverness, sincerity, or articulateness; people only read it because they can perceive it as a connection to that guy who did “Jesus Walks” and “Power”.

Songs Of The Days: Week 20

May 14: Chris Isaak - Wicked Game (Heart-Shaped World, 1989)



May 15: Public Enemy - Revolutionary Generation (Fear Of A Black Planet, 1990)



May 17: OutKast - B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad) (Stankonia, 2000)



May 18: Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Turn The Page (Live Bullet, 1976) (Not available on Spotify)



May 19: Maria McKee - If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags) (Pulp Fiction OST, 1994)



PJ Harvey - Dress (Dry, 1992)



Masters Of Reality - She Got Me (When She Got Her Dress On) (Sunrise On The Sufferbus, 1993)



May 20: The Clash - Death Or Glory (London Calling, 1979)

Week 19: Portishead - Third (2008)

“Esteja alerta para a regra dos três/O que você dá, retornará para você/Essa lição você tem que aprender/Você só ganha o que você merece”

(“Be alert to the rules of three/What you give, will be returned/That lesson, you have to learn/You only earn what you deserve.”)

     -     Spoken word intro to “Silence” (translation here, rewritten slightly be me)

While American rock hit a peak of anger and unintelligibility, the UK was intent on calming down. Whether it was a reaction to the harder-than-ever rock coming from across the pond or simply an outgrowth of the rave scene and its signature drug, E, is impossible to know, but the reality of England’s big chill in the 90s is inarguable. The rock music exported from the country during this period, as a rule, was less aggressive and distorted than the American counterpart. The singing was cleaner too. 

The strongest contrast though was between the two countries’ respective hip-hop trends. While the gangsta rap of NWA and Ice-T, as well as the abrasive hard rap of Public Enemy and martial sound of the Wu-Tang Clan, was the rule of thumb for mainstream rap in the early and mid-90s (the West Coast sound, exemplified by De La Soul, was an exception rather than the rule) over in the US, the UK had perfected and centralized the Bristol sound of trip-hop. Then hailed as the first truly original English rap genre (the garage sound of The Streets was years away, then), trip-hop became a household name with the advent of Massive Attack’s debut album, Blue Lines, and breakout single, “Unfinished Sympathy”, in 1991.

Although Blue Lines was a great success itself, “Unfinished Sympathy”, which featured singer-songwriter Shara Nelson to the exclusion of the bands other vocal members, such as Tricky, was far more important in the future shape of the trip-hop. The hip-hop inspired rhythms, strings, and soaring vocals became calling cards of the genre in the years to come, much more so than any actual rapping. Although neither future Massive Attack songs nor Tricky’s debut album, Maxinquaye (a classic itself), followed the formula of “Sympathy”, the die had nevertheless been cast. 

Songs Of The Days: Weeks 18 & 19

Apr 30: Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy (Hard Again, 1977)



May 1: Horace Silver - Song For My Father (Song For My Father, 1964)



May 3: ? And The Mysterians - 96 Tears (96 Tears, 1966)



May 4: Supertramp - Bloody Well Right (Crime Of The Century, 1975)



May 5: Rodrigo y Gabriela - Satori (Rodrigo y Gabriela, 2006)



May 6: Gang Of Four - I Love A Man In Uniform (Songs Of The Free, 1982)



May 7: The Faint - Worked Up So Sexual (Blank-Wave Arcade, 1999)



May 8: Link Wray & His Ray Men - Rumble (single, 1958)



May 9: Hole - Plump (Live Through This, 1994)



May 11: Murder By Death - Shiola (In Bocca al Lupo, 2006)



May 12: Rage Against The Machine - Maria (The Battle Of Los Angeles, 1999)



May 13: Aloe Blacc - Mama Hold My Hand (Good Things, 2010)

Week 18: Doug Paisley - Doug Paisley (2008)

Break-up songs are the single most fertile field in all of Western pop music. A glance over the Billboard year-end charts shows that at least one song about love in the past tense has been in the Top 10 since 1946. No other trend is as consistent or specific; the closest you can get is songs written in the first person or sung by a man.

There’s a pretty obvious reason for the break-up song’s popularity; it’s a nearly universal experience. At one point or another, we’ve all suffered a bad ending to some form of relationship, whether it be a friendship or a marriage. I’d wager that the majority of people have even suffered the kind of emotional breakdown immortalized in songs like “Walk On By” or “Cryin’”. Like “Heartbreak Hotel” says, “Although it's always crowded/You still can find some room/For broken hearted lovers/To cry away their gloom;” heartbreak is timeless, and we could always use a little room with someone else that understands.

The heightened drama of songs like “Hey There, Delilah” or “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” are fairly common and certainly well-remembered, but the songs that really grip me are the ones that take a more mundane look at love. Quiet desperation speaks to me more than high drama and powerful words; I still enjoy the latter type of song (“Alone Again (Naturally)” is a favorite, for example), but songs that depict the slow burn of relationships sound truer to me, for reasons I’m not going to get into.

Many of those mundane perspectives come from the country and folk genres, which follows from the enjoyment artists from both take in exploring the minutiae of life. While country has more than its fair share of dramatic songs, almost all of it is based in the low-key emotions that, even when they are present in soul, get blown up into operatic excess.

That difference in delivery is key, I think. With emotional songs the exact degree of passion is more dependent on the singer’s tone and volume than it is on the lyrics. For example, Kanye West’s “Heartless” can be artlessly transformed into a blue-eyed soul ballad simply by yelling it; the lyrics haven’t changed, but the song is transformed in a single stroke from an icy rage to heartbroken sobbing. Which is better is a matter of opinion (I think you can guess my preference), but this is illustrative of how important personality is to songs of bitter, damaged love.

RIP Adam 'MCA' Yauch

Week 17: The Avalanches - Since I Left You (2001)

“Get a drink, have a good time now. Welcome to paradise.”

-       “Since I Left You”

Way back in the day, Harper’s magazine ran a long-form article about the existential horror of cruises. As I don’t know how to swim and am so terrified of the ocean that I can hardly bear to look directly at it, I’ve never been on one, but the article portrays it as a world unto itself, where you have so little to attend to that the mind naturally turns toward despair. Everything is so bright and airy that one naturally suspects deception and two-facedness on a massive scale.  As The Undisputed Truth so classically put it, “Smiling faces, sometimes/They don’t tell the truth”.

This is a rough approximation of how I feel about clubs, bubblegum pop, and most dogs (except Shiba Inus, which look too much like Muppets to be remotely suspicious). As I’ve mentioned before, when the topic of clubbing comes up I’m more likely to imagine “Initiation” than “Last Friday Night”, and after I hit my late-teens it became impossible to take the perfectly combed/messy hair and shiny teeth of boy bands at face value. My mind grew suspicious and cold.

There are, of course, things to be suspicious of behind the airbrushed photos that help advertise the newest and brightest of pop stars, but not everyone likes to hear me explain how pop superstars like Justin Bieber, Jason Mraz, or Justin Timberlake probably have more than a few skeletons in their closets. Once their careers begin to fade the stories will begin to come out, just like with every other pop band or star in our tabloid history.