Week 37 - The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)

"I know there's a big world out there/Like the one that I saw on the screen/In my living room late last night/It was almost too bright to seee."

- The Postal Service, "  is Place Is A Prison", Give Up

"Keeping an eye on the world going by my window/Taking my time"

- The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping", Revolver

By mid-2002, two-thirds of the world had placed a call. In 2013, the UN claimed that a staggering 6 billion people had access to a mobile phone, exceeding the number of people with a working toilet by 1.5 billion. Factoring in land-lines and the timeless melody of the dial-up modem, I'd argue that every person alive today has heard a dial tone, or at least the sound of a number being dialed,  at least once. No other sound can claim to be as universal; not the sound of the ocean, the wind churning leaves, or even the flush of a toilet. If we define it broadly, only the human voice could possibly claim superiority.

Across a telephone line (or bounced through a satellite signal, as is so often the case), the voice is given an audible distance. The audio lags, the connection fades, and fidelity is lost. Across a particularly long/bad connection, your partner's voice can take on a robotic, 808s tinge that makes deciphering their emotions a sometimes baffling puzzle. Was that laugh genuine or mocking? Are they sad or apathetic? All the details get lost along the way.

I can only imagine what that kind of uncertainty could do to a self-styled sensitive bloke like Ben Gibbard, one of indie-rock's main spokesmen along with Chris Martin of Coldplay. Unlike the latter, who has transformed himself into a slightly more bewildered version of Bono, Gibbard has stayed largely true to his roots, keeping his sadsack image (one of the songs on his latest solo album was called "Teardrop Windows", another was "Oh, Woe") while occasionally injecting a bit of whimsy into his music or lyrics to avoid total monotony.

I'll admit that I can sometimes find the woe-is-me attitude a bit grating, especially since Gibbard's music often offers only a minimal backing for his usually whiny lyrics. I can sympathize with Gibbard's obsessions over the ambiguity of relationships and lost loves, but his wallowing comes across as awfully shallow. How much time can one man devote to feeling sorry for himself?

The lyrics on Give Up don't necessarily rise above Gibbard's cliches, but I think they're sharper and better realized thanks to the music. The album opens with what I can only hear as a slowed-down, synthesized version of a dial-tone, which is followed by Gibbard establishing his themes: isolation, the loss of romance, and deluded dreams. However, the persistent beats and chirps backing him keep these lyrics grounded and also reinforce the distance and isolation that serve as the song's subject. As I discussed before with 808s And Heartbreak, electronica serves as an excellent metaphor for emotional distance, and this album is obsessed with just that.

There are optimistic readings for Give Up's lyrics but, as you might expect, I don't give them much weight. You can read songs like "Such Great Heights" or "Brand New Colony" (the former being the hit lead single and the latter being the other song most people know/love from the album) as straight-forward yet quirky love songs quite easily, but that reading doesn't mesh well with the rest of the album, or even with the album title itself. Even a glance at the lyrics of the rest of the album reveal a character who's isolated himself in order to better fantasize about a particularly special lady.

Both the album cover of Give Up (a window viewed from a cozy bed) and a few of the songs heavily suggest either dreaming or simple lazing about. "Sleeping In" is all about wallowing in hopelessly optimistic fantasies, and "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" suggests the image of a break-up leaving one or both of the former partners lying in bed, emotionally drained. "Clark Gable" suggests that it's a fantasy or a dream thanks to its location in the London Underground, the only specific location cited on the album, and its wealth of oddly specific details. Aside from that, the entire song is about the narrator character desperately wanting his life to resemble a romantic epic while also doubting that it's even possible ("I want so badly to believe that there is truth/And love is real/And I want life in every word/To the extent that it's absurd").

"Clark Gable" is one of many songs on the album to revolve around the idea of a romance that is fantastic in both senses of the word. While that song is the most obvious about it ("And then I called you/I need you to pretend that we are in love again/And you agreed to"), both of the aforementioned hit songs of the album are all about such ideal relationships. "Such Great Heights" seems to be split between the flush of love-at-first-sight and someone desperately trying to use those memories to kickstart a relationship. The first two verses are straight-forward in their lovey-doveyness, but the third and fourth reveal that the narrator is essentially talking to himself or possibly writing a love letter of some kind. The next two verses reinforce this: it seems like the singer is trying to draw someone back to him with sweet little nothings rather than it being a simple love song.

Again, you could dismiss this as relentless, borderline pathological cynicism, but when you look at the album as a whole I think my reading wins out. Consider "Brand New Colony", which reads as a more escapist fantasy ("We'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene/Start a brand new colony/Where everything will change, we'll give ourselves new names/Identities erased"), especially when you consider that it comes directly after a song called "This Place Is A Prison". An even bleaker reading could suggest a fantasy of mutual suicide, but that's going a bit far into the melancholy depths, even for me. I think a lighter reading, that the singer is fantasizing that somehow the world is to blame for the failure of his relationship, is a bit more straight-forward.

That failed relationship is the centerpiece of the album, the cause of the singer's fantasies as well as his self-imposed exile to the underside of his bedsheets. "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" depicts the moments of a relationship ending ("Your palms are sweaty/And I'm barely listening/To last demands") as well as the singer making a last-ditch effort to restart the relationship by visiting his ex's new apartment ("You seem so out of context/In this gaudy apartment complex/A stranger with your door key/Explaining that I'm just visiting/And I am finally seeing/Why I was the one worth leaving"). It's an uncomfortable image to be sure; clearly this break-up did not go well.

"Nothing Better" is similar; a phone-call between two exes with one desperately pleading the other to fall in love again. This is a quintessential break-up song, similar to "Last Duet" by Doug Paisley, and basically runs a highlighter over the title of the album. When a relationship ends, giving up can seem like the cleaner, better option, especially when compared to this kind of pleading. The ignoble end Gibbard's character has devoted himself to is also in "We Will Become Silhouettes" going from him lovesick and shuddering in a kitchen cabinet "screaming at the top of [his] lungs/Pretending the echoes belong to someone" to a fantasy about the outside air being toxic. The origin of the album's isolation and fantasy is obvious at this point, especially when you consider that this song leads into "This Place Is A Prison" and "Brand New Colony".

The facts of the album are blurred by the electronica melodies and Gibbard's high-toned voice, but the truth is still there. Give Up is all about the worst possible way to end a relationship, going from an ugly break-up to holing yourself up in a room, wavering between fantasies of things being okay again and never wanting to leave your room. We've all been there. At our worst moments, dreams and fantasies are just goals we've given up on, silhouettes of a future we aren't even working toward any more.

It's not all bleak on Give Up, in spite of the name. "Natural Anthem", the album closer, which is not only half-instrumental but also has the most straight-forward, unornamented lyrics, can be heard as the singer coming to terms with their ex. The lyrics only come in halfway through the song, after a strain of suitably anthemic music, and it's the only song on the album that doesn't revolve around the singer. Instead, it's a promise to do something for that ex ("I'll write you a song/And it won't be hard to sing/It will be a natural anthem/Familiar it will seem") seemingly as an apology for the biased little portrait the rest of the album painted of her. Alternatively, you could read it as an apology from Gibbard to his own past self (which would make sense of the "At least I spelled your name right" comment at the end) for the fairly dim portrayal, but that seems a little twee for my tastes. Even if it is self-directed, it still shows GIbbard's distance from the sadsack on the rest of the album.

What "Natural Anthem" reveals is the positive spin you can put on the title. When a relationship ends, you can't resolve things by visiting your ex's apartment, begging her to take you back, or even by screaming at her. You just have to give up on it and move on; relationships aren't competitions so you can't call that a loss. You have to get out of bed eventually, even if you have to crawl to do it.

Week 36: Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (2012)

“What’s the film about? What’s it really about? What genre does it take? Not boy-meets-girl, that kind of shit. Fuck boy-meets-girl, fuck motorcycle movies, no. What is really being said? That’s what you’re talking about. The whole idea is subversion. You want subversion on a massive level.”

-       Sid, Sleep With Me (1994)

“Oh well, there goes the fairy tale/Lord, ain't it a shame/In all this comfort, I can't take the strain”

-       Maria McKee – “If Love Is A Red Dress (Then Hang Me In Rags)”

If you want a model for Lana Del Rey, look no further than the Barbie doll. The first Barbie doll was developed as the first American “adult” doll, moving away from the infant dolls of the period into something more mature. The doll itself was based on a German toy called Bild Lilli, itself based on a popular newspaper cartoon character who acted like a prototypical Joan Holloway; a blonde bombshell who used her sexuality to get her way. Not a particularly positive role model, granted, but an undoubtedly adult one.

When Barbie premiered in 1959, she was marketed as a “teen-age fashion model” and dressed in a one-piece swimsuit. Its remarkable how quickly the character was de-aged; while the original, ‘vintage’ model had a moderately adult face, the Malibu Barbie that premiered in 1971 infantilized that to the current Clueless type face. Soon, the “fashion model” of her description was dropped, and Barbie became simply a girl next door, with a permanent expression of slightly dazed delight etched onto her face.

Patronization is a powerful tool; Ronald Reagan used it to become President and Mattel used it to transform a fairly neutral (by virtue of it being explicitly idealized) female image into an explicitly neutral one. I’m not going to claim that shift was some act of gender warfare as I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but that change in portrayal is significant. Barbie went from being a possible adult future to a teenage present; a model for teenage girls to behave like rather than aspire toward. That’s a dangerous thing for a figure as heavily sexualized as Barbie.

Much like the Barbie doll, there is no future in Born To Die. The character of Lana Del Rey lives only in the present and in the past, and both are experienced either in love or in lust. The entire philosophy of the album is summed up in the title; when Lana talks about the future, it’s either a bleak endpoint or something that will never come. If death is the finish line then why even race?

The album plays as a bitter, crasser, half-speed version of Frank Sinatra’s classic sad bastard period (exemplified by In The Wee Small Hours, one of Tom Waits’ favorite albums), with string sections enhanced by hip-hop drums and vocal samples. Del Rey’s vocals are similar to classic vocal jazz ingénues like Julie London, but she occasionally goes into a higher register that almost seems like a parody of modern pixie-voiced pop singers like Ellie Goulding. When she chirps lines like “Keep me forever, tell me you own me” on “Off To The Races”, it’s obvious that we shouldn’t take it at face value. The higher register, for Del Rey, is her Lolita voice; even if the lyrics are straight confessions, they shouldn’t be taken seriously when delivered at that pitch.

As I suggested above, the album is dedicated to Del Rey’s sexuality, both how it gets her the life she wants (“American dreams came true somehow” (“Radio”)) and how empty it ends up leaving her (“I swore I’d chase ‘em till I was dead” (the very next line of “Radio”)). There isn’t even a hint of victory to the album, which either showcases Del Rey in the midst of heartbreak or in empty, frivolous relationships. Depending on how far you want to read into the album, you can posit the former as a cause of the latter; I somehow doubt that the same vocal sample being used in three different songs (“Blue Jeans”, “Dark Paradise”, and, very dimly, in “Million Dollar Man”) was the result of laziness, for example.

That vocal sample (an unidentifiable male yell) first shows up (going by track listing) in “Blue Jeans”, otherwise notable for the fact that it doesn’t glorify money, instead outright dismissing it (“Big dreams, gangsta/Said you had to leave to start your life over/I was like - no please, stay here, we don't need no money/We can make it all work”). The love interest appears to die over the course of the song, and gets remember in “Dark Paradise”, one of the most straight-forward and sincere songs on the album. It’s probably the only song here (lyrics wise, at least) that wouldn’t feel out of place on a torch song compilation, along with “Video Games” if you’re willing to stretch a bit. The sample, already fairly dim on “Dark Paradise” is a barely discernable echo on “Million Dollar Man”, where Del Rey hooks up with a “dangerous, tainted and flawed” rich boy, only to find that it’s not enough.

That dissatisfaction with one of the biggest dreams sold to girls generations past informs the entire album, and if you don’t think bleak nostalgia is a theme of the album then you should look at the cover one more time. Del Rey is linking the idea of settling down as a housewife to a nice rich boy to the supposedly more rebellious idea of fucking a dangerous outsider. It’s the same thing with a different goal, and that link is present both in the lyrics and in the Spector-pop-meets-Timbaland production.

Another link is through the repetition of the phrase “red dress”. That line shows up in two of the bleakest songs on the album, the Lolita-echoing “Off To The Races” and the borderline streetwalker-anthem “Carmen”, and on the farewell song “Summertime Sadness”, which seems to be about the thrill found in brief little flings. Those brief, seemingly harmless flings are being presented as being quite bleak indeed, and hint at a more worrisome reading for lyrics like “Honey I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere/Nothin' scares me anymore”. “Summertime Sadness” isn’t much different, lyrically speaking, from the love-as-intoxication songs that have flooded modern pop music for over a decade, but that implicit “red dress” link, as well as the pounding, militaristic beat, give a darker undertone to the song, one that I think is quite deliberate.

Even if you don’t agree with my deeper readings, it’s obvious that Born To Die isn’t exactly keen on relationships. There’s no hint anywhere on the album that love, lust, or sex can ever be truly satisfying. The only truly nostalgic song is “This Is What Makes Us Girls”, which buries its message of finding happiness with friends in a song about sixteen year olds who think they can gain power by making men want to sleep with them. Anytime you try to gain power through the feelings of others you’re only making yourself their slave. That kind of mockery of the Barbie-girl life isn’t a new idea, but the way that it’s presented here certainly is.

In fact, based on the critical dismissal of the album as pop artifice and empty style, that idea seems almost dangerous these days. Even though TV shows like Mad Men thrive on taking apart the fantasies we’re presented with from childhood on, pop music still takes and sells many of those fantasies at face value. Alternatives to some of those fantasies occasionally get presented (the members of En Vogue and Beyoncé, for example, are both fair examples of strong female figures) but subversion rarely, if ever, happens. I may be giving pop music short shrift on this front (I plan on binging on Beyoncé albums sometime in the next few weeks to see if her music deserves closer analysis) but Del Rey is one of the rare artists I’m aware of that isn’t simply presenting an alternative fantasy.

In essence, I think the fact that Born To Die is a takedown of a fantasy rather than a presentation of a different one is why the album ping-ponged between getting attacked and being ignored. There’s little room of subtlety in pop, and if taken at face value this album could very easily fall short of one’s expectations. Critics commented that the album was “unintentionally depressing” and conjectured at whether “one of her videos is going to have a happy ending”. Both trains of thought hilariously miss the point; I think the album’s mere title renders the first critique absurd and answers the second.

Ultimately, I think Born To Die touched a nerve in the critical community. It’s the only explanation I can think of for the way the album, and Lana Del Rey herself, was dismissed with barely any consideration; something in this album threatened the average critic on a subconscious level, so they dismissed it and its singer as “fake”, “unreal”, and “inauthentic”. When those descriptors get lobbed against a pop star you’re either dealing with a sixteen year-old hipster with an axe to grind or a critic backpedaling so fast they’ve dispensed with all logic. Calling a pop star fake is redundant. Besides, even if you think I’m crazy to conjecture at underlying messages in the album, criticisms like that are simply absurd.

The degree to which Elizabeth Grant’s life resembled that of the songs on Born To Die is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether the songs sound and feel authentic; whether the production, music, lyrics, and vocal delivery all work together to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I could care less whether or not Grant really went through the terrible, damaging relationships her songs are about, all that matters is whether or not I can believe that she did. That I can, and that she clearly has a point to her stories about heartbreak and empty love, is what makes this album great.

Songs Of The Days: Week 38

Jan 21: Arts The Beatdoctor - Laughs, Drinks, Jokes, Tricks (Transition, 2007)
Jan 22: The Sinister Ducks - The March Of The Sinister Ducks (single, 1983) (not available on Spotify)
Jan 23: David J - This Vicious Cabaret (single, 1984)
Jan 24: David Holmes - Hey Lisa (Bow Down To The Exit Sign, 2000)
Jan 25: Robbie Basho - Wine Song  (Sweet Wine Of Love) (Venus In Cancer, 2006) (not available on Spotify)
Jan 26: Goo Goo Dolls - Name (A Boy Named Goo, 1995)
Jan 27: Muddy Waters - I've Got My Mojo Working (At Newport, 1960)

Songs Of The Days: Week 37

Jan 14: Beastie Boys - 3-Minute Rule (Paul's Boutique, 1989)

Jan 15: Dessa - Poor Atlas (A Badly Broken Code, 2010)

Jan 16: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Third Stone From The Sun (Are You Experienced?, 1967)

Jan 17: MC5 - Borderline (Kick Out The Jams, 1969)

Jan 18: Theivery Corporation - Indra (The Mirror Conspiracy, 2000)

Jan 19: Jacques Brel - Jef (Ces Gens-La, 1966)

Jan 20: Minutemen - Dr. Wu (Double Nickels On The Dime, 1984)

Songs Of The Days: Week 36

Jan 8: The New Pornographers - All The Old Showstoppers (Challengers, 2007)

Jan 9: The Desert Sessions - Subcutaneous Phat (Volumes 9/10, 2003)

Jan 10: DJ Shadow - The Number Song (Endtroducing..., 1996)

Jan 11: Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker (In The Heat Of The Night, 1979)

Jan 12: Paul Marshall - Alcatraz (Vultures, 2007) (not available on YouTube)

Jan 13: Revels - Comanche (single, 1961)

Hiatus Announcement (In Case You Hadn't Noticed)

As may now be painfully obvious, I've been unable to find the time to regularly update this blog for a few months now. Between work, family commitments, and the struggle to complete several graduate school applications within the space of a few months, I simply haven't had the free time to commit to this blog.

I'm committed to eventually finishing this series, both due to my own enjoyment of writing these entries and out of a twisted need to finish the bloody thing, but I have no idea when I'll be able to do that. The only advice I can give is to follow my Twitter and periodically check this site for new posts.

My apologies, folks. You'll have to find good music without my help, I'm afraid.

Week 35: Brand New - The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me (2006)

“I’m writing a teenage symphony to God.”

-           Brian Wilson on the composition process for Smile

The most reliable method music has of getting noticed and beloved is to be emotionally relatable. Unlike aesthetic appeal, which is subjective, or technical ability, which can be off-putting in its virtuosity, a song that contains emotional rawness based around love, pain, or some other primal human emotion will almost always find an audience, and a devoted one at that. If a listener can connect to a song emotionally, they will forgive almost any flaw or shortcoming that may occur to a more objective critic; a belief in a song’s message will outweigh almost everything else.

There’s a reason, after all, why the first wave of mainstream pop was orchestrated pocket symphonies built around love stories, sad or otherwise. The early 60s were filled to the brim with aching, ‘young’ stories: tales of rebellion, squashed ambition, star-crossed lovers, or even simple hobbies like surfing and driving. That first wave of pop appealed to young folks (the market most likely to be buying singles and hanging around radios) with stories they could find relatable, either by some core detail or through some massive-in-scale emotion. When you’re a teenager, after all, every defeat, victory, and heartbreak has an intense poignancy. It all feels like something out of the movies, mainly because moviemakers decided to tap into that idea.