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.

Songs Of The Days: Weeks 33 to 35

August 13: Queensrÿche - I Don't Believe In Love (Operation: Mindcrime, 1988)

August 15: Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound Of Silence (Sounds Of Silence, 1966)

August 18: Dan Auerbach - Trouble Weighs A Ton (Keep It Hid, 2009)

August 19: Villagers - Home (Becoming A Jackal, 2010)

August 20: Mix Master Mike - Harsky & Starch (Eye Of The Cyklops, 2000)

August 21: Akira Yamaoka - Your Rain (Ft. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn) (Silent Hill 3, 2004)

August 22: Thin Lizzy - Cowboy Song (Still Dangerous, 2007)

August 23: The Crickets - That'll Be The Day (The "Chirping" Crickets, 1957)

August 24: Roxy Music - Love Is The Drug (Siren, 1975)

August 27: Television - Venus (Marquee Moon, 1977)

August 29: Cat Stevens - Moonshadow (single, 1971)

August 30: Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, 1998)

Sep 1: Gil Scott-Heron - New York Is Killing Me (I'm New Here, 2010)

Sep 3: Elton John - Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters (Honky Château, 1972)

Sep 4: Ryuichi Sakamoto - Lorenz And Watson (BTTB, 1999)

Sep 5: Raekwon - Guillotine (Swordz) (Only Built For Cuban Linx, 1995)

Sep 8: Dido - White Flag (Life For Rent, 2003)

Sarah McLachlan - Angel (Surfacing, 1998)

Sep 9: Pete Rock & CL Smooth - All The Places (The Main Ingredient, 1994)

Sep 10: Muse - Muscle Museum (Showbiz, 1999)

Sep 11: D'Angelo - Shit, Damn, Motherfucker (Brown Sugar, 1995)

Sep 13: Tim Buckley - Song To The Siren (Starsailor, 1970)

Sep 14: Flat Duo Jets - Sing, Sing, Sing (Flat Duo Jets, 1990) (not available on Spotify)

Sep 15: Skip James - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues (Today!, 1965)

Sep 16: Cowboy Junkies - Blue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis) (The Trinity Session, 1988)

Songs Of The Days: Week 32 (Neil Diamond Week)

August 6: Neil Diamond - The Boat That I Row (Just For You, 1967)

August 7: Neil Diamond - Shilo (Just For You, 1967)

August 8: Neil Diamond - Thank The Lord For The Nighttime (Just For You, 1967)

August 9: Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline (single, 1969)

August 10: Neil Diamond - I'm A Believer (Just For You, 1967)

August 11: Neil Diamond - Cherry Cherry (single, 1966)

August 12: Neil Diamond - Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon (Just For You, 1967)

Week 34: Coldplay - Parachutes (2000)

“I want to fly, never come down/And live my life, and have friends around”

-    Coldplay, “We Never Change”

Unity doesn’t get much respect in music criticism. The appearance of chaos, of many voices saying many things, gathered up under the pretext of a common subject, is far more valued, as it is seen as more difficult to manufacture. Homophony, many voices speaking as one, is dismissed as overly classical, while polyphony, the sounds of loosely yoked chaos, reigns as the ideal.

This preference is hardly difficult to call up examples of, especially now that the pre-ripped jeans aesthetic of dubstep and grime has infiltrated the mainstream pop scene. The most prized producers are now regularly achieving the Dickensian feat of speaking in many different voices, layering instrument upon instrument in an effort to baffle the listener into praise. It often works, simply because layer upon layer of music can very easily seem impressive, by dint of sheer scale and power. I didn’t necessarily like most of the album, but Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy exemplifies that idea of “more is more” as much as Queen did back in the 70s with A Night At The Opera; putting issues of songwriting aside, most people can agree that both albums sound impressive from the layering and production alone.

That massive production goes back for decades in Western music, dating back to Phil Spector’s work with wall-of-sound production and the baroque pop style of The Beach Boys. Moreso than Spector, who, as the name of his production style suggests, favored a unified wall of instruments, a bludgeon of sound, The Beach Boys reveled in the styles that required the kind of riches they were granted. “Good Vibrations” is the sound of a master songwriter dumping out his toybox and staging a large-scale play for all of his friends, just as “Power” is the sound of one man yelling his own praises over a mob’s jeers.

Week 33: The Strokes - Is This It (2001)

I shudder to think how true audiophiles feel about lo-fi music. To the music consumer who struggles to make sure every note comes through just as recorded, lo-fidelity genres like garage rock, a genre that distorts itself as much as possible from recording to mastering to get its sound, must feel like a cruel joke. All of those lost sub-tones, microvariations, and studio noises are like a slap in the face to every $600 dollar pair of headphones and thousand-dollar-plus studio systems in the world.

Being a low-grade audiophile (my headphones are in the relatively cheap $200-400 range) myself, I’ve had my share of issues with lo-fi music for years. Even if it is a deliberate choice these days to release a mass market album that sounds like something recorded in the 40s, it still grates at me that some musicians choose to sacrifice whole aspects of their songs in pursuit of some form of “authentic sound”. The fact that this music often sounds grittier than what was made in that era is all the more irritating.

Even in standard pop, which is generally crafted to be as hi-fidelity as possible, the issues involved in the Loudness War make it more unlistenable than even the most enthusiastic of the garage rock revivalists. Between the mass compression created by increasing the volume of the music and the pervasive, much-hated effects of Auto-Tune, modern-day plastic pop comes through just as lossy as most lo-fi music. The only difference is that artists of the latter type are limiting the noises found in their music for a deliberate reason. Even if that reason is flawed, misguided, or plain old infuriating (as it so often is), it’s at least being done for reasons other than grabbing people’s attention.

Week 32: JD McPherson - Signs & Signifiers (2010)

“I work hard every year/I seize my bread/I ain’t gonna let you women/Go to my head”

-          JD McPherson, “Country Boy”

My past birthday, a good friend of mine gave me a philosophy book, “The Sublime Object Of Ideology,” which is theoretically related to psychology, my academic vice of choice. I say ‘theoretically’ because I can’t make heads-or-tails of the bloody thing. The whole thing is just slightly beyond me, the language rendered impenetrable by alien phrases. I don’t consider myself dumb, but this is a book that makes me reconsider.

Though impressive technically, the insight the book contains and the craft used to put it together become pointless due to my inability to understand it. In the same way, most art rock, high-level jazz, and other deliberately complex music tends to fall on deaf ears. If people lack the vocabulary, the language, or, most importantly, the interest, then even the most technically impressive piece can be left deserted.

Pop hooks, past successes, and press buzz can help alleviate this issue, bringing even self-dubbed “art pop” into the #1 spot, but most of the time art music doesn’t even get glanced at by the majority. It gets consumed by small groups of people with scarves and far-too-large frames, as well as those of us who are always on the lookout for new things to hear. Otherwise, exposure to art music relies on word-of-mouth, blind luck, and lovely little bars and cafes willing to venture outside of Pandora and Starbucks sampler CDs.

The fact that people don’t like to seek out the kinds of music that often revel in their ability to offend and distance the listener doesn’t surprise me, and in fact it doesn’t even particularly bother me. All appearances to the contrary, I’m not enough of a snob to insist that people immerse themselves in the heady worlds of bebop and no-wave. Hell, even I don’t spend all of my time in those worlds, or even a majority of it; most of my leisure time is spent listening to music I enjoy rather than music that challenges me to decipher it.

Week 31: Screaming Females - Ugly (2012)

“Have you ever seen a human heart?! It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood.”

-          Larry, Closer

When art had its first golden age, ugliness would have been unthinkable. Classical artists sought to replicate the perfect nature that they believed in; their goal was to inspire a sense of grace and glory in their audience, to evoke God by perfectly portraying his Creation. To put flaws into the pictures, or worse, to make outright ugly images, would be spitting in the face of nature and, by extension, God.

I’m not enough of an art historian to say when, exactly, that began to change, but that opinions shifted is inarguable. Postmodernism takes error and ugliness as its main subject, with artists deliberately breaking the rules of their craft in an effort to explore its limits and make them obvious to the audience. This can be taken to unnecessary extremes, and even verge on self-parody in some cases, but it can also offer pieces of genuine interest. The key is that the artist can both prove that they’re breaking the rules knowingly and that they’re competent enough to be able to shed those rules.

Those rules of aesthetics are, often, where the beauty of an art piece comes from. When I use the word ‘craft’ I’m doing so to refer to artists attempting to give their audience a piece of perfection, a slice of Heaven. Such rules are tied to the classical tradition of giving an audience grace by offering them beauty, and by following such rules artists are attempting to do the same, though not necessarily with classical subjects. Pop music, for example, uses craft in an effort to inspire bliss in the listener, but it’s rarely tied to any kind of natural imagery. Instead, most pop relies solely upon the craft itself, using common, lovely chord progressions to augment the content of their choice.

Even the ugliest, rawest of subjects can be rendered graceful and lovely with the right degree of craft. A talented application of aesthetic principles can make even a child starving and sobbing in the streets appear beautiful, dulling the natural sympathy an audience has with a sense of elevated beauty. Such images are easier to digest than the reality of someone slowly dying in misery, and the ability to produce them is valued by charities and political groups all over the world.

Songs Of The Days: Week 31

July 30: Jeff Buckley - Lilac Wine (Grace, 1994)

July 31: Dead Kennedys - Kill The Poor (Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, 1979)

August 2: Depeche Mode - Blasphemous Rumours (Some Great Reward, 1984)

August 3: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1969)

August 4: The Lovin' Spoonful - Summer In The City (Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful, 1966)

August 5: AC/DC - Beating Around The Bush (Highway To Hell, 1979) (not available on Spotify)

Week 30: Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

“My TV ain’t HD, that’s too real"

     -    Frank Ocean, “Sweet Life”

Unlike his fellows in Odd Future, Frank Ocean seems to have no interest in sounding young. Like Prince, Laura Marling, or Jack White (all artists who started in their early-20s or younger), Ocean falls into the middle period of adolescence better than he does the categories of vapid youth or confident adult.

What makes Ocean and those artists more adolescent than, say, an album like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream is their indecision and lack of clear focus. The fatal flaw in Perry’s album is that no teenager would be able to narrow their fantasies down to someone as clearly defined as Katy Perry’s sugarplum-fairy-in-a-bikini image; indeed, most adolescents would be hard-pressed to narrow their fantasies down at all. It’s an era where, for the first time, we are forced to grapple with the fact that we can even have fantasies and dreams; childhood is an era in which everything we want seems readily available, and it ends as soon we realize how wrong we are.

The dreams of your average teenager more closely resemble the tenuously themed mixtapes or playlists they create or the television they watch, and both of those images are cornerstones of Ocean’s presentation. Nostalgia, Ultra was patterned after the former, complete with tape clicking noises and, at one point, a girlfriend’s insulting critique (“What’s a Radiohead anyway?”). This all fits with the literal mixtape presentation of the album; in recent years that term has taken on the meaning of a rapper’s self-released tape that uses wholesale sampling in lieu of professional production.

What truly unified Nostalgia, Ultra, aside from its presentation as a self-made mixtape, was how outwardly focused Ocean was in all of the songs. When Ocean does figure into the lyrics of the songs it’s only as part of some relationship that determines his actions. Much like a classic mixtape, all of the songs on the album are devoted to others, focused on relationships and people either real or imagined.

Songs Of The Days: Week 30

July 23: Noonday Underground - Go It Alone (Surface Noise, 2002)(Not available on Spotify)

July 24: Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You (Gorgeous George, 1994)

July 25: 16 Horsepower - Alone And Forsaken (Folklore, 2002)(Not available on Spotify)

July 26: Joan Osborne - What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted? (Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, 2002)(Not available on Spotify)

July 27: The Raconteurs - Store Bought Bones (Broken Boy Soldiers, 2006)

July 29: The Pogues - Fairytale Of New York (If I Should Fall From Grace With God, 1988)

Week 29: Beck - Sea Change (2002)

"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange”

-          William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”

There are few things in music more difficult than making quiet music sound interesting. Unlike rock or pop, which can fall back on danceable, clappable rhythms to keep people interested, quiet genres like folk or blue jazz must rely on either sheer quality or a hope that the audience is stoned enough to pay attention to anything. By definition, the awe-inspiring, bombastic wall-of-sound techniques of baroque pop are out, as are virtuosic solos and sudden shifts in mood or volume. Quiet music must either focus on maintaining its atmosphere and mood over the entire song or build to a crescendo; there’s little room for the terraced dynamics found in alternative music.

Generally, quiet music is designed to provide a vehicle for the singer. It’s no coincidence that the singer-songwriter genre provides most of the best examples of understated, near-silent songs; even if such songs are often dappled with strings and other instruments, the focus is still almost always on the artist whose name graces the album cover.

While that focus on the singer is present, to some extent, in most Western music, folk, singer-songwriter, and other similar genres are bound by their tendency towards quiet volume. In genres like pop or soul, where the singer is the unquestioned master and ruler, the vocals are allowed to soar in volume and octave to the limits of the singer’s ability. Artists like Roy Orbison, Whitney Houston, and Freddie Mercury used volume and melody to keep the attention of the listener on them during all but the 8-bar intros and solos of their songs. However, that freedom of range isn’t as total in other genres; when changes do happen, they happen slowly.

In quiet genres, the singer must demand attention in other ways, usually through their lyrics. Leonard Cohen, a man often lambasted for possessing almost no vocal range at all, nevertheless commands respect and attention simply through his inventive, beautiful lyrics. Bob Dylan is another case of this, and John Darnielle and Laura Marling are borderline cases.

Songs Of The Days: Week 29

July 16: The Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)

July 18: Moby - Everloving (Play, 1999)

July 19: The Throne - Otis (Watch The Throne, 2011)

July 20: Tricky - Hell Is Around The Corner (Maxinquaye, 1995)

July 21: The Hollies - Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress (Distant Light, 1971)

July 22: Saul Williams - Skin Of A Drum (The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of Niggy Tardust, 2008)

Week 28: Giant Panda - Fly School Reunion (2005)

Rap is a singles genre. The teams of crack producers aside, rap tends to thrive on the image of a single man (or, very, very rarely, woman) presenting themselves and their opinions in an unfiltered way, an extreme form of the frontman in traditional rock bands. The ideal rapper, in this school of thought, is raw id, able to say the things we would never dream of giving voice to and get rich while doing it.

Without exception, this raw id presentation is diluted the more people are present on a given track. The more guest artists and ghostwriters one has, the more diluted the personality of the actual rapper gets. There’s no real secret as to why this is; the more people you have in a band the more input the songwriter gets for a song, leading them, often, far away from the original emotions they were trying to deliver. Compare the schmaltz of the studio version of “Thunder Road” to Springsteen’s original demo, for example. In my opinion, the wall-of-sound style that’s all over the Born To Run album ruins what Springsteen was writing at the time; Darkness At The Edge Of Town improves on that tendency, but there’s a reason the all-acoustic, ultra lo-fi Nebraska is the music snob’s album of choice from The Boss.

Songs Of The Days: Old School Flashback (Week 28)

July 9: Fastball - The Way (All The Pain Money Can Buy, 1998)

July 10: Jimmy Eat World - The Middle (Bleed American, 2001)

July 11: The Wallflowers - One Headlight (Bringing Down The Horse, 1996)

July 12: Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind, 1997)

July 13: Coldplay - The Scientist (A Rush Of Blood To The Head, 2002)

July 14: Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On (Miss E… So Addictive, 2001)

July 15: Cake - Never There (Prolonging The Magic, 1998)

Week 27: Dr. Dog - Be The Void (2012)

“I was never that young/I was born old and grey/Alone and in shambles/It’s alright, it's ok”

-          Dr. Dog, “Get Away”

What place does the topic of age deserve in discussions about music? One of the most basic ways to dismiss something, from a critical perspective, is to label it as ‘immature’ or ‘childish’, a criticism that I’ve used on this very blog. I stand by my usage of those terms, mainly because such things don’t generally hold up under an analytic lens.

Poptimism, the critical perspective that pop music should not be criticized in the manner I described above, runs into this problem constantly. Artists like Beyonce may be making music that is brilliantly put together, but the accomplished whole doesn’t appear to me to have any real content. Most everything about pop music is put clearly on the surface level, without any need to dig deep for meaning, a pop song can only generate interest in itself by making sure the music is intricately arranged and, at best, offers some kind of interesting composition.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that approach to music. Entire books have been written on The Beatles, including their poppiest songs along with the ones that came closest to blues or folk music. Oftentimes it’s those intricate pop songs that attract the most critical attention, thanks to how readily they offer themselves to music majors with heads teeming with Italian words and a lot of free time. In a more general sense, pop songs are often the songs large groups unite around when they need something to fill the dead air between conversations. Taking examples from my own blog, I love “The Radicalization Of D” by Gareth Liddiard, but if I were to throw a party I’d be more likely to reach for Holy Ghost. Similarly, if I were to play some Kanye I’d have to cherry-pick from 808s quite a bit (“Heartless” would be a good choice; leave it to Kanye to make crippling depression danceable).

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make pleasant music, which is the only thing that truly unites all pop musicians. I hate modern pop for its constant, almost desperate attempts to eliminate all traces of humanity from their music, simply because doing so transforms pop into uncanny electronica. Making the human voice into an instrument has a long proud tradition in music all around the world and visa versa, but attempts to manipulate the voice in post as if it were a guitar string to be fretted gives me the oogies. How can you have joyful, happy music if the humanity has been clinically removed? It’s like marrying a Stepford Wife.

Songs Of The Days: Week 27

July 2: Booker T. Jones - Everything Is Everything (The Road From Memphis, 2011)



July 5: The Cannonball Adderly Quintet - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Live At "The Club", 1966)



July 6: Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover (Prince, 1979) (not available on YouTube)

July 7: TheTheThe day:

The Protomen - The Hounds (The Father Of Death, 2009)



The Budos Band - The Volcano Song (The Budos Band, 2005)



The Lawrence Arms - The Disaster March (The Greatest Story Ever Told, 2003)



The Wiseguys - The Grabbing Hands (The Antidote, 1998)



The The - The Twilight Hour (Soul Mining, 1983) (not available on Spotify)

Week 26: Contemporary Noise Quintet - Pig Inside The Gentleman (2006)

As the title suggests, Pig Inside The Gentleman is an album fundamentally based in stark contrasts. Much like the baroque and grunge technique of quickly shifting from loud to soft, soft to loud (which is called either terraced dynamics or sforzando (sƒz) depending on how pretentious you’d like to be), the album uses surprising shifts in tone, mood, and complexity to keep the listener’s focus nailed down to the music. If you don’t, you’ll likely be unable to recognize any given song on the album from one minute to the next; the Contemporary Noise Quintet work under the assumption that you’re paying close attention to what they’re doing.

While Pig Inside The Gentleman does use the classical technique of sƒz in many of its songs, the real tool of contrast for the Contemporary Noise Quintet is, as suggested by their name, chaos. While the opening track, “Million Faces” provides the purest example of chaotic noise in a mid-song, two-minute long aside, almost all of the other songs on the album use either frenetic percussion or free-flowing solos to suggest that any given song could repeat that kind of breakdown.  By proving their willingness to abandon structure in “Million Faces”, the Quintet are able to make a noisy piece like “P.I.G.” all the more interesting, simply because the listener is kept wondering how long the song’s ramshackle structure will survive.

Songs Of The Days: Week 26

June 25: Kings Go Forth - I Don't Love You No More (The Outsiders Are Back, 2010)



June 26: Fatboy Slim - Praise You (You've Come A Long Way, Baby, 1999)



June 27: Wall Of Voodoo - Mexican Radio (Call Of The West, 1983)



June 28: Digable Planets - Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat) (Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), 1993)



June 29: The Who - The Punk & The Godfather (Quadrophenia, 1973)



June 30: The Stooges - Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell (Raw Power, 1973)



July 1: Void Pedal - Women In White (Void Pedal EP, 2010) (not available on Spotify) (freely available here)

Week 25: Lucero - 1372 Overton Park (2009)

Country music, as evidenced by the classic cliché, “I listen to everything, except country and rap,” is one of the most regularly dismissed genres of popular music. Like rap, country music is also one of the most stereotyped, calling up images of White cowboys with shit-kicker heels and an NRA membership just as reliably as hip-hop brings to mind Black men with knee-height pants, big sunglasses, and an uncomfortable lust for “bitches”. Needless to say, both of those images are rarely accurate.

The reason why both rap and country music so easily fall into clichés and stereotypes is their focus on story and personality. Unlike the other lyrically focused mainstream genre, rock, both rap and country focus more on narrative than on raw emotion; while this can make the songs more interesting, it also means they often take more time to make their point. A rock song can often summarize their point in one chorus, while some country songs take a few full verses to get interesting; ditto with classic rap music, which required the listener to pay close enough attention to decipher the rapid-fire lyrics.

When rap crossed over to the mainstream for good, it did so by slowing the tempo and putting an emphasis on hooks. Hooks are the choruses of modern rap music, providing something to get stuck in a person’s head and make them stop the dial when surfing the radio. Eminem arguably mastered the trick, using it to embed “My Name Is” so far into the popular consciousness that it essentially guaranteed his future career. Similarly, “In Da Club” turned 50 Cent from an underground hero to a superstar by keeping him from rapping at all.

Songs Of The Days: Week 25

June 18: The La's - There She Goes (The La's, 1990)



June 19: White Zombie - Electric Head: The Agony (Part 1) (Astro-Creep: 2000, 1995)



White Zombie - Electric Head: The Ecstasy (Part 2) (Astro-Creep: 2000, 1995)



June 21: Alanis Morissette - You Oughta Know (Jagged Little Pill, 1995)



June 22: The Police - Message In A Bottle (Reggatta De Blanc, 1979)



June 23: Underworld - Born Slippy .NUXX (single, 1996)



June 24: The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make? (Hatful Of Hollow, 1983)

Week 24: The Walkmen - Heaven (2012)

Pop’s getting old. The basic styles and tropes of Western pop music, depending on how you define their origin, are around 50 years old, and unlike other artistic mediums we’ve done little to reinvent the wheel. Even Michael Jackson, the last true watershed artist for the pop world, had his grounding in the harmony-rich, rhythmically driven music of classic R&B, as did Madonna, his close successor.

As such, modern-day pop music tends to build itself as lavishly as possible, creating gothic facades over mundane, sometimes rickety foundations. Layers upon layers of synths, guitars, vocal overdubs, and general effects are used to create songs that were technologically impossible even 5 years ago. Invention over innovation; new tools created simply to be looked at and gushed over.

Not the other road of resistance is much better. Rather than paint oneself up with makeup and fancy dress, some artists chose to strip themselves down to the bones. Modern punks and the basest of garage rock revivalists revel in their ability to become walking skeletons, refusing to innovate or even invent ways to make things sound new.

Songs Of The Days: Weeks 23 & 24

June 4: Richard & Linda Thompson - Withered & Died (I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974)



June 5: Willie Nelson - Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour? (Where Are You, My Love?/I Never Cared For You (Teatro, 1998)



June 6: Matthew Dear - I Put A Smell On You (Black City, 2010)



June 7: Fleetwood Mac - Hypnotized (Mystery To Me, 1973) (not available on Spotify)



June 8: Beck - The New Pollution (Odelay, 1996)



June 10: Alice In Chains - I Stay Away (Jar Of Flies, 1993)



June 11: Calvin Harris - Merrymaking At My Place (I Created Disco, 2007)



June 12: The Kinks - Strangers (Lola Versus Powerman And The Money-go-round, Part 1, 1970)



Wye Oak - Strangers (AV Undercover, 2010)
Wye Oak covers The Kinks

June 13: No Doubt - End It On This (Tragic Kingdom, 1995)



June 14: Fiona Apple - The Way Things Are (When The Pawn..., 1999)



June 16: David Bowie - Stay (Live At Nassau Coliseum, 1976) (Not available on Spotify)



June 17 (Father's Day): Harry Chapin - Cat's In The Cradle (Verities & Balderdash, 1974)



Bruce Springsteen - Adam Raised A Cain (Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978)



Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (At San Quentin, 1969)



Buckethead - Watching The Boats With My Dad (Colma, 1999)

Week 23: The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (2001)

“Jack told me more than once not to make it sound too good."

-       Stuart Sikes, recording engineer on White Blood Cells, “A definitive oral history: Revealing the White Stripes”

Punk tends to favor personality over talent. For a genre that treats any form of instrumental virtuosity beyond playing three chords and yelling with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst (The Clash were pushing it with “Complete Control” already, and were essentially cast out of the clan when they released London Calling), the charisma of the performers tended to be the most important factor in the overall band’s success. Those who broke from that idea were either called The Ramones (who relied on playing great, simple pop songs really, really fast) or became the core of the New Wave and, later, New Romantic genres.

The power of personality that John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) and Joe Strummer personified had its root in the pre-Beatles pop music era. Back in the day, bands rarely had anyone capable of writing their own material, let alone at the rate needed to match the then-thriving industry of Tin Pan Alley. Buddy Holly & The Crickets were one of the first groups to manage the feat, and the British Invasion broke the industry wide open a few years later, but the 40s and 50s were dominated by songwriters who approached pop music in the same manner as blues, classical, and musical theatre: as something to be performed.

Week 22: Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

“I'm sick of spending these lonely nights/Training myself not to care”

-       Interpol, “NYC”, Turn On The Bright Lights

Few bands were as hated for their quality as Interpol was in 2002. Low-level music snobs were united in celebration; finally, there was a good, popular band that wore their influences so obviously and openly that their quality could be dismissed out of hand by even the least well-listened hipster. It was like a connect-the-dots puzzle for dummies, with a straight line between Joy Division and this band of charlatan mimics. People waved off the band, laughing while wearing a Closer t-shirt from Hot Topic: “You only think they’re good because you think they’re original.”

You may have guessed that I was one of those sneering snobs, for a while at least. I enjoyed the bigger singles from the album (“PDA” and “Obstacle 1”) when they were originally released, but the more I read about the band, the more irritated I became. I was outraged that they had allegedly ripped off Joy Division (despite never having heard one of their albums all the way through at that point) and The Chameleons (who I started listening to due to their claimed similarities to Interpol), and I quickly dropped the album out of my rotation.

It was at that point that I attempted to enter the off-putting world of post-punk, one of those cheerful genres that actively works at being alien and intimidating. The effort was short-lived; I enjoyed The Chameleons and have a firm, unyielding love for the Bowie albums that contributed a basic foundation for the genre (the Berlin trilogy and Station To Station, namely), but found the rest of the genre rather masturbatory.

I realize that’s a bit of an odd term to apply to a genre that was apparently focused on reducing music to elements even rawer than punks, but even a cursory glance at the genre reveals that the idea faded rather quickly. Post-punk and punk have in common two things: intent to rip up popular music and start over again (devolution, in other words) and a complete and utter failure to do so. Post-punk had been scooped on the idea of radical minimalism and primitivism in music decades ago; Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” did everything post-punk sought for in 1913, and incited a riot in doing so. By the time Public Image LTD rolled around, John Cage had already mastered the idea with “4’ 33””, a ‘song’ devoted to exploring the natural aesthetics of a quiet room.

There’s also the simple fact that the post-punk music that is today well-known and respected is still pop music. Like the best punk music, post-punk lacks the reckless courage of John Cage and other avant-garde artists in the way it clings to basic pop structures. A more accurate mission statement for punk would have been that they were seeking the devolution of Western pop, a mission in which they arguably succeeded.

Songs Of The Days - Pop Week! (Week 22)

May 28: Madonna - Beautiful Stranger (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me OST, 1999)



May 29: The Kinks - You Really Got Me (Kinks, 1964)



May 30: Crystal Waters - Relax (Storyteller, 1994)



May 31: Aaliyah - U Got Nerve (Aaliyah, 2001)



June 1: The Cars - Just What I Needed (The Cars, 1978)



June 2: Steely Dan - My Old School (Countdown To Ecstasy, 1973)



June 3: George Michael - Careless Whisper (Make It Big, 1984)



Gary Wright - Dreamweaver (The Dream Weaver, 1975)

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.

Songs Of The Days: Week 17

Apr 23: That Handsome Devil - Pills For Everything (A City Dressed In Dynamite, 2008)



Apr 24: Ram Jam - Black Betty (single, 1977)



Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Black Betty (Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986)



Apr 25: Fugazi - Waiting Room (Fugazi EP, 1988)



Apr 26: Violent Femmes - Add It Up (Violent Femmes, 1983)



Apr 27: Peggy Lee - Fever (single, 1958)



Apr 29: Eels - I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart (Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, 2005)



Wilco - I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002)



Stevie Wonder - Tuesday Heartbreak (Talking Book, 1972)

Week 16: The Black Keys - El Camino (2011)

"To me, this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect; it's not about sounding absolutely correct; it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [the heart] and what goes on in here [the head]."

-          Dave Grohl, accepting the award for Best Rock Performance at the 2012 Grammy Music Awards

Considering how often I bitch about music not having enough emotion or authenticity, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you were starting to wonder why I don’t actually post actual rock music. Aside from The Woods and The Moon & Antarctica, I’ve barely even discussed rock genres in a direct manner. Most of what I have said about such music is in historical or comparative terms, and I’m sure that can be vaguely infuriating to those of you in the audience who are asking yourself why, exactly, I don’t try to enjoy myself a bit.

Aside from the fact that I’m English by blood and therefore utterly incapable of true joy and/or happiness, there’s the simple fact that my self-imposed limitation of new bands (post-90s, basically) and new albums (post-2000) has drastically limited my options for good old-fashioned rock music to discuss. As Dave Grohl inadvertently demonstrated at the 2012 Grammys when his excellent speech (quoted above) was cut-off by an LMFAO song, reducing him to hollow yells of “Long live rock n roll,”, rock has been largely irrelevant to modern pop music for a long time. For proof, look no further than the competition Foo Fighters had for Best Rock Performance: “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall” by Coldplay, “Down By The Water” by The Decembrists, “The Cave” by Mumford & Sons, and “Lotus Flower” by Radiohead, none of which I would unflinchingly label as ‘rock’ music.

Let’s compare each to Grohl’s speech. Both Coldplay and Radiohead make heavy use of synths in the songs in question, and some effect has been applied to Chris Martin’s vocals for sure. As for Radiohead, I like “Lotus Flower” but there’s no way in hell that’s a rock song. The Decembrists song, while honestly quite good (I skipped The King Is Dead completely, and that seems to have been a mistake, honestly) has very heavy bluegrass and, as always, folk elements. You could call it alternative rock, sure, but it seems like a greater stretch than the Grammys would have had back in the 90s. Ditto to “The Cave”, which is remarkably similar to what The Decembrists might sound like with less people, slicker production, and some of those Queen-style vocal overdub choirs.