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Crushing On

Music Monday: “We’re Good” – Dua Lipa

June 20, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

There is no place on Earth where my brain is more alert than in the dentist’s chair.

Seriously. I know many people dread the dentist, but I feel like I’m never so full of life-altering epiphanies as when I’m trying to ignore the fact that several people have their hands inside my mouth.

Maybe that’s particular zen I mastered from more than four years of dull orthodontia appointments. Or, perhaps it’s about deepening your relaxation through discomfort, like hot yoga or lying on a bed of nails.

It would be terrific brainstorming time if not for the fact that it’s difficult to jot down major brainwaves while tiny motors are whirring just beside your tongue.

(Honestly, I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I touch type well enough that might be able to manage with a wireless keyboard on my lap. Perhaps once I’ve forged a trusting relationship with my Kiwi dentist I can convince her to let me give it a try. Think of all the blog posts I could knock out during a cleaning!)

This peculiar introduction is my way of explaining that I didn’t hear Dua Lipa’s “We’re Good” for the first time during a dental checkup, but it was the first time I really heard it. There was something about it that my dentist-zen brain responded to immediately. I furiously attempted to jot down mental notes that I could reconstruct later.

First, there is the two chord figure in the reggae-tinged verse. The chords are a G#m and a C#. That’s not such an unusual combination of chords, but something about their use here pings my brain in a peculiar way.

It’s the F in the C# chord. That note doesn’t exist in G#m natural minor, which means the song is not in the “normal” minor key our ears expect to hear. From the second measure the song starts breaking your expectations. That musical uncertainty is reflected in the contradictory opening lyric:

I’m on an island, even when we’re close.

[Read more…] about Music Monday: “We’re Good” – Dua Lipa

Filed Under: Crushing On Tagged With: dentist, Dua Lipa, Music Monday, songwriting

Music Monday: “Slow Song” – The Knocks with Dragonette

June 13, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

When I listen to “Slow Song” by The Knocks with Dragonette I feel instant nostalgia.

Have you ever felt that? Maybe not, because I just made it up. Or, at least, I’ve made up my particular use for it. People have coined the term to explain the effect of technology on memory or how to live in the moment.

I mean something different. I’m trying to describe the sensation of encountering something new that makes you feel nostalgic for a certain time or place, even if that new thing does not connect to or embody that memory.

I suppose it is something like déjà vu, which eternally asks the question: Do you really have a fleeting memory of having experienced this moment before, or is it a random misfiring neuron in your temporal lobe?

Yet, my experience with “Sad Song” is different. It wasn’t a fleeting feeling the first time I listened – a passing recognition. It’s a persistent tugging on the strings of my memory. It’s a certain lack of gravity in my stomach. It’s my skin remembering being newer and softer. It’s sudden tears in the corner of my eyes.

A lot of music trades in nostalgia. Even when a song doesn’t use an outright sample of a prior song, sometimes it can evoke an older track just through a certain leap of melody or the timbre of an instrument.

At first I thought that was what I was getting from “Sad Song.” The bass has that certain woody sound to it. And, I’ve been a fan of Dragonette for years – I own every one of her songs. Maybe it was just her voice? No. It wasn’t that. This doesn’t sound like any particular period of music I’m connected to. Dragonette’s voice is smoother and more legato here than her typically prickly delivery.

Slow Song - The Knocks with Dragonette featuring Aquaria

It’s something about the combination of the lyrics and the video.

In the second verse, Dragonette wistfully croons, “Oh, I got ways of losing you baby. I’m faster than whatever you’re chasing.

Something about that line utterly breaks my heart. It feels like the flipside of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own.” It’s about pursuing something you want and thinking that the person you want – the person you love and need – is right beside you, only to turn to realize they’ve outpaced you and are disappearing into the horizon like a setting sun.

I’m gonna play you
Play you right until the tracks done
Play you however many times I want
I’ll play you like a slow song

I’ll keep you spinning
Spinning circles till the groove’s gone
And fade it out just like a setting sun
I’ll play you like a slow song

She was always faster than whatever you’ve been chasing. You thought she was moving at your speed, but she was really running circles around you, circles and circles again until you weren’t sure if it was her spinning or you.

And then, one day, the groove is gone, and so is she. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was convenience. But it’s over now.

Was that the instant nostalgia? The feeling of that perfectly described fading connection between two friends or lovers? [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Slow Song” – The Knocks with Dragonette

Filed Under: Crushing On Tagged With: drag, Dragonette, Music Monday, The Knocks

Music Monday: “King” – Florence + The Machine

June 6, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

We all experience music in different ways.

When Cecily told me there was a new Florence + The Machine song out a few months ago, she said, “the first time I listened to it, I saw colors.”

Seeing (or otherwise experiencing) colors when you hear music is a form of Synesthesia. Explained simply, Synesthesia is when you experience one kind of sensory input, but it triggers a secondary perception or sensation. A common example is that some people think or see the color blue when they see the number “8” – even if the number is written in black or yellow.

Cecily’s comment made me consider how I experience new music.

As a musician, when I hear a song for the first time my brain usually begins to dissect it. How does the story in the lyrics track, what are the intervals in the melody, what is the chord structure, how do both change in the chorus, etc.

Yet, if I can press pause on my musician brain for long enough, I also hear music in a different way. Sometimes when my musician brain is switched off I hear a song and I get an intangible feel from it, separate from its genre or musical structure.

I don’t meant that the song makes me feel something, like happy or sad. It’s hard to describe. It’s almost more like a sensation. Some songs feel cold, slick, and metallic, like if I were to lick them my tongue would get stuck. Others feel like rubbery bubbles in a roiling boil, all ricocheting off of each other. Some have a sensation of fullness, even if their arrangements are sparse. I’m not picturing an image or a scene, but a concept.

I don’t get a feel from every song, and I don’t necessarily like a song if I get a feel from it. Sometimes I get the feel and I’m like, “Oh, so that’s what this song is,” and then I never need to hear it again. Sometimes the feel is addictive and I immediately crave more of it. Other times it is fleeting, and if I don’t jot it down in the moment I lose it forever.

Is that also a form of Synesthesia?

It’s hard to say, partially because I have so much difficulty defining it. My “feels” are not frisson, or “musical chills,” where certain musical passages give you physical goosebumps. I get those, too, especially on big crescendos! But, they’re distinct from this other sensation.

This was all on my mind the first time I listened to “King” with E (a major Florence fan). We pumped it out at maximum volume through our stereo speakers in the living room. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “King” – Florence + The Machine

Filed Under: Crushing On Tagged With: Florence + The Machine, Music Monday, Synesthesia

Music Monday: “Running Up That Hill” – Kate Bush

May 30, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

The entire internet is talking about Kate Bush today.

I love it! (If you’re wondering why, it has to do with yesterday’s post. If you’re ready for spoilers, Variety has a great write-up and interview about it.)

I came to Kate Bush relatively late in my life of music consumption. As a teen, my main lady piano rocker who communes with the ethereal world was Tori Amos.

I’d encounter older music fans who felt Tori was derivative of Kate Bush, so of course as a major Ears With Feet (that’s what Tori fans were called, in her heyday) I completed eschewed Ms. Bush for nearly a decade, until I picked up her LP Aerials at Tower Records in 2005.

That record was certainly Amos-esque, so I felt I finally understood the comparison. Imagine my surprise when in 2018 I finally dug into the rest of Kate Bush’s catalog to discover how much more she is than “lady piano rocker” (just as Tori is, as well).

I’m sure I had heard “Running Up That Hill” many times prior to that (including from Tori’s own cover of it, medleyed with her own “God”). It hit me in a completely different way when I finally I listened to it in the context of opening of Hounds of Love

The insistent galloping of the drums. The strange synthesizer sighs swirling around my head, darting from headphone to headphone.

And, that iconic chorus:

And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places

Be running up that road
Be running up that hill
Be running up that building

Say, if I only could, oh

When I first heard “Running Up That Hill”, it made me think of Sisyphus. His is the eternal struggle of pushing the same boulder up the same hill every day, only for it to roll back down again. He is the undying patron of lost causes and impossible struggles.

Would you willingly exchange places with him, even for a day? Could you survive? [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Running Up That Hill” – Kate Bush

Filed Under: Crushing On Tagged With: Kate Bush, Music Monday, Tori Amos

Music Monday: “Wet Dream” – Wet Leg

May 23, 2022 by krisis 1 Comment

Music keeps you young.

It sounds like one of those pithy phrases you might find on a decorative wall hanging into the home of a not-so-young person. (Full-disclosure: at this point I am a not-so-young person.)

I’ve always said that music is essential to me. It’s something that fundamentally makes me happy. The more I’m listening to music and playing my own, the more cheerful and productive I get in every area of life. One of the difficult parts of making the switch to a fully-remote life during the pandemic was a lack of commute – not because I like commuting, but because it is where I got my required one hour of music a day.

As music has come and gone from my daily routine in the past few years, I’ve realized that it’s not only my mood that changes when I have tunes in my ears or beneath my fingers. I feel like my actual age oscillates. New music makes me feel mentally and physically younger.

That might sound delusional, so allow me to explain by way of Wet Leg.

I’ll be honest, when I heard there was a hip new band named “Wet Leg,” I did not leap to listen to their music. Hip bands with clever names and ironic, punny songs come and go every year, each putting their own tweak on the current trends in pop production. After a few years of not connecting with them at all, I felt like hearing each successive entry just made me feel older. I just didn’t get what the youths were into, which made me decidedly not a youth.

Then, one day last in 2021, I happened to see the YouTube thumbnail for Wet Leg’s “Wet Dream” video, featuring lead singer and guitarist Rhian Teasdale dressed like an erstwhile modern day pilgrim wearing a pair of oversized lobster claws.

“Okay,” I thought, “it’s a hip band whose first song shares a word with their band name and is accompanied by an ironic video. I am going to hate this. Here we go.” [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Wet Dream” – Wet Leg

Filed Under: Crushing On, music Tagged With: Wet Leg

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