Crushing On

Music Monday: “Feeling So” – Shea Coulée

July 25, 2022 by krisis

I am a sucker for any song that uses layers of instrumental riffs to emphasize an insistent, galloping, every-quarter-note rhythm, and Shea Coulée’s “Feeling So” does that in the best possible way.

Every time I listened to “Feeling So,” the first thought that pops into my head is “wow, this is like an update of ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Tears For Fears.” Every single time I think it is a new thought, and I am impressed with myself for noticing the reference, and then after a minute I think, “Hold on, surely this has occurred to me before…”

I think the the thing the two songs have in common is how they layer different instruments with slightly differing rhythms to achieve the net effect of emphasizing every beat. In “Rule The World,” it’s the way the insistent bassline marries to the back-and-forth step of the synth, later topped with the peal of of guitar picking from the intro.

“Feeling So” is built the same way. It has an opening synth riff that continues burbling in the background like a melodic fountain. It has the same driving gallop of bass. And, it has that same step-and-repeat of passing synth chords.

The difference is how “Feeling So” later breaks that that rhythm. When the staccato chords of the pre-chorus interrupt the bassline it feels like a change in temperature – as if we’re on the verge of a shock. But, the song eases us back into the familiar gallop with the reintroduction of the bubbling synth in the background of the next section.

I think it’s the continuous rhythm, break, and return that has encoded this song into my brain so deeply, tempering my neural pathways with every repeat of the cycle.

Also that it really does song like an update of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” with a hint of the sunny disposition of Madonna’s “Cherish” – and that’s a sonic lineage that I cannot resist.

Music Monday: “The Wrong Year” – The Decemberists

July 18, 2022 by krisis

I can fall in love with a song because it means something specific to me.

Other times I fall in love with a song because of something it only implies – because I can find so many different meanings inside of it.

“The Wrong Year” by The Decemberists is one of the latter category. Every time I hear it I want to cry, and I’m not sure if they are tears of joy, of grief, of relief, or some other emotion entirely. There’s some unquenchable ache it creates in my chest that feels like only my tears can fill or expel it (maybe both).

The Decemberists write hyper-literate chamber-pop that’s also hyper-specific – and, often, historical. For a long time I assumed there was something obvious I loved about the lyrics to this song that I simply didn’t recollect between listens.

Diving more deeply into it, there’s very little to the lyrics. Each verse is about some ungraspable fey person – first “Grey Jane,” then an unnamed “he” who is “struck down as a summerchild,” and finally the author themselves – sleeping like a ghost all winter.

Yes, “Grey Jean” could be referring to Lady Jane Grey, the teenaged so-called “Nine Days’ Queen” of England who was swiftly dethroned and not too long after beheaded. And, in fact, “struck down as a summerchild” could even refer to her brief rule in July of 1553.

However, that’s not what has drawn me in all of this time. I didn’t know about any of it until this very moment!

So, what is it that makes “The Wrong Year” make me ache deeply in my soul every time I hear it.

First, the chord progression. It couldn’t be simpler or more common: G D(7sus4) Em Cmaj7. At first when I hear them played with this jaunty rhythm it evokes the verses of Ben Folds’ “Rockin’ The Suburbs.” However, after a few listens just now I realized that these are also the chords to something much more familiar: the first line of “Don’t Stop Believin'” raised a minor third!

In fact, the first line of this song closely echoes the first line of “Don’t Stop Believin'”! [Read more…] about Music Monday: “The Wrong Year” – The Decemberists

Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

July 11, 2022 by krisis

I have a secret favorite band.

They’re not only a secret because I never talk about them publicly. They’re also a secret because I don’t know a damn thing about them. I don’t know who they are, what they look like, why they’re a band, what their politics are, or when they’re putting their next album out. I’ve never seen them on tour and never watched a video of them. I don’t even know if they play live!

All I know is I love every song they have ever released.

It is highly unusual for me to fall madly in love with something and not want to hoover up every single facet of its existence. You’ve seen the name of this site, right? That’s what the “Crushing” part has always been about – what I’m crushing on, and what’s crushing me. When I have something crushing, I want perfect 100% knowledge of its complete breadth and depth.

Except this one band.

Turin Brakes.

I don’t know anything about them, but I can tell you exactly how I found out about them.

Their song “Underdog (Save Me)” was on the Q Magazine’s “Q Best of 2001” sampler CD that came with their end of year issue that December. I almost certainly bought it at an airport magazine stand en route to stay at my grandmother’s condo in Florida for the holidays. That was pre-iTunes, so I probably listened to it once or twice on my CD Walkman and then shelved it’s paper sleeve alongside the rest of my compilation CDs and promptly forgot it existed.

Then, in 2003, iTunes came to Windows and I spent a month converting my massive CD collection to MP3, including that Q sampler on November 8th, 2003. And then I didn’t listen to it for another year, until I bought my first iPod for my solo trip to California to hang out with Laura and Sara.

Clearly I was working my way through a playlist of unheard songs while on my trip, because several other tunes from that sampler have their first (and only) plays in that period. And then, the very day I returned to Philly, I added two Turin Brakes records to my collection. I might’ve even bought them at the historic Amoeba Music in Los Angeles!

Why? What was so special about “Underdog (Save Me)” that made me so eager to hear more of this band?

I can tell exactly why: they were the first new band I ever heard that entirely reminded me of myself. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

Music Monday: “Bliss” – Amber Mark

July 4, 2022 by krisis

There’s something about an R&B song with wah pedal and an every-quarter-note rhythm that I cannot turn off.

I blame TLC’s “Waterfalls.”

That’s the first comparison that came to mind when I heard “Bliss” by Amber Mark, even if her song is much more driving than the languid, trickling feel of “Waterfalls.”

I was already sold on Amber Mark’s 2022 debut full-length, Three Dimensions Deep, long before I hit “Bliss” at track 16. I dig the consistent Neo-Soul groove of the entire record, which backs Mark with tangible instrumental performances blended with programmed beats. I love

It’s “Bliss” that I keep coming back to. There’s something about that hypnotic “wah wah wah wah” and the more-organic drum sound that draws me in and keeps playing in my brain when I wake up in the morning.

Also, not for nothing, I love a chorus that starts with a great “Oh!” full of stacked harmony. And, I love a second verse that messes with your expectations about the song’s rhythm. And I love a song about something commonplace that juxtaposes it with the fantastic or galactic, as she does in the sublime first verse:

Conversations, sexual tension
Taking me to new dimensions
Outer space, nights at my place, oh
You teach me things I never knew
A crush don’t have to leave a bruise
My soul is shining, changed my life with perfect timing

There’s something about “Bliss.” The wah pedal and the every-quarter-note rhythm might have caught my attention in the first place, but there’s so much more than that in Amber Mark’s song.

Music Monday: “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice

June 27, 2022 by krisis

It’s impossible to separate my love for Sharice’s “I Love Your Smile” from the nostalgia it evokes.

They’re one and the same.

“I Love Your Smile” is a slice of such a specific time and place for me. It is a perfect encapsulation of the pure, twinkling, late-80s R&B birthed by Janet Jackson with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, complete with a woozy saxophone riff by Branford Marsalis.

Produced by Grammy-winning drummer-turned-hitmaker Narada Michael Walden, it’s an updated R&B version of the mall pop from The Jets and Debbie Gibson, free from rock crossover elements that would come with songs like En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” or samples that would come to dominate 90s Hip Hop by the middle of the decade.

It’s so sweet and plaintive. Almost oppressively sweet. The lyrics are about Sharice daydreaming through class and work, her mind fixated on the simplicity of a cute boy’s smile. The chorus is literally just her repeating “I love your smile” over the scatted vocal riff that opens and closes the song.

Sitting in my class, just drifting away
Staring into the windows of the world, yeah
I can’t hear the teacher, his books don’t call me at all
I don’t see the bad boys tryin’ to catch some play

‘Cause I love your smile
I love your smile

Looking at all of those elements one by one, it seems impossible that this song is good at all. My love for it must be pure nostalgia, right?

Taken altogether, the elements speak to a specific sense of teenage innocence in music that hasn’t returned to the top of the pop charts in force since then. Songs that start with “sitting in class” stopped being Billboard smashes unless the line was delivered with irony and retrospect.

The wistful simplicity of “I Love Your Smile” isn’t so different than how Britney’s loneliness was killing her in “Hit Me Baby (One More Time.” Yet, the late-90s teen pop resurgence heralded by Britney and Christina was threaded with self-awareness and sexual liberation that didn’t exist for Sharice.

There was no double entendre of being “rubbed the right way” in “I Love Your Smile.” It wears its heart on its sleeve, and Sharice’s biggest worries are putting a little black dress on a credit card and “thunder clouds of doubt” about if her love will be returned.

When I hear “I Love Your Smile,” I hear sunshine – which is ironic, since it peaked on the charts over Christmas break at the end of 1991. However, that means it was still in regular rotation in the spring of 1992. That makes sense with how it summons sunshine and pure innocence for me. That was my final year of schoolyard simplicity, existing right at the precipice of I realizing the darker themes that surrounded me in my Born Again Christian education.

Sharice’s innocence and my innocence were one and the same. That might be why this song will always work for me, even if it falls flat for a modern listener – although, I maintain that it’s hard to resist that scatted hook.