35-for-35

35-for-35: 2012 – “Madness” by Muse

November 28, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]EV is a very musical child.

I know, shocking.

muse-the-2nd-law She not only pretends that she fronts a band, but actually writes songs for that band, rehearses them, and then sings them to us. She’s also got pretty solid pitch, can memorize most lyrics after two practice runs, and has started singing harmony to my originals when I play them for her.

She has a pair of musical parents, and has already sat in on dozens of rehearsals, but I like to think all of her musical interest and acumen is down to one song: “Madness” by Muse.

I’ve enjoyed Muse ever since I first heard an a cappella group sing “Time Is Running Out” back in college. There’s something about Matthew Bellamy’s rangy voice and the Queen-like bombast of their biggest songs that draws me in.

As with Kings of Leon, I continued to follow Muse’s releases oblivious to the fact that they were turning into the most popular band in the land. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law, came out on September 28th and I was already sure that I liked it when I heard “Madness” on the radio for the first time on Sunday, November 18th, on its way to being the longest-running Alternative Rock number one song of all time.

I remember the day, because that was the day we learned we were pregnant with EV. We were driving back home from seeing our friend Gina (not that one, the other one) in a play and the song came on the radio. We both sang along and traded the vocal percussion back and forth, smiled giddily at the “some kind of madness” that was about to take control of our lives.

After that car ride, Muse’s omnipresent “Madness” became the secret anthem of our pregnancy.

When we arrived at the hospital to deliver EV nine months later, we were met by one of the older midwives from the group of six we had been seeing. She was an authoritarian hippy, easy-going and new age-y but able and ready to command us at a moment’s notice. I know I wasn’t the pregnant one, but that’s pretty much everything I was looking for in a midwife.

Unfortunately, her hours of coverage were up midway through E’s labor. Just as we were getting comfortable with her, she was replaced with a young midwife who we’d only met once before. We were a bit bummed. How had we spent all these months forging relationships with a group of women who would deliver our child and missed getting to know the one who’d actually do the delivering.

The bummedness didn’t last long.

The midwife’s name was Erin, another E-name in a room with E and an nurse named Elizabeth and, potentially, a little E-named baby, if our baby turned out to be a girl.

Erin shared E’s birthday – not just the day, but the year as well.

Finally – and to this day, I find this last coincidental detail utterly insane – like E, Erin sang in a semi-professional a capella group.

Erin was meant to delivery EV. It was all part of the madness.

The first image of her I recorded somewhere other than in my gray matter. She is about 15 minutes old.

E and I had joked for a long time that she wanted the rocking soundtrack to Supernatural Season One playing throughout the entirety of her labor, but as the evening progressed I noticed she simply wasn’t getting into a good zone listening to all that classic rock.

The first time “Madness” came on she went into a sort of trance. I played it again and reflexively began singing the “mm-mm-mm-ma madness” part under my breath. Then, Erin began to sing along in harmony. Then, to our surprise, E began to sing too, quietly, between her contractions.

Almost every other moment of the labor process is a blur of details to me until EV emerged, but that moment remains frozen in time in that way all of my most significant memories are – where I can see it happen as an omniscient 3rd-person narrator looking in on the scene over my own shoulder.

Music. “Madness.” EV incubated in it for nine months, us singing along to it in the kitchen, trading the vocal percussion back and forth, and it summoned her into this world.

35-for-35: 2010 – “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn

November 27, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I went through a period in the late 00s where all I wanted was singer/songwriter dance music. For a while, the closest thing was Justin Timberlake or indie-rock pop like hellogoodbye, but neither quite scratched the itch I had. I wanted straight up, cotton candy, 80s style pop music with an auteur behind it and more texture than the typical radio tune.

And, of course, I wanted to hear women doing it.

Luckily, Lady Gaga arrived in 2008 with The Fame and rubbed my itch raw, but I would argue that if we’re talking about dance-pop auteurs we cannot even have the conversation without talking about Robyn.

Five years ago I would have had to follow that statement with “Yes, my 90s friends, the same Robyn of ‘Show Me Love.'” That’s not the case anymore, with “Dancing On My Own” in the credits of TV’s Girls and “Call Your Girlfriend” reaching surprising ubiquity in the year’s since its release.

I didn’t have that context in 2010, though. All I had was this queer record called Body Talk, Part 1 from the woman who sang “Show Me Love.” I had completely missed the “Konichiwa Bitches” years of Robyn’s second breakthrough because at the time I didn’t swim in those pop circles (because, I’d argue, she and Gaga revived those pop circles in the US).

I even wrote about my discovery process of Body Talk, Part 1, and how I was cool to “Dancing On My Own” on first listen but floored by the EP as a whole.

With hindsight, I’m also floored by “Dancing On My Own.” Despite the busy synth bass, the song has an uncluttered sonic aesthetic, adding in just one element at a time as in my 1994 pick “Closer.” (Note that the original version of this cut does not include the higher synth line that can now be heard in the video.)

“Dancing On My Own” has more than that common with that profane NIN cut. Each song is the perfect evocation of a near-universal human experience. Yes, “Closer” is more base and primary, but watching the person you want be with someone else while you sway on your own is something everyone has experienced at least once – from the most popular jock to the most ridiculed nerd.

Robyn turns that dejected feeling into something empowering – a chorus you are proud to shout along to on the dancefloor. It’s just an excuse to dance on your own.

35-for-35: 2009 – “Love Of Our Lives” by Indigo Girls

November 26, 2016 by krisis

indigo-girls-poseidon-and-the-bitter-bug [Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]You don’t stop being an artist.

I haven’t written a new song in a few months, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being a songwriter. I never stopped being a blogger in the months this page lay dormant. You might not write as frequently as you did when you were 20, and you might draw inspiration from different things, but that doesn’t stop you from being an artist.

Being an artist has other implications in the commercial world, partially because there are costs associated with artistry. You may be a songwriter, but are you writing enough material to release full-length albums regularly enough that you won’t be forgotten? And, even when you do, will a likely-dwindling audience of tens of thousands of people like it enough to pay for it?

I don’t know how mainstream artists contend with all of those questions and still find the courage to make the art that drives them. I suppose that’s why you surround yourself with a team of managers and lawyers (although that’s a catch-22, since you have to keep making the art to pay for them to enable you to make the art!).

Somehow, despite all those odds, The Indigo Girls have continued to release some of their most vital, engaging work over the course of four studio LPs and a live album in the past decade. The live LP, Staring Down The Brilliant Dream, takes it name from this song, “Love Of Our Lives.”

(This acoustic version is from three years after the LP, but I think being able to see Emily and Amy trading the often unison octave vocals adds a lot to your listen.)

E taught me songs like “Least Complicated” and “Power of Two” note by note from her memory of many prior sing-throughs on long card rides back and forth in her little Corolla from her parents houses in New Jersey, young and in love.

We’ve been wanting to be helped by binding ties
We’ve been fighting for the love of our lives

This song flips that oft-told harmony-singing narrative on its head. We first heard “Love Of Our Lives” together in 2009, newly married (to the tune of “Least Complicated”!) and driving in our own car back on that same route with one window down and the wind whipping through our hair. We were equals as partners and singers, each naturally taking our accustomed parts (E with Emily, me with Amy Ray) and getting tangled up in each other as the two vocal lines merge back into a unison melody.

Fire and water, oxygen
Scotch and soda, or any combination
Starts the reaction.

Is there no mastermind of modern day
Who can blueprint a plan to make love stay
Steady and weatherproof usher in a new revolution?

I don’t know how are these two women writing such stunning statements of words and melody over 20 years into their careers, but I’m incredibly thankful that they are. I have so many favorite songs that remind me of the early milestones of our relationships, but this one will always remind me of the strength of us together.

After trying more, the hopeful ones still try.
How can we help it when we’re fighting for the love of our live?

(Also, a fun fact: “Love of Our Lives” include both of my favorite little marks of songwriting, the word “communication” and a reference to chemistry. They’re like the sigils of my and Gina’s respective houses, and also map onto Nathan and Martina in my novel. In fact, I’d say this song is specific inspiration for it, but to explain that much further would be a spoiler ;)

35-for-35: 2008 – “Dying Is Fine” by Ra Ra Riot

November 25, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Sometimes songs can see the future.

Yes, I know that the interpretation of art is in the eye of the beholder, and just as we look to coincidences in the world as the sign of supernatural guidance we can also believe in the kismet of a song that perfectly describes a situation in our lives. A good song should do and be that.

Yet, I think some songs – the best songs – are something more, because they so perfectly describe a future they have not yet glimpsed.

I have a song called “A Few Bars of Goodbye” that has maintained its favorite over the past fifteen years, with E, Gina, and now EV counting themselves as fans. I wrote the song as a project for a songwriting class at Drexel. It wasn’t based in life at all, but on trying to tell a complete narrative through imagery. It’s the story of a young couple – a career girl and a cool rock boy, who is blithe to the fact that she’s isn’t getting anything she needs from their relationship.

This is the third verse:

Yes it’s hard! You know it’s hard for her to do it
And she wishes she didn’t have a 9-to-5 grind
But while she’s out there in the real world
She wonders where he’s been spending his time
Wrapped up in his chords? Trying to write the next killer line?

Now she’s humming a few bars of goodbye

I’ve never identified with the song before this year, because E and I have always had a (more than) 9-to-5 grind plus our own passion projects. Being at home with EV focused solely on the twin passion projects of this blog and my music makes those lyrics uncomfortably close to home. Now I am the one spending the day wrapped up in my chords and trying to write the next killer line, and I expend so much time, effort, and communication trying to ensure E and I don’t share the same fate as the couple in this song.

“Dying Is Fine” was one of the earliest songs written by Ra Ra Riot, and it’s among their best. An insectile frenzy of strings dissipates to reveal a disco backbeat and a simple four-note guitar line, backed by a swirling liquid bed of violin and cello.

I love that juxtaposition of elements, along with Wes Miles’s slightly stuffy-nosed baritone vocals. Every aspect of the song fights against the others, creating a push-pulling against your ears until a bridge unifies all the instruments into a building crescendo. Afterwards, the chorus comes off completely different – a summation rather than a frantic cry. The song is a magic trick of exuding both joy and grief at the same time.

Ra Ra Riot formed in 2006 at parties at their alma mater Syracuse University and quickly exploded into indie-rock notability thanks to positive reactions from tastemakers and festival cords. They recorded “Dying Is Fine” with their original drummer, John Ryan Pike, for their debut EP, released in July 2007.

John Ryan Pike drowned after a show in June of 2007.

ra-ra-riot-the-rhumb-line Can you imagine – not only continuing as a band after one of your best friends and bandmates had died, but still playing his songs, and having your breakthrough come from a song you wrote with him that had this chorus?

Death, oh baby
You know that dying is fine but maybe
I wouldn’t like death if death were good
Not even if death were good

You might think that the unique push-pull of the song came from its increased resonance after Pike’s death, but you can hear all the same elements on the version he recorded with the band. It still had the grief and the joy. That disco backbeat is Pike’s, present on that original recording. The liquid waves of strings were always there. The bridge that braids the elements together into resolution is intact.

Is this it
Maundering about and
All I have is too much time to understand

That one can only love
Life until its ending
Oh, and I can’t forget

“Dying Is Fine” was complete already, a perfect picture of the grief it would be release into on that EP, and then the band’s full-length followup, The Rhumb Line. Part of those lyrics are cribbed (with acknowledgment) from an e e cummings poem of the same name: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 2008 – “Dying Is Fine” by Ra Ra Riot

35-for-35: 2007 – Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley

November 24, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Screw double jeopardy, it’s been almost ten years and I need to talk about this one again.

rilo-kiley-under-the-blacklight My obsession with Barsuk Records dates back to the early days of CK – I first posted about the label in January of 2001, but I had already been spinning Death Cab For Cutie’s Forbidden Love EP for weeks after being turned onto it by the owner of the old Spaceboy Records, who used to visit the coffee shop where I worked.

Barsuk was on top of the early internet game with a cool website and lots of MP3 samples, and over the course of the next year I came to know and love the label’s early roster of oddball rockers – Abigail Grush, This Busy Monster, Little Champions, and The Long Winters (though I was never a John Vanderslice fan).

One band, in particular, really captured my imagination. They were called Rilo Kiley, and featured a casual, squeaky-voiced women singing earnest, emo-ish, indie-rock tunes over glisteningly clean guitar tones.

I devoured song samples like “Bulletproof,” and when I bought their Sophomore effort The Execution of All Things on release day it completely took over my listening for a month. I remember laying in bed in E’s big shared house on Poweltown Avenue, listening to it on repeat on my CD Walkman while she slept.

I would have never imagined that an LP like 2007’s Under The Blacklight would emerge from that scrappy, squeaky, indie band, even after their sonically meandering More Adventurous in 2004. Where the first two Rilo Kiley LPs were filled with rough edges, Blacklight is wall-to-wall sheen. Where Jenny Lewis used to sound like an earnest alt-country crooner, now she is a rock powerhouse.

(Seriously: I saw them tour on this record, and I’ve never before seen a rock frontwoman in such good voice as Lewis, short of PJ Harvey.)

(It’s a complete coincidence that both Harvey and RK received full LP write-ups in a month of song-of-the-day.)

(Or maybe it isn’t.)

Opener “Silver Lining” begins the album with a complete reset of expectations. Handclaps, piano, and a gospel-tinged backup singers aren’t exactly the earmarks of Rilo Kiley’s prior sound, and there’s no doubt that Jenny Lewis’s 2006 acoustic soul effort Rabbit Fur Coat had an influence on the sound of the band’s return. Lewis’s voice streams and catches like honey, totally unlike any prior effort save for maybe the prior LP’s “I Never.”

And I was your silver lining, as the story goes.
I was your silver lining, but now I’m gold.

Hooray, hooray! I’m your silver lining.
Hooray, hooray! But now I’m gold.

The girl of “Silver Lining” is a trickle of quicksilver, something great in your life that you barely recognized before you lost your grip. It’s also about being defined by your partner and what you add to them, rather than who are are as an individual. Life isn’t like the movies – there aren’t any sidekicks or romantic interests, because everyone is a protagonist in their own minds. You might still be thinking of your silver lining as the one that got away, but she’s living her golden life in that getaway car.

That fleeting happiness is a theme of this bruised LP. Despite a lot of depression mixed in with its themes, Under The Blacklight doesn’t bear a single regret. It never hesitates to smile on the good times that came before the bruises started to show.

The other predominant theme of the album is sex. Blacklight sounds like the diary of a sex addict, filled with carnal obsessions and morning after regrets. It’s bracing to hear the disarmingly sweet Lewis lend her voice to these narratives, like seeing a favorite child actress tackle her first adult role. Or, as with Juliana Hatfield (a clear predecessor), would I even notice those innuendos from a male-led band?

It speaks to Lewis’s deft narrative touch that both of the following songs are about the monetary value of sex, yet this album never seems to be talking down at sex workers. Lewis’s lyrics obsess over sex, but she and her characters are never defined by it. [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 2007 – Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley