“I Love/Hate You,” Stockholm Syndrome, Derek Webb
Despite what I wrote a month ago, partly because I finally got the physical copy of the album, I’ve been listening quite a lot to Stockholm Syndrome, Derek Webb’s latest record. One of the tracks that has stood out to me is “I Love/Hate You,” one of his self-so-called “sabotaged love songs” (or at least I presume that it’s one of those songs). His philosophy is that although most love songs are “you’re great, I’m great, we’re great together, our love is great,” real life is not like that, being something more like “I’m broken, you’re broken, our love is messed up but we’re still committed to making it work” (he’s said “The truth will kill a good love song”). “I Love/Hate You” is the latest installment in the series, and follows a similar pattern as the previous versions, talking about a love that is simultaneously messy and even dangerous (“Your love is a noose around my neck”) and yet also a necessary and integral part of who he is (“But I don’t know who I am unless you’re holding me”). And the music makes it one of my favorite tracks on the album. It opens with an Eastern-sounding flute line, which makes for an interesting blend and contrast with the synthesized beat that enters next. This is one of the songs that bothered me due to its exact repetition, as I wrote about in my intial review; each of the three verses repeats its opening line three times, with no variation. But I believe it’s an intentional artistic decision on Webb’s part, and when paired with the hypnotic synths that fill out the harmony, it creates a trance-like effect that’s really cool. And I think the music of the chorus is some of the most accessible and Top 40-sounding on the album, along the lines of “Cobra Con” (and I when I say “Top 40″ I mean it in a good way–it sounds more like pop music, and less like electronic, and thus may be appealing to a wider variety of listeners). It’s another fun and very listenable song on my latest favorite album. You can hear the song in its entirety by playing the YouTube video below.
“Four Chord Song”
Thanks to my friend Jessica (@jesserface) for this one: A video by Australian musical comedy trio Axis of Awesome where the keyboardist quips, “We’ve never had a hit because we’ve never written a four chord song.” They then proceed to show how every pop song ever written uses the same four chords: I – V – vi – IV (in the video A, E, F-sharp minor and D). The list of songs included below the video is from the YouTube page, so I take no responsibility for any grammatical or punctuational or capitalizational errors (and just to be sure, I encased it all in quotation marks).
Funny? Yes. True? Yes. Sad? You decide.
“Songs Included are :
You’re beautiful by James Blunt,
Forever young by the Alphaville (covered by Youth Group),
I’m yours by Jason Mraz,
Amazing by Alex Lloyd,
Wherever you go by the Calling,
Can you feel the love tonight by Elton John,
She will be loved by Maroon 5,
Pictures of you by the Last Goodnight,
Cigarettes will kill you by Ben Lee,
With or without you by U2,
Fall at your feet by Crowded House,
Am I not pretty enough? by Kasey Chambers,
Let it be by The Beatles,
Under the bridge by RHCP,
Horses by Darryl Braithwaite,
Down under by Men at Work,
Waltzing Matilda,
Old Australia’s funniest Homevideos intro,
Taylor by Jack Johnson,
2 become 1 by the Spice Girls,
Take on me by A-ha,
When I come around by Green Day,
Save tonight by Eagle Eye Cherry,
Africa by Toto,
If I Were A Boy by Beyonce,
Self Esteem by the Offspring,
Apologize by One Republic,
U + Ur Hand by P!nk,
Pokerface by Lady Gaga,
Barbie Girl by Aqua,
Kids by MGMT,
Scar by Missy Higgins,
Thats all it takes to be a star by Axis Of Awesome.”
“Happy Birthday”
My wife and I attended a holiday/birthday party on Labor Day, and we sang “Happy Birthday” to the lady who was turning a year older partway through the festivities. (Instead of a birthday cake, Irish cupcakes were served, which are cupcakes made from Guinness with Baileys frosting. They were delicious.) Being a musician, I’m often asked to lead the group in singing everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) birthday song, but in this case, someone else, who is not a musician, did the honors. It’s hard, especially for non-musicians, to start singing something a cappella, because you don’t know exactly where you’re starting pitch-wise so you don’t know whether the range of the song will eventually take you too high or too low to sing comfortably. And, of course, it always takes a while for a non-musical group that’s singing to agree on a pitch. There were probably 15-20 people at the party at that time. I decided to listen intentionally to the group’s singing to see how long it took for them to fall into something close to a unison agreement. Unsurprisingly, it took two whole phrases: “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to–” and then by the second “you,” they were pretty close to singing the same notes.
It was an interesting experiment. Try it the next time you’re at a birthday celebration–and let me know what you hear!
Billy Idol and The Steve Miller Band Vs. Matchbox Twenty
Another entry in the recently reshuffled iPod playlist category….
I wrote a year ago about how my friend Rae hooked me up with some free CDs she didn’t want. Two of them happened to be the Greatest Hits of Billy Idol and the Greatest Hits: 1974-1978 of The Steve Miller Band. (What it says about the band that they have a Greatest Hits album with 14 tracks that spans all of 5 years, I’m not sure.) I put both those albums into my playlist, and I’ve heard multiple songs from both of them over the last week or so at work.
I’m not too impressed with either album. It’s definitely the 70s-80s rock sound that I would expect, not knowing much about either artist, and to be honest it bores me. Sure, there’s a lot of energy. But the style is quite outdated (insert your favorite cliche about 80s music here), and there’s nothing in the music that transcends the style–nothing that’s designed to last beyond the style itself. Especially in the Billy Idol tracks. They’re all constructed the same way, with the same instruments playing the same types of musical lines in every song. There are very few interesting details. The one exception is the live version of “Rebel Yell,” featuring some rocking acoustic guitar from Steve Stevens. He plays some unique accompaniment patterns, does some “superstrumming,” plays rhythms on muted strings, etc. That is worth listening to. But none of the other songs have the same redeeming quality (or any redeeming quality, to my mind).
Right after a song of Billy Idol’s and a song of The Steve Miller Band’s the other day, the song “All Your Reasons” from Matchbox Twenty’s album Exile On Mainstream started to play. It made me smile, because I love that song and it was a breath of fresh air after the other two. But then I started to wonder why–what was it that made “All Your Reasons” better than “White Wedding” and “Take The Money And Run”?
First of all, “All Your Reasons” is more intelligent than the other songs because while it has a distinctive pop/rock style, it transcends it because it’s a parody of the style. (The song starts out, quite humorously, with a couple of singers singing, with much feeling, “Ba da da da ba ba ba ba da” etc.) Maybe the parody won’t last for decades, but at least it’s a sentient style, so to speak–it’s aware of the style it’s operating in. Secondly, even though “All Your Reasons” is a simple song, there’s more detail in it than in five of Billy Idol’s songs combined–more subtle nuances in the instruments’ parts themselves, on a small scale. And thirdly, there’s more detail on a larger scale: there are great variations in texture (how many instruments are playing and what they’re playing), from the acoustic guitar and voices in the intro, to the full guitar-bass-drums chorus, to a driving bridge, to a chorus with only high guitar (punctuated by small drum fills, otherwise known as “details”).
Perhaps Matchbox Twenty’s music won’t last too far beyond its own style, either. But, while we’re still in a time where their style is relevant (and even if we’re not), it’s better music, and more worth listening to, than Billy Idol or The Steve Miller Band.
“Icicle,” Under The Pink, Tori Amos
I mentioned the other day that I’d been introduced to Tori Amos’ album Under The Pink by an old friend of mine, and that I’d recently put it into a playlist on my iPod. My friend had attended a church I was a member of a long time ago, and she thought I would find it interesting that Amos makes use of a hymn in one of her songs on that album. She couldn’t find it on the record she was playing at the time, but I found it when I got the CD and listened to it on my own.
In the piano intro to the song “Icicle,” Amos writes a deconstruction of the hymn “O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing” (careful, a crappy MIDI piano version of the hymn will start playing if you visit the site). After some meandering chords that change modalities (switching from major to minor, mainly by switching from F to F-sharp), the hymn begins at the 53-second mark. Although she adds an extra beat here and there, it’s a faithful rendering of the hymn through one verse. But the last chord of the verse is swapped for a flat-VI (an A-flat major chord replaces the expected C major), and she launches into her deconstruction through another verse. She first simply adds the flat seventh, turning C major chords into C dominant sevens, but then really throws it off by switching between major and minor tonalities (by switching from E to E-flat and then from D to D-flat) and collapsing into a dissonant mess. After hanging out on the final cluster chord for a while, the accompaniment to the song proper begins, an A-flat 5 arpeggio.
The subject matter of the song concerns Amos’ exchanging of her parents’ religion for her own ideas, and thus the gradual decline of the hymn into chaos is a brilliant musical mirroring of what she’s about to sing. You can listen to the whole song here, courtesy of Last.fm. Be forewarned that the song contains some sexually suggestive material; but you can listen to the intro and then stop the song when she starts singing if you’d like to avoid it.
Listening On the iPod
Usually, I can’t listen to music while I do something else, because I’m always listening to the music and analyzing it, whether I want to or not. In college I was never able to listen to music while I was studying because the music would be too distracting. Even when I’m eating out at a restaurant, some back corner of my mind is always listening and analyzing. I like to call this one of the “occupational hazards” of being a composer.
All this to say, I don’t have much occasion to make use of my iPod. However, occasionally at work I’m given some mindless tasks, like data entry for reports or conversion of a bunch of files from one format to another; and so I keep my iPod at work for such situations. It’s not large enough to sync with my entire iTunes library (it’s a 4GB iPod nano), so I have to pick and choose what I put on there. Here are some of the more interesting things I’ve recently put into my shuffled mindless-work playlist:
- The entire Wicked soundtrack. I hadn’t listened to anything from Wicked in a while, so I thought I’d get it back into the rotation; and just hearing a couple of the songs again is enough to make me wonder at Stephen Schwartz’s genius. Even the “non-greatest-hits” songs (e.g. “Dear Old Shiz,” “I’m Not That Girl,” “Thank Goodness”) have very clever words and catchy, quality music; and when Schwartz is at the top of his game (e.g. “What Is This Feeling?”, “Popular,” “For Good,” “Defying Gravity”) there’s no one better.
- Strange Attractor, Mercury Rev. I wrote about this album a few weeks ago. Even though it’s instrumental pop music, which normally doesn’t interest me too much, Strange Attractor is strangely attractive and I find it engaging, detailed and well-put-together. And for free, it’s hard to beat.
- Under The Pink, Tori Amos. An old friend of mine from Colorado who lived in LA for a while introduced me to Tori Amos by way of this CD. Amos is weird, there’s no doubt about it, but some of her writing is really good in her own eccentric way, and as a performer there’s much I can learn from her unique piano playing style.
And here are a few albums I’ve taken out:
- Turning Point, The Emmons Sisters. This was a family band (four sisters) that I met on our road trip two years ago up in Oregon; they play folk/acoustic/country-style music. But the songwriting is not very good, and the vocals are far too nasal to be easily listenable. A shame, because I had a lot of fun jamming with them while we stayed at their house.
- Kicking Television, Live in Chicago, Wilco. A friend of mine from Redlands gave me this CD to borrow, and it was the first time I’d heard Wilco. I’ll grant that a live album might not be the best way to be introduced to a band, but I really wasn’t feeling it. It’s difficult to put my finger on, but nothing really stood out to me and I don’t understand what the big deal is about Wilco. Any fans care to enlighten me?
- Stockholm Syndrome, Derek Webb. The only reason I took this off is because I’ve been listening to it incessantly since I downloaded it. The (censored) physical album comes out on September 1st, but it’s still available to order in its original form at http://www.derekwebb.com/store; so head on over and get yourself a copy!
08.14.2009Elemental, Loreena McKennitt
Posted by AJ Harbison at 4:32 pmI posted back in April about “eclectic Celtic” artist Loreena McKennitt, and after listening to Live Under Lights and Wires for a while and passing it on to my lovely wife, I picked up another of Eleanor’s McKennitt CDs, this time her first recording, Elemental.
Apart from suffering from a really weird cover picture (is she wearing a trenchcoat over a nightgown? Why is the harp standing by itself out in the grass while she’s running away? Is the building behind her a country ruin or her studio?), Elemental is a fine little album. It’s her first recording (from 1985, although I have a remastered version from 2006), and it shows a little, in a few simplistic arrangements and rough edges; but it’s also nice to hear the simpler, more traditional sounds of this record compared to the multilayered, polished tracks of The Book of Secrets. McKennitt’s harp playing features in most of the songs, as well as her voice–also a little rough around the edges and a bit shrill at times, but still haunting and perfectly suited to the Irish ballads she sings. Her guest collaborators are well chosen too: Cedric Smith turns in a very strong performance of the traditional song “Carrighfergus,” while Shakespearean actor Douglas Campbell’s thundering voice is unforgettable as he recites a William Blake poem in the final track “Lullaby.” Apart from “Lullaby” and “The Stolen Child,” with text from a W.B. Yeats poem, all of the tracks are traditional Irish songs “adapted and arranged” by McKennitt.
I still hold that Irish music is good for the soul, and this album is filled with the evocative, longing side of the genre. It’s not McKennitt’s best record, but it still repays a good listen.
08.03.2009“Love Is Pure,” Strange Attractor, Mercury Rev
Posted by AJ Harbison at 4:55 pmWay back in March, coldplay.com featured an interview with Mercury Rev, a band that was opening for them at that time on their tour. In the interview, they mentioned that they had an album available as a free download on their website. As someone who (at least in principle) is always interested in free music, I headed over, signed up for their email list and downloaded the album; as someone who (at least in practice) is always interested in procrastination, I hadn’t listened to it until today. But when I did, I found a very pleasant surprise.
On Wikipedia, the genres listed for Mercury Rev are “alternative rock,” “art rock” and “dream pop,” whatever those mean. Apparently the band normally has vocals, but the free album, entitled Strange Attractor, is all instrumental. I guess “dream pop” isn’t quite my cup of tea, but it was an enjoyable listen. The first track, however, captured my interest immediately. It’s called “Love Is Pure;” but it’s essentially a rock/pop remix of Arvo Pärt’s art music composition Fratres. I wrote about Fratres in the short-lived Listening Page feature on my former blog (short-lived because I soon expanded it to become this Listening Blog); here’s my description of the piece:
Pärt is an Estonian composer of minimalistic music, particularly a style known sometimes as “holy minimalism” (and ridiculed sometimes as “Holy minimalism, Batman!”). This is one of his best-known works–a hauntingly beautiful piece for four cellos. It’s one of those pieces in which the composer sets up a pattern, writes the beginning, and then lets the rest of the piece write itself (I hope to write a piece like this someday, it just seems too easy). In this particular piece, he writes a chord progression which begins at a very high pitch; then he repeats the progression nine times (I think), and each time the progression starts on a different, lower pitch, until it ends in the deep middle-low range of the cellos. The piece is about 10 minutes long, but it never gets boring because of the balance of repetition (the same general progression) and contrast (different chords in the progression in different ranges)…. It’s a really cool piece.
Mercury Rev’s version doesn’t repeat or change pitch, but it does use the same chord progression. The rhythm is jazzed up and delay is added, but the progression is clearly the same. It even retains the low held interval that the original Fratres does. Very cool.
You can listen to a recording of Fratres here, courtesy of Last.fm; and you can listen to “Love Is Pure” (by itself) here. However, the free download of Strange Attractor is still available at Mercury Rev’s website, and I’d recommend checking that out instead!
07.26.2009“Strawberry Swing” (music video), Coldplay
Posted by AJ Harbison at 12:37 pmIf you haven’t seen Coldplay’s new music video for “Strawberry Swing,” or even if you have already, you need to watch it right now. Do it!
http://www.coldplay.com/videostrawberry.php
I know this is technically The Listening Blog; but the visuals (and even just the concepts behind the visuals) are amazing. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
07.23.2009Live Under Lights and Wires, Sandra McCracken
Posted by AJ Harbison at 4:20 pmA few days ago I downloaded Sandra McCracken‘s latest album, Live Under Lights and Wires. It’s a live album, recorded by Sandra and Derek Webb (her husband) at a house show they performed in their own living room, just the two of them and their guitars. Derek just provides guitar and backup vocals, though; it’s Sandra’s show, and most of the songs are from her last album Red Balloon, which I wrote about a few months ago.
Live Under Lights and Wires is a fun listen–a glimpse into the songwriting process, by virtue of Sandra’s incidental comments and hearing the stripped-down versions of the songs, and a chance to listen in on a concert for the hundreds or thousands of fans who weren’t able to attend the private show. Sandra’s style is (as I mentioned in my Red Balloon post) “a folk/acoustic/singer-songwriter sound, with some country flavoring,” and it lends itself well to acoustic-guitar-only arrangements. She’s definitely a talented songwriter, and the personal songwriting shines through a personal and intimate performance. And it’s cool to hear her and Derek playing and singing together; if you ever get the chance to see them both live, it’s awesome to see the way they interact with each other during a performance, and there’s a small taste of that here.
A digital download of the album is only five bucks on Sandra’s webstore; a physical CD plus an immediate digital download is ten. The videos for “Halfway” and “Lose You” I linked to in the Red Balloon post are actually from the same show, so you can watch them as well. Sandra is an independent artist I would highly recommend, and this should be an enjoyable CD for fans and newcomers alike.
