Grace Potter, Lissie, and Florence (of Florence + The Machine) pack the most powerful voices in this moment’s music scene.
Grace Potter
Florence
Lissie
Too often in indie music we are offered the hushed, the murmured, and the coy. Loud and bombastic were pioneered in the sixties, harnessed in the seventies, and destroyed with gluttonous excess in the eighties and early nineties.
The 2000s seemed dialed back, more restrained.
There remained room in American music for the diva, mostly R&B and pop acts revered for letting ‘er rip. But indie artists kept it mostly quiet. And so it goes that the late 90s and 2000s’ most prominent female voices (Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Bjork, and even Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) were at their best when they were vocally feathery, and at least delicate. Sure, they can all ramp it up when needed, but even the sometimes-screamer O is more artful evocateur than blow-you-away belter. The momentous, bluesy wails of Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Ann Wilson appeared a thing of the past. Within the last year, however, that assertion no longer seems valid.
Three frontwomen–Grace Potter (of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals), Lissie, and Florence (of Florence + the Machine)–have torn through indie’s vocal restraint with unyielding force.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals honed their chops on the jam band and festival circuit before signing with label powerhouse Hollywood Records in 2005. The Nocturnals are the rare band as revered by jammy enthusiasts as pop music record honchos. Though it is their third record on a major label, the eponymous Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (released in June) has garnered the band and its mighty-voiced singer more publicity than all their previous efforts combined.
The album’s first single “Tiny Light” features Potter’s otherworldly, raw voice. The track begins as a tempered country-pop standard before it is unleashed into guitar&vocal thunder&lightning. Potter blows the song away from there. I daresay I’ve never heard such an unrestrained vocal performance on a pop record. It simply must be heard.
Illinois’s Lissie [Elisabeth Maurus by birth] packs a hot smokey voice into each of her folk-squelched performances. Like the other women profiled in this piece, Lissie has another couple gears she can crank to, when needed. Her “Little Lovin’” builds from a whispery crawl to an unchained call to the skies. When she says, “I’m gonna get to heaven,” you believe her, and you trust that she’ll bust the guard down to get there.
Lissie, “Little Lovin”:
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Speaking of slow builds, the UK’s Florence Welch knows a thing or two about how to ramp up to 11. The power-piped Brit invites assorted friends to record and tour with her under the title “The Machine.” Don’t be fooled, however. Hers is almost entirely a one-woman operation. Welch’s machine has been machinating everywhere, most recently lending the following track to the soundtrack of Julia Roberts’ upcoming film Eat, Pray, Love.
Ebullient in its power, Welch’s voice has the ability to disarm even the most terrible grump.
Florence + The Machine, “The Dog Days Are Over”:
And so it goes. We may have seen the end of the era where indie lead singers were too cool to let ‘er rip. I sure hope that’s the case. Because unchaining the instruments is what rock’s all about…especially if the instruments are voices like these.
If you’re looking for California noise pop with dreamy, sound-of-waves-in-a-seashell vocals and a beach music vibe, (in other words, music of the chill wave persuasion), check out Best Coast. While Best Coast, (based in Los Angeles, of course), is a “band”, as far as I can make out Bethany Cosentino is its essence. It’s her voice that sounds like it’s echoing in an empty beer cooler as the sun sets over an orange-tinged horizon, and she seems to be the main character of anything in which the band is featured. The cool thing about this music is it’s surf, sand, and salt, but it’s also got an old school, innocent fifties girl band vibe, making me picture everyone partying on the beach, but in poodle skirts and modest bathing suits and maybe about to start a game of croquet.
Best Coast released Art Fag 7″ in December, a time when listening to this beach blanket lust-fest was more painful than appealing. However, July 27th is a perfect time for their full length album, Crazy for You to drop, which it will, and then immediately become a staple on my summer play list. I’m not saying this is mind blowing music, but it’s solid, and it’s refreshing, and it just goes so well with watermelon and the smell of fresh cut grass. So pour yourself a lemonade, stretch out on a lawn chair, and give this a spin. You’ll like it, I promise.
From Art Fag 7″, two songs I like:
And the video for their single, “When I’m With You”, sums them up very well with the upside-down shot of the waves crashing into a blemish-free sky:
Finally, there’s a sneak peek on Pitchfork of a song from their upcoming full length. You can stream or download “Boyfriend”, which is yearny and wistful and makes us wonder why Ronald never made his move: http://pitchfork.com/news/39299-new-best-coast-boyfriend/
The xx aren’t a secret anymore – they’ve played at Coachella, Bonaroo, Austin City Limits, and many other favorite festivals, and their album, xx, was ranked the 9th best album of 2009 by Rolling Stone and the 6th best by NME. Once a quartet, the group is now a triptet, made up of members Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie Smith, who met at the Elliot School in London, a school that has also produced members of Hot Chip, Burial, and Four Tet, (and whose Main Assembly Hall was featured in the pageant scene of Love, Actually, for those who like that sort of thing). The xx can best be described as “dream pop”, its sound a landscape of slow hills and shallow valleys, all of it subtle, yet rich in texture. As it always does, the buzz around the album faded almost imperceptibly, until it was only an echo in our ears, that sound that maybe isn’t a sound, just something you think you hear because you’re trying to hear it.
But the buzz is back, with wait what’s March 2010 web release of the notorious xx, a brilliantly matched mashup of Notorious B.I.G. and The xx. On his website, www.waitwhatmusic.com, Charlie, who is wait what, says the album’s inception occurred in his sister’s apartment, when he wondered what “Juicy” would sound like when heard over “VCR”. From there, he expanded the experiment to all 11 of xx’s tracks, “chopping, slicing, and mashing it up” with Biggie’s vocals. Charlie says it took a few weeks to make, citing Boston, Williamstown, Albany, Chicago, Aspen, Denver, and San Francisco as the locations of its creation. When it was finished, he put the album up for free on his website. In ten days the album hit the top of the hype machine and reached an audience of over one million people in 113 different countries. It was also featured on many blogs and New York Magazine’s Vulture.
Unfortunately, I didn’t catch onto it until recently, weeks after April 6, 2010, when Charlie was forced to take it down by “the people behind the hip hop half of the project”. Of course, the internet being the ubiquitous monster impervious to the demands of The Man that it is, you can still find the album without much trouble.
There’s always that one album I hit on every summer, the season’s go-to soundtrack. It has to be perfect, both for lazy car trips to the beach with the windows down, and for nights on the porch with a cold beer, watching the moths make love to the light. I think the notorious xx will be that album for me this summer. wait what has found a way to take songs that have been implanted in my consciousness for years and shake them up, giving them a different energy and tone, the kind of energy that works so well with the hypnotic bliss of the summer sun. As I’ve said in earlier posts, the best collaborations create something that is more than the sum of its parts, and I believe this album is just such a successful experiment.
Below, find “juicy-r”, the project’s first-born and one of the album’s best tracks, along with “it’s all about the crystalizabeths”, my favorite. We have not heard the last of wait what, so keep going back to the website to see what else Charlie’s got cooking.
I wish I could say I was writing this post to tell you about a new record from Lambchop. Unfortunately, the Nashville group, fronted by Kurt Wagner, hasn’t released a new album since 2008.
I also wish I could say that I’ve been listening to Lambchop all along. I haven’t. I just started grinding on it two years ago. It was the winter in Massachusetts and I was huddled in bed with my laptop because the air in my apartment was so frozen I felt like if I moved it might break like glass. It was the middle of the day and dark out, the bruised sky hanging low over the dirty snowdrifts. Someone somewhere must have realized that at that moment I really needed to hear something that would wallow in my misery with me while simultaneously transporting me out of my funk, because I heard Lambchop’s How I Quit Smoking (1996). Wagner’s voice is soulful and his lyrics wistful, but on tracks like “The Man Who Loved Beer” the music feels like something you might hear on a leather couch in the back of a tiki-themed Los Vegas lounge, where the waitresses wear coconut bras and drape greasy plastic leis around your neck.
Now listen to “Your Fucking Sunny Day”, from Thriller (1997). The whole thing sounds so jingly jangly and hopeful, but you pay attention to Wagner’s at turns deadpan and jubilant delivery of lines like “Bent the hose to stop the sprinkler/ hosin’ off the sidewalk/what does it say/your fucking sunny day” and you realize this is another example of Lambchop’s typical irony, in which the sound of the song and the message are diametric.
In 2004, Lambchop released two records simultaneously. The idea was that each album was a separate and complete entity but they weren’t dramatically different in style, so in concept they served as a call and response to one another. They were aptly titled Aw Cmon and No You Cmon. Compare “Something’s Going On” (Aw Cmon) with “The Problem (No You Cmon). In both, Wagner’s voice is less twangy than in earlier albums – he has the gravelly sound of Leonard Cohen. The mood is similar in the two songs, too, inducing a trance-like dream state:
On Lambchop’s most recent album, OH (Ohio), Wagner ups the whimsy with songs like “I’m Thinking of a Number (Between 1 and 2)” and “National Talk Like a Pirate Day”:
He also regains some of his alt-country drawl and clears most of the gravel out of his throat, although the album did include a cover of my favorite Leonard Cohen song, “Chelsea Hotel #2″, which he delivers with a sweet earnestness that wasn’t present in the original:
So, I know this isn’t technically new music, but Lambchop is definitely worth knowing, so check them out. And if you already knew them, I hope this encourages you to dig them out and dust them off more often.
So you know how you’re reading Pitchfork and everything is going well, you’re understanding the jokes, you’re liking the tone and style, you’re laughing, you’re excited, and then all of a sudden they get to the genre part of the program and you’re like new-wave-post-crust-shoe-gum-what?
I admit it, I like being in the know. I like term-dropping. It’s the secret handshake of esoteric knowledge. But when it comes to music genres, I’ve been in the dark and too lazy to turn on the light.
Until now. I give you a glossary, (thank you wikipedia), explaining a list of terms ranging from “I couldn’t begin to tell you what that means” to “No, I can’t define it, but I think I know it when I hear it”. For each I’ve included at least one or two illustrative examples. If a subgenre’s name is self-explanatory, I’ve included it with just an example and no extraneous explanation.
Now listen. I know you will have opinions. You will disagree. I realize the example part is particularly problematic, as most good bands defy specific classification. But come on guys, you know what I mean. Just go with it.
Acid rock – psychedelic rock with long instrumental solos, few (if any) lyrics and musical improvisation (term coined by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test)
ALTERNATIVE _______________ (Rock, Hip hop, Country, etc.) – anything born of a reaction against the status quo of a genre or by blurring a genre with other influences (e.g. Alternative Hip hop has metaphorical lyrics, unlike gangster rap, and is blended with jazz, funk, etc.)
Art rock – rock music with experimental or avant-garde influences. Emphasizes novel sonic texture
Beach music – a regional genre developed from various musical styles of the forties, fifties and sixties. I mostly included this so you could listen to The Platters.
Biomusic – experimental music with sounds created or performed by living things
Britpop – a subgenre of alt rock that emerged from the British independent music scene of the early ‘90s, with bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, in reaction against musical and cultural trends in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, particularly grunge. You need Doc Brown to keep this straight!
Bubblegum pop – pop contrived and marketed to appeal to teenagers. Produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers. Upbeat, typically with sing along choruses, childlike themes and contrived innocence, occasionally combined with an undercurrent of sexual double entendre
Chill out – catch-all term for various styles of relatively mellow, slow-tempo music made by producers in the electronic music scene. Perfect soundtrack for ennui-laden movies.
Chillwave (a.k.a. glo-fi) – a group of artists that, although sonically disparate, are often characterized by their heavy use of synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines
Cowpunk – combo of punk, country, folk, and blues in sound, subject matter, attitude, and style
Dancehall – a genre of Jamaican pop – reggae made sparse. Lyrics often address politics and religion. In the mid-80s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, with digital dancehall (or “ragga”)
Dub – grew out of reggae. Consists of significantly manipulated and reshaped existing recordings, usually with vocals removed from an existing music piece and emphasized drum and bass parts. Often extensive echo or reverb is added. Sometimes features electronically generated sound effects or the use of distinctive instruments like the melodica
Dubstep – electronic dance music with roots in London’s garage scene. Overall sound has tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals
Dream pop – a subgenre of alt rock fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies
shoegaze is a louder, more aggressive strain of dream pop
Psychedelic folk – a loosely defined genre that retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of folk, adding musical influences common to psychedelic rock and the psychedelic experience
Electric folk:
Folk punk:
Folktronica:
Freak folk – draws from traditional folk. Mainly uses acoustic instrumentation, but introduces elements of avant-garde music and psychedelic folk, often featuring uncommon sounds, themes, and vocal styles
Anti-folk – raw or experimental sound. Generally mocks the established mainstream music scene in addition to mocking itself
Glam rock – a style of rock/pop that developed in the early ‘70s, with artists wearing outrageous clothes, makeup, and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter. Hey, androgyny!
Glitch – experimental electronic music characterized by a deliberate use of glitch-based sonic artifacts resulting from malfunctioning digital technology, like CD skipping
Grindcore – heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, high-speed tempo, blast beats, and vocals consisting of growls and high-pitched screams. An infamous trait is the “microsong”. Napalm Death holds the record for shortest song ever recorded with the one-second “You Suffer”. The term is an example of the suffix “-core”, used to denote a loose definition. Really vivid titles, too.
Indie music – technically any music released on an independent label. The styles associated with non-commercially released music have become their own genres, however, such as:
Indie pop – a genre of alt rock music with roots in Scottish post-punk. Its key characteristics are jangling guitars, a love of sixties pop, and often fey, innocent lyrics
Indie rock – rooted in earlier genres like alternative rock, post-punk, and New Wave
Industrial music – a style of experimental and electronic music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. In general, the style is harsh and challenging
Indust. rock:
Indust. metal:
Intelligent dance music (commonly IDM) – an electronic music genre that emerged at the end of the rave era. Influenced by a wide range of musical styles, particularly electronic dance music. Stylistically, IDM tends to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than on a particular set of musical characteristics. Artists labeled “IDM” do not like the term
Math rock – a rhythmically complex, guitar-based style of experimental rock characterized by complex, atypical rhythmic structures, angular melodies, dissonant chords, and atypical time signatures, while staying close to rock music in sound and instrumentation
Minneapolis sound – a hybrid of funk, rock, pop, R&B and New Wave pioneered by Prince in the late ‘70s. Synthesizers generally replaced horns, and were used more as accent than as fill or background. The rhythm is often faster and less syncopated than traditional funk. The “bottom” of the sound is less bass-heavy than traditional funk
Nerdcore – a sub-genre of hip hop characterized by themes and subject matter considered to be of interest to nerds. Rappers rhyme about anything from politics to sci-fi, but computers and Star Wars are favorites
New wave – emerged in the ‘70s with punk rock. Incorporates aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, and disco and ‘60s pop, as well as much of the original punk rock sound and ethos, like an emphasis on short and punchy songs
New New wave –
Noise music – avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, indeterminacy, and repetition. Can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically generated noise, and non-traditional musical instruments. Often ecstatic
Outsider music – songs and compositions that ignore standard musical or lyrical conventions, made by musicians who are not part of the commercial music industry. Often bizarre and emotionally stark
Prog rock – pushes rock’s technical and compositional boundaries by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures
Psychobilly – a fusion of elements of punk, rockabilly, and others. Often with lyrical references to science fiction, horror and exploitation films, lurid sexuality, and other topics generally considered taboo, though usually presented tongue-in-cheek
Post-grunge – a subgenre of alt rock that emerged as a derivative of grunge, utilizing its sounds and aesthetic, but with a more commercially acceptable sound
Post-punk – a rock movement with roots in the late ‘70s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion. Retains its roots in punk but is more introverted, complex and experimental. Broadened the range of punk and underground music, incorporating elements of Krautrock (e.g. Kraftwerk), dub, funk, studio experimentation, and even punk’s anathema, disco
Post-rock – characterized by instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms, harmonies, melodies, timbres, and chord progressions not traditionally found there. Typically instrumental. Don Caballero and Tortoise were among the more prominent bands described as post-rock in the ‘90s, but their styles are very different, despite being instrumental bands centered on guitars and drums. As such, the term has been the subject of backlash from listeners and artists
Power pop – inspired by ‘60s British and American pop and rock. Typically a combination of devices like strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs. Production values lean toward compression and a forceful drum beat. Its cultural impact has waxed and waned over the decades, but it continues to endure
Crust punk – influenced by anarcho-punk, hardcore punk and extreme metal. Evolved in the mid-80s in England. Often has songs with dark and pessimistic lyrics that linger on political and social ills
Synthpunk – a retronym for a small sub-genre of punk music from ‘77-84 in which musicians played synthesizers in place of electric guitars. Mark Jenkins called it “the link between The Ramones and Depeche Mode” in the Washington Post
Riot grrrl – an underground feminist punk movement that started in the early ‘90s. Lyrics address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, and female empowerment
Sadcore – alt rock with bleak lyrics, downbeat melodies and slower tempos. Categorized by Allmusic as “by and for the depressed”
Of course, as I said, most good songs are hard to classify as one specific genre. For instance, the song I’ve been listening to on repeat could easily be called indie rock, post-punk, or Britpop:
Growing up in Minneapolis, Hüsker Dü was a huge band. I always thought Grant Hart was the better songwriter, and his lyrics were very specific. Bob Mould kind of favored vague lyrics. But as far as detail-oriented songwriters, more contemporary… certainly Bruce Springsteen, Jim Carroll, John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats. A lot of hip-hop really inspires me. My absolute favorite stuff is Brother Ali from Rhymesayers. Atmosphere, obviously. Things like Aesop Rock, Sage Francis, MURS, all those guys. Even Jay-Z. Hip-hop is so much about lyrics, and as a lyricist it’s hard not to be inspired by it.
The Hold Steady
Most of us know the story by now. Craig Finn was the frontman of Lifter Puller and Tad Kubler was the band’s lead guitarist. Lifter Puller was ahead of its time, bringing back the synth-heavy sound of the 80’s well before it returned to popularity in the 2000’s. The band had been broken up for three years when, in 2003, Finn and Kubler were watching The Band performing live in The Last Waltz. Finn turned to Kubler and said, “Dude, why aren’t there any bands like this any more?”
With this sentiment in mind, Kubler and Finn formed The Hold Steady, (based in Brooklyn), along with Galen Polivka on bass and Bobby Drake on drums. Listening to The Hold Steady feels like a history lesson in rock and roll. You can pull influence after influence out like threads and still never completely unravel it. The most immediate influence – straight from the band’s mythology – is, of course, The Band.
It’s the wholeness of the music that they emulate. Like The Band, The Hold Steady are big, in sound but also in the scope of their songs; Finn follows a constellation of characters through struggles and hardships and relationships and failures and let downs and revolutions and relapses.
In fact, their second album, 2005’s Separation Sunday, is a loose concept album, following a girl named Holly and her struggle to reconcile her religion with her love for rock and roll and its lifestyle. Just the act of naming a fictional character in their songs sets The Hold Steady apart from their contemporaries – it’s just not cool anymore to be so specific. Vague lyrics about girls and women and metaphors for love, how it’s like a star piercing the darkness or your heart bleeding on your favorite shoes, are much more popular. The most specific character one usually hears in songs today, other than a celebrity name drop, is the “you” in tracks like Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable”, (“To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left”).
But The Hold Steady go there, they tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s like Homer’s Odyssey for modern listeners – the story isn’t just the emotions and the music, not just the poetry of the lyrics, but real characters doing real things. Some lyrics from Separation Sunday’s “How a Resurrection Really Feels”:
Her parents named her Hallelujah, the kids all called her Holly. If she scared you then she’s sorry. She’s been stranded at these parties. These parties they start lovely but they get druggy and they get ugly and they get bloody. The priest just kinda laughed. The deacon caught a draught. She crashed into the Easter mass with her hair done up in broken glass. She was limping left on broken heels.
Here, The Hold Steady perform it live:
I formatted the lyrics in a paragraph because it works that way. It doesn’t feel like fragments, but a cohesive tale. The Band, in a time when it wasn’t nearly as unusual to do so, also wrote several songs with specifically named characters. The most famous is probably “little Bessie” from “Up on Cripple Creek”, but my favorite is Ophelia of the eponymous “Ophelia”.
The Band sings it on The Last Waltz:
Boards on the window
Mail by the door
Why would anybody leave so quickly for
Ophelia?
Where have you gone?
The old neighborhood
Just ain’t the same
Nobody knows just
What became of
Ophelia?
Tell me what went wrong?
The proper word for what The Hold Steady do with many of their songs is “ballad”, but the term doesn’t do them justice. “Ballad” sounds folksy and antique, and The Hold Steady are not that. Their lyrics are about modern youth and what it feels like to go through it. This finger-on-the-pulse-of-dissipated-kids-today feel is a large part of what makes The Hold Steady so much like the great Bruce Springsteen, whose influence Finn mentioned in the quotation opening this post. Springsteen sang not about the 80’s, but from within it, reporting every important detail with excruciating clarity. Just take the opening of the well worn, well loved classic “Born to Run”:
In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on Highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the line
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
Its a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
And what does he do two lines later? He sings to Wendy, specifically, the narrator’s main accomplice in this song about growing up and getting out. Here he is, performing it live with the E Street Band:
Take a look at the lyrics for “Stuck Between Stations” (Boys and Girls in America, 2006), the ultimate ode to today’s 20-somethings diaspora:
Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together
Sucking off each other at the demonstrations
Making sure their makeup’s straight
Crushing one another with colossal expectations
Dependent, undisciplined, and sleeping late
It’s not just the writing that makes The Hold Steady a group of Springsteen disciples. It’s Finn’s plaintive but hopeful cadence and the (albeit nerdier) energy and dynamism of their live performances. Here, they perform “Stuck Between Stations” live in Brooklyn:
I love the way Finn hops around the stage, swinging his arms like a penguin trying to fly.
However, it’s the similarities with John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats) that draw me most to The Hold Steady. In the same Pitchfork interview I quoted at the beginning, Finn said:
There was someone else I was talking to in an interview– I can’t remember who– who said Leonard Cohen said that specific songs with specific images make things the most universal. My style of lyric-writing is very specific and has a lot of details, and I think people react most to that.
The imagery and metaphor in The Hold Steady’s songs resonate most with me. His descriptive language and ability to set a scene and populate it with living, breathing characters are what make Finn like Darnielle. In “One For the Cutters”, from Stay Positive (2008), The Hold Steady’s fifth album, Finn writes:
When there weren’t any parties she’d park by the quarry
Walk into the woods until she came to a clearing
Where townies would gather and drink until blackout
Smoke cigs ’till they’re sick, pack bowls and then pass out
Windows wide open to let the hard rock in
Theirs was a rage that didn’t need much convincing
The girls gave her glares but the boys were quite pleasant
To be perfectly honest, they didn’t seem much different
And here they do it live:
With those lines you get a sense of the main character, the “she” in the song, and her listless drift toward destruction, as well as a scene, a fire, darkness, an atmosphere of danger, the scowling townies. John Darnielle has this same ability, this way of including specific detail and images hand-picked to make the song more real, more believable, more devastating, like in “Dance Music”, from The Mountain Goats’ 2005 album The Sunset Tree:
I’m in the living room watching the Watergate hearings
while my step father yells at my mother.
Launches a glass across the room, straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover.
Lean in close to my little record player on the floor,
so this is what the volume knob’s for.
And here it is live:
Just a few hard facts and you can feel the song. You’re dodging the glass, escaping upstairs, feeling the rug tickle your stomach as you sprawl on the floor, inching the volume louder and louder. Every time I hear this song, I feel less safe, because I identify with the narrator. Darnielle’s details make me his accomplice – I’m right there with him. The same goes for The Hold Steady. After listening to one of their songs, I feel hung over, my veins scraped out, my soul emptied and dehydrated and rusty. I feel tired of all my striving and failing and partying and living and dying and resurrecting.
The thing is, what Darnielle and Finn are doing is writing believable fiction. Their ethos – the “show don’t tell” mantra ground into us in sixth grade English class – is what works to make the readers care about the characters in a novel or short story. It’s what makes us root for Gatsby to get with Daisy, what makes us excuse Sethe for murdering her child, what makes us love Julia along with Winston Smith.
And it’s The Hold Steady’s infectious dedication to their story and characters that makes them so great. Their fifth album, Heaven Is Whenever, was released on May 4th. They’ve been a consistent band as far as sound, but their lyrics have matured over the years and so have their characters. The razor-to-wrist living-on-the-edge mentality of their earlier songs has mellowed to a more zen, accepting attitude, (although, of course, still fairly jaded). As Finn said in a press release for the new album, the lyrics “speak a lot about struggle and reward. It’s about embracing suffering and understanding its place in a joyful life”. So similar themes, but the approach is from a slightly different angle. For instance, in the song “Our Whole Lives” from Heaven Is Whenever he sings:
Cheerleaders dream of quarterbacks
Jock Jills go for jumping Jacks
Goth girls love the vampire bats
They want to draw a little blood for their bath
Well, I don’t go much for that spooky stuff
I like the lights and the uptempo tracks
You’re damn right I believe in love
Because I’ve been in love and I’ve loved right back
Listening to these lyrics, you still see that keen observation, the mention of archetypal characters we’ve all met in our own lives, but you also have a sense of hope that wasn’t as obvious in Finn’s earlier writing. Rather than singing about girls who are good dancers but not great girlfriends, he insists “You’re damn right I believe in live/ Because I’ve been in love and I’ve loved right back”.
The Hold Steady have also spent time in recent albums reflecting on themselves, on what it’s like to attack the subject matter they’ve set their sights on, knowing that the audience will most likely assume their lyrics are autobiographical. While this assumption can be frustrating, it’s also a compliment because it means they’ve done their job – they’ve made it real. Finn addresses this phenomenon directly in “Rock Problems” (from Heaven Is Whenever):
That one girl got me cornered in the kitchen.
I said I’ll do anything but clean.
She wants to know what I liked better
Being a trash bin or an ice machine?
Some writer is by the fridge.
He said he didn’t make the gig.
We wants to know if I was drunk.
He said the kids that he knows from the net said the sound kind of sucked.
I didn’t want to stay in.
Because the walls are so grey.
You can almost feel the tentacles tighten.
I didn’t even want to go out because I was way too frightened.
She said I just can’t sympathize with your rock and roll problems.
Isn’t this what we wanted?
Some major rock and roll problems.
They’ve also eliminated any use of keys or piano on this album, giving the songs a more spare and open quality than they’ve had since Separation Sunday. Watch it live:
Sure, The Hold Steady have a lot of influences, and they’re apparent and immediate. But the way I see it, their songs are like carrot cake. There are separate ingredients – the cream cheese frosting, the cake part itself, the carrot shreds, the raisins, the walnuts – but when you pull them apart, it’s not the same. It’s all of it together in one bite that makes it carrot cake. And that’s how The Hold Steady works – they’re not just a combination of inspirations. They’re something more than that. Something special.
I can see that The Hold Steady’s tendency to hold steady (see what I did there?) to their signature sound could get old, but so far it hasn’t for me, because they’re growing up and so am I, and it feels good to do it together. As Finn sang in “Stay Positive”,
There’s gonna come a time
When the scene’ll seem less sunny
It’ll probably get druggy
And the kids will seem too skinny
I caught on to Joy Division when I was sixteen years old. It’s the kind of music that resonates deep within the rib cage of someone that age – just as The Cure, The Smiths, and Bright Eyes did for me. These people were expressing a kind of pain that I had never experienced, but I felt that I had, because I had gone through puberty, and it takes years to fully get over that trauma. Listening to Ian Curtis’ voice made me ache. When I was that age, I thought I was aching because Curtis was disillusioned and so was I, because Curtis’ pain so clearly echoed my pain that it was like the music was pumping in my veins instead of blood. Now, I realize, that I was a privileged upper middle class private school student living in the suburbs, and that ache I felt was the ache of lack – I had no idea what pain was. I had no history, no darkness. But Ian Curtis did.
Ian Curtis of Joy Division
Today, May 18th, marks the 30th anniversary of Curtis’ suicide. He was born in Stretford, England in 1956. Although from a young age he proved to be a very good poet, he had trouble following through with formal schooling. When he was 19 years old, he married his high school girlfriend, Deborah. One year later, his daughter was born and he met Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook who, with Stephen Morris, would form Joy Division.
Tony Wilson, the co-founder of Factory Records, signed them in 1978. Their EP, An Ideal for Living (1978), had the rough, almost snarling vocals and more biting tone that the band had developed in their live performances. However, for their first album, Unknown Pleasures (1979), producer Martin Hannett gave the music the spaciousness and ambience of emptiness, the tempered despair, that would become Joy Division’s signature sound.
Along with this echo-chamber-of-devastation sound, Joy Division also became known for Ian Curtis’ awkward, twitching movements during live performances. While Joy Division was rising to success, Curtis was battling epilepsy. His jerking was very reminiscent of a seizure, something that he had experienced more than once while on stage.
A year after Unknown Pleasures’ release, Curtis’ epilepsy was getting worse, his marriage was dissolving due to his affair with Annik Honoré, and he was swallowed by depression. Early on May 18, 1980, Curtis hanged himself in his parents’ kitchen in Macclesfield, England. Joy Division’s second album, Closer, wasn’t released until July, reaching #6 on the billboard charts and its single, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, reaching #13.
Joy Division’s opaque tone and elliptic sound, although perfected by Martin Hannett, was born of Ian Curtis’ artistry as a vocalist and lyricist. He left a legacy that continues to be relevant, even thirty years after his death – just take a look at Twitter today. Over the years many tributes to Curtis have been recorded, including “A Day Without Me”, the lead single from Boy, U2’s 1980 debut album:
Ian Curtis’ legacy can also be seen in film. 24 Hour Party People, which came out in 2002, was a sort of mytho-biography of Factory Records, with Joy Division and the heroin-loving Happy Mondays as central figures. If you want a really good sense of the atmosphere in the Manchester music scene at that time, this movie is perfect. However, regarding accuracy, Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer, has emphasized that any time there was a choice between the legend about a situation or character or the truth, he went with the legend. For accuracy, you should try the more recent black-and-white Curtis biopic Control (2007), based on his biography, Touching from a Distance, by Deborah Curtis, Ian’s wife. While 24 HPP gives a sense of the bleak realities of the punk scene in Manchester during the late 70s, the 80s, and the early 90s, Control concentrates on the bleakness of Ian Curtis’ existence, on his shyness, his deeply felt isolation, his beauty as an artist, and the tragedy of his poorly treated epilepsy and sinking depression.
Of course, Joy Division’s ultimate legacy is the post-punk sound: Curtis’ grim determination that slices through his vocals, the sad weight of his lyrics, the cavernous quality, the use of synthesizers and electronics. He influenced his contemporaries, like U2 and The Cure, but there are bands today whose sound wouldn’t be the same without Joy Division, like Interpol, Bloc Party, Nine Inch Nails, and even Moby and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Many, many bands over the years have covered Joy Division songs. Here are some of my favorites.
The Killers, whom I only like at their weirdest, here covering “Shadowplay”:
Hot Chip, covering “Transmission”:
Thom Yorke, covering “Love Will Tear Us Apart”:
NIN, covering “Dead Souls” (which they did for The Crow soundtrack):
In parting, I want to make sure I emphasize that I don’t think Joy Division and Curtis are only relevant to stupid teenagers. Joy Division continues to be one of my favorite bands, along with so many of the bands we wouldn’t have without them. While their legacy is clear, as well as those who influenced Curtis, (David Bowie and Iggy Pop being the most obvious), Joy Division is truly sui generis, which, is I think, why they remain so vivid for us even now, thirty years later.
Below, Ian Curtis himself sings “She’s Lost Control” (from Unknown Pleasures), my favorite Joy Division track. You can see that he maintained the more aggressive tone in his live performances that was tempered into more of a monotone laid over seething angst on the album:
LCD Soundsystem’s front man, James Murphy, was quoted in the Guardian as saying: “I’m a bit of a Zelig. I’ve always been a good imitator. I love music. But I’m just not that original.”
For those unfamiliar with Woody Allen’s 1983 film, “Zelig” refers to Leonard Zelig, a nondescript man with the ability to completely transform his appearance and affect in order to blend in with those around him. Moving through 1920s and 30s society, Zelig is just as comfortable mingling with the affluent guests at one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s parties as he is complaining in the kitchen with the servants. He is, literally, a human chameleon. When he is sent to a psychiatrist for research, she discovers that his desperate need for approval is so strong that he physically changes to fit in with his surroundings.
James Murphy, a drummer with a reverence for the tiny details, is known for his ability to single out the salient parts of a song and then, through editing and enhancement, assemble a cohesive and, more important, new arrangement. This talent is what sets Murphy apart – he has admitted himself that “every person who plays their instrument is better at their instrument than I am”.
LCD Soundsystem has a new album: This Is Happening. The single, “Drunk Girls” is poppy and more complex than most of their past tracks:
Murphy isn’t shy about pointing to his influences. In an interview recently printed in the New Yorker, he told Sasha Frere-Jones that the song is a “revved-up version of Bowie’s ‘Diamond Dogs’”:
However, others told Jones that they noticed its similarity to the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat”:
And LCD’s drummer, Pat Mahoney, saw the same form in “Drunk Girls” as the Silhouettes’ “Get a Job”:
What makes LCD Soundsystem work is its ethos. “LCD live was set up to be an argument about what’s wrong with bands and why bands should be better,” he has said. The band members don’t dress alike during live performances, and the stage is cluttered with equipment. This controlled chaos can be heard in the music, in Murphy’s shouting vocals and the dirtiness of the melodies. Murphy has a rule that nobody onstage hears anything the audience doesn’t. During his performances, he unplugs the mic when he isn’t singing because, as he told Frere-Jones: “It cuts down on the rumble when I’m not singing. I’m trying not to give the front of the house a headache.”
James Murphy is unambitiously iconoclastic as a front man in many ways. He is as involved with the technology as he is with the song writing. He records most of each album alone. He aims for music that is unclean and ugly. Yes, his influences are clear, but he points them out and uses them intentionally. His ability to riff of other artists and create brand new, danceable tracks is what makes his music so great. On top of this, he doesn’t do any of these things for the audience’s approval — only for his own: “I happen to be better at being me. So I can take your instrument and play what I want better than you can.” So is Murphy a Zelig?
In the end of Allen’s film, the same society that made Zelig a phenomenon destroys him. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen to James Murphy.
To finish, my favorite Soundsystem track, “All My Friends” (Sound of Silver, 2007) and Joy Division’s “Transmission”, the song that inspired it:
Danger Mouse, the notorious king of combinations and collaborations, has done it again. As you may remember, he came to prominence in 2004 when he mixed Jay Z’s acappellas from the Black Album with instrumentals from the Beatles‘ White Album to create the ever-so-aptly titled Grey Album. In 2006, his powers combined with MF DOOM to create DANGER DOOM, and their album The Mouse and the Mask. Then, there was that infectious ear worm of 2006, the theme of many summer nights drinking margaritas out on the porch, “Crazy”, a product of Gnarles Barkley, the Cee-lo/Danger Mouse coalition.
After working as a producer with the Gorillaz and Beck, Danger Mouse is back, this time pairing up with James Mercer of The Shins to form Broken Bells and their self-titled debut album.
My favorite track, “The Ghost Inside”:
I love collaborations and covers, especially when they come in unexpected combinations. It seems subversive, in a way, and often irreverent, when an artist covers a song that is totally out of his/her genre, or works with an artist with whom he/she would normally never be associated.
Case in point, an iconoclastic cover by Ted Leo of Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone and the YeahYeahYeah’s Maps:
The Mercer/Mouse collaboration is especially tasty because of the pleasant effect they’ve had on each other. An avid Shins fan in my day, I have to admit that by the time Wincing the Night Away was released I had grown a little weary of Mercer’s vocals. In every song he had a sharp whining twang that started to grate my ear drums.
While Mercer retains some of that quality, Danger Mouse’s influence has done much to temper it, encouraging him to soften his vocal edges. Jauntiness can be inspiring, but in Mercer it had become irritating, and Danger Mouse has helped to subdue him a little bit, smooth him out, so that he sounds more like a twilit ride on a winding country road than a bird chirping outside your window during mating season.
There are combustible combinations that can cause eargasmic explosions. Broken Bells isn’t that. But it is a product of teamwork between two seemingly incompatible artists for which the sum is greater than its parts. Mercer’s heart and Danger Mouse’s soul have comingled to produce a record that is truly fun to listen to and gives a new perspective on both artists, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Finally, one for the road. Broken Bells cover the wonderfully cheesey “Crimson & Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells:
Will Stratton’s voice–airy and effortless–would sway the pines and stir up the cicadas, if he lived anywhere near either. But this Brooklynite combines lush, warm guitar sounds and intimate songwriting to be the neighbor everyone would want in the studio apartment upstairs.
Stratton has released two LPs, 2007’s What the Night Said and 2009’s No Wonder. Both contain hushed melodies made for shoeboxes or grain solos. Luckily for everyone (particularly in the NYC area), and despite critical praise for both records, Stratton is still playing tiny venues that best suit his stylings. I highly suggest checking out a show while you have the opportunity.
Stratton’s lyrics also can disarm: No Wonder rolls “Things could fall apart if you would let them.” Vile Bodies asks “have you ever seen those skinny urchins? The ones with souls like coals on fire…” Poetry and rain drop guitar. Anyone have any complaints?
No Wonder
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Vile Bodies
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Sunol
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