A month or two back a friend of mine, who I’ve known since college, read my year-end post on the musical blind spots I filled in during 2006. “Your blind spots are like my top ten of all time,” he said. Not that it was his intention, but I knew when I made that post that I’d be subject to some degree of shame—how can I be thirty years old and consider myself a music nerd and not know Marquee Moon? I worked in a record store the entire time I was in college, ferchrissakes!
His email made me reconsider—what the hell was I listening to back then, when I wasn’t discovering Television, wasn’t listening to the Byrds, Big Star, the Kinks? I was busy buying up Fat Cat 12”s, clicky electronica, and krautrock. When I worked in that record store a co-worker and I would have “space rock Fridays,” where we would just listen to stuff distributed by Forced Exposure—records full of tones and buzzes. We’d scour the promo racks for anything that looked vaguely experimental and if it turned out to have—gasp!—song structure, we’d fall over each other on the way to the eject button as if a seven-year-old had just walked in while Wu-tang was on. Verse-chorus-verse, harmony, melody—it was anathema. Give us sound, no more.
Jump ahead ten or twelve years and, while I can still appreciate and adore a great ambient record, true joy at the record store comes when I pick up an album, new or old, that I can sing along to. It's not sudden; I've been singing along for years. But lately I'm particularly aware of the simple pleasures to be found in simple tunes. I'm not rejecting the wish—need, in the best cases— to experiment with form or sound, but right now I find the most enjoyment in songwriters that possess the confidence to not use deconstruction or abstraction to make some larger statement, particularly if the songwriter in question has the talent or ability to do so. Employing the right flourish at the right time, in a way that enhances the song but doesn’t draw attention to itself, that’s craft. This is the element that’s been missing, in one way or another, from a lot of new records I’ve been buying lately, for instance Clap Your Hands, Arcade Fire, or in a smaller way the Shins. Each album seems burdened by overcompensation, a misguided lack of confidence or an irrational need to self-rebel.
I'm getting a little bit off track. I didn’t begin this post with the intention of figuring out what’s “wrong” with these bands. Frankly they may not think anything is wrong, other than with me. And in fact that’s closer to what I’m trying to ascertain. The emails my friend and I exchanged about blind spots was just one of many conversations I’ve had with him, with my wife, and with other friends, all about different things but all adding up to my own perception of how my relationship with music, indeed with other artforms as well, has changed in the last ten years. I’m fumbling around a point here; more tomorrow [here].
I've had this conversation a few times over the last couple years with a few people (unfortunately, you haven't been one of them). I've always loved a good sing-along, but more so in recent years. All I want these days, in fact, is some compelling melody and harmony.
Good examples for me are Sam Beam and Jeff Mangum. The last two years or so, I can sit and sing that crap all day long.
So, now I want to know, give me a list (cause lists are good times) of the best sing-along, compelling melody albums. I promise I will buy them (unless I already own them).
Posted by: Jeremy | March 21, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Jeremy, stay tuned. I'll get at this a little bit in tomorrow's post, and I'll give a list within the next day or two. But if you haven't bought that Midlake album yet I'll have to buy it for you myself!
Posted by: pgwp | March 21, 2007 at 01:23 PM
Yoga is your way to harmony. Yoga and spirituality go hand in hand. Hath yoga is a great exercise for both mind and spirit. Spiritual medicine is fantastic for the soul and mind as well as for the body. People should pay more attention to this great tool of healing. If we have many rewards in life which can be many ferris wanli dimensional to transients to our biology and in more agreement of our attention to find the truth behind the metaphysical reformation of life. This is because our attention always go towards the traditional medicine that may or may not cure the real problem.
Posted by: Suchi | January 25, 2009 at 03:06 PM