The Song vs. the Sound

On the same day I downloaded In Rainbows, I also entered the physical world and went to a bricks-and-mortar record store and bought Beirut’s newest (among other purchases). I’ve been meaning to write some kind of formal review of it but I’ve been distracted by my first impression, which was this: Zach Condon has nailed his sound, but he’s yet to fully nail his song. To some extent that first impression has been proven wrong (kinda) with increased listens: The Flying Cup Club is far better than Gulag Orkestrar, despite my three favorite Beirut songs being on the earlier album (rounded out by numerous songs I could do without). But even though Condon’s songcrafting skill is improving, I still can’t totally get beyond that distinction: the song vs. the sound.

It’s a balance any band worth their salt has to achieve. It’s elementary: if your sound—the aesthetic quality of the noises produced by guitars, rhythm section, keyboards, voice, and combinations therein—is strong, then you’ll stand apart from the rest. But if you’ve got no song—the skill of lyric, structure, emotion, and delivery—then you’ve got no foundation.

If all bands had to be positioned on some sort of spectrum—song at the extreme left, sound at the extreme right—the most rewarding, most the time, would be somewhere in the middle. Sigur Ros skews toward sound, but then again their best album (Agaetis Byrgun) is the one that wraps their sonic textures around chord progressions and vocal melodies (just listen to "Sven-g-Englar": its two best qualities are the melody of the chorus and the sudden chord change 2/3 in). Bob Dylan is considered by many to be the greatest songwriter in pop history, yet many find him unlistenable: it’s his sound, not his song, that repels.

You get the idea. No matter how traditional or experimental an artist is, you can listen to an album and make the distinction.

So my brilliant wife and I were driving through Los Angeles one evening, listening to the new Beirut for the first time, maybe not giving it our full attention but listening nonetheless and forming opinions.

“So this one’s supposed to have a big French influence.”
“He’s not in Eastern Europe anymore?”
“Guess he’s done with the Balkans. He took his muse to France.”
“I don’t know, pretty much sounds like the last one.”

It wasn’t that reductive, but more or less that’s how the conversation started. “I like this album,” my wife said, “but if he does another one like this I think I’m done with him.”

Why is that? What is it about an artist that can sate us after one or two albums, even if the output doesn’t necessarily get worse? It’s the sound. Sound doesn’t have staying power without song. (One could argue vice versa as well.)

We started talking about the French/Balkan influence, our conversation colored by the  New York Times article I mentioned last week—“authenticity,” ancestral roots, whether any of that matters. I don’t think the latter matters, but I think the question of authenticity sticks to some artists but not to others as a direct correlation to their ability to let the song, not the sound, be their foundation. Perhaps inevitably, Paul Simon’s Graceland came up. That is one the albums of my life, not only because it’s good but because I’ve been listening to it since I was in sixth grade and it's forever entwined with too many great and mundane and iconic memories. But I digress. The reason Graceland is so good is because Simon never let world-music inclinations subsume his songs. “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” “Under African Skies,” “I Know What I Know”—they could all, technically, be stripped of the African influence and still be pretty terrific. On the other hand, it is that African influence that sets Graceland apart from—and above—every other Paul Simon album. The song and the sound, balanced.

Condon doesn’t achieve such a seamless integration. If you took away the horns and warbly chanting, not every track on The Flying Cup Club would survive. That’s not to say that means it’s not a good album, but it might explain my wife’s reaction—“I don’t need another one of these.” I have the same tentative feeling toward Sufjan Stevens. It’s that sound fatigue that keeps me from purchasing any album by Stevens that doesn’t have a state in its title. He’s a fantastic songwriter and has a unique sound, but too often he leans on the latter without confidence in the former. In my book he’s got one more album to prove his sound serves his songs and not the other way around.

Maybe it’s because I bought Beirut and Radiohead on the same day, but my first impression of Beirut has informed the way I’ve been listening to everything in the last month: I’m listening to everything with “the song vs. the sound” in mind. That might explain my reaction to In Rainbows, since I think Radiohead is most interested in exploring the sophistication of their sound than giving into the gratification of their songs. No, they don’t need to go back to writing pop tunes that would fit better on The Bends, but they could consider what effect each and every one of those washes of sound and effected vocals and doubled drum tracks has on the pure, simple pleasure of the song.

Comments

[Hugh]

"Zach Condon has nailed his sound, but he’s yet to fully nail his song."

I think that single sentence sums up the album far better than any of the other reviews I've read. Nice work. :)

[that wife he's talking about]

one thing of note, though - a well refined sound sure can make for a great concert. beirut was amazing live, and some of the songs (most of which i had never heard before) were hugely better in person than on the record, thanks to the bravado and bombast of his "sound".

[Scraps]

I like your axis with sound on one end and song on the other (though I might replace "song" with "structure"). I quibble with the example of Dylan, though, because while I dislike his sound, I could deal with that: it's his songs I find clunky and irritating, so full of flaws of craft that they overwhelm his overrated (to me) inspiration. I acknowledge that what he does just doesn't speak to me (though I stand behind my assessment of his sloppy craft -- "poet" my ass), and that he is obviously a (middlebrow) genius, whatever I think of him.

I skew heavily to the song end of things. Which is why -- for example -- while I love Graceland, it is certainly not (for me) above his flawless song masterpiece, Paul Simon. (Also, Graceland is far from the first time Simon borrowed from non-American sounds; it's just the first time he did so for a whole album.)

[phaid]

Brilliant. love the distinction between sound and song and the use of Graceland as an example was great. It's way too early to go any deeper (small children up way too early) but I know I'll be thinking about this a lot. Brilliant.

[Scraps]

P.S.: Seven Swans is my favorites Stevens album. But I love his songwriting; his beautiful sound is just a bonus. The only problem I have with Stevens is his prolificity is somewhat overwhelming; it's hard for me to absorb him at such length. I've found it worth the effort to learn the albums, but Seven Swans does not sprawl, and feels more like a finished piece of art, if you prefer albums that way. (I do.)

[Richard]

I think this is a useful distinction as well. I think I come down on the "sound" side, but I'm not altogether happy about it. It's kind of lazy. There are exceptions, though, where I zero in on the songs--but if the sound repels me in any way, it's harder for me to do so.

Dylan is an interesting example. For me, part of loving Dylan is embracing his sound. His (early) sound is amazing. Scraps calls his songwriting "sloppy". I think that has been true on too many occasions (for which he's undoubtedly gotten a free pass because he's a "genius"), but is not at all true for his best work (obviously, a matter of taste and opinion). His wordplay and melodies are enough songcraft for me.

Anyway, my problem is I often have a hard time hearing the songs beneath a production I don't like. And song fragments can carry a whole record if I like the sound/production enough, if those fragments are at all interesting. This is why, for example, I've struggled with some of the early Throwing Muses albums (not the first one, though), and why I've always preferred Surfer Rosa to Doolittle. On some level, I've always suspected that it stems from a superficial engagement with the music, but that could just be me being uncharitable to myself.

[scott pgwp]

brilliant wife - yes! Beirut was great live. So was Sigur Ros when we saw them years ago. The danger there though is that you really have to pull it off - hence you and I have been mostly disappointed every time we saw Sufjan. He always sounded like he and his friends were imitating a great sound rather than making one.

Scraps - I'm no real defender of Dylan, but still I think you get my point, in terms of how he is popularly accepted. Also your point about Sufjan's prolificity is precisely why I've limited my purchases.

I wouldn't use "structure" in place of "song"; structure, for me, is only part it. Aside from wordplay and wit, there is also the less tangible emotional payoff in delivery - hence why one singer can make a song a classic and another makes the same song lifeless. There are a million examples of this and I can't think of one because it's still too early in the morning for me.

Richard - I think I used to come down pretty firmly on the sound side of things, and over the years I've been moving steadily in the other direction. And for whatever it's worth I've always had greater attachment to Surfer Rosa myself.

[Scraps]

Wordplay and wit are part of structure for me. "Sound" is the materials: words and sounds. "Structure" is how you put them together: lyrics and riffs and songforms.

I think that structure is the grounds upon which we can make criticisms that are more than subjective (which is not to see that reactions to lyrics and songforms isn't subjective, just that there are grounds on which we can legitimately call things bad), while sound is (on the whole) the area that is entirely personal reaction. (An idea that underlies much of the anti-rockist sentiment: rocking out is not an objective virtue, nor is wimpiness or mellowness a flaw [unless one is trying to rock out].)

[Tom]

Writing about dance music Simon Reynolds made the distinction between records that were "songs" - could stand by themselves, with recognisable hooks etc. - and those that were "tracks" - made most sense as part of a DJ set, a component in a wider aesthetic that the dancer/listener is responding too.

I dunno if that has much relevance to your point - it struck me as a parallel, though, from a music where "songwriting" in the traditional sense isn't so important.