Jekyll2023-08-13T14:40:07+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/Bad Music HertzSiblings celebrating and borderline obsessing over their favorite records.Scum Fuck Flower Boy2018-02-24T11:19:00+00:002023-01-28T18:51:11+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/scum-fuck-flower-boy<p>I’ve been a late bloomer my whole life. From not easily sharing with others in preschool to low levels of self awareness in high school, I seemed to always be a good two years behind my peers. Naturally, this trait I’d carried with me for most of my life also came with me to college.</p>
<p>While I did exceptionally well in my classes, I wasn’t actually <em>doing</em> anything with my life. I had no passion projects, participated in no clubs, and didn’t even have a boyfriend to share my boredom with. To put it bluntly, for the better part of freshman and sophomore year at college, I was stagnant. While my peers were busy making fast friends with those around them, I spent my days watching hours upon hours of late night TV, writing angry political Facebook posts on topics I knew nothing about, and other nonproductive activities. I took just about any low-effort time waster available if it helped chase away the recurring fear that I peaked too early. Back in high school I had a boyfriend, a bustling social life filled with friends, and a successful “career” in numerous extra curriculars like swim team, theater and jazz band. But at college, I was frozen stiff with insecurities, seemingly incapable of sucking it up and pushing myself to build the life I wanted back. There I was, again stuck two years behind my peers and too frightened to take the effort required to fix it. Some things never change.</p>
<p>On particularly lonely nights I’d sometimes think about attending the campus <a href="http://www.drexelfuse.org">LGBTQ club</a> again—which I had only attended twice before deciding to stick to the comforting drywall of my dormroom instead. I’d wrestle with myself on the topic for a little longer, but eventually turn the TV back on to another mindless night of Family Guy reruns instead, until the thought was drowned out by the white noise.</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/tyler-the-creator/420368335">Tyler, The Creator</a>’s 2015 record <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/cherry-bomb/983056044"><em>Cherry Bomb</em></a> received a lukewarm response, at best. Despite continuing to showcase growing talent as an arranger and producer, critics slammed the record for having <a href="https://youtu.be/e2rexvDHPZs?t=1m18s">“trashy lyrics”</a> and awful mixing that unfortunately suffocated its moments of promise. For every step forward with regards to composition and arrangement, gross mixing and overly-graphic lyrics dragged him right back.</p>
<p>It didn’t help that Tyler was also under heavy scrutiny from music journalists for his continued use of <a href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/unapologetic-homophobia-tyler-creator">homophobic</a>, <a href="http://genprogress.org/voices/2011/09/13/17026/tyler-the-creator-reignites-debate-about-misogyny-in-music/">misogynistic</a> lyrics, his <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/60027-tyler-the-creator-issues-long-response-to-fans-reddit-post-criticizing-his-new-music/">vain, aggressive social media presence</a>, and his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Future#2015–present:_different_directions;_disbandment,_third_mixtape">continually dissolving relationship</a> with <a href="http://oddfuture.com">Odd Future</a> (Tyler’s musical group which jumpstarted his, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/frank-ocean/442122051">Frank Ocean</a>’s, and other hip hop artists’ independent careers). With social pressures mounting and music too distorted and off-putting to attract new listeners, Tyler’s professional growth stalled. It was around this time he started closing up, leaving his home less and less, and getting fewer and fewer phone calls from friends.</p>
<p>However, instead of burying the problem under another wall of distorted noise like he did his own voice in <em>Cherry Bomb</em>, picking more fights on Twitter, or overcompensating with even more graphic lyrics, Tyler did something entirely unexpected. He took a deep breath, cut the distortion, and just started asking himself questions.</p>
<p>Why <em>was</em> he so homophobic? Why wasn’t he leaving his home as often anymore? Why was he buying so many cars he didn’t need? Why’d he find it difficult to get started on his next project?</p>
<p>Such a radical change in approach wasn’t wasted. The fruit of this intimate self reflection was a gorgeously produced record, teeming with a lush bed of colorful chords, groovy beats, and moments of genuine, quiet honesty. It was in this headspace that <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> was conceived.</p>
<h2 id="in-bloom">In Bloom</h2>
<p><em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> is a grounded struggle for self understanding and acceptance, the likes of which we’d only gotten tastes of in his past work. Alongside swelling strings, Tyler lays his fears to bare in the opening track, “Foreward”, where he imagines suddenly dying (perhaps from drowning), and wonders who would even know. It’s a well-penned verse that says much about his social life’s health without explicitly stating so. His ruminations continue alongside Disney-like orchestrations in “Where This Flower Blooms”, where Tyler delivers startling lines (given his long history of homophobic lyrics and Tweets):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell these black kids they could be who they are<br />
Dye your hair blue, shit, I’ll do it too<br />
Look, I smell like Chanel<br />
I never mall grip<sup id="fnref:mall-grip" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:mall-grip" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> with my manicured nails</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Manicured nails? Chanel? What’s traditionally feminine things doing on a <em>Tyler, The Creator</em> album, let alone with regards to Tyler himself?</p>
<p>The confusion continues into the transition track “Sometimes”, where Tyler ambiently sings “Sometimes, I sit in my room / and think about us”, while an unknown man’s voice indirectly tells us the next song will be about him. This transition track establishes a new frame for the following track, “See You Again”, where Tyler wistfully describes longing for the ideal lover of his dreams over a whimsical, dreamy soundscape.</p>
<p>Given the framing from the previous track, Tyler effectively came out as gay (or bi).</p>
<p>If longtime Tyler skeptics were having difficulty buying into Tyler’s honesty up to this point, revealing such a secret certainly helps break down those walls. It provides valuable insight into Tyler’s psyche and suggests the root cause of his homophobic lyrics in the past were to deny his own feelings.</p>
<p>That’s not to say the visceral, aggressive Tyler of yore is gone in <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em>, far from it. Much like the title of the record, there’s moments of “Scum Fuckery” just as there are “Flowery” moments cross-pollinated throughout the record. Sometimes one side gets a whole song, sometimes they share. It’s as if Tyler’s playing a game of tug-of-war with himself instrumentally and lyrically, and it’s surprisingly effective at keeping the record fresh through a full listen.</p>
<p>Compared to <em>Cheery Bomb</em>, him moments of aggression work so well this time around because the songs are genuinely <strong>fun</strong>, despite being relatively scummy. Take “Who Dat Boy”, whose Jaws-like intro is a delectable treat for those that love build-up and anticipation in their music. It makes the drop and first appearance of <em>Cherry Bomb</em>-like Tyler on the record all the more impactful, without having to resort to even more offensive lyrics.</p>
<p>There’s also “I Ain’t Got Time!”, which <em>could</em> have easily been a run-of-the-mill fight instigator, but instead sounds as delightfully funny as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwcMIYpQg&feature=youtu.be&t=27m5s">“an Aunt putting earrings in her purse about to fight”</a>. It’s dirty and mean, yes, but it’s presented in such an quirky, unusual way I can’t help but love it.</p>
<p>For those that still can’t get into the grittier songs, there’s plenty of softer songs interwoven throughout the record to help make the overall package more palpable, like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. In “Boredom”, Tyler confronts his bitterness towards old friends copping out and his loneliness at not even having a partner to share a proper meal with (though he fails to do anything to address it).</p>
<p>Tyler’s insecurities and aversion to action appear again in “911 / Mr. Lonely”, where he and the features emphatically chant “I can’t even lie / I’ve been lonely as fuck”, with Tyler urging listeners to check up on him occasionally at the end of the song. Again, instead of “finding the time to do something” to improve his situation, Tyler’s crippling anxiety throughout <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> continually shuts him down.</p>
<p>In addition to making a well-paced record sonically, these duel facets of Tyler’s personality also serve as a reminder that questioning oneself and meditation don’t immediately make oneself a better person. Tyler’s still the Tyler from <em>Cherry Bomb</em> and before, we’re simply seeing the softer side he had locked up tight up until this point.</p>
<p>While our situations are different, I can’t help but empathize with the loneliness and anxiety in <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em>. Since my college was halfway across the States, I slowly lost contact with my old friends from high school. Not to mention, the distance was almost certainly a factor in the breakup with my first boyfriend. My bitterness at losing these connections held me back from improving my situation, or at least taking the effort to maintain those connections myself. My fear of failure and obsession with the way things used to be also numbed my hunger for pursing new projects or activities to better myself, so nothing changed as the days went by. Different situations—to be sure—but similar outcomes.</p>
<h2 id="take-me-back-to-november">Take Me Back To November</h2>
<p>Everything comes together in “November”, easily my favorite track on the record and what I personally feel is the most touching. The directness shown in “Foreward” and the end of “Boredom” return in full glory with Tyler analyzing another road block keeping him from moving forward: his longing to return to that one November.</p>
<p>The November in question is most likely the <a href="https://www.axs.com/camp-flog-gnaw-carnival-announced-2015-festival-lineup-65892">2015 Camp Flog Gnaw</a>—an annual music festival orchestrated by Tyler himself—where many members of the old Odd Future group <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/odd-future-to-reform-at-tyler-the-creators-camp-flog-gnaw-20150911">temporarily reformed to perform</a>. Peppered between these nostalgia trips, Tyler expresses even more fears, like that coming out on track seven would further drive his fan base away, or that his numerous car purchases of late are just vain attempts to fill the void he fears only another man could fill.</p>
<p>Later in the song, Tyler turns the mic towards us for the first time and asks what our own “November” is. Is it a place? A person? This question leads into what I feel is the most moving moment on the record; the music cuts as an interlude of Odd Future members and other friends tell us what their own Novembers are as their voices weave in and out together into a musical tapestry. After the isolation and loneliness up to this point (particularly with regards to friends copping out or disappearing), to have those close to Tyler all come together to share their own “Novembers” with him feels like a warm embrace from a loved one, and stands out as a moment of solidarity in an otherwise lyrically bleak and lonely album.</p>
<p>Afterwards—with what appears to be newfound confidence—Tyler moves back to focusing on today and for the first time on the record takes an active step forward by calling someone he wrote a song about “cause the love I got for you has exceeded appearance”. He gets as far as hearing the answering machine as we transition into the album’s climax, “Glitter”.</p>
<p>Up to this point on the record, Tyler enlisted numerous features to help with the more demanding vocal sections. It’s not news that Tyler’s singing and rapping voice isn’t a particularly strong attribute of his, and he’s even gone on record admitting he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwcMIYpQg&feature=youtu.be&t=26m18s">“hates the sounds of his voice”</a> (which explains why it’s usually buried in his past work).</p>
<p>Not in “Glitter”. There’s no features this time, just Tyler singing his heart out the best he can: wobbly, pitch-shifted falsetto and all. While Tyler timidly explored these feelings earlier on the record, “Glitter” is an unashamed celebration of them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fireworks<br />
I feel like glitter<br />
Every time you come around<br />
I feel like glitter<br />
You’re the one that I needed in my life</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the tail end of the song—just when things finally seem right—Tyler’s hesitations come back in full force as the song itself gets cold feet and freezes up along with him. The jubilance vanishes, replaced instead with creeping, down-pitched hesitations about his weight, the relationship’s destined failure, and other fears. Tyler even starts to softly mock himself with a haunting, children’s sing-a-long that also serves as the one and only title drop on the record:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>The song ends with the answering machine closing the call because nobody was speaking, confirming the jubilant confessions in “Glitter” weren’t even said aloud. He chickened out at the last minute.</p>
<h2 id="enjoy-right-now-today">Enjoy Right Now, Today</h2>
<p>The album could have ended there. Throughout <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em>, the “scum” and “flower” aspects of Tyler’s personality have wrestled back-and-forth from song-to-song, but on “Glitter” they both appear together in a final showdown, with the “flower” side withering and dying at the end. In this respect, “Glitter” makes for a fitting thematic closer.</p>
<p>That’s not how it ends. Instead, we are met with a marching anthem, of all things, entitled “Enjoy Right Now, Today”. Surprisingly, there’s no singing or rapping for the entirety of its four minute runtime, just unreserved instrumental optimism. Coming from a lyric-heavy, somber record, it’s certainly a curious choice, but one I believe can be explained solely by the title: <strong>“Enjoy Right Now, Today”</strong>. After an entire album of fits and starts, misgivings and insecurities, to have such a clear, hard stance towards doing something to build towards a better tomorrow at the tail end of the record says more than any lyrics could.</p>
<p>In fact, I like to think the slamming car door and footsteps at the end of the record hint at Tyler arriving to talk to his crush in person, a second (and this time, successful) chance at a new November.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> is a career-defining record. Sonically, the record is easy to get into with a plethora of earworm melodies, but with rich production and melodic intricacies that offer something new after every relisten. It would have been fairly mundane to take the subject matter <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> tackles and make the instrumentation as nasty and distorted as it feels to live through such times, but it’s facilitating to see those feelings instead turned into something that’s as remarkably beautiful as many of the cuts on <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> are. For these reasons and others I barely skimmed the surface of, <em>Scum Fuck Flower Boy</em> is a rewarding experience from every angle.</p>
<p>Like Tyler in “Enjoy Right Now, Today”, I did eventually break out of the drywall and begin making serious efforts on meaningful side projects (like the site you’re reading this article on). I also began looking for a companion in earnest with online dating instead of waiting around and hoping they’d stumble onto me. It wasn’t an instant cure, but it did start turning the wheels. My numerous side projects landed me my first real job at <a href="https://www.ibx.com">Independence</a>, where I got my first experience with big data. That experience got my foot in the door at <a href="https://my.xfinity.com/?cid=cust">Comcast</a> (after numerous failed attempts), and it was there I swallowed my fears, took a timid step forward, and met the love of my life last year.</p>
<p>Long gone are the days of sulking about my dorm room, longing for my high school glory days back. They’re just fond memories to me now. After “finding the time” and finding the courage to take that first step five years ago, I can finally say today with a smile:</p>
<p>“My November’s right now”.</p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="scavenger-hunt">Scavenger Hunt</h2>
<ul>
<li>The album’s filled to the brim with clever gardening imagery, see if you can find them all (practically every song has at least one!)</li>
<li>There’s a faux ending in “Pothole”, followed by a short, rough demo made by Tyler that was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwcMIYpQg&feature=youtu.be&t=23m50s">accidentally left in an early “Pothole” cut. Tyler liked the effect so much though that he kept it in the final master</a>. Keep an ear out to see if you can distinguish the “real” ending and the start of the rough demo clip at the end of “Pothole”!</li>
<li>Listeners that love the Jaws theme are bound to love the intro to “Who Dat Boy”. See if you can tell where it is without looking at the track listing.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="further-reading">Further Reading</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/theneedledrop">Anthony Fantano</a>’s <a href="http://www.theneedledrop.com">TheNeedleDrop</a> YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlLqB2lxii4">review</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwcMIYpQg">FLOWER BOY: a conversation</a> - interview with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrod_Carmichael">Jerrod Carmichael</a>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:mall-grip" role="doc-endnote">
<p>A <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mall%20grab">“mall grip”</a> is a commonly frowned-up method of holding a skateboard. <a href="#fnref:mall-grip" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Marc BarrowcliftIs it scummy? Is it flowery? Spoiler: It’s both, and it’s Tyler’s best record to date.Band on the Run2017-01-18T21:50:00+00:002017-01-18T21:50:00+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/band-on-the-run<p>Paul was in trouble.</p>
<p>Despite some records like <em>RAM</em> enjoying retroactive critical praise, Paul’s solo and Wings work following The Beatles’ breakup announcement had yet to break past mediocre commercial success. Old reviews of <em>Wild Life</em> and <em>Red Rose Speedway</em> from the early 70’s paint a grim scene with <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/red-rose-speedway-19730705">one review in particular</a> stating Paul’s “apparently begun a process of settling down” and perhaps ironically “working within a band framework that looks to remain stable.” The message was clear; Paul and Wings needed a hit or they would fade away into obscurity.</p>
<p>In an attempt to <a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=10m">inject some fresh vibes into his music</a>, Paul decided to get away from EMI’s London studio and record with Wings in a place “off the beaten track”. In his search, he discovered that EMI happened to have a studio in a place that seemed at first to be the perfect fit: Lagos, Nigeria. He just knew <a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=10m">“something’s going to happen if we go to Lagos”</a>.</p>
<p>Many things happened, indeed. The night prior to their flight’s departure, Paul got a call from two of his Wings band mates, lead guitar Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seidel, making it clear they did not intend to come. They quit the band over the phone.</p>
<p>With almost half the band gone just hours before their scheduled flight, Paul was at a crossroads. He could either cut his loses, cancel the whole trip, and try to shamble together a complete band again or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXT_JEYKJXg">ram on</a> anyway to Lagos with the rest of what now remained of Wings—his wife Linda and pianist Denny Laine. Paul made up his mind.</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=11m43s">“I’m going to make an album you wish you were on”</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>Things only got worse when the intrepid musicians landed at Lagos. What awaited them was a severely underdeveloped state—fresh off a civil war with a military government to boot—and a half-baked, barely finished studio that <a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=14m50s">didn’t even have a proper sound booth</a>. Not to mention, at one point all the demo tapes were stolen in a drive-by theft as Paul and Linda were walking back home one night (they were lucky to leave the situation with their lives).</p>
<p>At that point, most other people would have immediately high-tailed it back home to the cozy London studio (perhaps wisely), but Paul and the band continued time and time again to grit their teeth, dig in their heels, and press forward anyway despite the band falling apart, the shoddy recording studio making recording difficult, and the unsafe environment nearly costing them their lives.</p>
<p>I mean no hyperbole when I say it’s a miracle <em>Band on the Run</em> got made at all.</p>
<h2 id="jet-the-pony">Jet the Pony</h2>
<p>My album reviews try first and foremost to prime readers into what I believe to be the optimal state of mind for their first listen. To achieve this, I made a habit of prioritizing the album’s lyrics, which I found much easier to use for describing songs than attempting to describe specific sounds with text. This has not been a problem thus far since the albums I’ve covered have been lyrically dense, thus giving me a lot of material to work with.</p>
<p><em>Band on the Run</em> (and frankly Paul McCartney’s writing style as a whole) breaks my comfortable review format. Since his musical growth spurt in <em>Revolver</em>, Paul embodies a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness writing style that frequently amounts to songs or movements that don’t actually make any logical sense. As a direct result, when his songs aren’t simple fun, they’re instead something like a scrapbook collage of whatever musical fragments happened to inspire him that day. Take <em>RAM</em>’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI6C7L66zq8">“Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey”</a> for example, which contains three very distinct pieces seemingly superglued together to make a single track, or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road#Medley">“Golden Slumbers”</a> medley which made up the near entirety of <em>Abbey Road</em>’s second side.</p>
<p>So, in traditional Paul fashion, <em>Band on the Run</em>’s lyrics usually are just plain gibberish or run only skin deep. Look no further than “Jet” for an example; it seems to be a song about a bride-to-be and her disapproving father. This was fairly straightforward until Paul later revealed in an interview that “Jet” was actually <a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=36m10s">the name of his pony in Scotland</a>, which had served as the song’s original inspiration. You can still catch remnants of this inspiration even in the released version<sup id="fnref:jet" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:jet" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, which is made all the more humorous given that Jet also doubles as the disapproving father’s name:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jet was your father as bold as the sergeant major<br />
How come he told you that you were hardly old enough yet<br />
…<br />
Jet with the wind in your hair.<br />
Of a thousand laces<br />
Climb on the back and we’ll go for a ride in the sky</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a result, <em>Band on the Run</em> defies being pigeon-holed into my poetry-analysis review format and instead demands being experienced as music first and foremost. To clarify, Paul’s writing style is partially what makes this music such a relaxing delight to listen to in the first place. It lets you put down the lyrics sheet, relax as your mind unwinds, and simply enjoy the music washing over you. <em>Band on the Run</em>’s lyrics, and by extension Paul’s writing style, are not meant to be taken too seriously or ripped apart by isolated analysis. So, to better prepare for Paul’s free-spirited writing style, I encourage you to consider avoiding the lyrics sheet for your first listen or two and instead focus on letting your mind escape with the band<sup id="fnref:joanna-divers" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:joanna-divers" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>.</p>
<h2 id="raw-but-professional">Raw but Professional</h2>
<p>In my opinion, <em>Band on the Run</em>’s timeless charm stems from the group’s perfect blend of bare Lagos tapes and lush London orchestration recorded upon their return. With half the band gone and the remainder left to record in an incomplete studio, the group were naturally constrained and were forced to boil songs down to the essentials. While a similar approach was used in <em>RAM</em>, Paul’s unusually casual performances on <em>RAM</em> ultimately resulted in a charming album with mediocre production values. For example, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8pulOnIE5Q">“Backseat of My Car”</a>, the easy-going recording style left what was supposed to be the explosive grand finale sounding <a href="https://youtu.be/O8pulOnIE5Q?t=3m41s">disappointingly weak</a> in comparison to <em>Band on the Run</em>’s tightly produced finale, “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”. In this respect, <em>Band on the Run</em> can be seen as the raw recording approach forged in <em>RAM</em> refined and taken to it’s logical conclusion once Paul had his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_Silver_Hammer#Recording">renowned fire for perfection</a> back in full force.</p>
<p>The band utilized this solid foundation to explore many different sounds and styles, leaving something for just about everyone even with the record’s short ten-track listing; there’s classic rockers in the form of “Helen Wheels”, soothing folk with “Mamonia”, a bite-sized medley with “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)”, and more! It’s an absolute treat to be surprised at every track with something new that nonetheless sounds like it still came from the same album. Oftentimes, artists have a tendency to remain “samey” through individual albums which has the unfortunate side effect of songs congealing together into indistinguishable blobs. It takes great attention for artists to prevent this from happening, and <em>Band on the Run</em> gracefully does so with it’s diverse palate of genres and tight pacing, leaving no particular style around long enough to get stale.</p>
<p>I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Wing’s signature “secret sauce” as being a huge reason <em>Band on the Run</em> sounds as great as it does, even all these years later—Linda McCartney’s backing vocals. Let me be clear; Linda’s vocals are not stellar, they’re average at best and don’t hold up at all when they’re the lead (sorry, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G45W_SnnDhA">“Cook of the House”</a>). However, when Paul or Denny assume the lead and leave her as support, the sum of their parts result in something that’s flawed in theory but shockingly pleasing to hear despite this. This is most apparent in “Helen Wheels”, where Paul and Denny’s polished vocals balance out Linda’s visceral, unwieldy shrieks to produce a unified voice of controlled chaos. Other artists caught on to this magic as well; Michael Jackson <a href="https://youtu.be/IfQaqJn7dC8?t=19m">specifically requested her to supply backing vocals</a> on <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Say_Say">“Say Say Say”</a> for this exact reason. Linda’s backing vocals are without a doubt a core ingredient to the Wings’ sound and what makes their vocals so iconic not just on <em>Band on the Run</em>, but the group’s work as a whole.</p>
<p>As you’d expect, with all these elements, Paul continued to leverage his patchwork songwriting style to his advantage in the form of a delightful series of reprises in the last couple songs on the record (though I won’t spoil which ones). Like <em>Abbey Road</em>’s Side Two medley before it, while the motifs don’t amount to anything that makes lyrical sense, simply having the musical reprises make the album feel all the more meaningful. I still get chills when one song in particular makes a surprise reappearance in “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)”, the album’s penultimate track. For a while now, my litmus test for determining whether an album is just “good” or truly great has been whether or not the album can induce <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson">“chills”</a> at the end. In general, at the end of the record, I’m fatigued and starting to get antsy after having sat still for so long (even for some albums I truly enjoy). However, for an album in conditions like that to still <em>nail</em> home-run, chill-inducing climaxes, I know it’s a record that will stand the test of time, as <em>Band on the Run</em> has for me and music lovers everywhere for over forty years.</p>
<hr />
<p>They say constraint breeds creativity, and nowhere is that exemplified more than <em>Band on the Run</em>. In the face of adversity both internal and external, Paul and Wings crafted an album that not only won the adoration of fans and critics alike but did so with an album brimming with optimistic charm despite the circumstances surrounding its creation. It’s an undeniable achievement by every metric.</p>
<p>In retrospect, the nightmarish trip to Lagos was a success after all; <em>Band on the Run</em> went on to be a blowout success, eventually breaking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_on_the_Run#Commercial_success">triple platinum with over 6 million copies sold worldwide</a>. From Paul and Wing’s absurd trip to Lagos came a record naked at its core but grandiose in its ambition that continues to fascinate listeners to this day. The only way to really understand, however, is to give it a spin yourself. So, the next time you’re finally getting out of work and bursting out the doors to rush home, consider throwing <em>Band on the Run</em> on for your great escape (just watch out for those spotlights).</p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="scavenger-hunt">Scavenger Hunt</h2>
<ul>
<li>See if you can pick out which parts are from the “professional” London sessions instead of the “naked” Lagos sessions (hint, the London sessions are almost all orchestral, and remember that Paul and Wings didn’t have an orchestra in Lagos).</li>
<li>Keep an ear out for Linda shouting “Here we go!” from inside the vocal booth in “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”. The booth’s mic was off at the time, but the mics outside still picked it up, resulting in a muted shout in the final mix.</li>
<li>There are a total of three reprises in <em>Band on the Run</em>, see if you can notice them all and identify the originating songs (hint, they’re all near the very end of the record).</li>
<li>“Jet” still contains lyrical fragments about Paul’s pony, see if you can find them hidden underneath the new “dissenting father-of-the-bride” lyrics.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:jet" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Since Paul has a history of nonsensical songs (I’m looking at you, “Monkberry Moon Delight”), I’m not going to rule out that “Jet” is a <a href="http://img10.deviantart.net/688d/i/2011/337/5/7/my_little_war_pony_by_robthedoodler-d4i3qwc.jpg">sergeant major pony father</a>. <a href="#fnref:jet" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:joanna-divers" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Humorously, this is in direct opposition to <a href="https://badmusichertz.com/post/divers">Joanna Newsom’s <em>Divers</em></a>, which necessitated close inspection to be fully enjoyed. <a href="#fnref:joanna-divers" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Marc BarrowcliftSure, lets fly out and record our record at Lagos, Nigeria. What could go wrong?A1A2016-12-10T22:58:00+00:002016-12-10T22:58:00+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/a1a<p>Coconut bras, plush parrot hats, and Hawaiian leis decorate an audience of 35,000 singing along to a 69 year old sporting aviators and sandals—“why don’t we get drunk and screw?”. Beyond the concert entrance is <a href="https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=jimmy+buffett&hl=en&biw=1381&bih=906&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwip-YnVvsvPAhWky4MKHXy2AjoQ_AUICCgD#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=jimmy+buffett+concert+tailgate">a sea of decorated party buses and cars</a>, where stragglers sing along as they happily bar-hop in the tailgate from one DIY margarita bar to the next. From this scene, it can be hard to believe that this 69 year old pirate began as a “shy ex-altar boy from Alabama”. Like many, Jimmy Buffett’s roller coaster of a journey began with the toe dip into adulthood—college.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Parents, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors bombarded me with the same question: “What are you going to do with your life?” I didn’t want to think about that when I was fourteen. My teachers called me a daydreamer. They would write comments on the report card like, “He seems to live in a fantasy world and prefers that to paying serious attention to serious subject matters that will prepare him for life.” […] I saw more meaning in the mysteries of the ocean and the planets than in theology or religion. […] My heroes were not presidents; they were pirates. Emerging from adolescence with a healthy “lack of respect for authorities,” and a head full of romanticism and hero worship, I was able to come up with an answer.</p>
<p>Q. What are you going to do with your life?</p>
<p>A. Live a pretty interesting one.</p>
<p>Jimmy Buffett <em>“A Pirate Looks at Fifty”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Hundreds of miles north of the Mobile shoreline in a fraternity pledge swap party at Auburn University, a young, shy Buffett floundered in the social scene like a fish out of water. Defeated and on the verge of leaving the party, the sound of a guitar and a plethora of spectating college girls caught his attention. Mesmerized by the freshman player’s ability to work a crowd and play requested songs seemingly from memory, Buffett switched his direction from the door to the source of the music, joined in the crowd, and sang along. After the party, while many probably had the songs of the night still playing in their head, Buffett was left with the nagging question: how did a short, out-of-shape freshman with acne scars work a party, play requested songs on the spot, and attract the attention of so many people like that? To Buffett, what the freshman could do was magic. The secret to that magic? Three chords.</p>
<p>That night under the instruction of the freshman, Buffett, within a pint of Scotch time, learned the D chord, and by the end of the night, he was hooked. It was not long until he learned the rest of the chords and, overcoming his shyness, joined alongside the freshman during pledge swaps, playing duets and having a blast. With his focus revolving around learning the guitar and playing at his fraternities parties, it comes to no surprise that Buffett flunked out of Auburn by his spring semester. However, Buffett did not leave Auburn empty handed. He had learned something far more valuable than any classroom could teach him—those three chords and a taste of the thrill of playing for others.</p>
<p>However, not all was sunshine and rainbows for Buffett. This was the 60s, and people like Buffett were prime draft targets to be sent overseas. Knowing that he would have to face his father and a likely impending rice field grave overseas, Buffett traded the direct highway route for the scenic back country roads back home to Mobile, passing through Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville on the way. Perhaps he was looking for any way to postpone his homecoming or perhaps the thought of playing guitar for the college girls crossing the street urged him to stop, but for reasons even he is not sure of, Buffett pulled off the highway and paid a visit to the Administrative building. Even with his terrible GPA, he left Poplarville enrolled as a freshman on probation at Pearl River Junior College. Thus marking one of Buffett’s many life events that add credence to him either having a horseshoe up his ass or someone looking out for him upstairs—in most cases, it is probably both. With a quick visit back home to leave a note and pack, Buffett changed his fate from camo, boots, and a rifle to rag tops, books, and his guitar.</p>
<p>However, Buffett’s enrollment bought him more than avoidance of the draft. More importantly, it bought him access to the growing hub of folk music on the weekends, New Orleans and Biloxi. Buffett’s true lectures took place on Saturday nights in The Bayou Room and he did his homework on street corners—observing other performers and street performing until morning.</p>
<p>After forming his own folk group, transferring to the University of Southern Mississippi, and evolving from observer to performer at The Bayou Room, Buffett spent an increasing amount of time in New Orleans, “[making] up for the lost time [he] had spent as an altar boy”. Furthermore, his performing experience drastically increased as his weeks consisted of four days performing in the French Quarter with the remaining three days spent doing night classes. Needless to say, time quickly slipped through his fingers like sand, and he soon found himself face to face with the dreadful reality of having a diploma in one hand and a 1A notice<sup id="fnref:1A" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1A" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> in the other. Luckily, Buffett had another golden horseshoe up his ass, except this time it was in the shape of a stomach ulcer. With a nice NPQ stamp and a switch to the 1Y draft classification, Buffett was again clear of Vietnam. After marriage, a bar gig, employment at <em>Billboard</em> magazine, and a music publisher contract, Buffett headed to his new landlocked life in Nashville.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have been called a lot of things in these fifty years on the good old planet Earth, but the thing I believe I am most is lucky.</p>
<p>Jimmy Buffett <em>“A Pirate Looks at Fifty”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>After a record deal with Barnaby Records—Buffett, dreaming of his future as a star—enthusiastically launched his first record <em>Down to Earth</em> and left his position at <em>Billboard</em>. However, as fast as this good news came, the prospect of Buffett having a big break vanished. His first record failed to sell after a promotion trip to Dallas, Texas, leaving Buffett in debt with no more promotion band. To try to bail out his sinking ship of a new career and pay off his debt, he struggled to get back momentum performing solo again. However, to add extra holes to the ship, Buffett’s increased activism in anti-Vietnam protests and his vocal record business grumblings with other struggling performers did not sit well for his industry relations nor his marriage. In the end, his new shiny boat of a career hit rock bottom. All Buffett was left with was debt, a failed marriage, and of course, his luck.</p>
<p>Queue a deus ex machina in the form of country singer and songwriter, Jerry Jeff Walker. Walker and Buffett connected during Buffett’s <em>Billboard</em> days, and around the time of Buffett’s record flop, Walker paid a visit while in town. Like any friendly visit, the two shared drinks and long talks in which Walker extended an invitation for Buffett to visit him in his new home in Coconut Grove, Miami. After Walker’s visit, the sound and name of Coconut Grove stayed with Buffett, evoking <a href="https://youtu.be/IlOBRLT6c0c">warm thoughts</a> to Buffett’s mind. He was reminded of how much he missed his mother: mother ocean and the warm sea salt mist of her waves. He had an escape with Walker, and with some networking with the previous club owners he worked with, he landed a job at the Flick—a Miami club notorious for its booking difficulty due to its prime location. With an expired TWA credit card left over from his <em>Billboard</em> and marriage days and Buffett’s sly charming at the ticket counter, the pirate bought a ticket and headed to Miami to board Walker’s 1947 Packard—The Flying Lady.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I had left Nashville that morning, it was thirty-one degrees and raining. I was broke and getting a divorce. My career was in cold storage, and I had a cracked front tooth. Four hours later, I was sitting under a cluster of royal palms with a breeze coming off Biscayne Bay. I was barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt, eating lobster salad and drinking ice-cold beer, laughing and listening to Murphy’s stories of Key West.</p>
<p>Jimmy Buffett <em>“A Pirate Looks at Fifty”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Over Buffett’s two years in Nashville, every day his dry gills called his thoughts back to the ocean. He saw Nashville as a means to an end. From his time as a “normal businessman” at <em>Billboard</em> to his brief taste of the touring band lifestyle underneath Barnaby Records, Buffett’s sights never deviated from the true goal—life on an island. The warm sun of Miami—evaporating worries away—gave Buffett a clear perspective on his failure in Nashville; his heart, soul, and mind belonged to the culture, climate, and geography of the tropics and the ocean, not to that of the Blue Ridge State. To continue living and working in Nashville would mean the continuation of trying to be someone he was not.</p>
<p>The following Monday, after settling in at Walker’s and getting a tour of Coconut Grove’s popular sites, Buffett headed to the Flick to prepare for his opening night. However, Buffett’s guitar remained silent that night. Upon his arrival to the not-so-elegant strip mall sandwiched club, the club owner, who was more engaged scrupulously checking his recently bought fruit, dismissively notified Buffett that he would not start until two weeks from then. Even though the onus laid on the club owner for making the booking error, a verklempt Buffett dared not challenge the man who held the keys to his one gig in Miami as well as the network of other club owners. Two weeks it was.</p>
<p>When Buffett returned and relayed the news of the work delay, Walker’s girlfriend offered a simple suggestion, a suggestion which culminated in the pinnacle moment that would ultimately position Buffett to fulfill his dream of life on an island.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Hell, Jerry Jeff, let’s go to Key West.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, Key West would end up serving Buffett as more than just a dream home. Like French Quarter, Buffett’s Caribbean soul resonated with the dive bars and culture of the Key West. However, unlike New Orleans, living in the Key West provided him with more than just performing experience. The Key West served as a rich source and provider of inspiration and many stories that, in turn, fostered the beginning of his wildly successful music career.</p>
<p>After some mechanical repairs, Walker, his girlfriend, and Buffett boarded the Flying Lady towards U.S. 1. Destination: <em>A1A</em>, Key West.</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="the-storyteller">The Storyteller</h2>
<p>When Buffett made it to Coconut Grove and reconnected his soul with the tropics, he found happiness and purpose in life—the momentous “Migration” for Buffett. With his reconnection and happiness with the tropics also came confusion. In “Migration”, Buffett expresses his confusion and frustration at some people’s blindness to the beauty around them, whether it be old retirees who never venture beyond to the beauty outside of their condos in Florida or the “bastards” who are too blind to see their pollution of the Florida Keys with commercial America and mobile homes. However, Buffett’s confusion and frustration at others quickly transitions. Buffett comes across the revelation that his life, without the draft, failing marriage, and floundering career in Nashville, was finally looking hopeful and completely his to direct. Sure he made a lot of mistakes, but it is now time for him learn his lessons, refocus his life, and have some fun. After all, in a fast, excited spew of liberation in a form of a rebuttal to those who are blind to the beauty, he announces that he is sure as hell not going to end up like the an old condo retiree.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well now, If I ever live to be an old man,<br />
I’m going to sail down to Martinique.<br />
I’m going to buy me a sweat stained Bogart suit<br />
And an African Parakeet.<br />
And then I will sit him on my shoulder<br />
And open my trusty old mind.<br />
I’m going to teach him how to fuss,<br />
Teach him how to cuss,<br />
And pull the cork out of a bottle of wine.</p>
<p>“Migration” <em>A1A</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few years after Buffett’s first arrival in Key West, Buffett, with help of ‘Fingers’ Taylor, formed The Coral Reefer Band, and, in the same year <em>A1A</em> dropped, Buffett and the band tackled serious touring and roadwork until 1982. The saying is that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and, as shown in Buffett’s romantic love song for the island, “Tin Cup Chalice”, the upcoming serious roadwork for Buffett sure did make his heart grow fonder for Key West. The long ringing high pitched chords and the long-drawn, melancholy harmonica throughout “Tin Cup Chalice” provide a tasteful hint of tropical atmosphere as well as perfectly convey Buffett’s homesick caused longing. While the Key West was integral to Buffett’s inspiration and success, the subsequent success the island helped facilitate would also be the reason that Buffett would leave the island for touring and roadwork. While Buffett is certainly not resentful at this, in “Tin Cup Chalice”, it is clear that his heart and soul are tied to and long to be back in the sea salt air and bright sun of the island.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to be there,<br />
I want to go back down and die beside the sea there.<br />
With a tin cup for a chalice fill it up with good red wine,<br />
And I’m-a chewin’ on a honeysuckle vine.</p>
<p>“Tin Cup Chalice” <em>A1A</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="the-stories">The Stories</h2>
<p>In Key West, Buffett has met some interesting characters each with their own stories to tell. Many of these characters have made their way to serve as inspiration for songs—most notably Buffett’s real pirate friend, Phillip Clark, of the Key West who “A Pirate Looks at Forty” was written for.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a song… I guess I wrote this for an old friend of mine a few years back who could just not find his occupation in the 20th century. So, he just chose to live in a fantasy world and I looked at him and I went well what the hell’s wrong with that?</p>
<p>Jimmy Buffett <em>Feeding Frenzy [Live]</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>While this song is written as a eulogy for Clark, I can not help but hear some autobiographical inspiration from the ‘helpless romantic’ himself. However, autobiographical influence or not, Buffett, with his fascination with and respect for mother ocean and his romantic, heroic interpretation of pirates and the pirate lifestyle, wrote an empathetic tribute to Clark that I am sure would make the pirate smile.</p>
<p>In addition to possibly meeting Phillip Clark at one of the bars at Key West in the 70s, if one were to venture to City Hall on a Friday night they would hear music coming from underneath a big parachute, and they would possibly find Buffett taking a quick pass to spectate between tours of Duval Street. On those Friday nights, a square dance group called the “Nautical Wheelers” would gather underneath the parachute and dance the night away<sup id="fnref:nautical-wheelers" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:nautical-wheelers" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>. The observant eye would also possibly catch a drunk Clark tied to a channel marker out at sea.</p>
<hr />
<p>For an artist with an impressive 29 albums, excluding live recordings and compilation albums, why <em>A1A</em>? After all, when taking into account cover songs, the album barely reaches LP length. To put it simply, I believe that the remaining songs in <em>A1A</em> encapsulate a special time in Buffett’s life. Through songs like “Nautical Wheelers” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty”, the album provides the listener with a looking glass into the culture and people of early 70s Key West and, subsequently, the album also gives a fresh glimpse into Buffett’s bout of inspiration and creativity from his first years on the island. Furthermore, the sad, sour, retrospective career failure musings in “Dallas”, the drunken ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ wanderings and lifestyle described in “Presents to Send You”, and the pit-stop styled autobiographical up’s and down’s recounted in “Life Is Just A Tire Swing” present an interesting time-locked perspective on Buffett’s feelings, life, and worldview at this pivotal time in his life and career. Indeed, this album not only gives a glimpse into the tropical foundation of Buffett’s career, but with the album also containing Buffett staples such as “Pirate Looks at Forty”, “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season”, “Nautical Wheelers”, and “Tin Cup Chalice”, I would argue that <em>A1A</em> is the tropical foundation of Buffett’s career. So, I would encourage you to not dismiss Jimmy Buffett as a goofy, cult artist whose song lines only consist of the subject matters of margaritas and cheeseburgers. Through the crowd of parrotheads up on the stage, there is a pirate, sailor, and pilot behind those aviators who definitely has stories to tell.</p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1A" role="doc-endnote">
<p>The selective service breaks men up into classifications during draft time. 1A indicates the candidate is ready for military service. <a href="#fnref:1A" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:nautical-wheelers" role="doc-endnote">
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/jgmWWWQpXRE">There is a great video of a young Buffett performing “Nautical Wheelers” to a crowd in Key West</a>. I love this video as it is so much fun to see a more intimate performance with Buffett. It is also a blast to watch all the different audience members really get into the performance. <a href="#fnref:nautical-wheelers" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Michael BarrowcliftCoconut bras, plush parrot hats, and Hawaiian leis decorate an audience of 35,000 singing along to a 69 year old sporting aviators and sandals—“why don’t we get drunk and screw?”. Beyond the concert entrance is a sea of decorated party buses and cars, where stragglers sing along as they happily bar-hop in the tailgate from one DIY margarita bar to the next. From this scene, it can be hard to believe that this 69 year old pirate began as a “shy ex-altar boy from Alabama”. Like many, Jimmy Buffett’s roller coaster of a journey began with the toe dip into adulthood—college.The Suburbs2016-09-12T21:40:00+00:002016-09-12T21:40:00+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/the-suburbs<p>Sometimes, when lying in bed trying to sleep, I find myself slipping back to the past. Memories of old friends before time, differences, and distance took their toll fade back to the foreground to nag at my consciousness. We used to have so much fun together; what on earth happened? Revisiting my old neighborhood afterwards never offered much consolation. The few times my family and I visited since felt… off. Streets have been expanded, new houses built where there once were woods, and neighboring cornfields devoured by the insatiable suburban sprawl to join its sea of pavement and cheap strip malls.</p>
<p>It’s moments like these where it dawns on me—like I’m sure it does all of us at one point or another—that the world left part of who we were behind, filling the hole it left with a deep sense of alienation from our long-gone old friends, the ever-expanding suburban sprawl, and even the incomprehensible “modern kids” growing up in them now.</p>
<p>This is Arcade Fire’s <em>The Suburbs</em>.</p>
<h2 id="lost-in-the-sprawl">Lost in the Sprawl</h2>
<p>A blaring, carnival-like piano throws us head-first into the album’s self-titled opening track. Much like Bruce Springsteen’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZD4ezDbbu4">“Born in the U.S.A”</a>, the song’s lyrics carry a somber message in disguise. “The Suburbs” starts off with a cheery-sounding key riff as the singer fondly recalls memories of growing up in the ‘burbs and wasting time with friends during the dog-days of summer. Unlike “Born in the U.S.A”, however, the jaded, bitter undercurrent slowly reveals itself sonically as the violin and backing instruments artfully distort the once-cheery piano into a sorrowful swan song mourning the passing of the last bits of natural beauty the singer grew up with.</p>
<p>This theme of feeling uncomfortably “out of place” in the urban sprawl is further explored in “Modern Man”, a breezy daydream song which at times threatens to explode but always stops just shy to again resume the comfortable, monotonous guitar riff. In it, the singer clearly feels something’s off about playing the roll of the 9-5 Average Joe but seems to lack the language and emotional experience to fully express himself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So I wait my turn, I’m a modern man<br />
And the people behind me they can’t understand<br />
Makes me feel like…<br />
Makes me feel like…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He’s clearly on the brink of an epiphany, but every time he gets this far, he’s metaphorically or literally pulled aside and told he’s “going nowhere”. This leads him to inevitably fail and resign himself to his fate by repeating “I’m a modern man” while the song blows away as carelessly as it came.</p>
<p>I can’t help but see the similarities the song has with Katherine Mansfield’s <a href="http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/GardPart.shtml">“Garden Party”</a>, a short story featuring a young, high-class girl which ends with her on the brink of an epiphany regarding her and her family’s fake, pompous life. Like our modern man, however, she literally lacks the language and emotional maturity to successfully complete the epiphany, implying that she too reverts back to square one at the end of the story as she fails to complete her thoughts.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But Laurie–” She stopped, she looked at her brother. “Isn’t life,” she stammered, “isn’t life–” But what life was she couldn’t explain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Arcade Fire continues exploring other aspects of unchecked urbanization with the increasing ubiquity of technology in “Deep Blue”<sup id="fnref:deep-blue" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:deep-blue" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. It’s the sonic personification of wanting desperately to unplug from the hyper-stimulating LCDs flooding the world.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hey<br />
Put that cell phone down for a while<br />
In the night there is something wild<br />
Can you hear it breathing?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following the sad trend set by the album, it’s implied that in the end—like “Modern Man”—the singer’s light is snuffed out as they succumb to technology’s siren song along with everyone else.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And hey<br />
Put the laptop down for a while<br />
In the night there is something wild<br />
I feel it, it’s leaving me</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="kids-these-days">Kids These Days</h2>
<p>It’s a rite of passage, once you get into your mid-twenties you’ll find yourself occasionally feeling out-of-touch with the “modern kids” nowadays. In <em>The Suburbs</em> it’s clear the then thirty-year-old Arcade Fire members are no longer the spunky early-twenties rockers they once were. They’re wiser for it, to be sure, but with that newfound worldliness comes even further separation from their audience’s primary demographic: teenagers. Instead of awkwardly pretending to still be “hip with the kids” like lesser bands have done in the past and failed miserably at, they wear their age like a badge of pride and throughout the album address kids not as fellow teenagers but as adult figures, starting with a scathing commentary on hipsters in the dizzying violin-led piece, “Rococo”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They built it up just to burn it back down<br />
The wind is blowing all the ashes around<br />
Oh my dear God what is that horrible song they’re singing?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can’t help but laugh at that line; by using the stereotypical “old person” response to new music they’re fully assuming the role of an adult figure when addressing younger folks in the album, which they follow through on in “Month of May”.</p>
<p>As an ‘ol fashioned head-banger akin to what you’d hear at a basement or garage show, “Month of May” is easily one of the most accessible songs on the album. In it, Arcade Fire directly addresses teenagers who are facing the same emotional struggles the adults in the album’s other songs faced. Like a trusted adult figure, they urge these kids to keep their fighting spirit alive instead of letting it die like every adult on the album has.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So young, so young<br />
So much pain for someone so young, well<br />
I know it’s heavy, I know it ain’t light<br />
But how you gonna lift it with your arms folded tight?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can’t help but appreciate just how well Arcade Fire assumes this role without coming across as condescending or as try-hard guidance consolers. Perhaps what makes it work so well is their complete lack of sugar coating. They practically admit in the song that most aspects of teenage life suck, while at the same time urging kids to open themselves up to the world regardless so they wouldn’t miss out on the few precious things in life that are “pure” and “right”.</p>
<h2 id="old-friends">Old Friends</h2>
<p>While songs pertaining to the sprawl are generally focused on the present and future, nearly every song pertaining to the past focuses on fond memories shared with old friends. One of these is the sweet, tender “Half-Light I”, wherein the singer recalls running out late at night to hang out with friends when they were all supposed to be asleep. It’s unusual but refreshing to see this subject matter set to such a soft, heartwarming violin piece instead of the awful “<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouAreGrounded">Going Out to the Party Even Though You Were Grounded</a>” trope that’s been beaten like a rented mule in every televised sitcom in history<sup id="fnref:trope" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:trope" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>.</p>
<p>In “Suburban War”, we see how close relationships such as these came to end through the lens of one particular friend. They were clearly close (“Let’s go for a drive and see the town tonight / There’s nothing to do but I don’t mind when I’m with you”), but eventually stark differences in music preference and his friend’s spiteful “war against the suburbs” began to drive them apart.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But you started a war that we can’t win<br />
They keep erasing all the streets we grew up in<br />
Now the music divides us into tribes<br />
You choose your side, <span class="underline">I’ll choose my side</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite things breaking bad between them, he still cares about his old friend and sincerely regrets how things turned out between them (“Now the cities we live in could be distant stars / And I search for you in every passing car”). However, he knows deep down that these hurt feelings will haunt him forever because there’s no chance of patching up what they once had; they have both changed so much since then that the person his old friend once knew, quite frankly, doesn’t exist anymore.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All my old friends<br />
They don’t know me now</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="the-climax">The Climax</h2>
<p>Throughout the whole album, we see both adults and children feeling like they don’t have a home and life to call their own and failing to address these feelings in constructive ways: some resorted to expressing their bitterness in unhealthy ways (the kids in “Month of May” and “Rococo” and the people drowning themselves in instant gratification in “We Used To Wait”), some retreated to the past for sanctuary (the driver in “Sprawl I: Flatland” and “Wasted Hours”), while others just gave up altogether (the “Modern Man” and the last remaining “unplugged” person in “Deep Blue”). Practically all these characters share one truth in common: they have all failed to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zdNdjF-htY">wake up</a>”, either from failing to achieve an epiphany and giving up, crossing their arms and stubbornly not trying, or pouring their souls into technology or old memories in an effort to escape a life they’re unhappy with. In the case of the driver in “Sprawl I (Flatland)”—the first of the album’s two-part climax—he attempts dealing with his emotions by visiting his old childhood house in an attempt to convince himself there was once not just a house there, but a home. As you’d expect given the album’s track record, his trip fails to fill the void he feels in his heart as he realizes his childhood home was nothing more than “the house where we used to stay”.</p>
<p>Enter “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”, a thunderous, joyous dance celebrating all the emotions explored on the album. You read that right, <em>celebrating</em>. Over groovy instrumentals akin to Blondie’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU">Heart of Glass</a>”, Régine belts out her desire to drop everything and run away from the unnatural florescent lights the endless, dead shopping malls around her bring, to once again experience the wildness of a dark night. While in isolation the lyrics themselves aren’t particularly hopeful, Régine’s delivery and supercharged instrumentals transform what perhaps could have been another depressing song into an inviting rallying call for listeners to join her in dance.</p>
<p>As the song draws near it’s end, bell-tower like “gongs” sound in the distance, piercing through the slowly fading instrumentals. It’s as if it’s struck midnight in the middle of a vast mall parking lot, it was so brightly lit you didn’t even notice it was night. Finally, with a dreamy, rose-tinted refrain of the self-titled opening track, the album draws to a close.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>The Suburbs</em> is a nostalgic album of genuine sincerity. Through it all, whether they’re recalling childhood friends, expressing concern about the state of expanding urbanization, or simply trying to reach out to the “modern kids”, Win Butler and the band crafted songs with the honesty and heart of this year’s bedroom Indy darling but with the nuance that only age and experience can provide. That’s not to say their age has negatively impacted their ability to identify with the youth; attempts to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXNj2BobjJ4&hd=1">reach des kids</a>” are extremely difficult to pull off without accidentally insulting the intended audience. However, Arcade Fire time and time again manages not only to make it look easy but also to sneak in must-needed beatdowns in the process (“Rococo”).</p>
<p>Win’s love for his old neighborhood friendships, despite all the grief he carries about their end, is palpable. In case there was any doubt about this fondness, on the very last song on the album he idly wishes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I could have it back<br />
All the time that we wasted<br />
I would waste it again<br />
Waste it again, and again, and again</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This reenforces that he wasn’t just blowing hot air while telling the kids “some things are pure and some things are right” in “Month of May”. It seems that, despite everything else, these fond memories prevailed in his mind. To be clear, he and Arcade Fire went out of their way to express that this doesn’t negate any of the serious concerns they have with the suburbs, but those positive memories <em>are</em> there, and they do matter.</p>
<p>The next time you’re caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic with an hour or more of a commute to go, or you’re having trouble sleeping because you can’t help feeling awful about how once-good relationships ended, or you’re looking up at the night sky but can’t see the stars through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution">light pollution</a>, consider throwing <em>The Suburbs</em> on and letting yourself explore and celebrate these feelings with Arcade Fire. And, if you’re so inclined and able, cut the lights.</p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:deep-blue" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Named after IBM’s chess computer, code named “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)">Deep Blue</a>”. It won it’s first-every game against chess grandmaster <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov">Garry Kasparov</a> in 1996, though still ended up losing the overall match until the following year. <a href="#fnref:deep-blue" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:trope" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: child wants to go to a party, parents grounded child from going either because of the party itself or an unrelated event, child still goes anyway by sneaking out at night, gets in trouble, and learns a valuable life lesson because of it. <a href="#fnref:trope" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Marc BarrowcliftSometimes, when lying in bed trying to sleep, I find myself slipping back to the past. Memories of old friends before time, differences, and distance took their toll fade back to the foreground to nag at my consciousness. We used to have so much fun together; what on earth happened? Revisiting my old neighborhood afterwards never offered much consolation. The few times my family and I visited since felt… off. Streets have been expanded, new houses built where there once were woods, and neighboring cornfields devoured by the insatiable suburban sprawl to join its sea of pavement and cheap strip malls.Relief2016-08-03T19:25:00+00:002016-08-03T19:25:00+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/relief<p>Second semester sophomore year of engineering is what separates the men and women from the boys and girls, so to speak. Sink or swim was the name of the game. Weekdays were 17 credit hours of classes, swim team practice, and research work all with the usual routine of a test per week and homework. Weekends were spent picking up all the loose ends that fell through the cracks from the previous week and preparing for the next. To quote my shampoo bottle, “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”. Needless to say, I was beat and stuck deep in a rut.</p>
<p>One Saturday night, I had decided that it was time to close the planner and turn the speaker on. I had accumulated quite the backlog of albums in my iTunes “Recently Added” section, all with play counts of zero. I decided to start with one of the more recent albums Marc sent me—Vacationer’s <em>Relief</em>. That night, harmonies from a heavenly chorus arranged with exotic drum<sup id="fnref:sample" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:sample" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> filled my fluorescent lit 11’x11’ cube room.</p>
<p>With the same heart and sincerity as a friend or loved one would convey, Kenny Vasoli’s smooth, soothing voice expressed his desire for me to let my mind wander where my heart would go.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Want you to stay<br />
wherever your heart would go.<br />
Want you to make it<br />
About what your life is for</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the last strokes of the harp faded away, I no longer felt like I was laying on my dorm room bed on a cold, dull Milwaukee spring evening. I instead felt like I was stepping into my own dream paradise. I found myself experiencing the heat of the first 80° day, the bliss of a summer love, and the liberating excitement of an adventurous vacation—I found relief.</p>
<h2 id="the-first-80-day">The First 80° Day</h2>
<p>The Midwest’s climate inertia usually means the temperature refuses to fit the calendar month in the early spring. However, there are always rare days when the temperature spontaneously accelerates to reach the coveted first 80° day; the day that most Midwesterners, delusional from the long winter days, swore was a myth. For those of us within the Midwest or areas of the world with similarly long winters, the first 80° day is magical. Tense muscles relax in response to the welcome burn of the sun. The mind clears and stress evaporates like water. The only thought on one’s mind is the near arrival of summer—the “Paradise Waiting”.</p>
<p>Vacationer’s jaunty piano and rhythmic bass carry the smooth-going tempo from “Stay” and encapsulate the feeling of the first 80° day like none other. “Paradise Waiting” has the power to transform the world around the listener. No matter what their latitude, Vasoli and company ensure that the listener will feel the warm, relaxing glow from the sun—providing the reassurance that in any season “there’s paradise waiting for us in summertime”.</p>
<p>However, even when this sun-filled nirvana arrives, life is neither perfect nor paradise. Soon, we adjust, and the warm glow of the sun turns from something previously cherished to something typical and expected. The novelty of summer’s arrival slowly decreases, and—even in the beautiful summer months—life can continue to wear on us. Vacationer’s prescription? Unleash your inner cold-blooded animal, and bask in the grass. Dr. Vasoli and company juxtapose this lazy subject matter with a high voltage jolt to the smooth, easy-going tempo carried through the album up to this point. A racing synth and thumping bass drive this chilldozer™<sup id="fnref:trademark" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:trademark" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> as the listener’s worries dissolve and float away in the breeze, riding just above the blades of grass.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Breeze keeps coming…<br />
Dreams keep coming…<br />
Breeze keeps coming, dreams keep coming to life…</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="the-summer-love">The Summer Love</h2>
<p>With simple yet elegant lyricism akin to Walk the Moon, in the back-to-back duo of “Fresh” and “Go Anywhere”, Vacationer brings the listener to the early days with a new love and the feeling of bliss that comes with the realization that this new love is “the one”. Whether it be with a summer fling or “the one”, the early days of a relationship are full of infatuation and carelessness for previous woes. In “Fresh”, with a head-bob inducing beat, Vacationer evoke memories of the fun, butterflies-in-the-stomach times had during a fresh, new relationship.</p>
<p>Just as a romantic relationship transitions from the infatuation stage to the compassion stage, so does Vacationer transition from “Fresh” to “Go Anywhere”. As the strumming bass fades out in “Fresh”, a unique, mellow beat from a medley of tropical drums reign in the tonal shift in “Go Anywhere”. Whether or not you have met that special someone, Vacationer enables the listener to experience the bliss and comfort associated with the heartfelt assurance that a person is the love of your life. As Vacationer describes, all life fades out and all that is left is relief and the knowledge that “it could go anywhere”.</p>
<h2 id="the-adventurous-vacation">The Adventurous Vacation</h2>
<p>During childhood, summer was more than just a seasonal change. It meant long sunny evenings, no responsibilities, and—of course—freedom from school. As we grow older, the summer months lose their significance. The joy and liberation of the last school bell in early June is replaced with “See you tomorrow, Bob”. The three month holy grail vacation no longer exists. However, this feeling of joy and liberation, while less frequent, can still be found through travel. Jimmy Buffett perfectly describes this in reference to his trip to Costa Rica.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you are traveling on a trip like this in the right frame of mind, time and space will change. Things that seemed absolutely necessary two days ago slip from your mind. You find yourself looking out the window of the plane, boat, or car and daydreaming about going native. Time becomes something to be used, not saved.</p>
<p>Jimmy Buffett “A Pirate Looks at Fifty”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In “Vision”, the fanciful flute and beating hand drum have the power to put anyone in a special kind of bubbly mood—the type that accompanies the exploration of somewhere new. With the flute being the wandering, daydreaming mind and the steady hand drums being the excited, perky motion of the body, this Vacationer-led exploration takes us to that moment when time and space change. That moment of awe and stupefaction that accompanies the discovery of true, natural beauty—when the mind struggles to contemplate the power and elegance of nature. The lure of this beauty starts conjuring the thoughts Jimmy Buffett experienced in Costa Rica—the thoughts and temptation of abandoning all ties to the modern world, going native, and embracing the “Wild Life”.</p>
<p>Vacationer’s brilliant choice of exotic samples and atmospheric nature sounds integrated with bass driven tropical pop create a relaxing, whimsical, dreamlike auditory vacation spot for the listener. Vasoli and company enable the listener to leave their physical location and transport to whatever escapist location and experience they desire, whether it’s the summit of a mountain, the coast of somewhere beautiful, a daytime walk in a foreign city, a summer’s nap with your love, or a frolic in a lake’s hidden sandbar. Next time the monotony, stress, and worries start to build, press play and let Vacationer take you on a trip to your personal place of Relief.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s the dawn of the time of relief<br />
It could mean everything</p>
</blockquote>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:sample" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Vacationer artfully incorporates this source material in <a href="https://youtu.be/9IA0Rq1DGJU">Stay</a> <a href="#fnref:sample" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:trademark" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Trademark Kenny Vasoli <a href="#fnref:trademark" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Michael BarrowcliftSecond semester sophomore year of engineering is what separates the men and women from the boys and girls, so to speak. Sink or swim was the name of the game. Weekdays were 17 credit hours of classes, swim team practice, and research work all with the usual routine of a test per week and homework. Weekends were spent picking up all the loose ends that fell through the cracks from the previous week and preparing for the next. To quote my shampoo bottle, “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”. Needless to say, I was beat and stuck deep in a rut.Divers2016-05-26T18:05:00+00:002016-05-26T18:05:00+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/divers<p>The soundscape and themes in Joanna Newsom’s <em>Divers</em> are as dense and opaque as the unkempt garden on the cover. Among the sea of white-lab autotune vocals heard on today’s radio hits a harpist sporting an old-style nasally voice straight out of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlUbWNpg1os">Disney’s Snow White</a> seems so foreign that it might take listeners aback if they’re not prepared for it. I’d wager not many people can recall the last time they heard a song containing harp instrumentals, let alone songs featuring them as the vocal lead’s primary backing instrument. This sheds <em>Divers</em> in an almost unworldly glow, as if it exists in a dreamlike plane where time bears no meaning and moves as freely as the wind. This feeling does not seem accidental as time itself is one of the central themes on every single track in <em>Divers</em>. The album as a whole seems to resist attempts to pin it down to a sentence-long elevator pitch, Joanna went on record saying that if it were that easy <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2015/10/19/joanna-newsom-divers-interview">“I wouldn’t have bothered making a record”</a>. Indeed, the album’s lyrics are so layered it can take multiple listens to begin having any idea what she’s trying to say deeper than the surface-level. With all the double-meanings at play and the inherit difficulty in following along with the album’s frequent use of time travel <em>Divers</em> will leave you lost in time and space if you don’t take care to follow along. For those that do, what awaits is a grand, never ending opus of love and time whose impact will stay with you long after you lift the needle.</p>
<h2 id="the-great-time-war">The Great Time War</h2>
<p>One of the multiple events that ripple through numerous tracks on the album is the devastating time war waged by the grand 101st Lightborn Elite, a tale told through a mournful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKF-nKnn6VU">sea shanty</a> the likes of which would make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WH2JRfLRP0">The Decemberists</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0CR1IJKMPo">proud</a>. While they aren’t explicitly revealed until the core of the record in “Walz of the 101st Lightborne”, their reveal gives songs like “Anecdotes” and “Time, As a Symptom” new context. In “Walz of the 101st Lightborne” it’s revealed that a mysterious invading force attacked the world for its resources, resulting in great casualties on both sides as well as the reduction of our once green Earth to nothing more than a dry dustball. Just as mysteriously as they had arrived the invading force soon left, leaving the defeated human race and withered planet in its wake. But as the wells ran dry, we found our salvation!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And we came to see Time is taller<br />
Than Space is wide<br />
And we bade goodbye<br />
To the Great Divide:<br />
Found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What luck! What providence! Humanity had at long last unlocked the secrets of time travel. The remaining humans quickly assembled all the men they could muster (leaving women behind in the process, see the album’s self-titled track) and sent them to the farthest reaches of time and space to scavenge and colonize. Such is how the human race completes the paradox and unwittingly becomes the very enemies that invaded and sapped the Earth in the first place. This remains the state of the human race for most of the album, trapped in an infinite war loop “between us and our ghosts”. It’s frankly like a plot plucked straight out of a thrilling two-part <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who">Doctor Who</a> episode, I half expected that familiar blue box to come whirling into the album at some point<sup id="fnref:blue-box" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:blue-box" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. It soon becomes clear, however, that there’s no Doctor coming to save us, and there’s no happy ending to be found. We loose more than just our precious Earth and our future in this “eternal return and repeat”, our interpersonal relationships suffer as well.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Before You and I ceased to mean Now<br />
And began to mean only Right Here<br />
(To mean Inches and Miles but not Years);”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At this point something might be nagging at you, wasn’t there an army or battle of some sort mentioned before? Yes! Track 1, “Anecdotes”, has carefully laid clues hinting at the true identity of the army and the nature of the war they’re fighting. One might assume they could possibly be one of the two sides in the time war after listening to “Walz of the 101st Lightborne” but a question posed to one of the soldiers by another (Rufous Nightjar) removes all doubt, “When are you from”? This is a question that only makes sense when asked to those who can traverse freely through time. Since we know “past” Earth doesn’t achieve time travel themselves until the end of the initial attack that means the first people we are introduced to in the album are indeed the illusive, ever present 101st Lightborne Elite, right in the mist of pillaging past Earth.</p>
<h2 id="glorious-divers">Glorious Divers</h2>
<p>Joanna frequently plucks out characters from history to progress the album’s emotional narrative, many of which could be considered divers in their own right. Take for example <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Purroy_Mitchel">John Purroy Mitchel</a> from the album’s second track, “Sapokanikan”. John was a former alderman and later “Boy Mayor of New York” who led sweeping reform movements against the Tammany Hall political machine during his short career. Upon failing to get reelected, despite his measurable achievements, he left politics to join the Air Service. During a fateful training exercise, however, his plane took a sudden dive, leaving the unfastened John to plummet to his death. For the listener—knowing all too well that the New York political machine would later slip back into corruption—this sad tale fits cosily into Sapokanikan which highlights time’s ability to indiscriminately erode away all of humankind’s efforts.</p>
<p>Again following the idea of diving to earth from the sky, Joanna hints at another fictional character in the album’s tenth song, “A Pin-Light Bent”. She plucks a soothing, quiet scene with her harp of an airplane mid-flight (“Short flight, free rows: / I lie down and doze”) only to sing of disaster shortly after (“Short flight; free descent / Poor flight attendant”). While this is fairly sparse information there seems to be enough clues implying the flight attendant who got a “free descent” is <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F05EFD6123CE63ABC4851DFB6678389679EDE">the stewardess who fell to her death in 1962</a> when the emergency door on her flight suddenly sprang opened, sucking her out into the open sky. Perhaps by no coincidence this story had also <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42716">inspired a poem</a> by <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/james-l-dickey">James L. Dickey</a> which follows the stewardess’s stream of consciousness during the last moments of her life as she fell. In this stream, he frequently compared the stewardess’s descent as that of a “glorious diver” and often commented on how linear time as we know it seemed to cease as stewardess faced imminent death, as if a veil had been lifted and she was seeing life as it truly was for the first time. Joanna focused on this epiphany specifically in “A Pin-Light Bent”, leaving listeners with the calming, humbling peace that comes with accepting one’s own mortality and place in the universe.</p>
<h2 id="eternal-return-and-repeat">Eternal Return and Repeat</h2>
<p>Joanna embraces the notion of non-linear time not only at the thematic level in <em>Divers</em> but also at the meta level with how the songs are orchestrated and ordered. The primary manifestation of this attention to detail is in “Anecdotes” and “Time, As a Symptom”, the bookend, sister songs of the album. At first listen it becomes apparent these songs share a great deal in common such as the key signature and the mourning doves echoing at the songs’ fringes, among other things. These songs share more than just surface level similarities, however, and to see what’s going on we must dive deeper into the lyrics. In “Time, As a Symptom”, the first half of the song focuses on a new mother experiencing the joy of life as she cradles her newborn child. As the song progresses and the instrumentation swells we find ourselves being pulled away from this scene and seeing it in the ever growing bigger picture of time, death, and reincarnation. The simple piano we found ourselves with at the start of the song is now a grand orchestral movement growing in size and momentum as Joanna’s singing becomes more sporadic and urgent, as if we’re flying through eternities and lifetimes to the ends of the universe in a matter of a few lyrics. It quickly becomes neigh unintelligible as layers and layers of sound continue to be added, that is until we hear Joanna begin belting out over it a looped, military-style shortwave radio transmission, a plea:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>White star, white ship-Nightjar, transmit: transcend!<br />
White star, white ship-Nightjar, transmit: transcend!<br />
White star, white ship-Nightjar, transmit: trans-</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Joanna’s transmission cuts off mid-word a Mourning Dove calls out over the last ringing notes, now reverberating to the song’s end. It’s as if the album itself suddenly died, soon to be reincarnated as “Anecdotes” back at the beginning of the album. After all, where have we heard the name Nightjar before? Ah! Rufous Nightjar, the solider from “Anecdotes” who asked “When are you from?”. Joanna here is desperately trying to send a message back in time to Rufous Nightjar, or perhaps humanity as a collective, warning of the infinite disaster they cause and to instead “Transcend!”; to transcend above the hell time travel has caused and transcend out of the infinite war loop, all in the hopes of regaining our lost future.</p>
<p>As it turns out, Joanna’s message didn’t go unfinished. Those that have already listened to the album have heard the rest of it, in fact. For those of you with digital copies, put the album on repeat next time you give it a spin and let it continue a bit past the “last song” so it loops back to “Anecdotes”. Aside from the instrumentation fade out in “Time, As a Symptom” exactly matching that of the instrumentation fade in on “Anecdotes”, <em>Joanna’s desperate plea is actually completed when you match the lyrics together</em>. The last word in “Time, As a Symptom” is “trans-“ and the first word of “Anecdotes” is “sending”, making “transc[s]ending”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>White star, white ship-Nightjar, transmit: trans-<br />
. . .<br />
Sending the first scouts over</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Joanna alluded to this indeed being the case in interviews as she carefully avoids referring to “Time, As a Symptom” as the last song of the album and instead only refers to it as the album’s eleventh track. With this being the case, we can’t truly say this album has a “start” or “beginning” in the traditional sense; it’s a perfect lyrical and musical loop, no beginning or end.</p>
<p>However, this revelation carries great implications. It means the transmission didn’t work and the human race has failed to either hear or heed the warning to transcend since they’re still suck in the paradox throughout the album. I’m of the opinion that Joanna’s putting this up for the listener’s interpretation. Perhaps the story is hopeful, that during one of these loops the message will get through to the album’s characters and the human race will indeed transcend its fate. Perhaps not and the story is grim, with the infinite war loop being mankind’s ultimate fate. This message is both harrowing and hopeful and leaves the listener’s emotions following the listen as tangled as the album’s garden cover art.</p>
<p>Throughout many moments in our life time can seem like a linear prison. We wait to grow up. We wait to drive. We wait to graduate. We wait to find love. We wait to die. When we’re in moods like this <em>Divers</em> is a breath of fresh, green air to the soul. As we plunge in with Joanna, we can remember that time is what we make of it; it’s not a prison, but mental blinders we grow into as we age. <em>Divers</em> is that necessary reminder to occasionally take those blinders off, dive back into the joy of life, and transcend!</p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="scavenger-hunt">Scavenger Hunt</h2>
<ul>
<li>As discussed above, the entire album is constructed to be a perfect, infinite circle. “The Things I Say” is at the center of this circle, and if you listen closely you’ll notice there’s some strange audio at the end of the song. If you’re on a turntable, play “The Things I Say” in reverse, and the strange audio is revealed to be the song’s ending played in reverse, furthering the idea that time moves both ways and foreshadows the album’s destiny to repeat forever.</li>
<li>Besides taking inspiration from <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42716">James L. Dickey’s <em>Falling</em></a>, Joanna also built off the work of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley">P.B. Shelley</a>’s <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias">Ozymandias</a></em> in “Sapokanikan”. Give <em>Ozymandias</em> a quick read before listening to “Sapokanikan” and see if you can pick out all the callbacks!</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:blue-box" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Hurry up, Doctor, we need you! <br /><img style="text-align:left;display:inline-block;" src="/images/assets/divers/the-doctor.gif" /> <a href="#fnref:blue-box" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Marc BarrowcliftThe soundscape and themes in Joanna Newsom’s Divers are as dense and opaque as the unkempt garden on the cover. Among the sea of white-lab autotune vocals heard on today’s radio hits a harpist sporting an old-style nasally voice straight out of Disney’s Snow White seems so foreign that it might take listeners aback if they’re not prepared for it. I’d wager not many people can recall the last time they heard a song containing harp instrumentals, let alone songs featuring them as the vocal lead’s primary backing instrument. This sheds Divers in an almost unworldly glow, as if it exists in a dreamlike plane where time bears no meaning and moves as freely as the wind. This feeling does not seem accidental as time itself is one of the central themes on every single track in Divers. The album as a whole seems to resist attempts to pin it down to a sentence-long elevator pitch, Joanna went on record saying that if it were that easy “I wouldn’t have bothered making a record”. Indeed, the album’s lyrics are so layered it can take multiple listens to begin having any idea what she’s trying to say deeper than the surface-level. With all the double-meanings at play and the inherit difficulty in following along with the album’s frequent use of time travel Divers will leave you lost in time and space if you don’t take care to follow along. For those that do, what awaits is a grand, never ending opus of love and time whose impact will stay with you long after you lift the needle.Broken Bride2016-02-14T11:48:15+00:002016-02-14T11:48:15+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/broken-bride<p>Until I was in high school, the music that filled my iTunes library only consisted of Jimmy Buffett, Star Wars soundtracks that I used to play in the background while having epic battles with my LEGO (no shame), and my “Mix” playlist that consisted of songs passed on from my sister when she set up my first mp3 player<sup id="fnref:mp3player" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:mp3player" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. Admittedly, at that time, it did not really interest me to explore music and expand my iTunes library beyond what I had. I only really had an iTunes library as a result my parents and siblings sharing stuff with me. Even with 30+ songs on my mp3 player, I rarely used it<sup id="fnref:apology" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:apology" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>. Oddly enough, playing music and actually listening to and appreciating it really was a foreign experience for me at the time. Songs to me existed solely only as single entities used for background noise, not as a collective piece of art that could share an experience or tell a story. However, my general disinterest and narrow perception of music started to drastically change when Marc and I started to share the car ride to and from high school. Already a lover of the arts and music, Marc, empowered with a cassette AUX jack, played different types of music that he had discovered. Whether I liked it, in cases of Death Cab for Cutie’s “Trasatlanticism”, or not, such as with the cases of Coldplay, the half hour commute to and from school was the time to learn to appreciate songs and music as a whole. Hit play and let the album roll was the rule of the ride.</p>
<p>The hours in the car we both shared only continued to grow, and subsequently, I started being exposed to more music. My narrow view began to widen. It soon became apparent to me that it was not music that generally disinterested me, but rather that I had not been open enough to explore it and give it a fair chance. Queue LUDO. While I could talk a lengths about LUDO as a whole, the rest of their discography is a discussion for another day. What is important for this discussion is that Marc, newly equipped with burned CDs from a friend, added LUDO’s “You’re Awful, I Love You” to our music rotations in hopes of pleasing his angsty teenage brother actively voicing his dislike towards Coldplay. Little did Marc know, he put LUDO on my radar, and he subsequently kickstarted my independent exploration and development of my musical taste.</p>
<p>After I had listened to LUDO’s “You’re Awful, I Love You” a few more times throughout our car rides. I was hooked. No other music I had experienced before had their unique, descriptive lyrics<sup id="fnref:ludocreativeprocess" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:ludocreativeprocess" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup>, unconventional song writing, and unique instrumentation<sup id="fnref:moog" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:moog" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup>. It was beyond refreshing. While “You’re Awful, I Love You” primarily consists of “radio” songs, the couple of exceptions such as “Lake Pontchartrain” and “In Space” showed me that music could have the creativity and imagination to build a musical world or tell a story. Eager to experience more songs like “Lake Pontchartrain” and “In Space”, I soon delved more into the band and pulled the rest of their discography from Marc’s burned CDs. After uploading them to my iTunes, despite the small provided album art real estate in the iTunes Store UI, the album art of Broken Bride caught my eye.</p>
<p>Giving a high resolution version of the album art a hard look now as I write this, I now see that Broken Bride’s album art is a great example of album art at its finest. It now does not seem so coincidental that the album really caught my eye back then. I am confident that had this album existed back in the 60s and 70s, when album art displayed on big vinyl envelopes had arguably a greater influence on sales and shelf appeal, it would have flown off the shelves like crazy.</p>
<p>What really sparked my intrigue with this album art as opposed to the others in LUDO’s discography was the picture in the lower right of the album. The picture of a shadowed male against a heavily forested, mountainous, and overcast background juxtaposed with the title “Broken Bride” really sparked my curiosity. In hindsight, I now see that the reason “Broken Bride”’s album art worked so well at catching my eye was due to its elegant representation of the story behind the music without giving too much away. Swirling, ominous green auras and grunge-splattered fonts, yep, no weddings or crying brides here.</p>
<p>At a first glance at the track list, it became obvious that this EP was fully dedicated to a consistent story throughout. A whole album dedicated to telling one story? Count me in! The idea of an entire EP rock opera from LUDO truly excited me. What could LUDO tell given 28 minutes instead of 4? What lied behind that album art? Who is that in the lower right? With a quick double click on “Pt 1 Broken Bride”, crescendoing drums, fast-paced guitar, and the atmospheric electricity of the moog immediately catapulted me into the midst of the plight of the nameless hero.</p>
<p>Fifteen years ago, in the May of 1989, the hero lost his wife to a tragic car accident. Destroyed by his loss, our hero vows to undo the events that so cruelly robbed him of his one true love. Motivated by photos, memories, and the dream of holding his wife again, he wrestled with Einstein’s legacy for fifteen years, gained command of spacetime, and constructed a crude time machine.</p>
<p>After setting the clocks for May, 1989, the machine’s circuits fail, and, instead of being greeted with an early summer breeze, the machine launches him face first into a mud pit back in the Jurassic Period. Pterodactyls dominate the sky, as now, he escapes to hide in a cave separated from his machine. Our shell-shocked hero scratches the name of his love on the cave walls as an intense instrumental section transitions the narrative focus.</p>
<p>For anyone new to LUDO, Pt 1 perfectly showcases their dedication to lyrical refinement and storytelling. In Pt. 1, their lyrical skill is best showcased with how they chose to describe the protagonists emotion and scenes. With highlights such as: “Like motor oil down my throat, I couldn’t speak / I dropped the phone, the burning flares, the steam, your hair / Bits of glass, they sparkled everywhere”. This distraught verse coupled with the rolling drums and eerie moog put the listener right in the middle of the shock and trauma at the scene of the car crash. Additionally, Volpe’s fast-paced, urgent delivery throughout the song perfectly conveys the absolute resolve and dedication our hero has in rescuing his love.</p>
<p>Tampering with spacetime and the past do not go without consequences. Haunting, abrupt chords show that our hero’s clashes with the Jurassic period have had exponential effects on the future ultimately culminating in the apocalypse. Monstrous environmental decay, a dragon, and zombies spread death and catastrophic destruction throughout the city; at City Hall, a little boy confronts the Mayor as the survivors sit surrounded by terror below. Defeated, the Mayor proclaims his alliance to King Simius and takes his life. LUDO’s rallying instrumentation and evocative vocal delivery accompany the brave little boy as he decides to not go down without a fight and, uniting the survivors below, he leads the final stand against the rapture. As the song decays, the sound of the City Hall’s bell tower intermittently echoes poignant bell tones as the fate of the little boy and the survivors is left unknown.</p>
<p>Wind gusts and an upbeat guitar line sweep the focus back to the cave where our hero remains cornered. Coming to grips with his situation, our hero turns away from self-pity, and motivated by the memory of a vacation with his wife, he becomes determined to escape the pterodactyls and return to his machine. Pumping himself up, our hero throws down his etching rock and exits the cave.</p>
<p>Andrew and company’s layered, hectic delivery set the scene for the chaos as our hero narrowly dodges the pterodactyls, outmaneuvers the raptor, and reaches his machine. The machine’s widgets and gauges vibrate and snap the fabric of spacetime launching our hero back to the future, however, low fuel cells and rapid heavy metal riffs hurdle our hero head over heels straight ahead back to the scene of the apocalypse, where the situation surrounding City Hall has dramatically worsened. Our jarred hero sits in awe at the sight of bloody seas, dying stars, and engulfing flames while a catchy, foot-tap inducing, acoustic, western rhythm contrasts the scene of absolute terror.</p>
<p>A shaking, shell-shocked soldier of the rebellion sits in the ruins of battle and tells our hero of King Simius’ survival and his lead of the continuing rebellion against the Tyrant . However, their conversation is cut short when the dragon is summoned from across the ruins. With LUDO’s descriptive, atmospheric instrumentation at its best, erupting, volcanic guitars and hollowing winds from the moog bring us face to face with the rampaging dragon. The dragon shoots flames onto the remaining survivors. The last of humanity hangs on by a thread.</p>
<p>The rapid riffs of the dragon’s destruction fade as our hero looks at his machine. Hand on the ignition, our hero glares at the dragon. He fires up the circuits with the last remaining fumes of fuel, and the dragon is sucked into spacetime limbo destroying the machine in the process. At such an integral moment in the story, LUDO’s moog unifies the album as a whole with a tonal call back to Pt 1 accompanying the destruction of our hero’s last hope of seeing his wife again. Defeated, our hero weeps over the remnants of his machine. However, the eerie silence of the wasteland is broken by the elegant sound of harps.</p>
<p>The story of our hero, The Traveler, concludes in Pt 4. However, I will refrain talking about Pt 4 in this post, as I believe that it is best experienced without having any prior context. I highly recommend that you give this EP a listen and experience the conclusion of the journey for yourself.</p>
<p>Just like an exciting movie, when the album came to a close, I found myself thinking about the story for days. In the boring moments in high school classes, I would find myself reimagining all the different scenes and characters, adding new detail here and there, building my own vision of the story. Throughout the album, LUDO’s consistently imaginative lyrics add such color and life to the story. Moreover, in the emotional moments, such as the destruction of The Traveler’s time machine, and in the chaotic moments of terror, such as the summoning of the dragon, their instrumentation is able to weave an epic, emotional tale better than any words could. What really set this album apart from LUDO’s other discography, is, in my opinion, their exploration of multiple musical styles. Pt 1 brings the listener to a familiar electric, rock alternative style characteristic of the band. However, in Pt 3, LUDO explores into heavy rock and metal in addition to western acoustics. To top it off, the album closes with a grand finale on the piano.</p>
<p>Every time I pop this EP on, in addition to taking me on the wild, tragic journey of our hero, The Traveler, it reminds me of a couple memories and great times I have had in my life so far. It brings me back to early high school and the beginning of my independent exploration of my music taste. Listening to Broken Bride also takes me back to this past summer when Marc and I woke up at 3am to tackle the long six hour drive far up North for vacation. During the car ride, the designated co-pilot DJ, Marc, played Walk the Moon’s self titled, Beach Boys, and some other fantastic records and bands in addition to Broken Bride. The drive was like old times back in high school, except this time I was in the driver’s seat, and we actually had a dedicated auxiliary cord—thank God.</p>
<p>I am ever grateful for Broken Bride and LUDO as they were able to show my high school self that music can be something so much more than something to play for the sake of having background noise. Just like a big blockbuster or an addicting book, music, such as “Broken Bride”, can pull you into a wild, emotional adventure with vivid characters and complex conflicts.</p>
<p>If you are up for taking a romantic, action-packed, apocalyptic, musical adventure through spacetime, pop in your best pair of headphones or earbuds, press play, and enjoy—just be on the look out for the pterodactyls.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLudoVideoThing/videos">LUDO’s YouTube Channel</a></p>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:mp3player" role="doc-endnote">
<p>A <a href="http://goo.gl/11CNly">Sony iRiver</a> <a href="#fnref:mp3player" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:apology" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Sorry, Aimee, I know you worked really hard on setting it up for me… <a href="#fnref:apology" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:ludocreativeprocess" role="doc-endnote">
<p>An example of LUDO’s <a href="https://youtu.be/JvgpryBFWw0?t=1m18s">creative process writing process</a> <a href="#fnref:ludocreativeprocess" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:moog" role="doc-endnote">
<p>As of 2007 LUDO’s Tim Convy was only one of the known six players of the keyboard/synthesizer combo, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAXhg_J1BGo">the Moog</a> (pronounced mōɡ). <a href="#fnref:moog" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Michael BarrowcliftUntil I was in high school, the music that filled my iTunes library only consisted of Jimmy Buffett, Star Wars soundtracks that I used to play in the background while having epic battles with my LEGO (no shame), and my “Mix” playlist that consisted of songs passed on from my sister when she set up my first mp3 player1. Admittedly, at that time, it did not really interest me to explore music and expand my iTunes library beyond what I had. I only really had an iTunes library as a result my parents and siblings sharing stuff with me. Even with 30+ songs on my mp3 player, I rarely used it2. Oddly enough, playing music and actually listening to and appreciating it really was a foreign experience for me at the time. Songs to me existed solely only as single entities used for background noise, not as a collective piece of art that could share an experience or tell a story. However, my general disinterest and narrow perception of music started to drastically change when Marc and I started to share the car ride to and from high school. Already a lover of the arts and music, Marc, empowered with a cassette AUX jack, played different types of music that he had discovered. Whether I liked it, in cases of Death Cab for Cutie’s “Trasatlanticism”, or not, such as with the cases of Coldplay, the half hour commute to and from school was the time to learn to appreciate songs and music as a whole. Hit play and let the album roll was the rule of the ride. A Sony iRiver ↩︎ Sorry, Aimee, I know you worked really hard on setting it up for me… ↩︎Helplessness Blues2016-02-14T11:47:30+00:002016-02-14T11:47:30+00:00https://badmusichertz.com/post/helplessness-blues<p>I never finished my first listen of <em>Helplessness Blues</em>. Sure, I found the beginning and middle parts pleasant enough but near the tail end of the record a cacophonous, heinous solo not unlike a sax getting stabbed to death prompted me to immediately turn it off and walk away laughing. What a horrible song! What were they thinking? Never listening to this thing again, that’s for sure.</p>
<p><em>Helplessness Blues</em> has remained my all time favorite record for about four years now. Besides being an emotional and spiritual rock for me during my transition to college it was also the main actor in transforming how I view music as an art form. So how did this happen exactly? How does one get from not even being able to finish a full listen to holding it in such high regard?</p>
<p>To get a sense of how this happened I need to start from the beginning. In 2011 I had freshly graduated from high school and was keen to enjoy what would be my last summer at home before moving to Philadelphia for the next five years to study software engineering at Drexel University. It was difficult to work through the feelings of fear and doubt I had at the time, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle with trusty Coldplay at my side.</p>
<p>Ah, Coldplay, just the band name itself drums up fond memories of long drives to and from high school theater and swim team practices. I had discovered Coldplay in an almost miraculous moment at a terribly awkward dance party for teens on a family cruise. At the event I was where any sexually confused early high school boy would be: sitting off to the side obsessively checking his phone wishing for a dream scenario to fall on his lap like it did in the movies. That’s when I heard “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTFFQkdhw6Q">Lovers in Japan</a>” for the first time and it <em>blew my young mind</em>. Growing up, I was fed a strict musical diet of oldies, Country, Jimmy Buffett, and a splattering of Fleetwood Mac, but nothing I had heard my entire life up to that point sounded as cascadingly joyous and beautiful as that song did. Even still it makes my heart light hearing the old, familiar whirlwind of keys and blaring synths. You see, “Lovers in Japan” was an essential stepping stone for me along the path leading to Helplessness Blues. Because of that song I began to crave for music like it, anything to get that “high” again. When I arrived home I immediately poured over this wondrous and strange band “Coldplay”’s discography, buying any songs that sounded even remotely like “Lovers in Japan” from their thirty second previews in iTunes. I had that haphazardly assembled “Purchased” playlist on repeat for the better part of my high school career.</p>
<p>As graduation loomed ever nearer I began to finally grow a bit more curious. Maybe, just maybe, there were other bands out there like Coldplay for me to discover, but who? For a while I tried doing “Similar Video” hopping on Youtube with poor results (just more Coldplay majority of the time) and continued this into Freshman year of college until finally I stumbled across my answer. I was frequenting <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/coldplay">/r/coldplay</a> at the time (a community of coldplay fans on <a href="https://www.reddit.com">reddit.com</a>) and happened across a post from someone in a similar position as mine asking the small community of other “Coldplayers” what other bands they listened to. There, posted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/coldplaying">/u/coldplaying</a>, was <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Coldplay/comments/wzin3/share_bands_you_like_that_other_rcoldplay_members/c5hv5hc">a list of suggested bands</a>. One of the names listed caught my attention, “Fleet Foxes”, so I clicked on the provided link. That’s when I heard “Montezuma”, <em>Helplessness Blues</em> opening track, for the first time.</p>
<p>It had been three years since I had first heard “Lovers in Japan” and immediately I knew I was having an experience of the same caliber. The ambient, lush guitars and angelic harmonies painted a sonical mood not often explored by Coldplay. I knew I had to check out what else this band had to offer. To audit the band’s other songs like I had with Coldplay I snagged a copy of <em>Helplessness Blues</em> from my local library along with Radiohead’s <em>In Rainbows</em> (which also kept popping up as a suggestion on the forums which I look forward to covering another time) and 30 Seconds To Mars’s <em>This is War</em> (which I regretfully will also be covering another time). Finally, I could sit down and see what other songs made by these “Fleet Foxes” might sound like “Montezuma”. That’s when I cut my first listen short due to the dying saxophone solo and disregarded the band and “Montezuma” as a fluke.</p>
<p>There it remained sitting in my iTunes library for the next few months until I stumbled across something curious while searching for the lyrics to “Montezuma” and “Grown Ocean” (the album’s closer, which I had in the meantime discovered with the related videos section on YouTube) on songmeanings.com. There a fan <a href="http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858864351/?&specific_com=73016045044#comments">left a comment</a> on “Grown Ocean”’s lyrics that changed the way I perceive music and ultimately prompted me to give <em>Helplessness Blues</em> the crucial second listen. He had left a comment about how “Grown Ocean” continued a story, a character, from the previous songs, therefore making the songs in the album connected. The bulb lit, it all made sense now. The album was an ordered, coherent <em>whole</em>, not just a thoughtless collection of individual, “hit” pandering songs an artist threw together like my terrible iTunes playlists. Songs can be individual threads used to weave together a grand sonical tapestry of the mind, the whole stronger than any of their parts. All my life I had viewed music as the occasional good song that would get up in front of you for a quick, pitiful lap dance and leave you with an empty feeling afterwards known all too well in a world of zero calorie drinks, cheap thrills, and instant gratification. His comment shown forth like a gloriously illuminated lighthouse, a promise there could be something more not just in this album but in all music. With his comment in hand I immediately dove into my dusty, lonesome digital copy of <em>Helplessness Blues</em>, now with eyes opened to a new world of possibilities, and listened to it for what would truly be the first time.</p>
<h2 id="enter-the-prodigal-son">Enter the Prodigal Son</h2>
<p>Over the course of the album we pass by what seems like a plethora of unidentified different characters for each song until we are formally introduced to a son in Bitter Dancer. This character, mirroring the one from the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son">biblical story</a> in many respects, suddenly puts the album in context as we realize the majority of the various seemingly unique characters thus far are actually the same, the prodigal son from Bitter Dancer.</p>
<p>To explain, let’s look at “Montezuma”; we see a young man grimly realizing his current failures in life, mainly a lost love and squandered wealth. Then in “Bedouin Dress”, we see what we thought was another young man wistfully (and perhaps sheepishly) reflecting on their wasted, privileged, and spoiled childhood in a state of mind they refer to as Innisfree. This young man desperately wishes to return and have a do-over to “soon return” everything he had taken and to gaze upon his love again for the first time. Then again in “Battery Kinzie” we see what we thought was again another young adult realizing because of his ambivalent, unappreciative treatment of his now ex lover he has squandered his prime and attempts to patch things up only to realize she’s already moved on with another. Finally, in “The Plains / Bitter Dancer”, we see a prodigal son being scolded by his father that he’s done nothing of value his whole life despite the great privilege granted to him, ultimately deciding to leave and make it on his own because of it. It becomes clear now that these were not individuals at all but the same son finally identified in “Bitter Dancer” and we’re witnessing his life literally falling apart around him. He’s lost his “Innisfree” mentioned in “Bedouin Dress”, his true love in “Battery Kinzie”, and now his father’s acceptance and wealth in “Bitter Dancer”. The prodigal son we’ve grown to empathize with up to this point is now out to make it on his own which leads us into the self-titled track at the halfway point of the album, <em>Helplessness Blues</em>.</p>
<p>Here we see the son surprisingly deciding to not let all these life shattering events get him down, no, “what good is it to sing <em>helplessness blues</em>?” after all? He’ll strive out there and make a new Innisfree for himself! He thinks to himself “Why should I wait for anyone else?” and dreams of an orchard (a pure representation of an opportunity to work hard) where he can work to prove his own self worth. Through it all he holds the belief that his love will “keep me on the shelf” and return to his arms when he’s victorious. For the rest of the album we follow his emotional journey as he strives to achieve this dream.</p>
<h2 id="the-hardships">The Hardships</h2>
<p>Through the glimmering, bubbling rivers in the instrumental “The Cascades” we realize we’re listening to a traditional musical-style interlude to indicate time passing. It’s been a considerable while since the son lost his fortune and left to create his own Innisfree. Through this and “Lorelai” there’s still a soundscape of optimism and hopefulness, but particularly in “Lorelai” and “Someone You’d Admire” we begin to see that facade the son put on through the whole album begin to crumble. In “Lorelai” the son’s lyrical speech begins to take up hints of cynicism towards the way his lover left him (He “was old news to you”, just “old news”), while in “Someone You’d Admire” we see the son for the first time having difficulties actually following through on his vow to become an hard working, enlightened man in <em>Helplessness Blues</em>. We begin to realize that the part of him we have seen that just “wants only to be someone you’d admire” has been fighting a new dark side we are only just beginning to see that “would as soon just throw you on the fire”.</p>
<p>At this point, the train is at full steam towards a sharp turn and there’s no going back. The listeners all know where this sad tale is going. The shimmering hopefulness and the last sliver of innocence displayed by the son through the album even in the mist of a spoiled past, revoked fortune, and lost love is about to fall apart. The son as we know him is going to vanish.</p>
<h2 id="the-collapse">The Collapse</h2>
<p>This is it, “The Shrine / An Argument”, the two part movement that turns away almost everyone I’ve shared the record with as it did me in my initial listen. It’s easy to be caught off guard by it if careful attention had not been paid to the underlying emotional narrative up to this point. Throughout the entire album—though it’s been filled with melancholy and hardship—it’s still remained lighthearted and <em>beautiful</em>. Then enters “The Shrine / An Argument” like a splash of icy cold water; suddenly we’re met with an abrasive sonic tone sung to us by someone that is clearly not well and dangerous to himself and those around him. The idealistic son we’ve followed this entire time is crashing; he’s stealing money from wishing fountains (it should be noted this could also be seen metaphorically as leaching off the dreams of still innocent children now that his own dream has died), harassing and stealing from his old lover, and other self destructive acts. He’s spiraling out of control and things couldn’t get any worse.</p>
<p>Everything stops.</p>
<p>A bone chilling, eerie calm seeps into the song, making us even more fearful and uncomfortable than the earlier madness. It’s quiet and soft but something’s horribly, terribly wrong. The son calmly claims the “green apples hanging from my tree” belong “<em>only to me</em>”. The dream he tried so hard to achieve to make his father proud, to rid himself of borrowers guilt, and most importantly to win back his lost lover is revoked. It was and is all only for him now, nobody else matters. With this selfish regression complete (and now without innocence to use as a crutch), he lays down on the beach as the tide comes in and attempts drowning himself as the ear splitting saxophone solo you’ve heard so much about begins. Everything’s come to this, ambivalent suicide and the most ugly, vial, heinous sounds you could ever possibly imagine. You may not even notice the instruments fading out one by one until you’re left with a sole violin crying out it’s final note.</p>
<h2 id="the-aftermath">The Aftermath</h2>
<p>What’s this? Just a guitar and a sole vocalist wondering why the stars are in the sky? What the hell happened!? You can’t just switch back to music like this after what we have just been through and heard! <em>What the hell happened</em>?</p>
<p>In “Blue Spotted Tail” time has clearly passed again and it seems that the son we thought we lost has miraculously survived. Maybe he couldn’t follow through with it in the end after all? Or maybe he really did try but by some miracle was unsuccessful? Or maybe someone intervened right before it was too late? We can’t know, we aren’t given an answer, but regardless of the circumstances involving the failed suicide attempt <em>he’s alive</em>.</p>
<p>His mental state is doing much better than when we last saw him. Not great—or even good—but better. He’s lost all sense of purpose and doesn’t know what to do anymore. In “The Shrine / An Argument” he was fueled by bitter, destructive selfishness, but now he’s just exhausted and above all directionless. What’s the point in carrying on, really? He’s lost what little family he had, most likely lost the love of his life forever, and ultimately failed at “making it” on his own.</p>
<p>To top it all off he realizes now he can never return to Innisfree again. He’s lost the blissful, innocent ignorance he had when he was growing up comfortably and knows it will never come back. There’s no point in trying anymore.</p>
<p>What now?</p>
<h2 id="grown-ocean">Grown Ocean</h2>
<p>Unbridled musical bliss bursts forth throwing us off our feet. After such a quiet, subdued song (especially in he face of the lush precedent set by all the previous songs on the album) “Grown Ocean” thunders in like a trumpeting, glorious wake up call to the soul. At once all the worries we held from the previous couple songs melt away. It’s remarkable, we don’t even need to hear what the son has to say in the album’s final song to know what he feels, the sheer happiness is literally bursting at the seams through the music, as if it’s barely able to contain it. Clearly the son has discovered a new purpose in life, but what could it be?</p>
<p>The answer to that question reveals itself differently depending on the listener. One would perhaps say it’s the hope of being a father someday, however small the chance irrelevant. The wealth and fame he so desperately sought after to make it on his own (“someday I’ll be like the man on the screen”) was all wrong, it means nothing. Children “kept like jewelry, kept with devotion” are the only wealth in life worth treasuring and pursuing. Another might say instead that the son has achieved peace of mind through learning <em>patience</em>. He accepts the only way to find the answers he longs for is to “remove my demands for now” and calmly await his slow moving dream as he lives his life. Should the dream end up never coming <em>that’s fine</em>, <a href="https://youtu.be/VxUsQssT8Jc">Life is for Living</a> and “I’ll have so much to tell you about it” should he die before it manifests. It’s the journey, not the destination, and he vows to be there for every step.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s both these values together the son has awoken to. He doesn’t require some grand, elaborate plan anymore for a reason to live, as he proclaims he’ll be “so happy just to have spoken” as the story draws to a close. Throughout all the turmoil the son has come through better for it. Grown, like the ocean.</p>
<p>As the last of the music drops away we are left with just a sparse vocal harmony whispering these final words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wide eyed walker<br />
Don’t betray me<br />
I will wake one day, don’t delay me<br />
Wide eyed leaver<br />
Always going</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite everything he’s learned, there’s still the fear that he’ll never reconcile with his love (and even if he does that she might leave him again). Our character has grown, surely, but that won’t suddenly make life easy. Life will still be full of hardship and despair, but that doesn’t make it worth throwing away. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHAHgjL0YzQ">It’s part of the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating joy of life</a> and he resolves to be there for every moment of it.</p>
<p>And so ends <em>Helplessness Blues</em>. Perhaps when you listen you’ll disagree with my interpretation, and that’s absolutely fine. Maybe you’ll see a more intangible, emotional narrative presented by a multitude of characters, or maybe instead you’ll see a collection of songs that broadly deal with determining your purpose in life and coming of age, or you may even see a different narrative at work. Regardless of what you personally take away from the experience, it is no doubt one worth taking in one sitting while resting at a quiet place with a cup of tea and lyrics in hand. I know I will; there’s spiritual comfort in knowing as the birthdays continue to rush by I can always drop a needle and hear someone from far away crying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So now I am older<br />
Than my mother and father<br />
When they had their daughter<br />
Now what does that say about me?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>♫︎</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="scavenger-hunt">Scavenger Hunt</h2>
<ul>
<li>The album’s brimming with sonic imagery. See if you can hear the train in “Sim Sala Bim” slowly beginning its roll and eventually reaching breakneck speed during the instrumental second half. Also keep an ear out for the bubbling, crystal clear waters in “The Cascades” and the haunting moors in the first half of “The Plains / Bitter Dancer”.</li>
<li>As the name suggestions, the chaotic saxophone in “The Shrine / An Argument” sounds like it could be imitating a bitter argument between two people, adding yet another layer of sonic imagery to the record.</li>
<li>The album makes frequent callbacks to the singer’s personal “Innisfree” and the orchard he vows he’d tend there. See if you can pick up on all the times this underlying dream reappears throughout the record.</li>
</ul>Marc BarrowcliftI never finished my first listen of Helplessness Blues. Sure, I found the beginning and middle parts pleasant enough but near the tail end of the record a cacophonous, heinous solo not unlike a sax getting stabbed to death prompted me to immediately turn it off and walk away laughing. What a horrible song! What were they thinking? Never listening to this thing again, that’s for sure.