Who Let You Listen to My Music?

On May 7th, Baltimore indie rock station WTMD debuted the new song by Fulton Lights called Little Town of Not No More. Do you think Andrew Goldman, the brains behind Fulton Lights, would love to know that there was someone out there in radioland that heard the debut, loved the song, listened intently for the name of the band and the song once it was over, and then muttered it to himself over and over for the next hour until he was able to get back home and find it on Soundcloud? I am sure that is exactly what Andrew Goldman hoped would happen when someone heard his song. But, maybe, just maybe, Andrew Goldman would not be as excited when he found out the circumstances of this listen. For that person was me. And I was not engaged in any hipsterish behavior such as ironically playing chess with an old man in a dangerous park in West Baltimore or riding a single speed bike in Fell's Point. I was driving to Costco in a minivan with five kids.

(An aside: hearing new music with kids in the car is great because their minds are sufficiently uncluttered that when you yell back to them: "Remember this title! Panic Switch!" or "Remember this line: 'Self help guru with neck tattoo'" they can easily spit it back to you when you get home. It's a good reason to have kids. [It works better when you have more than one kid, because then they repeat it back and forth to each other.])

This isn't just the case for Fulton Lights. There are a bunch of Baltimore bands (Dan Deacon, Wye Oak, Future Islands, Viking Moses, Monster Museum, just off the top of my head; other people would add Beach House but I don't really care for Beach House) who have put out great music in the last couple of years. There's probably a real "scene" up there in Baltimore. And I am not the target audience for any of them. Not a one would say, "Yeah, we play music for people like that guy."

I guess I should be more bothered by this, but I really like it instead. Instead of speaking truth to power, I am speaking truth to coolness. You may have carefully crafted a sound that you think only intelligent modern young liberals would like and yet here I am in your audience proving you partially failed. I like to think that if I went to a Dan Deacon concert, Dan would look into the audience, see me and think, "That guy doesn't belong! Who let him in? Why is he listening to my music? Why are there five kids with him?" (This is a variant of the Ben Gibbard Wrong Audience Problem. He once said something to the effect of that it was really strange looking into the audience and seeing the cool people who would have beat him up in high school.)

The sad reality, though, is that I have aged out of the scene so I can't torture the artists I love with my presence. I have become content with just listening to the music and not trying to go down to clubs in Baltimore to see shows. Maybe it's a subconscious decision analysis (the negative value of getting mugged in Baltimore when multiplied by the likelihood of such mugging exceeds the positive psychic benefit I would receive of watching Viking Moses in a dive under I-83) maybe it's a value issue (I would prefer to go watch my kids play baseball games) and maybe it's because it's because no one I know around here likes the type of music I like because they are old and set in their ways so I have no one to go with. Whatever it is, 35 year old Doug makes excuses for not going that 20 year old Doug would not have.

(Aging even affects if I am willing to listen to a band. There is a new Baltimore indie band called Legends of Etcetera that gets a lot of play on WTMD but I cannot like because they just graduated from high school. I feel like an old weirdo even if I just listen.)

I didn't think I would ever get here. I guess that means some of those Projections (to use a term from A Swiftly Tilting Planet) of sitting in a basement listening to Kraftwerk and watching the Giants or loudly telling my teenagers that there hasn't been any good music made in the last decade or going to a Counting Crows/Hootie and the Blowfish concert because they represent music from my youth regardless if I liked it, all of these Projections are becoming sharper, clearer, more likely. And while they seem monstrous now, maybe 45-year-old Doug won't mind watching Adam Duritz and Darius Rucker harmonize on A Long December. (But I am still going to do what I can to make them Might-Have-Beens and not realities.)

Cabin Project's Unfolded and Soft Melancholy

When I was sixteen, I had a feeling that I still distinctly remember. I was lying on my bed in the basement and I felt a certain kind of soft melancholy. Naturally, I wanted to match music to my emotion, so I took a mental inventory to see which album I should put on. Nothing fit. Grunge was too harsh for the feeling, anything from the 80s was too brash, post grunge was too quirky. I tried playing my parents' Enya CD, but that didn't work either. I had to think of what I did not have in my collection and it finally dawned on me: emotional, poetic, feminine music. The closest thing I had to that was Elastica which was loud, brash, and snarling.

I didn't find the musical fit to my soft melancholy that day. But some months later, I found it. In the pre-internet days, a vital part of my musical education was the CD and cassette collection in the bowels of the Orem Public Library. So, somewhere along the way while browsing through the Smithereens, early OMD, Joy Division, early New Order, Icehouse, Asia, Oingo Boingo, Aerosmith, etc, I came across Sarah McLachlan's debut album, Touch. And there it was. The answer to the void in my collection. (Further exploration yielded her sophomore album Solace as being even better. The next two albums don't have quite the same impact for me.)

Touch and Solace-era Sarah M. was the starting point for me when listening to the album. The sound of the vocals in the chorus of "Where I Stand" for example, could be from Solace. There is also some late-1990s Heather Nova in the feeling of some of the vocals. But there is one thing that strikes me about the vocals that is very different for me compared to Sarah and Heather: The first few listens, I cannot make out a lot of what is being said so the voice works as an instrument in coloring the sound of the album. That voice! It hovers high, it goes low, it's soft, it hardens up, it conveys so much emotion and yet I cannot tell you a single thing that it says.

Although the voice is the starting point, the viola is what really drives the album. The long drawn out notes of sadness or driving the tempo with short staccato strokes. Because the viola is used so liberally in the early tracks and to such great effect, I thirst for it in the remainder of the album when the viola isn't featured prominently at the beginning of some of the later tracks. I wait eagerly. I know it’s coming. You don’t let a PhD in viola not get in on the action on every song. For example, in the song Highways, there is that great moving viola line at the beginning, it seems to drop out for a little bit while guitar picks up the voila line, and then it comes back with a drawn-out aching and emotional line that is the best use of aching emotional strings since Max Richter remixed Vivaldi’s Summer. I think the viola is what takes this from being an album that I can only enjoy when caught in melancholy to an Album of all Moods and Seasons. (It's telling that I listened to it during a sunny week in the summer in Maryland and not covered with pine sap in a cabin in Oregon in the fall and still thought it a winner.)

There is something very different about having strings appear in an album and having a member of your band whose sole responsibility is to play the strings. For the former, you can imagine the leader of the band (James Mercer, Conor Oberst, Thom Yorke) at some point in the production process say, "I think we need some strings here," but because the strings aren't a part of the band, the song isn't written with the strings in mind. (As I wrote this, I imagined Phil Selway of Radiohead listening to Burn the Witch and thinking, "How are we going to do this live?") Usually, they are there to just add some color. (Even Matt Pond PA and their use of the cello feels this way. Matt Pond just wanted to have some background strings.) But when you have a member of the band (especially a trio in the case of Cabin Project), then the strings are as important to the structure of a song as the guitar, drums, or bass. The only other band that even compares to Cabin Project in this regard is the Levellers. By making the strings (fiddle for the Levs, viola for CP) so integral to the music, it creates a sound that is set apart from others.

Here come the questions...

If you are given the task of creating a being that is an animated representation of the sound of the band and, when you have assembled the structure of the figure from parts plundered from the local charnel houses and cemeteries and you only have to place the final bone and you turn to your assistant and he informs you that he has taken the sacred reliquaries from the Cathedral of Comedians that contain the bones of each of the Three Stooges, which Stooge Bone do you choose? Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, or Curly Joe? The answer is Larry. On screen, Larry is the embodiment of a sad viola. You put Larry's bone in and your creation now has the requisite melancholy to represent the sound of the band.

Which song would I choose to add to my If I Were to DJ an LDS Stake Dance playlist? Love You More. Oh man, this song would be a killer follow-up to I Would Live in Salt by the National which I would play near the end. Even better, as relationships grow out of dancing consecutively to these two songs (how could they not?) and then collapse, only then will the couple realize that Love You More is actually a sad break-up song, that the song that cemented their relationship also built into their relationship the seeds of its dissolution.

Which song could you convince an aging Lilith Fairer was that one song she heard Sarah McLachlan play in 1999 when got so close to Mother Gaia that she felt her feet sink deep into the earth, her heart echoed the natural rhythms of the earth, and she felt the life-giving wick move up through the soles of her feet until it filled her entire being? I am going to go with Crows (sample lyric: Singing like a banshee like they’re the only ones who know whether the wind is going to move us higher). Where I Stand would be a good choice here as well. But to do something to an aging Lilith Fairer would be cruel.

If SkyNet was going to hold off Judgement Day if you could make it feel true human sadness, would you play a song off of this album? No! This is too soft a melancholy to avert Judgement Day! Don't be fooled! If you are in this position, you should always play something from Taylor Swift. If SkyNet heard All Too Well, it would think: "If this is the depth of sadness that human beings can feel after a puppy love type of relationship, I cannot fathom the depths from mass extinction. I will destroy myself instead for I feel nothing."

Grade: A- (because its melancholy cannot save us)

Shearwater: JP&O

Douglas Call Tuesday, April 12, 2016 7:45 AM

I think you would like the new Shearwater song Quiet Americans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr2pdwhjtjU

It sounds like a late 80s/early 90s Depeche Mode track

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:49 PM

and, yeah! this song is cool!

I never would've said this was Shearwater

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:57 PM

Wow, this song is amazing.

third time through. It definitely sounds like a throwback to the past, but done so well.

so that it stands alone

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:59 PM

it's totally a winner.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:15 PM

Listening to "Backchannels" now. I love this.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:23 PM

man, this Backchannels is a haunting song. I can't stop listening.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:36 PM

I've got my friend Mike listening to Quiet Americans and Backchannels on repeat.2:36 PM

you've touched two lives today.

Josh Sorensen Wednesday, April 13, 2016 9:14 AM

I started my day with Shearwater "Backchannels" on repeat

Josh Sorensen Wednesday, April 13, 2016 9:16 AM

I love the lyric: "put down the knife, The night is here.
But still is spinning out stars in its wake." Dang. so beautiful. And his voice is so weary.

I can't get enough Quiet Americans and Backchannels.

Josh Sorensen Thursday, April 14, 2016 11:49 AM

You're right, “Whither the Americans?!” is a great thing to shout.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:16 PM

btw, the last half of Jet Plane and Oxbow was my main entertainment last weekend.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:17 PM

I find Stray Lights fascinating. It's a great album ender.

The only track I don't love is Wildlife in America.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:18 PM

it'd be hard to follow Pale Kinds.

laugh, kings

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:21 PM

I should probably save this for the blog, but sometimes when I'm listening to JP&O I feel like I'm listening to Mike and the Mechanics.  The weird thing is I don't even know Mike and the Mechanics beyond their radio singles. one night a week ago or so I went down this strange rabbit hole wondering how the end of the 80's would've looked to Mike and the Mechanics. The onslaught of grunge and rap and r&b. I wonder what the view was like from their seats.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:19 PM

man, we haven't agreed on an album in years.

Since, what, War on Drugs?

Doug's A-Z Listening Experience: Surprise Song Follow-Up

Unlike so many of my goals in life, the A-Z Listening Experience is still going strong. I just plowed into the Is which gives me the chance to give an update on the Surprise Songs from D-H. (Remember, these are songs that I have in my catalog that I have no memory of hearing in the past. So, they cannot be songs where I say: "Oh YEAH! This song is so great!" They have to be total surprises.)

D is for Diggin' Up the Heart by Brandon Flowers. (Disconnecty by Grandaddy was a close second.)

This is off the album that he released last year that a lot of people liked but that I never listened to except in the car with Christina and the kids and even then, the kids kept requesting certain songs. So, I never caught this one and I like it better than anything else on the album because it's a Brandon Flowers Nevada song. The best thing to me about Brandon Flowers is that he continues to write about Las Vegas and, when the characters aren't in Vegas, they are somewhere out in small-town Nevada. When kids from the Sun Belt listen to his stuff, they don't have to try and imagine themselves in New York, the docks, or the Midwest. In this song, it's about a guy who is in prison out in the desert where he can smell the sagebrush when he is out in the yard. Sure, the story in the song could have been about a kid in the Midwest, but because Flowers specifically marks the location in the song (the desert, the girl in the song being Humboldt County queen), it evokes driving through Winnemucca (county seat of Humboldt County) on I-80, coloring the whole song with memories of vast blue skies, blistering heat, sagebrush, and utter emptiness. 

E is for Execution of All Things by Rilo Kiley. 

I have always liked the sound of Rilo Kiley, but there is something in the way that Jenny Lewis swears that is incredibly ugly to me. It seems that in the first few tracks of this album that there were enough of Jenny Lewis swearing to deter me from the whole thing. (Personal preference, of course. Other people might find the way she swears cute or endearing or empowering. I find it ugly. That's the only way I can describe it.) So, I never got to this song which is a great angry song about havoc being rained down on the head of an ex. (This explanation doesn't make sense because this is track three. Whatever.) This is really the apex of Rilo Kiley for me because I like the sound of this album (previous album was kind of boring, next album because really slick) and it isn't marred by the ugly swears. (I can't write this in any less prudish way. Sorry, man.)

F is for Flake by *shudder* Jack Johnson.

That is the most difficult sentence I have ever had to write. I cannot stand anything else I have ever heard by Jack Johnson. I cannot stand his vibe, his voice, his lyrics, everything he stands for. (Laid back dude on the beach with an acoustic guitar who strums idiotic ditties without a shirt but with a shell necklace and all the girls think he is so deep and so talented.) If someone asks me what music I like, part of the description is "...and I cannot stand Jack Johnson." And yet, here I am, completely besotted by Flake. I was shocked that when it first started playing, that I didn't give it an immediate thumbs down like all his other songs. But the songs evolves into something much more interesting and cool by the end and I could not get it out of my head. I spent the rest of the Fs hoping that something else would come along to knock it out of first place. I kept relistening to it, hoping that I was mistaken. Instead, each relisten further confirmed a most inconvenient truth: I liked a Jack Johnson. (Even worse, according to one of my beach bum friends, this was a popular Jack Johnson song back in the day.)

G is for Good Old Days by the Lodger. (Close runner-up: Generate by Collective Soul. Seriously.)

It's a very simple peppy British song. Nothing much to it. Which makes it almost a perfect song. It's like a Whoville Christmas after the Grinch stole it, without all the trimmings and trappings and roast beasts.

H is for Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez. (Close runner-up: He Seng by Carsick Cars.)

Jose Gonzalez is one of those soft acoustic men from the early 2000s that people recommended to me and when I listened to their albums and thought they sounded same-y. No idea how we go this particular song (it must have been popular because we also have a version of the song that is sung by some chorus), but divorced from the rest of the album, it really shines. 

The lack of Republican Rock

You know I think (likely erroneously) that I am as middle-of the-road as possible when it comes to my politics. I like to think that I am the swing voter that every politician cherishes. Because I think I am middle-of-the-road, I like it when there are viable candidates from both parties, when it seems like both parties are getting their message out there. So, the following is not my endorsement but an attempt to figure out why one side kills it in the political music department and the other is so so terrible.

Fact: Payola by the Desaparecidos is a great album.

Fact: It's also a very political album.

Possible Fact: Conor Oberst when interviewed about the album said something to the effect of "if you only have three minutes to say something, you have to be direct." (Even if this isn't a fact, pretend it is because it makes my point.)

Payola touches on a bunch of different policy areas: immigration, health care, foreign policy, Wall Street are the ones that come to mind but I am sure that there are others. And while Payola is a completely political album (Muse's Drones is another political album from 2015), a number of indie bands at least write political songs.

Fact: All of these songs are from some the same ideological perspective. (I would guess that any political hip hop songs are also going to be from a similar ideological perspective, but I do not listen to hip hop so I can't say for certain.)

Fact: Republicans are so loathed by rock bands (mainstream and indie) that not only can Republicans not get bands to play at their rallies, they can't even get approval from a band to play a recording at their rallies (unless it's Ted Nugent).

Pretty sure a fact but not wanting to look it up: Republicans have anemic support among young voters.

Why? Democrats do a great job in presenting what's wrong with the country and what needs to be fixed. You listen to any of those tracks and Payola and you say, "Yeah! That's a real problem! A guy dying from lack of health care! Immigrant families being treated inhumanely! Wall Street bros getting golden parachutes while the common man is underwater! We need to fix it!" (Note that the messaging is heavy on problems, light on solutions.)

What do mainstream conservatives give you as problems? Over-regulation of small business, activist judges, too much government spending, not enough guns. Try stoking the fires of political activism with that. Try writing a song that will change the minds of others about those issues.

Of course, then you have the Donald Trump branch of conservatism with messages of xenophobia and racism. Much pithier but deplorable messages that if you are a mainstream Republican, you really don't want to see put into a catchy three minute song.

The issue with conservative messaging is that it focuses on the wrong problems. Small business regulation is a boring issue. Declining life expectancy in the Midwest? That's an issue. Opiod addiction? Great issue. Increasing rates of nonmarital births? Oh boy. Declining labor force participation? Bingo. And those topics would be fertile territory for songwriters.

So, let's say I am a Republican candidate and I decide to shift my message to "America has problems. And the problems are with substance abuse and disability and no jobs and suicide" who is the band that I ask to play at my rally? Some country band who sings about patriotism? Not on your life.

Give me...The Offspring.

*Josh clutches his pearls and asks for his smelling salts*

Yes, because amidst the sea of vapid songs, they have a couple that nail the problems that should be the heart of conservative messaging:

(1) Hit That: It's about teen pregnancy, sexual and material irresponsibility, and a condemnation of the hook up culture.



(2) The Kids Aren't All Alright: All the kids on a street grow up and their lives are broken. Drop outs, nonmarital births, drug abuse, suicide.



So, yeah, change the messaging so that it can be articulated in a three-minute rock song. Bring in the Offspring, get them to play for the rally. Bus in some straight edgers. (If you think this is all too 1990s, uh, let me remind you that Dave Matthews just played a Bernie Sanders rally. At least the Offspring have hit singles in the last ten years.) Get other bands on board. Create a Republican music scene.

Because, only then, will we achieve what I think would be the most important step forward in American politics:

Election Eve.
Live.
Battle of the Bands: Democrats vs. Republicans.

Such is my hope, such is my prayer.

Shearwater: The Importance of Removing a Thor from Your Side or Designing Play Names for Tim Tebow

Upfront disclosure: This review will be biased.

Unlike you, I don't send emails/write handwritten notes to bands that I like. I have done it twice. One was a completely unfair request for the Mountain Goats to come back to Salt Lake City something like three months after they played there because I had just discovered the Sunset Tree and I really wanted to see it played live. 

The other time was when I wrote Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater. I was really into the Winged Life album and the Thieves EP (side note: I just hit I Can't Wait on my A-Z Listening Experience and I had the same experience that I had when I first heard it 11 years ago: This guy's voice is incredible), so I was exploring their website and they had a demo up for a song called Turn Your Transmitters Off. I loved the song, but I couldn't understand all the lyrics at one point in the song, so I sent an email to Jonathan Meiburg asking him: "On Turn Your Transmitters Off, what is the missing word in the phrase 'It was a ______ disaster'?" He responded quickly: "It's 'f@#$#$%', I'm afraid." I was impressed that he responded AND that that his response was so gentlemanly. (Side note: Turn Your Transmitters Off became Red Sea, Black Sea on Palo Santo, but *music snob alert* I still prefer the demo.) 

Since that time, I have been all aboard the Jonathan Meiburg/Shearwater train. I have become more and more convinced that Meiburg sharpened Will Sheff's genius and that his leaving Okkervil River in 2008 to focus on Shearwater full-time was a crippling blow to Okkervil River (I don't think that Sheff's fit of nostalgic solipsism that was The Silver Gymnasium [their worst album] happens if Meiburg is still in the band because then Sheff doesn't view himself as the undisputed leader of OR).

One nagging thing I have felt about Shearwater since they became a fully-realized band and not an Okkervil side project is that although their albums were at various times brilliant, they also had some languid moments. (I am talking about the island trilogy of Palo Santo, Rooks, and the Golden Archipelego). Sometimes I felt like that was just part of the band's MO, the quiet, the slow tempos, sometimes breaking out in rampages but many times there was barely anything there. Each of the albums, though, had one really solid loud, fast-tempo song and I always wondered whether there was friction within the band, if someone wanted to go harder and faster and someone wanted to go slower. I read one time that the drummer, named Thor, was a believer in minimalist drumming.

Thor left the band after the Island Trilogy.

The next album, Animal Life, was ferocious. And it was also amazing. There are still some quiet moments, but nothing as torpid as on previous albums.

Which means I was beyond excited for Jet Plane and Oxbow. And, at first, I thought Meiburg had blown it.

Why? Electronics. The album begins with Prime and Prime begins with some synth arpeggios. And that synth stays throughout the song, although ultimately buried in drums and guitar. And then Quiet Americans starts up and it sounds like the beginning of a really great industrial track. Great sound, but not really a classic Shearwater sound. A Long Time Away gets off great, but because I already have the electronic concern in my head, I am much more aware of the little descending synth line that appears throughout the song. And this obsession just grows so that I stop paying attention to the songs and just keep thinking: "Why are they ruining their great sound?"

And then Pale Kings bursts forth and it's just a complete and total Shearwater track in the veins of You As You Were. It's driving, it's radiant, it's upbeat, it is thrilling, it is Shearwater at their finest. And I felt like it's this beautiful gesture from Meiburg saying, "If you were distracted by the electronics, here's this non-electronic gem. The songs, the lyrics, the sounds, they are all still there. Now go back and listen to those first five tracks and realize that the electronics don't factor into them nearly as much as you thought they did." And I went back and listened to those first five tracks with Pale Kings as my reference and absolutely loved them.

But the other surprising thing about the album is that Pale Kings not only unlocks the key to understanding the first five tracks but it also leads you into the spectacular second half that is much more of the Animal Joy sound. (And, in the case of Radio Silence, sounds like a prime British Sea Power cut from the Do You Like Rock Music? era. That guitar line that rips through the song, the call of "disarray", followed by the imploring "I need it I need I need it" is so BSP.)

Now, let's answer the questions:

How many football plays for Tim Tebow can you make from derivations of the title of the album?
(1) Jet Plane and Tebow: Zone read for Tebow with a really fast halfback as the option.
(2) JetBow and Oxplane: Sprint out for Tebow with a fullback in the flat as a safety valve
(3) TePlane and Oxbow: Goal line play, O line forms an oxbow, Tebow makes like a plane and flies over the line into the end zone
(4) Jet Plane Te "is a freaking ox"Bow: Short yardage, shotgun play, Tebow makes like a fullback and plows ahead like an ox.
The answer is 4 plays.

Which song title do I always get wrong in my head? Pale Kings. Every time I think of the name of the song, I think it is called White Knights. Meiburg's title is better.

Which song could be played during the credits of a Jerry Lewis movie to help people feel forget that the movie had no real ending?
None. But maybe, if you translated Stray Light at Clouds Hill into French, it could work some magic.

Which song should you not play during the credits of a Jerry Lewis movie because it would further the ennui of the patrons?
That would be Long Time Away. "I just watched 90 minutes of a movie about a sad clown without an ending? And now there is a song telling me that I have been a long time away from my life where anything would have been better than suffering through this?" *spiking ennui levels*

Let's say you are in line for a concert at the 9:30 Club and in a flash of an eye, you are caught in a snob-off about this album with a bearded doughy fellow. What's the winning criticism?
"Electronics" is too obvious, and it's likely the shiv that beardo has brought to the fight. You gotta go with track sequencing. "I mean, it's a brilliant album, but Pale Kings is such a rush that you have to put a really quality track right after it. And Only Child just starts off so small that it just kills some of the momentum of the album. Glass Bones should be track 7." Beardo hasn't considered it. You just pulled a Marion-drinking-game-in-Tibet move. Collect your winnings. (I think some metaphors got mixed in there...)

Grade: A+