Hypnotize - System of a Down
Hypnotize and the album that preceeded it, Mezmerize, each stand alone quite well, but they’re also each meant to be half of a larger whole. Apart from the similar titles, their covers have similar imagery, and the packaging of Mezmerize is designed so that Hypnotize can nestle comfortably into its back flap. It also seems that Hypnotize continues and elaborates on some of the themes in Mezmerize’s songs, and its final track is a longer reprise of Mez’s first track, Soldier Side. In general, the songs are deeper and more personal in their explorations of the political, social, and spiritual themes.
Over the years, one of my favorite songs on this album has been the title track, Hypnotize. The way that it seamlessly draws connections between personal and political issues (as someone once said, “the personal is political”) strikes me as an especially adept navigation of that particular continuum. Plus the sounds those guitars make are some of the most beautiful I have in my collection.
It’s clear that these two albums together are supposed to mean something. I confess, I haven’t devoted much of my mental energy over the years to trying to divine that meaning. If I were to venture a guess, after immersing myself in both for about a week now, it might go something like this:
Mezmerize explores many of the ways that propaganda has seeped into all aspects of popular culture, lulling the public into a false belief about their lives and their place in the world. The albums’ titles refer to that false belief, indicating that we’ve been to some extent brainwashed into accepting the status quo and being content with a less meaningful existence and a comfortable ignorance about the suffering that exists in the world.
In turn, Hypnotize proceeds to break through that trance, looking the truth in the face and shaking away the fog of self-deception. What it finds is violence, exploitation, isolation, and yet a certain amount of guilt for breaking this comfortable trance in the first place. In one song, Kill Rock ‘n Roll,
So I felt like the biggest asshole
When I killed your rock n roll
Every time I look In your eyes, every day I'm watching you die
All the thoughts I see in you about how I
Yet the truth must, and ultimately will, be known.
Next: Elect the Dead
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 105: Mezmerize
Mezmerize - System of a Down
After getting my first internet-connected laptop of my very own, I quickly began to dabble in illegal music downloading. I mostly used it to discover, risk-free, some musicians that weren’t currently on the radio, including the Indigo Girls (now a favorite). But I also used it to shamelessly get more music by some bands I was already well aware of and could easily have bought at the local record store. Some tracks from Mezmerize were among those, specifically Revenga, Cigaro, and Violent Pornography. Eventually I bought the album, more out of completionism than guilt; I had come to the decision that downloading individual tracks, piecemeal, was not for me.
I have some things to say about Violent Pornography. Like I said in my Toxicity review, System of a Down is “no such thing as TMI” music; they dare to use imagery and subject matter often considered taboo, and not just as a joke or for shock value. I usually find that the explicit lyrics are usually thoughtful, powerful, and serve to make an important point that shouldn’t be taken lightly. For instance, in Needles, the image of a tapeworm is used to emphasize the draining, parasitic nature of addiction. Violent Pornography seemed to be an exception; for several years I saw only sexually explicit lyrics and not much in the way of depth or meaning.
But recently, I started to feel like I get it.
It’s a violent pornography
choking chicks and sodomy
the kind of shit you get on your TV
This song came out in 2005, well after the Internet had become established not only as a common household media source but especially as a discrete way to acquire pornography. It was two years after Avenue Q debuted, with a song called The Internet is for Porn. And yet here’s a song describing the most hardcore porn as something you get on TV, the more mainstream, wholesome, mass-marketed medium. What is this song trying to say about mainstream media? About pop culture in general? The lyrics also repeatedly taunt, “Bet you didn’t know.”
I could analyze any of these other songs in as much depth. Some of them I especially like because I’m impressed with how difficult they must have been to write and perform. These include Question! with its confusingly syncopated rhythms, and This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song, which is... well, hyperactively fast-paced. It makes an excellent running song, as does the rest of the band’s repertoire.
This was one of my favorite album for a very long time, and I find I do not love it any less for all the time that’s passed. It’s beautiful from start to finish.
Next: Hypnotize
After getting my first internet-connected laptop of my very own, I quickly began to dabble in illegal music downloading. I mostly used it to discover, risk-free, some musicians that weren’t currently on the radio, including the Indigo Girls (now a favorite). But I also used it to shamelessly get more music by some bands I was already well aware of and could easily have bought at the local record store. Some tracks from Mezmerize were among those, specifically Revenga, Cigaro, and Violent Pornography. Eventually I bought the album, more out of completionism than guilt; I had come to the decision that downloading individual tracks, piecemeal, was not for me.
I have some things to say about Violent Pornography. Like I said in my Toxicity review, System of a Down is “no such thing as TMI” music; they dare to use imagery and subject matter often considered taboo, and not just as a joke or for shock value. I usually find that the explicit lyrics are usually thoughtful, powerful, and serve to make an important point that shouldn’t be taken lightly. For instance, in Needles, the image of a tapeworm is used to emphasize the draining, parasitic nature of addiction. Violent Pornography seemed to be an exception; for several years I saw only sexually explicit lyrics and not much in the way of depth or meaning.
But recently, I started to feel like I get it.
It’s a violent pornography
choking chicks and sodomy
the kind of shit you get on your TV
This song came out in 2005, well after the Internet had become established not only as a common household media source but especially as a discrete way to acquire pornography. It was two years after Avenue Q debuted, with a song called The Internet is for Porn. And yet here’s a song describing the most hardcore porn as something you get on TV, the more mainstream, wholesome, mass-marketed medium. What is this song trying to say about mainstream media? About pop culture in general? The lyrics also repeatedly taunt, “Bet you didn’t know.”
I could analyze any of these other songs in as much depth. Some of them I especially like because I’m impressed with how difficult they must have been to write and perform. These include Question! with its confusingly syncopated rhythms, and This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song, which is... well, hyperactively fast-paced. It makes an excellent running song, as does the rest of the band’s repertoire.
This was one of my favorite album for a very long time, and I find I do not love it any less for all the time that’s passed. It’s beautiful from start to finish.
Next: Hypnotize
Thursday, October 22, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 104: Steal This Album!
Every so often I feel like ordering a pizza with “Pepperoni and green peppers, mushrooms, olives, chives” and seeing if anyone gets the reference.
Steal This Album! - System of a Down
It amazes me that I owned three albums by System of a Down before I started to realize how much I love them. I got this one after Roulette showed up on my Pandora station consisting mostly of acoustic folk rock, and I was surprised to find it there. The song is a marked example of the “token light song” that many metal bands like to put into their albums, being a very stripped-down voice-and-acoustic-strings piece with wistful, relationship-centered lyrics. But it’s still very distinctly theirs, and I like that.
The rest of the album is much less light, with the band’s usual level of hard-hitting themes and equally hard-hitting sounds. And in several songs, a focus on percussion that reminds me of another favorite band, Course of Empire. There also seems to be an increased focus on spiritual themes, as seen in songs like Innervision, Ego Brain, Thetawaves, and Streamline.
And then there’s bits that sound spiritual, but maybe are just a delivery system for pure sonic sugar. Like I-E-A-I-A-I-O, whose title is a transcription of the nonverbal chant-like refrain; it frames each word-salad verse like a mystical incantation.
I think if I had to rank all of System of a Down’s albums, this one would just barely make the top of the list as my favorite. It’s quite consistently awesome-sounding, with many high points throughout, and relatively few low points. I think it’s also got some of the most beautiful vocal performances I’ve heard from the band. And there’s a lot of drums in it. I love drums.
Next: Mezmerize
Steal This Album! - System of a Down
It amazes me that I owned three albums by System of a Down before I started to realize how much I love them. I got this one after Roulette showed up on my Pandora station consisting mostly of acoustic folk rock, and I was surprised to find it there. The song is a marked example of the “token light song” that many metal bands like to put into their albums, being a very stripped-down voice-and-acoustic-strings piece with wistful, relationship-centered lyrics. But it’s still very distinctly theirs, and I like that.
The rest of the album is much less light, with the band’s usual level of hard-hitting themes and equally hard-hitting sounds. And in several songs, a focus on percussion that reminds me of another favorite band, Course of Empire. There also seems to be an increased focus on spiritual themes, as seen in songs like Innervision, Ego Brain, Thetawaves, and Streamline.
And then there’s bits that sound spiritual, but maybe are just a delivery system for pure sonic sugar. Like I-E-A-I-A-I-O, whose title is a transcription of the nonverbal chant-like refrain; it frames each word-salad verse like a mystical incantation.
I think if I had to rank all of System of a Down’s albums, this one would just barely make the top of the list as my favorite. It’s quite consistently awesome-sounding, with many high points throughout, and relatively few low points. I think it’s also got some of the most beautiful vocal performances I’ve heard from the band. And there’s a lot of drums in it. I love drums.
Next: Mezmerize
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 103: Toxicity
Toxicity - System of a Down
This is the first CD I ever bought. For real. A used record shop, Spectra, had just opened around the corner from home; I saw this album on the rack and recognized the title of a song I’d enjoyed on the radio. I didn’t even like heavy metal at the time, except when some of the softer hits trickled into my alternative music station and mere exposure effect gradually desensitized me. I was young and still very noise-sensitive.
I didn’t really develop my deep love of System of a Down until years later, when I got Mesmerize, and I haven’t paid much attention to this particular album for over a decade. There are songs on it that endure in my memory, of course - hits like Chop Suey, Aerials, and Toxicity which everyone probably knows if they’re at all aware of the metal/alternative scene of the turn of the century. But giving the whole album a wholehearted listen-through after all these years, I found that it reminded me of everything I love about System of a Down, and why it remains one of my absolute favorites:
1. Shamelessly barefaced politicism. As much as I’ve raved about the power of ambiguity in art, there’s something to be said about pushing an agenda and pushing it so directly as to leave no room for interpretation. There’s no doubt about, for instance, the message encased in Prison Song. Among other things, it’s saying:
All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased
and law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
This is pure poetry. And pure politics. How many bands can do both at once without being preachy? I’m looking at you, U2.
2. Vocals that do everything. Since childhood I’ve gone from enjoying Serj Tankian’s vocals in spite of the occasional screamyness to because of it. There’s something very powerful about metal’s use of throat-burningly emotive screams that I don’t think I could reasonably do without in my life, and I think System of a Down has the perfected the art - and yet can also sing well in a more conventional style. If you doubt it, listen to Aerials. And on top of that, they can do some decent birdsounds too.
3. No such thing as TMI. Want politics? Got it. Spirituality? Got it. Pulling a tapeworm out of your ass? It’s set to a catchy tune interspersed with “Hey!” Sexuality? Pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo...
4. A mixture of ancient and modern, acoustic and electric, whatever you want to call that combination that seems to make music sound timeless and eternal.
5. Spirituality. When they want to be, their lyrics are profoundly meaningful:
Life is a waterfall
we’re one in the river
and one again after the fall
What I love about System of a Down is everything I love about music.
Next: Steal This Album!
This is the first CD I ever bought. For real. A used record shop, Spectra, had just opened around the corner from home; I saw this album on the rack and recognized the title of a song I’d enjoyed on the radio. I didn’t even like heavy metal at the time, except when some of the softer hits trickled into my alternative music station and mere exposure effect gradually desensitized me. I was young and still very noise-sensitive.
I didn’t really develop my deep love of System of a Down until years later, when I got Mesmerize, and I haven’t paid much attention to this particular album for over a decade. There are songs on it that endure in my memory, of course - hits like Chop Suey, Aerials, and Toxicity which everyone probably knows if they’re at all aware of the metal/alternative scene of the turn of the century. But giving the whole album a wholehearted listen-through after all these years, I found that it reminded me of everything I love about System of a Down, and why it remains one of my absolute favorites:
1. Shamelessly barefaced politicism. As much as I’ve raved about the power of ambiguity in art, there’s something to be said about pushing an agenda and pushing it so directly as to leave no room for interpretation. There’s no doubt about, for instance, the message encased in Prison Song. Among other things, it’s saying:
All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased
and law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
This is pure poetry. And pure politics. How many bands can do both at once without being preachy? I’m looking at you, U2.
2. Vocals that do everything. Since childhood I’ve gone from enjoying Serj Tankian’s vocals in spite of the occasional screamyness to because of it. There’s something very powerful about metal’s use of throat-burningly emotive screams that I don’t think I could reasonably do without in my life, and I think System of a Down has the perfected the art - and yet can also sing well in a more conventional style. If you doubt it, listen to Aerials. And on top of that, they can do some decent birdsounds too.
3. No such thing as TMI. Want politics? Got it. Spirituality? Got it. Pulling a tapeworm out of your ass? It’s set to a catchy tune interspersed with “Hey!” Sexuality? Pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo...
4. A mixture of ancient and modern, acoustic and electric, whatever you want to call that combination that seems to make music sound timeless and eternal.
5. Spirituality. When they want to be, their lyrics are profoundly meaningful:
Life is a waterfall
we’re one in the river
and one again after the fall
What I love about System of a Down is everything I love about music.
Next: Steal This Album!
Thursday, October 15, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 102: Illinois
Illinois - Sufjan Stevens
This album was in the same dump of mp3s that my friend loaded onto my computer along with the two October Project albums and several others. I’m not sure what my impression of it was at the time, but it must have been significant enough to warrent buying the album for real, or else I was influenced by various cultural references to Sufjan Stevens as one of the quintessential “Indy” artists.
Which has led me to ponder a certain question: what makes music “Indy?” It’s not just being made independently of a major record label, even if that was what inspired the name of the genre. After all, “Pop” came from a shortening of the word “Popular,” but also indicates a very specific kind of sound that isn’t present in all popular music. So far I have not been able to string together a set of adjectives that describe “Indy” music even as I see it myself, let alone society in general. As such I prefer not to use the word at all. But when talking about some of the albums in my collection, it feels weird not to at least acknowledge that the word seems to mean something to an awful lot of people.
A lot of the songs on this album are like those of The Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree in that they have a lot of weirdly-assembled voices and instruments working together in a surprisingly coherent way, but different in that Sufjan Stevens’ particular voice dominates even when he’s not actively singing. Other voices and instruments are much more in the background even when they are the aural focus.
The moods of the songs range from dismal depressing to bright and cheerful, with lots of interchange between them. It’s a concept album in that all the songs are about things and people and places associated with the state of Illinois - duh - but apart from that, there isn’t any overarching theme connecting anything. Some evoke imagery of mythic grandeur, others are deeply personal nostalgia, others seem to rush through historical name-dropping with a fervor matched only by Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.
Before making this album, Stevens made one about his home state of Michigan. I’m told that his intent was to create an album devoted to each of the fifty United States. That would be a tremendous undertaking for one man, even if he did nothing else for his whole musical career (how many people even have fifty albums to their name?), so I doubt that it’s ever going to happen. And in the ten years since Illinois’s release, there have been no more state-centered albums. My guess is that Illinois is a hard act to follow up on. Just listen to it. It doesn’t need to be part of anything greater than it already is.
Next: Toxicity
This album was in the same dump of mp3s that my friend loaded onto my computer along with the two October Project albums and several others. I’m not sure what my impression of it was at the time, but it must have been significant enough to warrent buying the album for real, or else I was influenced by various cultural references to Sufjan Stevens as one of the quintessential “Indy” artists.
Which has led me to ponder a certain question: what makes music “Indy?” It’s not just being made independently of a major record label, even if that was what inspired the name of the genre. After all, “Pop” came from a shortening of the word “Popular,” but also indicates a very specific kind of sound that isn’t present in all popular music. So far I have not been able to string together a set of adjectives that describe “Indy” music even as I see it myself, let alone society in general. As such I prefer not to use the word at all. But when talking about some of the albums in my collection, it feels weird not to at least acknowledge that the word seems to mean something to an awful lot of people.
A lot of the songs on this album are like those of The Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree in that they have a lot of weirdly-assembled voices and instruments working together in a surprisingly coherent way, but different in that Sufjan Stevens’ particular voice dominates even when he’s not actively singing. Other voices and instruments are much more in the background even when they are the aural focus.
The moods of the songs range from dismal depressing to bright and cheerful, with lots of interchange between them. It’s a concept album in that all the songs are about things and people and places associated with the state of Illinois - duh - but apart from that, there isn’t any overarching theme connecting anything. Some evoke imagery of mythic grandeur, others are deeply personal nostalgia, others seem to rush through historical name-dropping with a fervor matched only by Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.
Before making this album, Stevens made one about his home state of Michigan. I’m told that his intent was to create an album devoted to each of the fifty United States. That would be a tremendous undertaking for one man, even if he did nothing else for his whole musical career (how many people even have fifty albums to their name?), so I doubt that it’s ever going to happen. And in the ten years since Illinois’s release, there have been no more state-centered albums. My guess is that Illinois is a hard act to follow up on. Just listen to it. It doesn’t need to be part of anything greater than it already is.
Next: Toxicity
Thursday, October 08, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 101: Matinee Motel
Matinee Motel - Dan Smith and the Deep Cleveland Trio
I got this CD as part of a giveaway of chapbooks at a poetry reading three years ago, when I started becoming more active in the Cleveland poetry scene. It differs from every other CD on my shelf because it’s primarily a work of spoken word (a collection of poems written and read by local poet Dan Smith), and the music mainly creates a moody backdrop.
Many of the poems have a very local flavor. Dan Smith is not only a Cleveland poet by coincidence of geography, nor even by the name-dropping of specific streets and landmarks around town, but by the way he captures the city’s gritty, rough-edged spirit. Listening to him reading his poems, I thought about other Cleveland poets I know, and wondered if Cleveland has a voice that all its poets channel with their words.
Then I wrote a poem about it:
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city of humble aspirations
a city that burns a river and names a beer after it
a city that places its pride in its ashiest deeds
and paints its noblest face with the colors of self-deprecation
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a voice that says if you can’t take the cold
get into the kitchen with kielbasa and pierogi
and leave the oven door open when you’re done
a voice that doesn’t bother with meter and rhyme
or even the rhythms of soul
unless there’s bass in the background
and a neon light overhead
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city that aspires to humility
because any higher aim would take us away
from the truth that skitters down the streets
with the wind
Next: Illinois
I got this CD as part of a giveaway of chapbooks at a poetry reading three years ago, when I started becoming more active in the Cleveland poetry scene. It differs from every other CD on my shelf because it’s primarily a work of spoken word (a collection of poems written and read by local poet Dan Smith), and the music mainly creates a moody backdrop.
Many of the poems have a very local flavor. Dan Smith is not only a Cleveland poet by coincidence of geography, nor even by the name-dropping of specific streets and landmarks around town, but by the way he captures the city’s gritty, rough-edged spirit. Listening to him reading his poems, I thought about other Cleveland poets I know, and wondered if Cleveland has a voice that all its poets channel with their words.
Then I wrote a poem about it:
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city of humble aspirations
a city that burns a river and names a beer after it
a city that places its pride in its ashiest deeds
and paints its noblest face with the colors of self-deprecation
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a voice that says if you can’t take the cold
get into the kitchen with kielbasa and pierogi
and leave the oven door open when you’re done
a voice that doesn’t bother with meter and rhyme
or even the rhythms of soul
unless there’s bass in the background
and a neon light overhead
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city that aspires to humility
because any higher aim would take us away
from the truth that skitters down the streets
with the wind
Next: Illinois
Monday, October 05, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 100: Shrek
Shrek - Various Artists
Shrek, the popular animated film deconstructing the classic rescue-romance fairytale narrative and forwarding the revolutionary view that conventional standards of beauty are not the be-all end-all of loveability and worth for young women, was released when I was 13. I was the perfect age to absorb its message - not only because I was one of those not-pretty girls myself, but because I was beginning to grow out of the animated fairytale genre and could really appreciate the satirical humor that liberally spiced each scene, while still getting wrapped up in the plot and its resolution. Despite some disappointing sequels, to this day it remains a favorite for a lot of reasons.
And one of those reasons is the music. Most of the songs are more poppish than my tastes generally run (fitting for a popular movie), but they’re enjoyable to listen to. The one that really motivated me to buy the soundtrack is Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Hallelujah, which later prompted me to seek out the many other covers of that beautiful song, and Wainwright’s music in general (some of which I’ll review in a few weeks). The impact that one track had on my musical education is rather impressive now that I think of it.
Also present is a mixture of pop and rock songs that more or less echo the movie’s sentiments: offbeat love songs like My Beloved Monster, cynical rebellious ones like Stay Home and Bad Reputation, and self-esteem bolstering ones like All Star, which I have a kind of unironic appreciation for despite its overplayed status. But a fair portion are the kind of uncomplicated love songs that already flood the pop scene - Like Wow! and You Belong to Me, for instance - and in my opinion aren’t especially appropriate for the movie’s central themes.
But again, it’s a popular movie, and while it subverts many tropes of the genre the general narrative arc is still there. It’s a popular love story at its core, so maybe the pop love songs are appropriate after all.
Whatever the case, I enjoyed listening to this soundtrack for the first time in several years, and it’s putting me in the mood to watch that movie again. I wonder how well it has aged in the past fourteen years.
Next: Matinee Motel
Shrek, the popular animated film deconstructing the classic rescue-romance fairytale narrative and forwarding the revolutionary view that conventional standards of beauty are not the be-all end-all of loveability and worth for young women, was released when I was 13. I was the perfect age to absorb its message - not only because I was one of those not-pretty girls myself, but because I was beginning to grow out of the animated fairytale genre and could really appreciate the satirical humor that liberally spiced each scene, while still getting wrapped up in the plot and its resolution. Despite some disappointing sequels, to this day it remains a favorite for a lot of reasons.And one of those reasons is the music. Most of the songs are more poppish than my tastes generally run (fitting for a popular movie), but they’re enjoyable to listen to. The one that really motivated me to buy the soundtrack is Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Hallelujah, which later prompted me to seek out the many other covers of that beautiful song, and Wainwright’s music in general (some of which I’ll review in a few weeks). The impact that one track had on my musical education is rather impressive now that I think of it.
Also present is a mixture of pop and rock songs that more or less echo the movie’s sentiments: offbeat love songs like My Beloved Monster, cynical rebellious ones like Stay Home and Bad Reputation, and self-esteem bolstering ones like All Star, which I have a kind of unironic appreciation for despite its overplayed status. But a fair portion are the kind of uncomplicated love songs that already flood the pop scene - Like Wow! and You Belong to Me, for instance - and in my opinion aren’t especially appropriate for the movie’s central themes.
But again, it’s a popular movie, and while it subverts many tropes of the genre the general narrative arc is still there. It’s a popular love story at its core, so maybe the pop love songs are appropriate after all.
Whatever the case, I enjoyed listening to this soundtrack for the first time in several years, and it’s putting me in the mood to watch that movie again. I wonder how well it has aged in the past fourteen years.
Next: Matinee Motel
Thursday, October 01, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 99: Parables & Primes
Parables & Primes - Danny Schmidt
A few years ago I became aware of a wonderful little podcast called Welcome to Night Vale, a fictional comic horror drama that incidentally features, in each episode, a song from a different emerging or established independent musician. This segment of the show, even taken out of the context of the rest of the podcast, serves as a very interesting tour of various worthy and largely unknown artists; most of them were wholely unknown to me before being featured.
One episode featured the song This Too Shall Pass, a thoughtful piece in acoustic guitar and voice that features such hard-hitting verses as:
We think too big, we think our self is one whole thing
And we claim that this collection has a name and is a being
But deep inside, when every cell divides
It sets upon the rule that states self-interest is divine
Cancer, too, lives by this golden rule
That you must do unto the others as the others unto you
All for the best, cause that’s all the life accepts
And so we kill it like a buffalo, with awe and with respect
I am such a sucker for this kind of subtlety and emotional ambiguity in song lyrics and all other art. Like Georgia O’Keefe framing a sunbleached skull in vibrant flowers, this song takes death and despair and sets it alongside beauty and truth and allows them to flow into one another, so each is tinged with the essence of the other. Naturally I had to investigate this musician further, and as it happened I soon had the opportunity not only to hear him perform live (in a Night Vale stage show), but to buy this album from him personally.
Not all the songs held my attention as readily as that one, but another immediate favorite was Stained Glass, another masterpiece of that aforementioned ambiguity. In the grand tradition of folk rock, it tells a story: of the destruction of a beloved stained glass window in a church, the death of its creator, and the attempts of his 90-year-old father to “resurrect the window from the dead” in time for Easter. Even at the time lacking Christian belief, the potent Easter imagery struck me right where a good mythic tale should, in the heart and soul. But to really be appreciated the song must be heard with an open mind and full attention, so I hope you will take a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7lTPyoHA5w
Other songs have taken some time to sink in. I am gaining a slow and comfortable appreciation for Beggars & Mules, about the struggle to promote one’s art (something that I, as a poet, can relate to). Another new favorite is Happy All The Time, which is less lyrically accessible, but I think I might be starting to get a hang of some of its meanings:
I lived inside a log but I was happy all the time
With the lizards and the frogs but I was happy all the time
And I always ate at dawn and I always slept til dark
I guess I worked too hard but I was happy, I was happy all the time
It’s sung to a bluesy beat, and dripping with irony. There’s that ambiguity again.
Next: Shrek
A few years ago I became aware of a wonderful little podcast called Welcome to Night Vale, a fictional comic horror drama that incidentally features, in each episode, a song from a different emerging or established independent musician. This segment of the show, even taken out of the context of the rest of the podcast, serves as a very interesting tour of various worthy and largely unknown artists; most of them were wholely unknown to me before being featured.
One episode featured the song This Too Shall Pass, a thoughtful piece in acoustic guitar and voice that features such hard-hitting verses as:
We think too big, we think our self is one whole thing
And we claim that this collection has a name and is a being
But deep inside, when every cell divides
It sets upon the rule that states self-interest is divine
Cancer, too, lives by this golden rule
That you must do unto the others as the others unto you
All for the best, cause that’s all the life accepts
And so we kill it like a buffalo, with awe and with respect
I am such a sucker for this kind of subtlety and emotional ambiguity in song lyrics and all other art. Like Georgia O’Keefe framing a sunbleached skull in vibrant flowers, this song takes death and despair and sets it alongside beauty and truth and allows them to flow into one another, so each is tinged with the essence of the other. Naturally I had to investigate this musician further, and as it happened I soon had the opportunity not only to hear him perform live (in a Night Vale stage show), but to buy this album from him personally.
Not all the songs held my attention as readily as that one, but another immediate favorite was Stained Glass, another masterpiece of that aforementioned ambiguity. In the grand tradition of folk rock, it tells a story: of the destruction of a beloved stained glass window in a church, the death of its creator, and the attempts of his 90-year-old father to “resurrect the window from the dead” in time for Easter. Even at the time lacking Christian belief, the potent Easter imagery struck me right where a good mythic tale should, in the heart and soul. But to really be appreciated the song must be heard with an open mind and full attention, so I hope you will take a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7lTPyoHA5w
Other songs have taken some time to sink in. I am gaining a slow and comfortable appreciation for Beggars & Mules, about the struggle to promote one’s art (something that I, as a poet, can relate to). Another new favorite is Happy All The Time, which is less lyrically accessible, but I think I might be starting to get a hang of some of its meanings:
I lived inside a log but I was happy all the time
With the lizards and the frogs but I was happy all the time
And I always ate at dawn and I always slept til dark
I guess I worked too hard but I was happy, I was happy all the time
It’s sung to a bluesy beat, and dripping with irony. There’s that ambiguity again.
Next: Shrek
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