Aims - Vienna Teng
This album came out just after I started training for my first marathon, and like every other album I discovered during that time, my first experience of it was during a run. This artist, whose previous work consisted of a mix of fast and slow music tending toward ponderous and pensive themes and intellectual depth rather than the kind of simple upbeat sounds that are normally ideal for exercise, miraculously came out with an album of perfect long-distance running music just in time. There are a few slow songs, yes, but only just enough to provide a break from the constant bass-thumping that encourages speed and to remind me to pace myself for the long haul. And one of the slow ones, Breaking Light, manages to be both encouraging and relaxing, and joins the very short list of slow songs that I nevertheless like running to.
Aims did another thing too: proved that Inland Territory was not the sort of lightning that only strikes once, but marked a genuine shift in Vienna Teng’s musical style and quality, a shift that I like even as I still deeply appreciate her earlier work. It’s similar to Inland Territory in its open-minded experimenting with lots of different styles, and yoking genres with themes in ways that suggest some meaning to be explored. But the themes themselves are different. As the title suggests, I suspect that this album is about humanity’s various personal and collective goals, and our efforts to acheive them. (Yet another appropriate characteristic of running music.)
Some songs serve as precisely aimed political and social commentary, such as In the 99, which explores economic inequality in the language of the then-recent Occupy movement. There’s also the more subtle Hymn of Axciom, which borrows the aesthetics of religious chanting to deliver a chilling message about the pseudo-spiritual relationship we’ve developed with marketing algorithms.
But most of the album is more focused on personal and interpersonal subject matter. Things like love, determination, healing, family, and home. Not that these songs are any less grand in scale than the ones that address political themes. Landsailor uses imagery that suggests doing the impossible in a vaguely spiritual way, while Level Up is one of the most awe-inspiring “encouragement” songs I’ve ever heard (and the video is pretty awesome too).
And with this I must bid adeu to Vienna Teng and move on to someone much less familiar to me.
Next: Fear
Monday, November 30, 2015
Monday, November 23, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 113: Inland Territory
Inland Territory - Vienna Teng
This album came out a year or so after I began counting Vienna Teng as one of my favorites, and I remember it as the moment when her music exploded in every stylistic and thematic direction and became much larger than her previous repertoire of genres and instruments. The core of the album is her signature intellectual, yet emotional, narrative style and arty piano aesthetic, but it pulls in new sounds from spooky atmospheric effects to orchestral accompaniment to folk styles to pots and pans used as percussion.
The expansion of the music is echoed by an expansion of the lyrical themes, with a literal world of topics covered, all to the furtherance of a central agenda: empathy. Now, this is my personal observation and interpretation; I’m not sure how well it syncs with the artist’s intended meaning. But this is my blog.
There are two types of songs on this album, and they are thematically complimentary. The first relates personal conflicts to global ones; the second relates global conflicts to personal ones. There is some overlap in some of the songs, which underscores the connections drawn in others. As I’ve said before, the personal is political.
Exemplifying the first time is Antebellum, whose title means “before the war” and whose words mourn the loss of harmony when a relationship is frought with fighting. The metaphors are taken directly from war imagary, and are echoed in the choice of instruments, while violins and pianos represent a classically romantic sound and a snare drum invokes the war aspect:
I know the borderlines we drew between us
keep the weapons down, keep the wounded safe
I know our antebellum innocense was
never meant to see the light of our armistice day
Other songs, like In Another Life and No Gringo, explicitly put the narrator (and by extension the listeners) in the shoes of people in vastly different circumstances in order to provoke empathy. In Another Life does so very directly by jumping from century to century, exploring the lives and deaths of past humans - not the significant historical figures we’ve all read about, but common folk, the laborers and soldiers and nameless teenage wives who have always made up the bulk of historical existence.
No Gringo makes things even more personal by taking a timeless but contemprory historical problem - immigration and anti-immigrant sentiment - and turns it on its head, asking the central question behind all instances of empathy: “What if it was you?” (Gringo is a Spanish slang term for a white person).
In Radio, the dichotomy between personal and global concerns is especially blurred, since it shuffles back and forth between the perspective of a victim of terror and someone hearing about it on the radio. It’s made clear that when we hear of others’ trajedies, we have a choice. We can empathize, and make their struggles our own... or we can change the station.
Besides being a goldmine of substantive meaning and intellectual stimulation, this album is also simply gorgeous. A few of the songs still send me into involuntary fits of sentimentality and tears, so effectively do they reach into my heart. The favorite of the day is Stray Italian Greyhound, which is all about a pessimist finding reason to feel optimistic. “What do I do when every no turns into maybe?” “This feeling calls for everything that I am not.”
Next: Aims
This album came out a year or so after I began counting Vienna Teng as one of my favorites, and I remember it as the moment when her music exploded in every stylistic and thematic direction and became much larger than her previous repertoire of genres and instruments. The core of the album is her signature intellectual, yet emotional, narrative style and arty piano aesthetic, but it pulls in new sounds from spooky atmospheric effects to orchestral accompaniment to folk styles to pots and pans used as percussion.
The expansion of the music is echoed by an expansion of the lyrical themes, with a literal world of topics covered, all to the furtherance of a central agenda: empathy. Now, this is my personal observation and interpretation; I’m not sure how well it syncs with the artist’s intended meaning. But this is my blog.
There are two types of songs on this album, and they are thematically complimentary. The first relates personal conflicts to global ones; the second relates global conflicts to personal ones. There is some overlap in some of the songs, which underscores the connections drawn in others. As I’ve said before, the personal is political.
Exemplifying the first time is Antebellum, whose title means “before the war” and whose words mourn the loss of harmony when a relationship is frought with fighting. The metaphors are taken directly from war imagary, and are echoed in the choice of instruments, while violins and pianos represent a classically romantic sound and a snare drum invokes the war aspect:
I know the borderlines we drew between us
keep the weapons down, keep the wounded safe
I know our antebellum innocense was
never meant to see the light of our armistice day
Other songs, like In Another Life and No Gringo, explicitly put the narrator (and by extension the listeners) in the shoes of people in vastly different circumstances in order to provoke empathy. In Another Life does so very directly by jumping from century to century, exploring the lives and deaths of past humans - not the significant historical figures we’ve all read about, but common folk, the laborers and soldiers and nameless teenage wives who have always made up the bulk of historical existence.
No Gringo makes things even more personal by taking a timeless but contemprory historical problem - immigration and anti-immigrant sentiment - and turns it on its head, asking the central question behind all instances of empathy: “What if it was you?” (Gringo is a Spanish slang term for a white person).
In Radio, the dichotomy between personal and global concerns is especially blurred, since it shuffles back and forth between the perspective of a victim of terror and someone hearing about it on the radio. It’s made clear that when we hear of others’ trajedies, we have a choice. We can empathize, and make their struggles our own... or we can change the station.
Besides being a goldmine of substantive meaning and intellectual stimulation, this album is also simply gorgeous. A few of the songs still send me into involuntary fits of sentimentality and tears, so effectively do they reach into my heart. The favorite of the day is Stray Italian Greyhound, which is all about a pessimist finding reason to feel optimistic. “What do I do when every no turns into maybe?” “This feeling calls for everything that I am not.”
Next: Aims
Thursday, November 19, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 112: Dreaming Through the Noise
Dreaming Through the Noise - Vienna Teng
Of all of Vienna Teng’s albums I like this one the least, which is to say, I love it quite a bit. A few of the songs that initially prompted me to seek out more by this artist are on this album, especially City Hall, another of those story-songs that sounds lovely but provides a satisfying “Aha!” when you pay attention and finally understand what’s going on. That said, several of the songs here are ones I never quite appreciated, although I may someday in the future. Songs like I Don’t Feel So Well and Transcontinental 1:30 A.M. don’t seem quite as interesting, either lyrically or musically. Plus the smoothe jazzyness of those songs just isn’t quite my style, so if it’s yours, maybe this will be your favorite of Vienna Teng’s albums.
1BR/1BA also has a jazzy style, but for some reason I like it. Perhaps it’s because it deals with a common situation, but not one commonly portrayed in song: moving into a new apartment, and all the little discomforts and adjustments as the place transforms from a laconic ad to a real place with walls and windows and a busted AC to, eventually, a home. “My upstairs neighbors are making sounds that I never want to hear / I hope they’re just moving furnature around and really liking their ideas.”
It also strikes me that this album is a tad darker than the others. All of them have sad songs, but this one doesn’t seem to put as much of a cheery face on them. The love songs all deal with some kind of separation from the beloved, some chasm that can’t quite been navigated, whether it’s of physical distance or mere ignorance. One song’s refrain says “I am nothing without you / but I don’t know who you are.”
Even the mostly-joyful City Hall must end by confronting the possibility of loss: “If they take it away again someday...”
Next: Inland Territory
Of all of Vienna Teng’s albums I like this one the least, which is to say, I love it quite a bit. A few of the songs that initially prompted me to seek out more by this artist are on this album, especially City Hall, another of those story-songs that sounds lovely but provides a satisfying “Aha!” when you pay attention and finally understand what’s going on. That said, several of the songs here are ones I never quite appreciated, although I may someday in the future. Songs like I Don’t Feel So Well and Transcontinental 1:30 A.M. don’t seem quite as interesting, either lyrically or musically. Plus the smoothe jazzyness of those songs just isn’t quite my style, so if it’s yours, maybe this will be your favorite of Vienna Teng’s albums.
1BR/1BA also has a jazzy style, but for some reason I like it. Perhaps it’s because it deals with a common situation, but not one commonly portrayed in song: moving into a new apartment, and all the little discomforts and adjustments as the place transforms from a laconic ad to a real place with walls and windows and a busted AC to, eventually, a home. “My upstairs neighbors are making sounds that I never want to hear / I hope they’re just moving furnature around and really liking their ideas.”
It also strikes me that this album is a tad darker than the others. All of them have sad songs, but this one doesn’t seem to put as much of a cheery face on them. The love songs all deal with some kind of separation from the beloved, some chasm that can’t quite been navigated, whether it’s of physical distance or mere ignorance. One song’s refrain says “I am nothing without you / but I don’t know who you are.”
Even the mostly-joyful City Hall must end by confronting the possibility of loss: “If they take it away again someday...”
Next: Inland Territory
Monday, November 16, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 111: Waking Hour
Waking Hour - Vienna Teng
Like Warm Strangers, this Vienna Teng album is full of lovely songs that each tells a story. They’re good stories, too; many of them are love songs, but with a psychological complexity that’s lacking in a lot of love songs these days. There’s also an intellectual side; this is the album that led me to conclude that Vienna Teng is a master at melding scientific fact with emotional truth, using each as a metaphor for the other. For instance, in songs like Gravity and Momentum, physical forces are used as metaphors for emotional drives. After all these years, I am convinced Momentum is about, among other things, depression: “All I’m asking is to be alive for once.”
Others have more of a narrative style, and really are stories in a more literal sense. Say Uncle tells the story of a family rallying together in the face of loss. Decade and One has its narrator reflecting on her past and life path. Enough to Go By is so compellingly evocative of both past experience and future hopes and dreams that it has become a dear favorite of mine:
I’m at your back door with the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
you won’t recognize me, for the light in my eyes is strange
it was years ago, God knows, when you strained to tell me your whole truth
that you wer enot mine to save, that you could not change
would it be enough to go by
if we could sail on the wind in the dark
cut those chains in the middle of the night
that had you pulled apart
would it be enough to go by
if there’s moonlight pulling the tide
would it be enough to live on
if my love could keep you alive
But my favorite song on the album is Eric’s Song, one of those complex love songs, and one that has probably influenced my own values and ideals about romantic love in general. I would select an exerpt of its lyrics to demonstrate this point, but I find that none of the verses can really stand to be taken out of context.
Next: Dreaming Through the Noise
Like Warm Strangers, this Vienna Teng album is full of lovely songs that each tells a story. They’re good stories, too; many of them are love songs, but with a psychological complexity that’s lacking in a lot of love songs these days. There’s also an intellectual side; this is the album that led me to conclude that Vienna Teng is a master at melding scientific fact with emotional truth, using each as a metaphor for the other. For instance, in songs like Gravity and Momentum, physical forces are used as metaphors for emotional drives. After all these years, I am convinced Momentum is about, among other things, depression: “All I’m asking is to be alive for once.”
Others have more of a narrative style, and really are stories in a more literal sense. Say Uncle tells the story of a family rallying together in the face of loss. Decade and One has its narrator reflecting on her past and life path. Enough to Go By is so compellingly evocative of both past experience and future hopes and dreams that it has become a dear favorite of mine:
I’m at your back door with the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
you won’t recognize me, for the light in my eyes is strange
it was years ago, God knows, when you strained to tell me your whole truth
that you wer enot mine to save, that you could not change
would it be enough to go by
if we could sail on the wind in the dark
cut those chains in the middle of the night
that had you pulled apart
would it be enough to go by
if there’s moonlight pulling the tide
would it be enough to live on
if my love could keep you alive
But my favorite song on the album is Eric’s Song, one of those complex love songs, and one that has probably influenced my own values and ideals about romantic love in general. I would select an exerpt of its lyrics to demonstrate this point, but I find that none of the verses can really stand to be taken out of context.
Next: Dreaming Through the Noise
Thursday, November 12, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 110: Warm Strangers
Warm Strangers - Vienna Teng
Vienna Teng was one of the first artists that I became aware of mainly through Pandora Radio, when her song Daughter came up on my station, along with a few others. I shared my new discovery with a friend - the same friend who introduced me to the likes of October Project and Sufjan Stevens - and we both fell in love with Vienna Teng’s delicious songwriting, voice, and piano. She was the first of us to make the plunge by buying Warm Strangers, and for the next year or so we took turns buying albums and sharing them with one another. In time, I took it upon myself to buy legitimate copies of each of them for myself.
I think the song that initially drew me to this album is Hope on Fire, which has become one of the iconic songs of my life, representing every person who has ever gotten fed up with the status quo and set out, with nothing but the determination and the knowledge that it’s the right thing to do, to make a change.
When describing Teng to strangers, I usually say that each of her songs tells a story. Sometimes the story is very clearly and straightforwardly told, as in Shasta:
So far so good
You're coming to the bend at the end of the road
You put a hand to the belly that's foreign more
With every day like an oversize load
And so on. Others are more opaque in describing their central characters and events, but it’s clear that some story is there behind the figurative language. A favorite example is My Medea, obviously a mythology reference but otherwise quite mysterious in its words. Is the narrator of the story the mythical Medea herself, her husband Jason, or someone else who played a role in her tragic life? Or is the name Medea just used here to invoke a sense of destructive love and jealousy?
Either way I love this song. The instrumental swelling behind the verse that says “So come to me my love / I’ll tap into your strength and drain it dry / can never have enough / for you I’d burn the length and breadth of sky” is so stirring that I will never tire of it. There are more than a few songs on this album that I could listen to over and over.
This is one of those albums for which I could probably write at least a paragraph about each song, and this review would stretch on for several pages. But I will leave this here, for I have a few more Vienna Teng albums to get to before this is over.
Next: Waking Hour
Vienna Teng was one of the first artists that I became aware of mainly through Pandora Radio, when her song Daughter came up on my station, along with a few others. I shared my new discovery with a friend - the same friend who introduced me to the likes of October Project and Sufjan Stevens - and we both fell in love with Vienna Teng’s delicious songwriting, voice, and piano. She was the first of us to make the plunge by buying Warm Strangers, and for the next year or so we took turns buying albums and sharing them with one another. In time, I took it upon myself to buy legitimate copies of each of them for myself.
I think the song that initially drew me to this album is Hope on Fire, which has become one of the iconic songs of my life, representing every person who has ever gotten fed up with the status quo and set out, with nothing but the determination and the knowledge that it’s the right thing to do, to make a change.
When describing Teng to strangers, I usually say that each of her songs tells a story. Sometimes the story is very clearly and straightforwardly told, as in Shasta:
So far so good
You're coming to the bend at the end of the road
You put a hand to the belly that's foreign more
With every day like an oversize load
And so on. Others are more opaque in describing their central characters and events, but it’s clear that some story is there behind the figurative language. A favorite example is My Medea, obviously a mythology reference but otherwise quite mysterious in its words. Is the narrator of the story the mythical Medea herself, her husband Jason, or someone else who played a role in her tragic life? Or is the name Medea just used here to invoke a sense of destructive love and jealousy?
Either way I love this song. The instrumental swelling behind the verse that says “So come to me my love / I’ll tap into your strength and drain it dry / can never have enough / for you I’d burn the length and breadth of sky” is so stirring that I will never tire of it. There are more than a few songs on this album that I could listen to over and over.
This is one of those albums for which I could probably write at least a paragraph about each song, and this review would stretch on for several pages. But I will leave this here, for I have a few more Vienna Teng albums to get to before this is over.
Next: Waking Hour
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
All My CDs, pt 109 - 200 km/h In the Wrong Lane
200 km/h in the Wrong Lane - t.A.T.u.
I was surprised and a little embarrassed a few days ago when I discovered that this CD is still in my collection after well over a decade. Like my Linkin Park CDs, I liked it for a while when I was a teenager, but that fondness has not endured into my adulthood and I have since come to regard it with a kind of shame. I can never really escape the knowledge that even as kids these days are fawning over inane and overcommercialized pop music, in my adolescence I fawned over the same sort of claptrap myself.
When I started playing this album once again, I was expecting to feel more of that shame. Instead, I found myself enjoying it, and cranking it up on my car stereo until it could probably be heard half a block away while I drummed along on my steering wheel. It’s catchy techno dance music with angsty lyrics about star-crossed love affairs - perfect teenager fare. I don’t know whether this stuff will ever go out of style.
When I was young I was especially fond of bilingual musicians. For a few years I think I harbored a delusion that I could learn Spanish by listening to Shakira. While that didn’t turn out to be true, while listening to t.A.T.u. I found myself reminded not of my high school years when I bought and enjoyed the album, but my first year of college and my Russian class. Words and phrases that I’d forgotten jumped out at me from the songs. I even remembered mentioning the Russian version of the song’s hit single - All The Things She Said, or Ya Soshla S Uma - when my teacher taught us that idiomatic phrase.
To this day, I prefer that particular song in Russian. Perhaps the language just sounds more exotic and pleasing to my ears, or perhaps it’s easier to ignore the cliches when they’re sung in a language I’m only passingly familiar with.
My favorite song on the album, both then and now, is Malchik Gay. Partly because despite its lyrics being just as angsty as the rest, it manages to be the most cheerful-sounding song on the album, partly because it’s a techno song prominently featuring an unaltered acoustic guitar. It also amuses me to realize what counted as “edgy” in pop music back in 2002.
I enjoyed listening to this CD for the past few days, but I don’t know if I ever will again.
Next: Warm Strangers
I was surprised and a little embarrassed a few days ago when I discovered that this CD is still in my collection after well over a decade. Like my Linkin Park CDs, I liked it for a while when I was a teenager, but that fondness has not endured into my adulthood and I have since come to regard it with a kind of shame. I can never really escape the knowledge that even as kids these days are fawning over inane and overcommercialized pop music, in my adolescence I fawned over the same sort of claptrap myself.
When I started playing this album once again, I was expecting to feel more of that shame. Instead, I found myself enjoying it, and cranking it up on my car stereo until it could probably be heard half a block away while I drummed along on my steering wheel. It’s catchy techno dance music with angsty lyrics about star-crossed love affairs - perfect teenager fare. I don’t know whether this stuff will ever go out of style.
When I was young I was especially fond of bilingual musicians. For a few years I think I harbored a delusion that I could learn Spanish by listening to Shakira. While that didn’t turn out to be true, while listening to t.A.T.u. I found myself reminded not of my high school years when I bought and enjoyed the album, but my first year of college and my Russian class. Words and phrases that I’d forgotten jumped out at me from the songs. I even remembered mentioning the Russian version of the song’s hit single - All The Things She Said, or Ya Soshla S Uma - when my teacher taught us that idiomatic phrase.
To this day, I prefer that particular song in Russian. Perhaps the language just sounds more exotic and pleasing to my ears, or perhaps it’s easier to ignore the cliches when they’re sung in a language I’m only passingly familiar with.
My favorite song on the album, both then and now, is Malchik Gay. Partly because despite its lyrics being just as angsty as the rest, it manages to be the most cheerful-sounding song on the album, partly because it’s a techno song prominently featuring an unaltered acoustic guitar. It also amuses me to realize what counted as “edgy” in pop music back in 2002.
I enjoyed listening to this CD for the past few days, but I don’t know if I ever will again.
Next: Warm Strangers
Thursday, November 05, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 108: Imperfect Harmonies
Imperfect Harmonies - Serj Tankian
Some time after Elect the Dead, I discovered that Serj Tankian had released another solo album, and immediately jumped at the opportunity to buy it. The first time I put it on, the first note of the first song startled me out of my skin; it seemed that every instrument that ever existed had joined together in unison to blast a hole through my consciousness. If nothing else, just listen to the first few measures of Disowned, Inc; you’ll hopefully see what I mean.
The awesomeness of this album is such that it almost overshadowed the awesomeness of its predecessor. For a time I neglected Elect the Dead, although writing my last review had the effect of making me appreciate it a lot more. I still think Imperfect Harmonies is the better album, but it’s a short distance between them, and I love both quite a lot.
What is it about this album? About Serj Tankian in general? It’s hard to find words that I haven’t already said, and that don’t sound like mere adulative blather. The lyrics are more poetic. The music is more grand and far-reaching. And I consider it a treat to hear Yes, It’s Genocide, sung in Armenian, which so poignantly highlights the Armenian genocide and all other genocides throughout history.
The song that follows it, Peace Be Revenged, is one of the most thoughtful and powerful inditements of modern society I have ever encountered in song form. Several other songs are fair contenders as well, such as Borders Are...
Borders are the gallows
of our collective national egos
subjective lines in sand
in the water separating everything
Fear is the cause of separation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National blood-painted persuasions
It’s true that the words can sound a bit preachy, but as they say, some anvils need to be dropped. And as I’ve explained before, sometimes I like my sociopolitical commentary to be blatant and unabashed. In my next review, something else will be blatant and unabashed.
Next: 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane
Some time after Elect the Dead, I discovered that Serj Tankian had released another solo album, and immediately jumped at the opportunity to buy it. The first time I put it on, the first note of the first song startled me out of my skin; it seemed that every instrument that ever existed had joined together in unison to blast a hole through my consciousness. If nothing else, just listen to the first few measures of Disowned, Inc; you’ll hopefully see what I mean.
The awesomeness of this album is such that it almost overshadowed the awesomeness of its predecessor. For a time I neglected Elect the Dead, although writing my last review had the effect of making me appreciate it a lot more. I still think Imperfect Harmonies is the better album, but it’s a short distance between them, and I love both quite a lot.
What is it about this album? About Serj Tankian in general? It’s hard to find words that I haven’t already said, and that don’t sound like mere adulative blather. The lyrics are more poetic. The music is more grand and far-reaching. And I consider it a treat to hear Yes, It’s Genocide, sung in Armenian, which so poignantly highlights the Armenian genocide and all other genocides throughout history.
The song that follows it, Peace Be Revenged, is one of the most thoughtful and powerful inditements of modern society I have ever encountered in song form. Several other songs are fair contenders as well, such as Borders Are...
Borders are the gallows
of our collective national egos
subjective lines in sand
in the water separating everything
Fear is the cause of separation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National blood-painted persuasions
It’s true that the words can sound a bit preachy, but as they say, some anvils need to be dropped. And as I’ve explained before, sometimes I like my sociopolitical commentary to be blatant and unabashed. In my next review, something else will be blatant and unabashed.
Next: 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane
Monday, November 02, 2015
All My CDs, pt. 107: Elect the Dead
Elect the Dead - Serj Tankian
A while after I heard that System of a Down were breaking up, I was perusing a record store with some friends and one of them recommended Serj Tankian’s new solo album; I picked it up right away and began to love it. Before I listened to it for the first time, I wasn’t sure how Tankian’s music would sound without the rest of the band, and suspected it would be similar, but less. Instead, I have to say that his music is similar, but more. Many of the same themes and styles are there, but something is added as well, as if going solo allowed Tankian the freedom to express his musical voice more fully.
What’s added? Most obviously, there is a lot more piano and orchestral strings. The piano plays an important role in this album’s sound, and it’s not the pensive, melancholic piano you find with artists like Tori Amos. It’s a more gutsy incarnation of the instrument, and the same applies to the strings that show up from time to time. Each song is overloaded with a multitude of diverse instruments, and the resulting sound is unlike anything else, a genre unto itself.
There’s something about the lyrics too. Tankian is a poet in his own right, having also produced a book of poetry that graces my bookshelf, and his distinct poetic voice is present in the lyrics of these songs. They have the directness of System of a Down’s lyrics, but subjectively they seem more present, more heartful, like they’re more in sync both with the instrumentation and with the expressiveness of the vocals. I don’t think the lyrics are any more clear about their meaning, but I do think that the emotional content of the songs is more aligned with their intellectual message.
It isn’t always the case that a member of a great band will be equally great going solo, but I think that’s exactly the case with Serj Tankian.
Next: Imperfect Harmonies
A while after I heard that System of a Down were breaking up, I was perusing a record store with some friends and one of them recommended Serj Tankian’s new solo album; I picked it up right away and began to love it. Before I listened to it for the first time, I wasn’t sure how Tankian’s music would sound without the rest of the band, and suspected it would be similar, but less. Instead, I have to say that his music is similar, but more. Many of the same themes and styles are there, but something is added as well, as if going solo allowed Tankian the freedom to express his musical voice more fully.
What’s added? Most obviously, there is a lot more piano and orchestral strings. The piano plays an important role in this album’s sound, and it’s not the pensive, melancholic piano you find with artists like Tori Amos. It’s a more gutsy incarnation of the instrument, and the same applies to the strings that show up from time to time. Each song is overloaded with a multitude of diverse instruments, and the resulting sound is unlike anything else, a genre unto itself.
There’s something about the lyrics too. Tankian is a poet in his own right, having also produced a book of poetry that graces my bookshelf, and his distinct poetic voice is present in the lyrics of these songs. They have the directness of System of a Down’s lyrics, but subjectively they seem more present, more heartful, like they’re more in sync both with the instrumentation and with the expressiveness of the vocals. I don’t think the lyrics are any more clear about their meaning, but I do think that the emotional content of the songs is more aligned with their intellectual message.
It isn’t always the case that a member of a great band will be equally great going solo, but I think that’s exactly the case with Serj Tankian.
Next: Imperfect Harmonies
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