So, last week I posted a piece on the rift between rebellion and complacency in indie rock in general, and on Contra in particular. That piece was a translation of an older piece in Danish. There was a slight difference though, in the original piece, I mentioned TV on the Radio as another band, who wrote about the split between logic and emotions, sort of. But I felt like I wanted to work a bit more on that part of it, and look on one of my favorite albums from the last decade: Dear Science, To begin with, I want to apologize in advance, if people see this post as clumsy or condenscending or anything. Diplo once said: Having white kids talk about race on the internet is the dumbest thing in the world To make it even dumber, I'm talking in a language I'm not completely fluent in... So apologies in advance, please let me know in the comments, if I offend anyone or anything.
Well, if I'm claiming that the album could be about a fight between rational/irrational, then the title definitely speaks to that. It is the header of a letter to science, Rationality par excellence. We don't know what the letterwriter wants to say to science. It might be an appraisal, or a condemnation, or an inquiry, or anything really. But the title invokes some sort of unfinished dialogue with rationality. The album is perhaps the rest of this dialogue. Well, at times. One would have to contort some of the lyrics a lot to make them fit this theme (well, Owls are symbols of Athena, Godess of wisdom, and Storks... have long feet, so they are like dancing or something...). But at times the theme pops up. Often, it is conflated with questions about race.
TV on the Radio has a different problem with the rational/irrational schism, that I wrote about, than most other indie bands today. Still today, in this enlightened day and age, and within this elitist, snobbish, indie-loving subculture, the fact that they are black connotes that they are probably more 'funky' and 'soulful'. They are probably more in touch with their emotions, and... you know... bodies... This was to me an unfortunate, and no doubt unintended, subtext of Sasha Frere-Jones article A Paler Shade of White, from a few years ago - at one point he states that Wilco could stand to be more syncopated, as if that's what black music amounts too. It's also ironic that David Sitek are sometimes seen as some sort of production wizard, as if he's the 'mind' of the band, and it's not just because his production and mixing are actually one of the least rational parts of the package – though I've learned to love the jumbled, overstuffed and slightly out of control way his productions sound. The production geniuses in music has actually mainly been black, from King Tubby to The Bomb Squad to J Dilla... TV on the Radio never shone away from tackling problems related to racism and prejudice (and they didn't shy away from subverting prejudice either, Wolf Like Me could definitely be read as being about the white fear of black sexuality), but on their first couple of albums, what they incorporated of black influences was often something leftfield and slightly archaic like barbershop or jazz. It was first with Dear Science that they made numbers that could be considered 'funky'. Crying, Golden Age, Red Dress. These songs didn't sound like earlier tracks from the band, but they sounded perhaps more like what a stereotypical 'black' rockband should sound like. I've seen it lamented in some quarters, as if TV on the Radio had somehow succumbed to society's perception of how they should sound. But some of the lyrics shows that the band is very occupied with conceptions and connotations of race. There are the obvious ones, such as Family Tree, about a black man lynched because of his love, presumably white (and with it's dead narrator and two mothers 'raven haired' and 'silver haired' it somehow reminds me of Paul Celans Todesfuge). There is Golden Age, which isn't directly about race, but in the fall when Obama won the election seemed to sing to a promise of a post-racial America. But the three examples I want to use deals not so much with racism as with conceptions of race and what it does to ones self-perception.
First off, there is Crying. It is the first 'funky' song on the album, after the more rockish Halfway Home. It combines funk and soul, of course, but in it's lyrics and form, it is composed like a Spiritual. A song of lamentations, the people are crying and whying and stuff. But it also inverts the form of the Lamentation-song, people are 'calling God's name in vain' they suffer like the Lord with 'Coloured glasses. Can't see for the thorns' and in the end they should do something, anything, even 'Take this car. Drive it straight into the wall. Build it back up from the floor. And stop our cryin' It is a Lamentation song about the futility of Lamentation songs. But the lyric I wanted to focus on was 'Mary and David smoked dung in the trenches / While Zions behaviour never gets mentioned' The first many times I heard this song, I thought it was a comment on the behaviour of Israel. It probably is, but in it's context, it's much more than that. The songs of Lament in the Bible are exactly song by the children of Zion, in their exile in Babylon. The African slaves of course identified with the plight of the Israelites in Egypt and Babylon, and used used their songs to describe their own troubles. Today, the whole Zion/Babylon dichotomy is huge in Reggae, especially. So when TVotR point fingers at Zion in a song that seems inspired by Spirituals, it is a reminder that people should look inwards at themselves. Israelites. African Americans. And everyone else. Crying over how unfair the world, even though it is important to point out injustices, can hide our own transgressions.
Unfortunately, Red Dress isn't on youtube in it's album version. Go buy the album. It is a masterpiece.
Second example. Red Dress. It is probably the best lyrics on the album – and they mention 'the whore of Babylon'. What I especially love about them, is how the Red Dress / White Robes thing is reinvented in every chorus. The first verse is about defiance and joy in a cruel world. So the chorus says that we should put our Red Dress on instead of our White Robes, and dance away. But right before the second chorus, the lyrics mention 'blood of the saints shot down in the square'. So this time the Red Dress is actually a bloodied Robe. The time has come for sacrifice. And then there is the brilliant third verse. 'When the man cracks the whip / and you'll all shake your hip / and you'll all dance to this / without making a fist. / And I know it sounds mundane / but it's a stone cold shame / how they got you tame / and they got me tame' So now in the last verse, the Red Dress has become what keeps black people in their place, supplanting the white robes of the Klan, presumably. And yet this is a funk song, making people shake their hips and dance. As with Crying, it points to the problems of the genre it uses. It's a funk song partly about the problems with funk songs. It tells of the problems, but it shows the power.
Final example is the final song. It's a plottwist! After the world seems to go to hell in DLZ, due to the wrongdoings of some 'death professor' the band seems to find some glimmer of hope. In sex. In lust. This might be seen as completely succumbing to an African stereotype, not helped by the funk of it, the African sounding horns of Antibalas, and lyrics like: 'I hunger for you like a cannibal'... But another view would be, that they defeat the cliché by their defiant ignorance of it. Wouldn't not being able to sing about whatever you want, be succumbing to racism? If you have to be a counterexample to a stereotype, then you are still defined by the stereotype. I can't think of final lyrics more fitting than ''Yes dear, of course there are miracles / under your sighs and moans. / I'm gonna take you / I'm gonna take you / I'm gonna take you home' And not just because the first song was called 'Halfway Home'. They find a good irrationality, the miracle, in sexuality, and replace the crying and whying with moaning and sighing. After these lines, the only thing that remains is to allow for the marching drums and triumphant horns to get to the finish line. Brilliant.
So the lyrics are rational, but it is juxtaposed with emotional music. In a much more knowing way than on Contra. And in the end the band chooses life. And sex. It is a really great album, one of my favorites of the decade.
R.I.P. Gerard Smith, who died last week only 34 years old. Much too young. It is a tragedy, first and foremost for his friends and family, of course, but the whole world will miss his contributions to this band, and music in general.
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