tirsdag den 27. september 2011
Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know
I first discovered this video on a music board. Underneath the video, the person who had posted it had written something along the lines of: 'Weird, this is not normally the kind of music I listen to.' When I heard this song my first thought was: 'This sounds like a mix of Sting and Phil Collins' After listening to this song over and over afterwards, I began to think about how weird these responses actually were. It sometimes seems to me, that obssesive music-listeners such as myself and so many other bloggers, reviewers, critics and music-board-discussioners might actually be the ones who understand music the least. When you hear this number, obviously your not supposed to think about how it fits in with all the other stuff in your record collection, or which other bands it reminds you off. You're supposed to think of people that you used to know...
Music can communicate in a weird way. In this song, almost nothing of the communication to the listener depends on the lyrics. From the title and the opening lines: 'Now and then I think of when we were together' there is not a single line that is anything special, with several of them actually being quite cringeworthy, the lowpoint for me being 'But that was love and it's an ache I still remember' But something happens in the delivery. The way Gotye whispers the explanatory verses highlights their insignificance, and makes his emotional outpouring in the chorus that much more effective. He seems to understand pretty clearly what happened, it was all inevitable and probably for the best. 'BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO CUT ME OFF!' And what a marvel that chorus is. The drawn out 'cu-u-ut me off' and 'sto-o-op so low' (they are another example of an emotional outburst being shown through the melody jumping up, what I recently described as a 'scream', though that term isn't really accurate) that contrasts the next lines, where as many syllables as possible are crammed together to provide evidence for the wrongdoings of the ex. It's not poetry, but it is a pretty convincing picture of the mix of emotions and attempts of finding that one bulletproof explanation that would clearly put the guilt on the other part, that so often goes on after a breakup. So who cares about poetry? And then Kimbra enters the picture and obliterates the image of the wronged guy with the lines 'Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over'
And then there is the musical context. This is what makes the song so universal, I think. As I heard this song more and more, it reminded me of more and more people I used to know. Breakups, potential relationships that never were, friends with whom I grew apart, dead relatives. Actually, the lyrics are quite specific, and describe a circumstance I've never been in, the line 'Have your friends collect your records and then change your number' especially describing something I can't really relate to. But while the lyrics paint a picture of a single breakup, the arrangement makes the song seem much more universal. That unrelenting guitarloop that provides the foundation for the song, the allmost childlike hook-line on the xylophone, the marching drums that enters the song during Kimbra's guest-verse. All of it creates a picture of inevitability, of life marching forward and onward, leaving situations forever changed, the past impossible to recreate, and making once extremely important people into, yup, somebody that you used to know. This is one of those weird creations, not just a song, definitely not poetry set to music. It's more like a carefully sculpted soundscape in which a small play takes place. The play creates a believable personal story, and the soundscape makes that story seem universal. Both parts are equally important.
Though this song is probably pretty obscure in most parts of the world, it was a huge hit in Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. As with many popular songs, it might therefore be treated to different versions, liveversions, remixes, demos and acoustic versions. While some of these imaginary versions might be very, very good, to some extent they would be evidence of a misunderstood attitude towards pop. At times, people talk about 'stripping' a song to it's 'core', removing all the ornamentary arrangements from it to check if the melody and lyrics can stand on their own. Yet, in this song they really can't. Play this song on an acoustic guitar, and you're left with an average description of a breakup. But this isn't supposed to be looked at this way. This is not a core and stuff on the surface. This is a lot of different but equal parts, that relates to each other, sometimes supporting each other, sometimes opposing each other (i.e., they are in dialogue). It is a glorious, contradictory mess, that utterly fails to coalesce into a single statement. Which is part of the reason it's so great.
Here is an article on the creation of the song. Not surprisingly, it took a lot of effort to get it just right.
onsdag den 21. september 2011
Dialogism vs Dialectism
At times, I need to write down the theoretical boring stuff, that somewhat are at the foundation of most of what I write. Write them down again, that is. Phrasing and rephrasing will hopefully help me get to the core of these things. Plus, as far as I can see, hardly anyone ever reads these theoretical posts anyway, so the risk of someone being bored by the repetition is hardly that large. I tried to explain something with my introduction to this blog, now I'm kinda trying to explain it again. And it probably won't be the last time either...
This time, it's because I read an interesting piece on Modern Classical Music some time ago. Actually, I found it because Simon Reynolds wrote about it. If you need a primer on what I think is perhaps the most essential discussion facing the art-world at the moment, go read it. It's on the question of heterogenity and 'too much freedom'. To put it simply and less eloquent than Reynolds and Davidson: The artists of today has too many choices, too much inspiration, so their art ends up eclectic but somehow inessential. It's all new and exciting, but it doesn't really do anything. This is all fair game, and I agree, that a lot of modern art, litterature, music and film seem to be new for new-ness sake, without anything essential to say. Where I think they are unfair, though, is what Davidson indicates when he ends his piece by saying: What they badly need is a machine to rage against and a set of bracing creative constraints. I think this is unfair, because it's a conclusion that doesn't follow from his earlier points. Davidson doesn't write a lot about what is missing, but the one time he does, he states on two works, that: Both works abound in sonic beauty, yet they lack, say, Messiaen’s violent awe at a landscape’s revelations. But this isn't describing something Messiaen was against, this is something he was in awe of, it would be more precise to describe it as something he was for.
And I find this emblematic when a lot of - older - people write about what I kinda think is my generation (warning, I'm going to set up a strawman here...). They say we aren't against anything, without really backing it up. It's unfair, because it paints us as lazy. How, with the state of affairs of today, can we be so passive? Neoliberalism, two wars, economical breakdown, tea party, so many things to be against, and we are not fighting against any of it. Well, back in their days, they were truly political and trying to change the world. But as I said, it's not that we lack things to be against, what we lack is true, strong alternatives. We lack something to be for. And obviously, I'm for a lot of things. I'm for love, truth, treating other people decently, warm cups of tea, Romanian Cinema, writing about stuff on the internet. Yet most of what I'm for is either rather vague or rather personal... Hardly any of it can function as the basis for what many in the elder generation is looking for: Collective Action. I think young people of today is for and against as many things as their predecessors, but since each has their own little thing going, it hardly looks like a lot.
Mikhail Bakhtin, the guy I spoke about in the introduction, also used the word Dialogism to explain himself. In his great essay Discourse in the Novel, he explained the way novels work. They are heterogeneus, mixing together all different kinds of words, speech, language. But a novel does not mix things to make the linguistic strands do battle with each other, but just to have them relate to each other. This way, the novel in itself works against authoritarianism, which is always trying to make language as homogenous as possible. Therefore dialogism is naturally opposed to any kind of authoritarian power, it will perhaps always be a force of freedom of possibility. Yet what Bakhtin never stated explixitly - and probably couldn't have done if he wanted to, he was writing this in Soviet Russia, after all - is that Dialogism is also seemingly opposed to Dialectism. Dialectism was described by Hegel as being the force behind history. A thesis meets it's antithesis and they melt together into a synthesis of the two. Karl Marx then wrote a political version of that, where the proletariat and the bourgoisie was supposed to struggle, and then a communist society would be born out of that (this is obviously massively simplified). But in that way, dialogism undercuts the mindset and philosphy behind marxism and class-struggle.
At times, it feels like that's what these - older - commentators abhor in the new generation. To be perfectly frank, it often seems as if they are angry/dissapointed that we are ambivalent about marxism. Yet we do still believe in socialism, I do at least, it's just that I feel that if it becomes the only allowed alternative to the establishment, well then that is almost just as suffocating. I don't believe in dialectism anymore, and I don't really believe in any big ideas. And I don't believe in importance. What I believe in is small but great ideas. And feelings. Some people think that dialogism amounts to little more than postmodernist relativism, just taking all kinds of stuff and mixing them together. And while that is definitely a danger, it doesn't have to be that way.
Last year, my two favorite albums was Slow Six - Tomorrow Becomes You and Yellow Swans - Going Places. The first of these could have been included in Davidsons piece: They are from New York, they are classically trained, and they play a somewhat new hybrid of a lot of things. Going Places was a very abstract noise record, that was first on Popmatters list of 'Best Experimental Records 2010'. Yet, if you go to these two records looking for importance, forward thinking and avant-garde newness, well then you'll probably leave dissapointed. Slow Six are basically Do Make Say Think with violins instead of guitars, and while that - and the influence from Steve Reich - make them somewhat original, the album would hardly be anything special if that was all they had. No, what I love about this album is that it seems to describe love and longing quite profoundly, in a somewhat original way. The pieces switch between being polyrythmic and in weird meters, and more 'normal' parts. They sort of switch between playing against each other and with each other, for me illustrating a struggle for people to find and fall in sync with each other. And Yellow Swans is all about leaving the known world behind, and finding your footing again somewhere else, illustrated by songtitles such as Opt Out and New Life.
What these albums do, is to Opt Out in the search for originality and avantgarde importance. They are not grounded in any kind of idea of the 'future', they are not grounded in any struggle against anything. They are grounded in feelings, and the elements on the album have been chosen to best support these feelings. This is art without creative constraints or rage against anything. This is mixing and matching bits and pieces, all in service of something grounded in feelings. That might be a basis for dialogic art to grow out of, though these records are probably too homogenous to be there yet. All in all, though, this is something I'm very much for.
Bakhtin's essay on 'Discourse in the Novel' can be found in the collection 'The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin', 1981, Texas University Press. Edited by Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. It can be bought here, here or here.
This time, it's because I read an interesting piece on Modern Classical Music some time ago. Actually, I found it because Simon Reynolds wrote about it. If you need a primer on what I think is perhaps the most essential discussion facing the art-world at the moment, go read it. It's on the question of heterogenity and 'too much freedom'. To put it simply and less eloquent than Reynolds and Davidson: The artists of today has too many choices, too much inspiration, so their art ends up eclectic but somehow inessential. It's all new and exciting, but it doesn't really do anything. This is all fair game, and I agree, that a lot of modern art, litterature, music and film seem to be new for new-ness sake, without anything essential to say. Where I think they are unfair, though, is what Davidson indicates when he ends his piece by saying: What they badly need is a machine to rage against and a set of bracing creative constraints. I think this is unfair, because it's a conclusion that doesn't follow from his earlier points. Davidson doesn't write a lot about what is missing, but the one time he does, he states on two works, that: Both works abound in sonic beauty, yet they lack, say, Messiaen’s violent awe at a landscape’s revelations. But this isn't describing something Messiaen was against, this is something he was in awe of, it would be more precise to describe it as something he was for.
And I find this emblematic when a lot of - older - people write about what I kinda think is my generation (warning, I'm going to set up a strawman here...). They say we aren't against anything, without really backing it up. It's unfair, because it paints us as lazy. How, with the state of affairs of today, can we be so passive? Neoliberalism, two wars, economical breakdown, tea party, so many things to be against, and we are not fighting against any of it. Well, back in their days, they were truly political and trying to change the world. But as I said, it's not that we lack things to be against, what we lack is true, strong alternatives. We lack something to be for. And obviously, I'm for a lot of things. I'm for love, truth, treating other people decently, warm cups of tea, Romanian Cinema, writing about stuff on the internet. Yet most of what I'm for is either rather vague or rather personal... Hardly any of it can function as the basis for what many in the elder generation is looking for: Collective Action. I think young people of today is for and against as many things as their predecessors, but since each has their own little thing going, it hardly looks like a lot.
Mikhail Bakhtin, the guy I spoke about in the introduction, also used the word Dialogism to explain himself. In his great essay Discourse in the Novel, he explained the way novels work. They are heterogeneus, mixing together all different kinds of words, speech, language. But a novel does not mix things to make the linguistic strands do battle with each other, but just to have them relate to each other. This way, the novel in itself works against authoritarianism, which is always trying to make language as homogenous as possible. Therefore dialogism is naturally opposed to any kind of authoritarian power, it will perhaps always be a force of freedom of possibility. Yet what Bakhtin never stated explixitly - and probably couldn't have done if he wanted to, he was writing this in Soviet Russia, after all - is that Dialogism is also seemingly opposed to Dialectism. Dialectism was described by Hegel as being the force behind history. A thesis meets it's antithesis and they melt together into a synthesis of the two. Karl Marx then wrote a political version of that, where the proletariat and the bourgoisie was supposed to struggle, and then a communist society would be born out of that (this is obviously massively simplified). But in that way, dialogism undercuts the mindset and philosphy behind marxism and class-struggle.
At times, it feels like that's what these - older - commentators abhor in the new generation. To be perfectly frank, it often seems as if they are angry/dissapointed that we are ambivalent about marxism. Yet we do still believe in socialism, I do at least, it's just that I feel that if it becomes the only allowed alternative to the establishment, well then that is almost just as suffocating. I don't believe in dialectism anymore, and I don't really believe in any big ideas. And I don't believe in importance. What I believe in is small but great ideas. And feelings. Some people think that dialogism amounts to little more than postmodernist relativism, just taking all kinds of stuff and mixing them together. And while that is definitely a danger, it doesn't have to be that way.
Last year, my two favorite albums was Slow Six - Tomorrow Becomes You and Yellow Swans - Going Places. The first of these could have been included in Davidsons piece: They are from New York, they are classically trained, and they play a somewhat new hybrid of a lot of things. Going Places was a very abstract noise record, that was first on Popmatters list of 'Best Experimental Records 2010'. Yet, if you go to these two records looking for importance, forward thinking and avant-garde newness, well then you'll probably leave dissapointed. Slow Six are basically Do Make Say Think with violins instead of guitars, and while that - and the influence from Steve Reich - make them somewhat original, the album would hardly be anything special if that was all they had. No, what I love about this album is that it seems to describe love and longing quite profoundly, in a somewhat original way. The pieces switch between being polyrythmic and in weird meters, and more 'normal' parts. They sort of switch between playing against each other and with each other, for me illustrating a struggle for people to find and fall in sync with each other. And Yellow Swans is all about leaving the known world behind, and finding your footing again somewhere else, illustrated by songtitles such as Opt Out and New Life.
What these albums do, is to Opt Out in the search for originality and avantgarde importance. They are not grounded in any kind of idea of the 'future', they are not grounded in any struggle against anything. They are grounded in feelings, and the elements on the album have been chosen to best support these feelings. This is art without creative constraints or rage against anything. This is mixing and matching bits and pieces, all in service of something grounded in feelings. That might be a basis for dialogic art to grow out of, though these records are probably too homogenous to be there yet. All in all, though, this is something I'm very much for.
Bakhtin's essay on 'Discourse in the Novel' can be found in the collection 'The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin', 1981, Texas University Press. Edited by Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. It can be bought here, here or here.
fredag den 9. september 2011
Sufjan, The-Dream, The Shins & The Wrens - How to Scream Believably!
So, I've been bogged down in a discussion over 'authenticity' in music these last few days. That weird, rockistic term, which no one really knows what means, and yet people still sort of feel it is useful. I kinda don't. I simply don't get what it means. My problem with the two words 'authenticity' and 'honesty' is, that they don't just relate to the music. That a record is 'authentic' or 'honest', seamingly means that the link between artist and art is in a certain way. Therefore, you have to include the artist in the discussion, if you use those words. So instead, I've begun to think that the word 'believability' is better. I mean, every piece of art is an attempt to express something in a certain way, judging it on how it relates to the artist seems wrong somehow. I'd rather judge it on how much I believe in the construction presented to me. Even though most songs are somewhat dishonest (Extreme examples: David Bowie wasn't really from Mars, Jeff Mangum hasn't had sex with Anne Frank, Stephen Merritt is not 69 People. Less extreme examples: Many songwriters keep writing that they have just fallen in love, even though they have been married for a long time.), many of them still seem believable, even though what they say is hardly possible... I still find it hard to explain what I mean, so I've found four examples. Four songs, where the vocalists does almost the same thing, two of which I find believable, and two of which I don't.
The first example is a song I've written about before, actually just last month. I thought about contrasting it with the next example back then as well, but I decided it would be out of place. It's the same moment, that high-pitched 'Oh my God' at 1:20-1:30. I simply don't believe in it. The problems are, that it's presented as if the singers are meant to sound surprised. The song talks about the victims, and then all of a sudden goes 'Oh my God', as if the singers couldn't stand it any more. Here, it clashes completely with the fact, that there are two singers singing in harmony. So the two of them was shocked in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time... I don't find it believable.
I'd wanted to contrast it with the song above, Right Side of My Brain by The-Dream from his album Love vs Money. The thing he does, he does twice, from 2:00-3:00 and from 3:30-3:45. He tries to do the same thing as Sufjan, use two voices explosively to show how he is overwhelmed by emotion, and even though I know it is just as constructed as the Sufjan-song, it works for me. The key is how he introduces the second voice as doing it's own thing. When it enters the song, it just answers the first voice a bit, but then it all of a sudden becomes a higher version of the melody. It sounds like two different parts of his psyche, all of a sudden united in anguish, not the same part doubled. And I know it's impossible, it's the same voice overdubbed, it's not 'honest' or 'authentic', yet it still works. For me, at least.
The third example is by The Shins. The moment in question occurs at 0:54 (if you knew the song, you'd probably already figured that out...). This actually doesn't have much to do with the song in question, the 'scream' is nicely foreshadowed in the instrumentation, which a moment before becomes a bit noisier. Yet this moment still annoys me, and it has to do with the way the song is posited on the album it's from. See, this is the opening song of the album Chutes Too Narrow from 2003. So this is how The Shins introduces themselves and their world to the listener, with a weird scream coming out and surprising anyone. On it's own, the song kinda works, but as an introduction, I find it annoyingly quirky. It crosses the line I spoke of in the Sufjan-piece and becomes clever because it doesn't know how to be honest. And that cleverness makes it seem too constructed, too calculated, and again, I stop believing in it.
This song above, This Is Not What You Have Planned by the Wrens is on it's own probably more quirky and annoying than the Shins-one, what with the weird way it's recorded and the way the singer clears his throat at the start. The key point is that this song is located at the end of the album in question, The Meadowlands, also 2003. So because of the way it's located on the album, it's positioned as meaning Go Away! instead of Welcome. And all of a sudden, I believe in it. It doesn't sound as calculated, it sounds frustrated and depressed. Both of these songs are off-putting, but the one by The Wrens is believably off-putting.
So what I've been trying to do, is to discuss why some tracks are believable and some are not, focusing only on the way the music is constructed, on the level of a single song or a whole album. I've done this to keep it on the level of discussing craft and composition. Some people use the words 'honesty' and 'authenticity' to give value to entire genres - i.e. music recorded live with acoustic guitars is more 'authentic' than music with samplers and autotuned vocals - and while it is undoubtedly statistically true, that the percentage of numbers that seem believable is high in some genres and not as high in others, there are no tools that can't be used to create believable music. It's all a question of talent and craft.
The first example is a song I've written about before, actually just last month. I thought about contrasting it with the next example back then as well, but I decided it would be out of place. It's the same moment, that high-pitched 'Oh my God' at 1:20-1:30. I simply don't believe in it. The problems are, that it's presented as if the singers are meant to sound surprised. The song talks about the victims, and then all of a sudden goes 'Oh my God', as if the singers couldn't stand it any more. Here, it clashes completely with the fact, that there are two singers singing in harmony. So the two of them was shocked in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time... I don't find it believable.
I'd wanted to contrast it with the song above, Right Side of My Brain by The-Dream from his album Love vs Money. The thing he does, he does twice, from 2:00-3:00 and from 3:30-3:45. He tries to do the same thing as Sufjan, use two voices explosively to show how he is overwhelmed by emotion, and even though I know it is just as constructed as the Sufjan-song, it works for me. The key is how he introduces the second voice as doing it's own thing. When it enters the song, it just answers the first voice a bit, but then it all of a sudden becomes a higher version of the melody. It sounds like two different parts of his psyche, all of a sudden united in anguish, not the same part doubled. And I know it's impossible, it's the same voice overdubbed, it's not 'honest' or 'authentic', yet it still works. For me, at least.
The third example is by The Shins. The moment in question occurs at 0:54 (if you knew the song, you'd probably already figured that out...). This actually doesn't have much to do with the song in question, the 'scream' is nicely foreshadowed in the instrumentation, which a moment before becomes a bit noisier. Yet this moment still annoys me, and it has to do with the way the song is posited on the album it's from. See, this is the opening song of the album Chutes Too Narrow from 2003. So this is how The Shins introduces themselves and their world to the listener, with a weird scream coming out and surprising anyone. On it's own, the song kinda works, but as an introduction, I find it annoyingly quirky. It crosses the line I spoke of in the Sufjan-piece and becomes clever because it doesn't know how to be honest. And that cleverness makes it seem too constructed, too calculated, and again, I stop believing in it.
This song above, This Is Not What You Have Planned by the Wrens is on it's own probably more quirky and annoying than the Shins-one, what with the weird way it's recorded and the way the singer clears his throat at the start. The key point is that this song is located at the end of the album in question, The Meadowlands, also 2003. So because of the way it's located on the album, it's positioned as meaning Go Away! instead of Welcome. And all of a sudden, I believe in it. It doesn't sound as calculated, it sounds frustrated and depressed. Both of these songs are off-putting, but the one by The Wrens is believably off-putting.
So what I've been trying to do, is to discuss why some tracks are believable and some are not, focusing only on the way the music is constructed, on the level of a single song or a whole album. I've done this to keep it on the level of discussing craft and composition. Some people use the words 'honesty' and 'authenticity' to give value to entire genres - i.e. music recorded live with acoustic guitars is more 'authentic' than music with samplers and autotuned vocals - and while it is undoubtedly statistically true, that the percentage of numbers that seem believable is high in some genres and not as high in others, there are no tools that can't be used to create believable music. It's all a question of talent and craft.
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