Strange Specific Stuff Meets Sadsack Backpack Rap

I’ll admit it—I’m a nerd, and only recently have I embraced that label. I completely agree with Donald Glover’s description of the experience of being a nerd, and being black, during Steve Urkel and Carlton Banks’ heyday. He talks about how things have improved for us black nerds over the last few years since at least a couple of our current exemplars—Barack Obama and Kanye West—are considered cool, in part, because of their nerdiness. Kanye is a black nerd because he likes strange specific stuff (robots and teddy bears)—the definition of nerdiness according to Donald Glover. I like that definition. It’s all about context and expectations. If your passions and interests don’t correspond with convention, then you’re probably a nerd. When his white friends in high school expect him to know all about sneakers and rap, Glover feels stifled. He’d rather talk about The Cranberries. Similarly, I’d rather talk about The Knife and David Lynch. Strange specific stuff.

I see 808s and Heartbreak (808s) as the unfiltered manifestation of Kanye West’s inner nerd: his sort of corny, heartbroken, grieving inner nerd, and therein lies its appeal to me. One reason why 808s interests me so much is because most of the material is mined from Kanye’s tragic experiences in the world, yet it feels universal.  I can empathize with the album’s emotional undercurrent of love, loss, pride, and grief. The tracks Welcome to Heartbreak, Paranoid, Street Lights, and Coldest Winter are what make 808s especially memorable for me. Street Lights’ chorus in particular strikes me not just because of its content, but also its delivery. The catchy drum beat and backing soulful vocals both complement Kanye’s robotic tone and give the song a sense of urgency. “All the streetlights glowing/Happened to be just like moments/Passing in front of me.” 

It’s clear from his body of work that Kanye has a thing for using lights (All Of The Lights, Flashing Lights, Street Lights) to help create his lyrical imagery. At first, “Lights” brings a few images to mind: the glow of fame, hip hop ballerdom in general, and omnipresent paparazzi. However, in the case of Street Lights, I picture driving alone at night and seeing the passing glint of street lights as I speed by, perhaps not considering my surroundings in the moment, but reflecting in the aftermath and eventually regretting that I didn’t appreciate that part of my journey as it unfolded. This is the point where the album gels together for me. I don’t know what it’s like to deal with the flashing lights, but I get the down-to-earth personal pathos underlying 808s’ lyrics and feel.

The offbeat technical parts of the album (Auto-Tune, singing instead of rapping, absence of traditional hip hop sound effects, etc.), combined with Kanye’s obsession with publicly unpacking his personal baggage are strange (nerdy) given what the vast majority of his hip hop contemporaries were putting out at the time. Another highlight for me is “Coldest Winter” when Kanye samples the Tears For Fears song “Memories Fade”. The vocals on “Coldest Winter” are just as hammy and melodramatic as on “Memories Fade.” To me, Kanye seems particularly moved by Memories Fade’s chorus, “Goodbye my friend. Will I ever love again?” because he repeats the question over and over then answers it with a statement, “I won’t ever love again,” followed by a gorgeous synth hook refrain. I can almost picture Kanye humming that hook to himself while walking Charlie Brown style with his head down missing his mom and brooding over his failed relationship. Or maybe I’m just projecting…

The roller coaster on boardwalk of Kokomo.

I grew up listing to The Beach Boys on the radio, hearing fragments of their massive discography  sandwiched in between Billy Joel and Fleetwood Mac and Cat Stevens. The radio constructed a disjointed narrative that evoked snapshots of California beaches, surfing, young romance, endless summers, and cheesy soft rock. I could see the band harmonizing around a bonfire, without a worry in the world.

I'm fascinated by the stark contrast between The Beach Boys' carefree sound and their volatile history. Brian Wilson's life story is compelling enough that I'm tempted to read his autobiography. Dennis Wilson died before he could release an autobiography: in 1983 he drowned, attempting to recover the items he threw off his boat in an intoxicated fit. I had no idea growing up that Brian Wilson rarely toured with the band and that he had serious personal problems that affected his creative output. I had no idea that Dennis Wilson released a pretty awesome solo album “Pacific Ocean Blue” and that he had died when The Beach Boys revelled in commercial success with their 1988 #1 hit “Kokomo.” I wonder what Dennis would have thought about “Kokomo.” When asked about the M.I.U. Album, which seems to be the beginning of the Beach Boys' creative end, Dennis said that he didn't “believe in that album" and that it was "an embarrassment to [his] life. It should self destruct... I hope that the karma will fuck up Mike Love’s meditation forever."

A lot of critics agree that The Beach Boys' best work was created when they were not that popular. They were the band that could have been even greater. For a time in the mid-to-late 60s, I've heard that The Beach Boys were as critically and commercially popular as The Beatles. I can only imagine how ground-breaking Pet Sounds was: it was the album that paved the way for the British Invasion's psychedelia. Post-Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys could not reach the same level of commercial success, prestige, and cool as their British counterparts. Oddly enough, The Beach Boys made a comeback in the mid-70s, riding the wave of Endless Summer, a pre-Pet Sounds compilation of hits, and in 1974 they were named the Rolling Stone's “Band of the Year.” It seems like a return to 10+-year-old sounds in the post-psychedelic-rock era ignited this bizarre nostalgia for sunny songs. The Beach Boys then started pushing music that resembled bad soft rock; it made them a lot of money, though. 

It's a weird experience revisiting The Beach Boys' music and correlating it with their history. I'm not sure I would have liked growing up in the 60s listening to and loving their albums like Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey. I imagine I would have experienced some sort of profound disappointment listening to their later albums. Their bad music, though, does not create a vacuum; it fills an important musical space. All music tells a story. Some music might not tell the story I want to hear. Should I ignore the bad music, the stories I don't want to hear, like it never exist? No. I try not to dwell on them; and when I do dwell on them, I try to see how they fit into the bigger narrative. It turns out that The Beach Boys have a very compelling narrative with a lot of sad stories.

Living and learning and moving on: Joni Mitchell avoided a cliché and constructed something beautiful.

I've decided that it's okay if my feelings fall in line with a cliché; they exist for a reason, because the reality is that our humble experiences aren't that unique, which I believe is a good thing, providing a large platform for empathy.

Like a cliché, some songs lose their original meaning if listened to over and over again. It's the good songs, the artful ones, though, that retain their meaning. Yes, I experience song-burnout, but with the good songs, it's always there, when I'm ready for it again.

My favorite songs tell a story through their lyrics, vocals, and instrumentals. My favorite songs grow with me. While I'm still young, I'm reaching the age where songs begin to evolve in meaning, depending on the time and space. Take the ex who introduced you to Junior Boys and LCD Soundsystem. Take the middle school friends who convinced you to play guitar and Sublime. The songs meant wildly different things now and then, and I love them all the same, wildly.

I had a recent fling with Joni Mitchell's Blue. I had listened to Joni Mitchell before but in the peripheral sense: I had heard that song before; this song sounded familiar; etc.. Now that I'm older, with a wearing-out pair of ears, I gave Mitchell a good, thoughtful listen. I didn't think too hard, though. I listened and let her tell her story.

Blue was written after Mitchell's difficult break-up with Graham Nash, some while traveling Europe. The themes of heart break, the sadness that follows, and the road and redemption ahead are not unique. Many artists fail to compose work that covers these topics in a digestible form that won't make you vomit. But her work is so damn lyrically, vocally, and instrumentally insightful that she avoids the “bad” sentimentalism, and she transports us to her emotionally lush oracular-world.

In “A Case of You,” she masterfully depicts her infatuation, addiction to her past love.

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine/

Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet/

Oh I could drink a case of you/

I could drink a case of you darling/

And I would still be on my feet/

Oh I'd still be on my feet.

While the entire album is filled with gems, it's “California” that gets me. “California” takes us through her journey, where she runs away, literally moving on. After she's run enough, exhausting her alienation, she knows it's time to come back home, to California. The return is when she can really move on. So as she is ready to go home, she asks California to take her as she is. And this is the end of the song, the most important part of the song. We don't need to hear the resolution because we know that when you come face-to-face with your emotions, you're going somewhere; California, like Joni's feelings, like Joni's close family and friends aren't going anywhere. Thank you, Joni. I look forward to listening to this song again tomorrow, the day after, and when I'm really old. 

Sincere Old Friends, Not Just Yet

In Jonathan Franzen's “Freedom,” Walter Berglund and Richard Katz, two old friends, with a pretty fucked-up and endearing relationship, pay a visit to Conor Oberst, Bright Eyes. Katz's, the rock star's, omniscience reflects on Oberst's “tortured Soulful Artist shtick, his self-indulgence in pushing his songs past their natural limits of endurance, his artful crimes against pop convention: he was performing sincerity, and when the performance threatened to give sincerity the lie, he performed his sincere anguish over the difficulty of sincerity.”

Is one of this year's “cools” the antithesis to cool? i.e. taking the avoided path because it's okay to be sentimental when you are sincere about what you are doing and doing it artfully? Have we reached a point in music where revivalism swallowing in irony has reached a noticeable level of shallowness that artists organically react with sincerity? In the context of American literature, David Foster Wallace speaks of the hypothesized anti-rebels who “eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue” and who are “backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic.”

If you don't understand something is it ironic? Is it ironic in the Alanis Morrissette way? Irony has metastasized as a construct, infecting our perception of the world. It's nothing new, but it is used and misused with a frightening frequency. Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), in an interview with Pitchfork, says that “the simple answer is that irony is based on insecurity; it seems to me that when people are doing something ironically, it's because they're challenged by something or they like to hate something that's popular.” He doesn't bother defending "Beth/Rest," which is definitely anachronistic, in and out of place, and when listened to by an ironic ear comes off as insincere: “I literally just don't give a shit.” He made the song for himself. He's telling us, if you don't understand it, deal with it or don't listen to it.

When word broke that Justin Vernon and James Blake were collaborating on a project called “Fall Creek Boys Choir,” I, very plainly, got very excited. Blake, like Vernon, has pushed the “anti-rebel” agenda. In another Pitchfork interview, Blake revisits the idea of honesty: “People can smell dishonesty on you. On this album, I felt like I was being totally honest-- so I don't have anything to lose.” Blake is candid about where he draws inspiration from. A few of my favorite Blake tracks are derivatives: samples or covers. I love the use of Aaliyah's “Are You That Someone” in “CYMK.” Blake's covers are particularly interesting and bold. “Wilhelm Scream” covers the lyrics of his father's (James Litherland) yacht-rock love song “Where To Turn.” “Limit To Your Love” is an obvious Feist cover. And he pays homage to another female pop artist, Joni Mitchell, in “A Case of You.” Compared to Vernon's visceral sincerity, Blake's sincerity is conceptual and technical.

So Blake and Vernon have released “FallCreek Boys Choir (FCBC),” and we now know that “FCBC” is part of Blake's upcoming EP Enough Thunder. “A Case of You” is said to be included in Enough Thunder, and we are all left wondering what Vernon's larger role will be on the EP. When Blake was asked whether he would produce for anyone else, he said, “I'm too aware of that approach of, 'Oh, let's get that one producer to work on this.' There's a weird producer-mating-season thing going on and I'm not really a fan of that.” Which is interesting because on “FCBC” it sounds like Blake is on the production and Vernon is on the vocals. I'm going to withhold judgment, though, on “FCBC” until I hear the EP in its entirety. I'm just waiting for Vernon and Blake to cover Simon and Garfunkel's “Old Friends,” composed and recorded in Vernon's log cabin. 

In seriousness, though, how many yacht-rock covers can we listen to (See Washed Out perform “FarAway.”)? When will sincerity fail to be sincere and we get inundated by musicians who have to pull an Oberst and perform their “sincere anguish over the difficulty of sincerity”? I hope the sincere anti-rebels don't fall into the recursive loop of self-conscious art.

20-somethings, the suburbs, nostalgia, and music.

When I listen to Arcade Fire's title track “The Suburbs,” I'm hit with a feeling that I can unjustly reduce to something along the lines of nostalgia. The nostalgia is hard for me deconstruct, pinpoint where it's coming from, and I don't feel the need to do so: that's what makes the experience meaningful, artful, expansive enough that I can visit it many times over, feeling a similar but different way with each listen.

The Suburbs was inspired by Win and Will Butler's youth in a Houston suburb. In an interview they state the album's lyrics are “neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it's a letter from the suburbs. [1]” They are reflecting on times past, when they were free of adult-like responsibilities but confined by their social space. Win recollects that "a lot of [his] heroes from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer were suburban kids who had to pretend they were train-hoppers their whole lives. Talking about an experience and not make-believe [is what we're doing on The Suburbs]. [2]"

Did I grow up in the suburbs? Yes. Did I feel restless, bored, like nothing ever happened? At times. But, surprisingly, I wasn't particularly angsty about it, and I don't look back at my adolescence wishing it was different or thinking it was wasted. So if growing up in the suburbs as a privileged youth wasn't mind-blowingly awesome but certainly wasn't awful (not even close), then why do I feel nostalgic listening to songs about kids running through their neighborhoods but not away? Why do I feel this way when Bradford Cox sings about being saved by old times? Or when I listen to M83 songs about young French love on Saturdays?

I feel elements of empathy when I listen to bands like Arcade Fire, Deerhunter, M83, etc., but I think their music evokes a broader pathos that I've resigned to calling nostalgia. Their lyrics require careful listening – the vocals and meanings are often obscured – and are emotionally rewarding in different ways. Their sounds like all sounds are derivatives of old sounds. Win made an analogy, stating that The Suburbs is like Depeche Mode meets Neil Young [3]. I've heard several people say that Saturdays = Youth was made for a John Hughes' film. While some bands purposefully reproduce sounds to evoke nostalgia, other bands create nostalgia organically with or without borrowing from the past.

I'm going to say that Arcade Fire, Deerhunter, and M83 are artful bands that create organic nostalgia. There are many other bands that I've left out, and there are many bands that evoke this sentiment in some people but not others. I'm not sure whether it's my particular taste in music, but I feel that this organic nostalgia is a key theme in contemporary indie music that hits a strong chord with this generation of music listeners. To define this generation of music listeners is a long and difficult task. I've found this article to be informative, however:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html.

[1] from Wiki via NME magazine, 31 July 2010, pg. 24
[2] http://www.nme.com/news/arcade-fire/51270

[3] http://www.spin.com/articles/new-arcade-fire-depeche-mode-meets-neil-young