A Listener's Diary

 
In Nick Hornby's Songbook, a group of essays on some of his favorite pop songs, writing about the song "I've Had It," by Aimee Mann, he observes:

'All art constantly aspires toward the conditon of music,' Walter Pater said, in one of the only lines of criticism that has ever meant anything to me...; music is such a pure form of self-expression, and lyrics, because they consist of words, are so impure, and songwriters, even great ones like Mann, find that even though they can produce both, words will always let you down. One half of her art is aspiring toward the condition of the other half, and that must be weird, to feel so divinely inspired and so fallibly human, all at the same time.

He goes on to discuss the subject matter of pop songs, the kinds of topics that work and don't work, concluding that the subject of love works best. OK, that's obvious, but I like how he describes it:

But because it is the convention to write about affairs of the heart, the language seems to lose its awkwardness, to become transparent, and you can see straight through the words to the music. Lyrics about love become, in other words, like another musical instrument, and love songs become, somehow, pure song.

Of course, words aren't "impure" next to sounds. Novels can be as pure as symphonies, as far as I'm concerned. But I couldn't agree more with him about the lopsided relationship between words and music in songs. I've often said that lyrics don't matter to me as much as music--even with my favorite bands I can rarely sing the lyrics all the way through (in the case of Stereolab, hardly at all)--but no one ever seems to understand what I'm trying to say. So I feel especially grateful to Nick Hornby for shaping this idea more effectively than I ever have.


- posted 2/26/2004

 
The Grey album? Sounds interesting.

- posted 2/25/2004

 

How cool! Daft Punk collaborated on an anime flick featuring their album Discovery--it's called Interstella 5555, and it's been released on DVD. I remember seeing anime-style videos for a couple of the singles, but I didn't realize they planned to take it so far.

- posted 2/15/2004

 
Tower Records has declared bankruptcy as a strategy for survival. I'm glad stores will keep running as normal, but this can't be good long-term. It buys them more time, but do they expect the market to get better? It seems to me that they must make their online sale of downloads more successful and that they have to play to their strength (at least compared to the discount outlets like Walmart that are cutting in on their business): stocking a wide diversity of hard-to-find music. The discount businesses are bound to win at the mass-marketed hits (the book stores face a very similar situation). But if the store can appeal to the small percentage of music fans who buy voraciously but whose taste is specialized or obscure, perhaps, I hope, they can survive.

- posted 2/09/2004

 

Belle & Sebastian have just released their first DVD, Fans Only, and it's a winner. Not simply a mechanical compilation of videos, it's a feature-length film mixing in videos, interviews, footage of the band, and footage the band took. The introductions of the band members is especially good, and it's a delight to finally feel like I'm connecting faces to the music I've enjoyed for several years now. For the most part, their cover art hasn't featured them, and there's often no explanation in the liner notes to explain who performed or gets songwriting credit. So there's been a lot of extraordinary mystery about the band.

The first single off of Dear Catastrophe Waitess, Step Into My Office, Baby, is not my favorite cut on the album, but I can see why they released it: it's funny and unique. I'm very happy with the 2 non-album cuts, esp. "Love on the March" (a Stevie song?) which is the first instance (as far as I know) of Belle & Sebastian trying out clasic 60s bossa nova. Ugh, right? Mais, non! It's excellent, catchy and beautiful, with an interesting harmony (I esp. like the part near the end where Stuart joins in) that keeps it from being too familiar. Highly recommended.

- posted 2/06/2004

 
Lip-Syncing: yes or no? Who knew the answer could be so complicated? And this idea in particular rang true with my experience of the youngsters at recent concerts I've attended:

"Timothy Powell is the owner of Metro Mobile Recording of Chicago, which has taped shows by Paul McCartney and Radiohead as well as a recent female lip-syncher Mr. Powell declined to name. During songs, his microphones pick up a constant stream of fan chatter, including cellphone conversations. "I don't know if they're even listening to the show that much," he said."

Not to sound like a grumpy old fart, by why go to a concert and not listen?

- posted 2/02/2004