1/28/13

"It's 16 miles 
To the promised land 
And I promise you 
I'm doin' the best I can" 



Oh, I miss you, Rilo Kiley, what with your fantastic auxiliary choices and early acoustic strumming patterns, and literary lyrical qualities that somehow defy all potential pretension. So much to love about this particular song, with the group vocals and xylophone and the straight up, put-up-or-shut-up call to action. I wonder what it would feel like to write an honest song again, but I do not think I know how. I'm pretty sure I only did once (it was pretty cool, though,another post for another day).

It's mind-boggling, really, how I can recognize honesty almost everywhere around me, in what I see and hear and read and observe, but am still relatively incapable of finding it in myself. It had to have been there once, I remember figuring it out. Like in my grandparents' living room during the overheard conversations about the shortfalls of my relatives, conversations where a little me served as audience, a third-party listener hearing the playbook of what I must do to live a successful life. And then, during heart-to-hearts in dance class, I learned to put words to what I wanted, sitting on the cold church floor picking at runs in pink tights, anxious and awkward-limbed while digging for ways to describe what it was I danced for...surely I knew what it was to be honest with myself then?

Maybe it's mid 20s-existentialism or maybe I'm just letting haters get the best of me, but some days I wake up with an unshakable guilt, like any second the proverbial "they" will bust down my door to tell me to get out of this life, that "they" were wrong and that there's someone in line who has her shit much more together than I who deserves this chance.

One thing I can be honest about though: Dreams are better shared. That is, at least, a comfort.

"And some days,

They last longer than others
But this day by the lake went too fast
And if you want me, you better speak up,

I won't wait
So you better move fast"~With Arms Outstretched
Rilo Kiley, The Execution of All Things 

9/25/12

Probably the best use of garden-variety keyboard beats I've seen ever maybe.



Also, shaker egg! Really fantastic harmonies. Easy to love, sort of makes you want to dance. But beneath all the twirling auxiliary, and those wonderful mandolin strings, there's a really lovely song, an assertive, berated yet dignified love letter. Something very 19th century about it that is refreshing, charming.

It's a well-crafted structure, in the sense it's very even and that's not something everyone can do, as it can be tough to find the right words that are also the right number of syllables and rhyme enough. Sure I love something asymmetrical, that's certainly interesting, but something this steady is simple, and simple works more often than not.

Some friends of mine played with these guys back home last night. Interesting in checking out their album...would've been so cool to see that show! Alas.

"When I was a boy of nine
I loved you with all my mind,
all my heart, all my soul,
Love me now or lose it all.

Your sister Jean and Anne Marie
say that you're in love with me.
Is there something I can't see?
Love me now or leave me be.

Down by the river on past the creek,
all me way to Widow's Peak,
proclaimed my love but you didn't speak,
love me now or hold your peace.

The baker and the butcher's wife
say you lead a lonely life,
need a man to stand beside,
love me now or stand aside.

Darling, it's so plainly true,
even I get lonely too.
When my heart is set on you,
love me now or leave me."
~Boy of Nine
Buxton, Nothing Here Seems Strange

7/28/12

Surprise, surprise, she's won me over again.

Fiona Apple doesn't release albums often, but when she does, rejoice. Fiona albums only grow better with time and "Idler Wheel..." is no different....Flurried and frantic sometimes, steady and desolate at others, it sounds like nothing else out there. It took me about four listens to truly understand it, understand where it was coming from, but I love that I couldn't give up on it; I couldn't because her words were drawing me in past anything else that I wasn't getting. You will see reviews talking about private she is and how revealing her songs are and whatnot, but at the end of the day she's an artist. She's honest and weird and metaphorical, an artist we only know of because of the pop charts who produces these strange and wonderful narrations of internal struggle and external desire and just feeling.

On "Idler Wheel...." there are multiple moments of painfully bold sharp notes and bellows. She growls, she writhes, she shrieks. But then she resolves, with patience, and returns back to a decisive cleanliness...vocally, her control is phenomenal and used to convey meaning like none other, see "Left Alone" for a taste of the variety Apple can cram into two measures. She says every single syllable with its own intensity, capturing insanity, loneliness, self-doubt and self-assurance with the most appropriate vocal tone, even if they're all in the same phrase. Quivering on the right words is interspersed with whisperlike trills, and Apple hits the blues notes with just enough throwaway....there is really just something behind every syllable. Instrumentation is sparse but purposefully so, the use of space and texture is refreshing to ears used to everything electronically layered so damn close...piano is center stage sharpened by unique auxiliary (shakers, ringing bells and hard-to-identify drums are in no small number, even what appears to be nat sound of footsteps on stones), and it's expansive, so, so expansive - the intro on "Anything We Want" is probably my favorite, playful and primitive.

But delivery, and instrumentation, would be nothing without these words. She just says it....lyrics are wry and dark and often tortured but exposing all the sad, scary vulnerable bits we feel and never say. "Werewolf" and "Periphery" in particular show immense perspective wrapped in metaphors and the end result is achingly real. She puts your head in a place that's always on but rarely tuned; these songs are the result of one woman's subconscious turned inside out and the lessons to be learned, the insights to glean, the connections to forge, will give and keep giving as long as you're willing to look.

"I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead
But I admit that I provided a full moon 
And I could liken you to a shark the way you bit off my head
But then again I was waving around a bleeding, open wound 

But you were such a super guy 'til the second you get a whiff of me
We are like a wishing well and a bolt of electricity 
But we can still support each other, all we gotta do's avoid each other
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key 
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key

The lava of the volcano shot up hot from under the sea
One thing leads to another and you made an island of me

And I could liken you to a chemical the way you made me compound a compound
But I'm a chemical, too, inevitable you and me would mix
And I could liken you to a lot of things but I always come around
'Cause in the end I'm a sensible girl, I know the fiction of the fix 

But you were such a super guy 'til the second you get a whiff of me
We are like a wishing well and a bolt of electricity
But we can still support each other, all we gotta do's avoid each other
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key"
~Werewolf,
Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do