9/2/13

Don't know if I have the right words for this one - Tori Amos music, this song in general, but this past weekend I heard "Gold Dust," a recent album where she re-did a bunch of songs, set with orchestra parts. It was beautiful. I went to YouTube and while I didn't find the exact version of "Cloud on my Tongue," a longtime favorite song, I found a live version.

You might say that it was a good surprise. I loved listening to this, even out of terrible laptop speakers it was gorgeous and dynamic (and yes, the laptop speakers are extremely terrible and I try to never listen to music on them, but sometimes it's the only thing around). Truly she is the kind of artist where if you don't get her, you don't get her and you won't see what's so marvelous about her songwriting. What she does with lyrics is one thing - one that is very hard to decode but overflors with feel and imagery - but what she does with counterpoint  and layering and tempo - just musically - is another. Before the first chorus, those violin trills, and the build under the "circles" part? Absolute chills, and I could not imagine a more beautiful way to re-hear one of my all-time favorite songs.

And good lord Tori Amos is talented, just a master of what she does, the complete owner of her sound and her work and her art. The idea of coming back to a song many years after the album was made and re-setting it with a freakin' Belgian symphony behind you? And having it be this beautiful? You can't pull that off. I can't pull that off that. Eighty percent of artists whose name you know and music you buy easily could not pull it off, They'd succumb to early burn out or never getting the opportunity because they just didn't know how to do what they do this well.

Lots of people can be artists every now again, it is an entirely different type of human who manages to embody it, live it, be fueled by it.



"Thought I was over the bridge now." 
~Cloud on my Tongue
Tori Amos, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgiumw/ the Metropole Orkest

8/30/13

I am sorry to say I haven't heard the latest LP from The Dangerous Summer yet. I've read about it, I've heard a couple singles, and I don't know if I've just been distracted by other groups newer to my ears, but what I heard just hadn't really *clicked* with me yet. After I heard "Catholic Girls" and "Sins" I didn't really feel a need to hear them again, but at the same time, I really love AJ Perdomo's work and the band's overall sound.

So today, the "Sins" video was released, and I gave it a watch and a listen, and I think the pieces finally clicked. What I thought was a disjointed structure is actually a rather disguised weaving of verses and choruses - you'll catch this at the very end. His vocals take on the shrillness and urgency we've heard before, but it's more aggressive this time, and the lead guitars resonate over velvet-heavy drums and rhythm parts, adding a lightness.

 The whole song almost feels like a bunch of tension without a release, and I think that's why it was uncomfortable for me at first, but I realized then that's what the song is about. The execution mirrors the story. Looking forward to hearing the full record when I can get my hands on it.



"Was I wrong?
Didn't have you for myself
Even if you're still abroad
We will fuck with consequence

'Cause our lives will still be ours
I wanna carry you and
Take your fallout and
See when I follow through
Yea, hold me harder and

I'm living away from our love
I'm living away from our love

To belong
To the wind won't take us from
The fire we hold inside
Won't you rest your tired eyes
'Cause a lifetime will be hard

And when I stare at you
I feel my arms open
The tide is pulling through
To take our walls down and

I'm living away from our love
I'm living away from our love
I'm living away from our love
I'm living away from our love...
The current's strong
There's a void where we both sleep
I'll take you out of there
I'll take you anywhere for good

It won't be long
We will find a place by the beach
And days will cascade
Then days will start again for good

I turn my back on the rope tied to my ceiling
To reason I won't go there anymore
So I thought for once that death might bring me healing.
The Atlantic washed over in Cape Town, in London.

'Til we wash away your sins, and the lives that we once lived."
~Sins 

The Dangerous Summer, Golden Record

8/27/13

Acoustic poetry with a little piano kicked in. It's just a couple scenes and rhymes, and very simple melody, but the sadness in this song is chest-filling, eye-swelling, overwhelming. Love.




That's no way to live
all tangled up like balls of string.
And we woke at dawn
and watched the sun glide over the hill.

I just said the first
three words that popped into my head.
Let me off the bus;
I'm tired and sore and should probably change clothes.
And the circuits are blown,
my woman is cold,
our children are stoned and worthless.
All waiting for you to tell them the truth.
The truth is a line, that you'll never use.

And her dignity
shown so bright like a light on a hill.
And she burned for me,
and no other man came near the flame.
And back country songs the defeaning twang of the rich-white-kid blues
You can own the stage,
but the lights and glares will not make you real.

She whispers to me, I was meant to be free.
This life that we've built is deadly.
She crawls from my bed, with a comb cross her head.
She crawls to the train and drives herself home

~A Light on the Hill 

Margot and the Nuclear So and So's, The Dust of Retreat

8/23/2013

"I guess I should have known better.
Everything's become subjective.
And we're always changing our perspective of what's right.

And I'm caught between the color schemes of black and white.
And I know that it's not right
It's not right

Because it seems that all the places worth staying have been claimed.
And all of the claims, they have been staked.
So who am I to grade you?
And who am I to write?
Seek, try and all you'll find is
Seek, try and all you'll find is

They say when it rains, that it pours.
When a window it closes, it opens up a door.

And I'm caught between the color schemes of black and white.
And I know that it's not right
It's not right

Because it seems that all the places worth staying have been claimed.
And all of the claims, they have been staked.
So who am I to grade you?
And who am I to write?
Seek, try and all you'll find is
Seek, try and all you'll find is

The answer comes in time.
That's just the story of my life.
That's just the story of my life.
I don't want anything from anyone anymore.
I don't want anything from anyone anymore.

Because it seems that all the places worth staying have been claimed.
And all of the claims, they have been staked.
So who am I to grade you?
And who am I to write?
Seek, try and all you'll find is
Seek, try and all you'll find is....

That's just the story of my life.
I don't want anything from anyone anymore."

~The Answer Comes in Time, 

Transit, Listen & Forgive

Pretty much sums it up.

Not much else to say on this one other than Transit is great, this song is cemented in my head, and I love it when pop punk bands pull off multiple vocal parts like this.

Joe Boynton has more than a hint of fighter in his Boston-bred pipes. In true emo-bred, pop punk form, this song manages to encapsulate defeat without being too sad to listen to. The wordplay is excellent and the metaphors are unpretentious (stay/stakes/claimed). The melody, suspended pre-chorus breaks and gang vocal ending are punk enough to turn a line like "I don't want anything from anyone anymore" from a potentially whiny emo refrain into a kiss-off to the world.

Wherever a band like Transit fits in scenes and trends doesn't matter when they've got frustration on their side. Once you learn how to translate that frustration into your art, it's going to show, and for the better.  

8/7/13

I had a friend listen to me today.

We started talking before I realized I needed someone to listen to me and hear what I had to say about something I hadn't intended on speaking about. Before I knew it, she helped me understand what I knew was the answer to the questions I was struggling with all along, the kind of answers I was too afraid to confront myself.

Self-sabotage is not always an intentional thing, but when you catch yourself doing it, or when someone else helps you notice, you can avoid a world of destruction, or at the very least, trotting down a hurt-trimmed path. I think that's what this song is about, I think it's very clear. What a classic.

OLP may not have sent many shockwaves with their most recent work (did you know they released an album in 2012? Because until about five minutes ago, I did not), but man, was some of their earlier stuff on the money. "Gravity" was likely the most commercially successful in 2002, what with the singles and the critical praise ("Made of Steel" completely crumbles me), but "Clumsy" always spoke to me a little more as an entire album. I loved how it was aggressive but not too angry, self-aware and smart but unpretentious. Especially when I got into their discography, early 2000s amid an emo-tinged alt rock scene, something about OLP felt far grungier and spacier; it's in the distortion and the swung tempos and their ability to take it down a notch without losing depth, and the just-this-side-of-insane overlay on the vocals. Raine Maida almost always sounds like he just about to lose it - and he occasionally does, in the form of yelling - and I love how he makes you hear that edge so much you can practically feel yourself balancing on it.

"throw away the radio suitcase
that keeps you awake
hide the telephone, 
the telephone in case, 
you realize that sometimes 
you're not okay
you level off but its not all right now
you need to understand
there's nothing strange about this
you need to know your friends.
I'll be waving my hand watching you drown,
watching you scream,
quiet or loud.
maybe you should sleep,
maybe you just need a friend.
as clumsy as you've been,
there's no one laughing,
you will be safe in here.
Throw away this very old shoelace
that tripped you again
try and shrug it off
it's only skin now.
you need to understand
there's nothing fake about this
you need to let me in
I'm watching you 
I'll be waving my hand watching you drown
watching you scream
no one's around.
and maybe you should sleep
and maybe you just need a friend.
as clumsy as you've been,
there's no one laughing,
you will be safe in here." 
~Clumsy,
Our Lady Peace, Clumsy