What’s the point?
Camille Saint-Saens – Danse Macabre
Trotting from lingering clouds of dire intent to the thrill of impish orchestration to the base of chill, and then a free-fall orgy of all elements as a crashing force; ‘Danse Macabre’ – starting with the innocent beat of a single piano note, used so often now by Dario Marianelli – is at its core a grandiose orchestrated riff that bows out to serenading trickles of dancing rhythmic beat and prancing viola. It is a coupling of sheer joy and utter torment that brings the listener to complete enslavement of the sound. It is a song whose month is forever confused. I need to make more time for classical music. [Illustration by David Foldvari. Seek.]
I climb to lose you
Another snowman standing in the sleet
“I stopped wearing my wedding ring,” he said. “At work, I mean.”
She continued pouring milk out of a chilled glass pitcher – steadily, measuredly, full to the brim.
“I know,” she said, and sat down, her wooden chair creaking. He raised an eyebrow. “The tan,” she explained.
“Oh.”
He tucked his napkin under his collar and cut into the roast. “I just thought you should know is all.”
She smelled earthy, like freshly baked bread, as she walked – back straight, posture perfect – past him to the bathroom. She locked the door.
Leonard Cohen – If It Be Your Will
Leonard Cohen, more than any other songwriter in the past century or so, creates music that sounds sacred. Like he picked right up from the hymns, like the church’s recent flitting with obscene and obscenely unoriginal pop music never happened. Like when his aging fingertips – withering but still gentle, lythe – touch the taut guitar strings, the only possible response is supplication, sanctification.
I’d go to that church, you know. Cohen up on stage, his body stiffened by approaching rigor mortis, but still trim in a suit. An angelic chorus supplementing him from behind the pews, up in the balcony. L. Cohen certainly wouldn’t tell me to switch my phone to silent, laughing nasally because the comparison of the vulgar cinema and the consecration of church makes him slightly uncomfortable. He would never tell me to close my eyes, to open up my “heart of hearts.” No, he’d just close his own eyes. (It’s hard to imagine cellular telephones and Leonard Cohen coexisting in one world.) He’d sing in that earth-rumblingly deep voice, each bass note veined with experience and humility.
Instead of holding our hands aloft and swaying, we’d silently bow our heads and mutter prayers into our collars. [Live In London.]
Sometimes you feel sick after
The Strange Boys – Laugh At Sex, Not Me
“They love each other. And – for some reason – that pleases me.” To me, first listen brings an immediate reminder of Dick Dale and his Tones – that twangy guitar sound so often shelved; but there’s a kind of tenderness not present in the whisk invention that is ‘Misirlou’, however. ‘Laugh At Sex, Not Me’ is as surprisingly moving a song about hearing friends have close-by sex as one might ever hear. A firm guitar riff grasps and guides us through story-telling of ongoings in the other room (“Being quiet as they can, so as not to be rude,”) and the marching band progression of the rhythmic section ensures attention never wanes. There’s a bummed bass chord, too, suffering steady vibration, drilling its way through the track as lonesome backing terrain, not calling for attention, but content to just be there. It’s an atmospheric tone somewhat unfitting, but for a brief announcing of the same-girl and shared-pleasures. “It feels good, but it’s not always possible.” [Invest.]
The water’s clear, and innocent
It is a familiar cold. The sweater you never wear, buried deep in the trends of your dresser, buried deep and snug and crinkled. From that winter when you were twelve. When your cheeks blushed a rosy hue. It is everything it was before and nothing like what it is. It is a motion picture. It is a morning bell, ringing ringing ringing. It is a piano on a sexless highway, creakily rolling, notes pressed down upon by a single hand burned to a crisp, limbs scattered on the worn tar black from the light. It is yesterday. It is tomorrow. It was today.
***
It is Savernake Forest. It is jagged oak fingers reaching out. It is scattered coppices and winding meadows, prickly scrubs and wretched heath. It is sadness. It is slovenly. It is you. You are the sloth. You are sitting on the branches, are never climbing. You crawl sideways, looking up. Waiting for the rain. The clear, clean rain. [Buy The King of Limbs.]
But no one is asking so leave it alone
The National – Cherry Tree (Black Session)
Bryce rolled out of the cab somewhere uptown to attend a black light party. The apartment was full of a cluster of Eastern Europeans, mostly sitting in a circle on the wooden floor in the living room, white socks and neon shirts glowing. Nervous, itchy, he skidded around them to the kitchen, where the lone light in the apartment was on.
A skinny Swedish girl, crossfaded and with pink hair tips, stared wide-eyed back at him as they stuttered through a conversation. Bryce kept scratching his elbow and looking down or looking away or looking out the glass sliding doors.
Sitting down indiscreetly at the edge of the circle, Bryce wonders if it’s more noticeable to sit alone or to pretend to be in a cluster having a conversation without saying anything. He’s pondering his own antisocial neurosis and if it sprouts from too much time alone on the computer when suddenly someone’s asking him a question. “Don’t look at me,” he nearly whispers back, “I’m only breathing.”
[The Black Sessions are free. So is the New York Times Magazine feature on The National.]
… because I’m new to it
Building site clatter, chasing cars, space-growls, and forced crowd claps – sounding more like regimented feet hitting floors in shattering symmetry than time keeping; it’s not what should be beautiful. It’s not what should be anything, in truth, except for a lacing of spiked vocal melody, so absorbing (listen out for that final ‘er’ in “remember” that’s delivered with impediment beauty) and promising in its idealist flirtation, and it’s that exact rise of melody and the sparkling plateau it breathes upon that has us reaching for Brian Wilson again and again, which is altogether unfair when Panda Bear presents it against such a polarising backdrop of melodic oppression.
Against this controlled and aligned fright is a singer proposing a revolt. The revolt against the self and all our failings, “Coolness is having courage, courage to do what’s right.” In the face of what may be deemed wrong, have some courage. It’s not the soundtrack to the bravery and voices gaining volume in sections of our lands today, but it is a fraction of the point. It’s a hopeful step, the courage to deafen insecurities, to breed realisations. And as an opening note to us all, Bear’s comfortable in search of the baby steps: “Try to tell me how to do it, only because I’m new to it.” [Paw tracks.]