Grief at being in a world where these things happen
Juan-Garcia Esquivel, Sentimental Journey.
Musicians were free to do whatever they wanted before The Beatles discovered how to game the pop-song algorithm. No moment of music history was so replete with fecund invention as the turn of the sixties: anything was possible, no one had yet boiled down the formula to catchy verse-chorus guitar / drums. Esquivel’s sounds are some of the most startlingly fresh and unexpected to come out of that superbly innovative moment, and they are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Are you happy, listening to this, and knowing that the subsequent history of mainstream pop music will be a relentless narrowing of possibilities, to the point where there are only two paths open today: a Nevermind-esque rough-edged rockist angst, or the kind of bubbly dance tunes which get forgotten barely a blink after they’re released?
Parquet Courts, Tenderness.
In the face of the yawning void of the machine, don’t we all, with Andrew Savage, wish for a little tenderness? His voice at first is smooth, like a clarinet; but his higher register is raw and rough, close to weeping. What a world he sees! Clocks aren’t fast enough, everything gets sped up and we don’t have time to cherish the moment anymore; all these machines all over the place provoke him to flirt with nihilism—tear it all down, it’s all rotten—but even that doesn’t give him the solace he craves. Stupid modern technics! “Nothing reminds the mind of power like the cheap odor of plastic” has got to be one of the most gloriously oblique lines ever sung in a song.
Alice Phoebe Lou, Glow.
The guitar is not dead. Repeat that to yourself. Don’t listen to all that doom-and-gloom twaddle. Confident and assured, this music swaggers out and commands our notice: it is proud and full of certainty, just like the singer. Notice how often Alice Phoebe Lou turns the subject back on herself: I and me are her favorite words, cropping up with regularity in her art. In her life as well as in ours, how much of this confidence is facilitated by the support staff, who often do the worrying for us: “My mom knows I’ll be alright, but she’ll be glad I’m home; she’s always casting spells for me.”
Animal Collective, The Purple Bottle.
Do you remember your first serious crush? Remember being sixteen and just simply not being able to get that special person out of your head? It colored everything, didn’t it—every little aspect of your life suddenly existed in relation to that person, and the future spun limitlessly outward, vast and full of potential—you remember that, right? It’s astounding how much our friends the Animal Collective can get out of the very limited means they have chosen to work with—the middle section of this song contains barely anything other than voices and percussion. Animal Collective has a fundamental wildness about them, traceable all the way through their records: an improvisatory / Dionysian spinning nearly out of control, evidenced in this song by the giddy yells which populate the music at times. We shouldn’t really talk about the feelings our crush enflames in us—no, our little words are just inadequate; thus: “You’ve got that . . . WHOO!!”
DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ, All the Beautiful Things U Do.
No music I know is better than this song at opening up a wide vista, at managing tension and letting it bubble and brew underneath: notice how every few measures the same chord keeps coming back, as if we’re always about to launch out into the world, always at the point of becoming, always full of possibilities. The cusp of adulthood is pure potential. That’s what Natalie Portman told the Harvard class of 2015: that they can do anything they wanted. Standard commencement-address stuff, really, except for the insistence on Portman’s part that what we do isn’t as important as the art of it—the superfluous yet essential style that makes our doings memorable. We’re all going to do something, that’s obvious; but “the beautiful things you do”—will you do them with flair and panache, with gumption and gusto, with moxie and pizzazz? In the second half of the song Portman’s voice is deconstructed—chopped up like vegetables and thrown into the stew. DJ Sabrina: how do you do all the beautiful things you do?
Desired, Video Girl Yukiko.
Always a fan of simple yet sublime melodies, I’m eternally captivated by this one: “Sukiyo sukiyo sukiyo sukiyo ah na ya na,” or something like that, a rising pattern of four three-note repetitions, climbing an octave and a third and then quickly curling back down to the seventh. For all its pep and swing there is a note of melancholy in this song: maybe I only say that because I’m familiar with the rest of Desired’s work, and it’s almost always the type of jumped-up future funk that will melt your brain if you listen to too much of it. Is there such a thing as wistful melancholy? Peaceful, contented melancholy? Sunny melancholy? This song contains it.
Brothertiger, High Tide.
There are two songs about drowning: this one, and Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi.” Decide on your own which one you prefer; they are both masterpieces. Here, John Jagos explores the deeper register of his voice (Get it? Deeper? Drowning?) as well as the push-pull tension of instrumental parts coming, going, dropping out, starting back up. The sonic events tend to congregate near the vocals, leaving realms of space in between the sung lines. Watch for the sustained synth tone which mutates into its own melody; it’s a treat.
Nonkeen, Diving Platform.
Here we have the longest intro of any song on this playlist; it doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the song, though—it serves more as a warm-up or those parts before the symphony starts when the musicians are tuning. The song itself is a fine example of a slow crescendo; as the song’s two chords rock back and forth the instruments swell in power, not unlike a thunderstorm—then, also not unlike a thunderstorm, they dissipate. For all its force and drive, this one is fundamentally serene; nothing happens abruptly, nothing suddenly changes. Long stretches of life are like this; and that is a good thing.
Widowspeak, Girls.
What to do about the people who are beating you at life’s game? Remember the chances you didn’t take, the decisions you couldn’t make—why couldn’t you make them? Why is it easier for the up-and-coming generation to do them? Of course, the big moral question remains (neatly summed up in these lines: “I’ve seen girls younger than me doing things I’ve never done; see these girls and think in terms of who lost and who won.”) Indeed, a careful, cautious approach might not be all that bad; risks are, um, risky . . . but then there are all those times when we are getting older every year and we still don’t know what we want, and meanwhile the kids are fully certain of their goals and dreams. Who has the real wisdom here? And do I sense, in the song’s long instrumental coda with its coiled-up energy, a feeling that all of this is, deep down, too painful for words?
The Marshall Tucker Band, Heard it in a Love Song.
Ach, those “love” songs! Don’t listen to them, if they tell you to leave the girl who is crying for you! Listen to her tears! Don’t accept your fate; you may have been “born a wrangler and a rounder,” but you don’t have to live that way. You are the master of your destiny—right? That’s correct, right? The piano in this song is one of the best pianos in all of rock-n-roll, eclipsed only by the pianos in Van Morrison’s “And it Stoned Me” and Wilco’s “Company in my Back.” And that poignant, heartfelt flute—it’s as if the music knows he really ought to come back to her, that he will ruin not only her life, but also his own, if he leaves forever.
The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done.
Please, please, let me be close to you. The broad and grandiose vista we are ushered into, with those splash cymbals and those crunchy guitar chords, reveals a yearning desire that’s close to the heart of many an otherwise strong and stoic man. It is not good for man to be alone, the scripture says; but how to convince the other person that they are the one who will fill your aloneness? And has there ever been a more achingly poignant crescendo in a billboard hit than the middle section, the one that goes “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”: I have deep and beautiful emotions and they find their source in you, but help me please: I’m not strong, certainly not strong enough to go on without you.
LCD Soundsystem, All My Friends.
There is a kind of frenetic energy which serves to mask a raw and gripping heartache. Truly, for its fresh and perky piano chords, this is a deeply sad song: it speaks of loneliness, of the empty feeling which can come, suddenly, while we are swept up in the moment; of the distance between even the closest friends; of the lies we tell ourselves about our regrets. The tension in this one builds and builds, as James Murphy, with his perfect voice, keeps a calm and even grip on his yearning . . . until the end when he reaches into his upper register for his heart’s cry: “Where are your friends tonight?” They’ve gone, like a sales force into the night, and you’d better follow them. They’re heading for the clubs to have the kind of fun that hides an empty hole in its center—or at least, a hole that you can see, even if they can’t.
DJ Boring, Winona.
And what do we feel, once we’ve gotten to the club and started getting down to that funky DJ groove? Remember, even DJs can be contemplative and sad sometimes. In a world of clubbing and raves and all the rest, let’s take a moment to remember one little girl, picked on and pestered for her looks in school, who was just trying to make a living and got roundly thrashed by an adult in power over her—thrashed with words, that is, and we all know words can hurt much worse than sticks and stones. But what does it mean that this girl grew up and became astoundingly, spectacularly famous? It’s easy to look back with sadness at the injustices we’ve overcome, but hear this now: for every Winona Ryder there were hundreds of little girls who also were told they were “not pretty enough” . . . and believed it. And stopped trying. And gave up, and lived with that through their years.
The DJ beat goes on, the synths warm up and the deep groove overwhelms . . . but kids still get betrayed by their adults and all I feel right now is grief at being in a world where these things happen.
Was a big Animal Collective fan back when I was an early 2010s millennial hipster. Good times, and a perhaps a discography to revisit this year.
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I might add PJ Harvey's Down by the Water.