Souverian - Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird is a purveyor of puns and wordplays that flow like the violin he always has with him that may well have become a detachable appendage from the trachea - it's that natural to him.

On this masterpiece called 'Souverian' Bird has created something that summons rest.  Whenever I felt too tired to go on this past year, I would lay down and listen to this song, and it was rejuvenating, it feels so natural, so comforting.  He plays on the French word 'Souverain' which in English is 'Sovereign' perhaps referencing a monarch, or someone with sovereign authority.  It feels like a medieval lullaby in some ways, in that it evokes imagery of a former time, a time of oppression and pain, where power is centralized and hope is decentralized.

The song tells of a fire one that burns the countryside
               
               Though bells will ring church steeples catchin' fire . . . 'Cause in the Spring tender grasses won't burn easily . . . Wild parsnips they still scald my lungs . . . While thistles will burn my feet . . .

In the midst of this fire, whether proverbial or not, waits a man for his lover, a lover who will not come.   It seems that amidst the spring, the time of growth and rebirth, the time where birds let out all the breath they had stored up from winter, his lover won't return, but he still sings.  He sings in the second person and addresses her, because if the birds' songs were futile in summoning her, perhaps his personal appeal would reach her ears on the backs of the wind-waves and heartaches.  Perhaps it would be enough to compel her to return.

He sings his tune, his tune that acknowledges their youth, their time ahead, time that is hoped to be spent with each other.

About four minutes in, the song builds up together with the violin and the acoustic guitar and it culminates to a point
                     . . . then silence . . .
                then a soft descent sliding down the violin, and landing upon the tempered drum.  And Bird's voice flows in with the words

                      Under the elders, the older get younger,
                      The younger get older, over the elders,
                      And under the elders, pretend that you're older now

I'm not going to pretend like I know what this means, because I don't, but I believe it is rooted in the family tree, a tree whose branches extend far beyond what we can imagine, and we feel this day the effects of our ancestor's decisions, their residual personalities have been incorporated into us, without us even knowing them, like the leaves who have never known their roots, but are still sustained by them all the same.

A motif in Andrew Bird's songs is the concept of the 'fatal shore'.  He posits it in the line:

                     And if you join the chorus you will never fear anymore
                     So here comes the chorus, we will meet on a fatal shore

What a beautiful line.  What a beautiful concept.
The fatal shore.
It reminds me of the line in Modest Mouse's 'Ocean Breathes Salty' where he says 'You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye' - I imagine that that meeting and departure would take place on this fatal shore, on this shore where all things come to an end - things like fear.

With this song, Andrew Bird created something truly surpassing, something that encapsulates the essence of what art is supposed to do, because I believe art is supposed to do something, whether that is to move, stay, inspire, compel, exist, work, question, think, or in this case all of the behind, while also beckoning rest, beckoning rest via violin, whistle, and vocals.  Well done Mr. Bird.

Forks and Knives (La Fete) - Beirut

Anytime a piece of writing can transport you to another time and place it's worth considering, and when that time and place is golden France of an age ago, that piece of writing is special indeed.  

Zach Condon is the frontman of the eccentric band Beirut.  Condon is young and his youth shows through much of his music, but it is a youth that has heritage, much like Joe Pug's, but less American, trading an acoustic guitar for a mandolin and accordion.  Beirut is a band that feels much more communal than a lot of folk, it has its roots in Balkan folk and their songs usually require a plethora of instruments - accordions, mandolins, ukeleles, violins, drums, tamborines - along with some voices to back Condon.  'Forks and Knives' feels much like this, like it's a song sung round the table after a dinner party in a French cottage.  

The song starts with these waltz-like violins that level out and mingle with the accordion as Condon flows along singing of people's spirits as they seem able to turn the weather warm and light like the ebb and flow of a tame river.  This yields a chorus of merry song accompanied by a steady cymbal and snare and the melodic accordion, violin, and mandolin playing throughout.

The middle stanza intercedes and Condon keeps his word-waltz stepping as he talks of sad words from wise birds, words that may keep the organic street afloat as they break into another orchestral round.  The horns come in, as is Beirut's way, and synchronize the accompanying instruments around it, and perhaps relay the message of the wise old bird with his sad words, although, it may be the bird itself speaking.  

The horns yield to the accordions providing the background for Condon's last stanza of the tale, as he talks of "He" who could be that old bird, or could be a new old man, either way he speaks of the things that make his life worth living - his stories of superb wine, rich memories, and a melancholy hospital bed.  I picture this as a man who gave the hitchhiking Condon a ride in the French countryside in this fictional memoir, a man who sat him down and fed him hearty food and wealthy wine and told him rich tales of old - of heroism and romance, breaking his heart and summoning laughter with each alternating weave.  

About the hospital bed - I picture him talking of the loss of loved ones, like he was a man with a loving large family that he lost one by one, that he had to endure death with over and over in that hospital bed and maybe he experienced bad health himself, recovering then reverting then recovering all the while his life ebbs and flows like a river with the hospital bed as its eddy.  This is a man that has experienced much and probably speaks regularly with that sad old bird, they speak the same language, though the well-meaning old man has a more optimistic dialect that seems to confuse the bird.

Conjecturing aside, this song is pure listening pleasure, if the taste of honey had a musical parallel it would undoubtedly be this sweet song.

Take away show courtesy of Vincent Moon and La Blogotheque:

http://www.blogotheque.net/serie/concert-a-emporter/

Hymn 101 - Joe Pug

Joe Pug is the real deal.  I believe he is.  I believe he is one of those chosen storytellers, the ones who have the power to change a generation, because they're so full of words that it just takes one - one album, one song, one word that can ignite a people, ignite them like a flare in the thick of a dry forest of brush that is the youth, the youth that is starved for honesty, starved for stories, starved for something that they can hold on to, starved for something to coalesce their attention, something that has substance.

'Hymn 101' is that flare.  It works like a flare, starts from a low place, a base, a place of identification, a place that everyone knows, an open road if you will.  And it rises.  Oh, does it rise.  The strum is steady like a rickshaw, but the lyrics progress, unfold.

What makes Pug resonate is because he realizes, he isn't one of a kind, he doesn't see himself as an ace of spades, he's not going to change the face of music.  He realizes that it is his time, his time in a long list of times, a heritage of musicians, but more a heritage of folk folk - the storytellers who don't write anything down but have keen memories and oral tradition.  Yet he will make his time last, because what he says in his time has staying power.

He says:

'I've come to reach out blind,
To reach forward and behind,
For the more I seek the more I'm sought'

It's painful how much we fail to remember that to reach forward, you must always reach behind.  History repeats itself.  It is cyclical, it's predictable in many ways, for better or for worse or for both.  This is how Pug's music is.  His words are original, but they exist in a community of influence, throw a dart between Dylan and Twain and Moses and you can find similarities, spheres of influence that overlap on a grid at points A-Z to the nth power, and each of those intersections is a point in time of a storyteller, and that point in time is their time.  Right now is Joe Pug's time and he knows it.

The song is strewn with the narrator's voice of explanation, his voice that gives reasons for his arrival and for his journey.  The line that stands out to me is:
'I've come to test the timber of my heart'
That is what this song comes down to, that could be what it means, it means that he's got something inside of him, and it's either rotting or it's growing and he means to found out which.  Perhaps the former led to the latter, which spurred his feet on this journey, this spiritual journey of foundation, of seeking.

And it all comes down to the end, a fitting end.

And you've come to know me stubborn as a butcher,
And you've come to know me thankless as a guest,
But will you recognize my face,
When God's awful grace,
Strips me of my jacket and my vest,
And reveals all the treasure in my chest?

He comes to the end of the road, perhaps a changed man.  Perhaps the road has shaped his rotten wooden heart and has rooted itself in substance, in good earth, so that now it means to grow, to produce.  Perhaps he is almost unrecognizable now, because how can there possibly be a recognition between shadow and light?  How can the night ever linger long enough to see the dawn?

And yes there God waits at the end, with his revealing awful grace.  His painful grace, his awestruck eyes-wide grace, his reverential penitent grace that strips away everything and shows the essence of a person, an essence that appears to be filthy - jacket and vest covered in dirt-muck and sweat-spit, but when stripped away, it shows to be concealing something much more beautiful, something much more vibrant - you.  And man, is that worth singing about.

Dawes - A Little Bit of Everything

This song is perfect.  And I rarely say that about any piece of writing.  'A Little Bit of Everything' is a song that resonates to the very deepest part of being, it's like it slowly unwraps a Christmas present you forgot to open in childhood, a present that brings back painful memories you don't want to deal with.

The piano that begins the song summons your attention, it does not command it, but it beckons it, and you comply simply because you know it will be worth it. And it is well worth it.  But it is also painful.  Every key that is hit, lingers for a bit, much like lead singer Taylor Goldsmith's voice when he tunes it to his instrument.

The song begins with a jumper on the Golden Gate Bridge.  It does not tell a story of joyful redemptive safety.  It does not tell what happens to him.  It just relays the message that he tells the officer who asks him 'Just tell me what you're doing it for.'  He responds:

'Oh it's a little bit of everything,
It's the mountains, it's the fog,
It's the news at six o'clock,
It's the death of my first dog,
It's the angels up above me,
It's the song that they don't sing,
It's a little bit of everything.'

Goldsmith lifts his voice when he says 'mountains' and 'fog' like he is looking out at both of them when he says it, willing his voice above them.  He proceeds to sing of the angels, of a song that does not get sung, a song that perhaps has the potential to save this life if they only knew what to sing.

The story continues with the description of an older man who probably wears a half smile and has tired sad eyes.  He has taken to eating to try to forget his pain, as if his memory runs adverse to his stomach.  When the server asks what he wants he says:

'I want a little bit of everything,
The biscuits and the beans,
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees..."

Meanwhile, our heart is there with that older man, who has lost his son and his bright future.  Who has lost purpose.  Who takes temporary comfort in the ephemeral food, the ephemeral appetite being satiated.  He can eat as much as he wants and people watch as much as he wants at the buffet, but he can't escape it, he is only stuffing away his pain into a compact area of his mind, one that has a foot in the conscious and the subconscious.  He has to endure pain, he has to endure that hard road, and man, man is it hard.

The narrative continues.

It describes a soon-to-be bride, a period of time that is usually the most ecstatic part of a woman's life, one that is all anticipation, all sweet wine, and no sour grapes.  Yet she appears weighted with heavy thoughts.

She responds to her concerned fiancee:

'I think that love is so much easier than you realize,
If you can give yourself to someone, than you should,
Cause it's a little bit of everything,
The way you joke,
The way you ache,
It is getting up before you,
So I can watch you as you wake...'

I picture her with thoughtful brown eyes, like she is staring at a picture in her mind, that we can't see.  She then describes love in one of the most beautiful ways I have ever heard it described.  I think that's what love is, all the little things, it is everything, the good and bad, the solid walls and the frail flaws, everything.

I'm not sure, but I think the three stories are one, I think they are interconnected, a story about how one person's untimely death ripples into others' lives and affects them far down that hard road.  I think Taylor Goldsmith has some experience on that road.  This song is infused with passion, passion that is channeled into an emotional story, a story that needs to be told.  The drums give it life, like a heartbeat 'bom bombombom bom bombombom', and Goldsmith's voice, man that is a voice of a storyteller, one that knows his way around.  It's one that remains quiet until it has something really important to say, and everybody listens, because everybody knows that that voice carries weight.

And what weight this song carries.

The final part is a detailed description of something we have journeyed through the whole song trying to define, but not knowing what exactly the word is.  It says:

'All these psychics and these doctors,
They're all right and they're all wrong,
It's like trying to make out every word,
When they should simply hum along,
It's not some message written in the dark,
Or some truth that no one's seen,
It's a little bit of everything.'

If we want purpose, purpose is to be found where we are at, wherever that may be.  We don't have to go to a distant place to find purpose, we don't have to study dense books to find purpose, no, we can find it here, we can find it there.  I think there is always hope to be had in loss, there's always hope that our legs will grow stronger walking hard roads.

Thank you Dawes for creating a song that is one for the ages, and one that will surely accompany me through those ages.

The World at Large - Modest Mouse

I have probably listened to "The World at Large" by Modest Mouse well over 300 times.  This song is a song that takes listening, I mean real listening.  It takes silencing everything and focusing.  The song talks about the journey of a drifter, a romantic, who knows not what he is looking for, but he sure knows that he's looking, he is ever-looking.  His journey is strewn with the stuff of life, the stuff of being, the stuff that makes you get up in the morning and the stuff that makes you cry out in pain, that stuff that urges you onward when you know you are slowly falling backward.  He sees autumn, he sees spring, he leaves after each, not finding what he is looking for in the short golden autumn days, or the solidarity of cold nights.  Not finding it in the long green days of spring either.  He feels like he is alone, like he is doomed in this purgatory earth, forever to wander, because that's all he knows, that's all his feet can do, they've only been trained to walk, they know not rest.  The piano is mourning, it is hard and yearning, it keeps it's notes throughout the journey, it keeps steadily moving on, steadily.  He talks about moths lending their shocked bodies to the summer breeze after futilely colliding with lights, he talks about being swept by this undertow, taking him unwillingly, much like the moth towards the light.  He's lost.  But in his search there still remains hope, even if it be so small as a moth, or as imperceptible as the breeze, it is still there, that's what keeps those feet moving.

Matthew And The Atlas

To start this blog out, I must turn to the Indie-Folk genre, a genre you will find the blog mainly consisting of.  The best band that you've never heard of is a small English folk band called 'Matthew and the Atlas'.  I use the word small only to describe their fame.  As far as quality of lyrics, vocals, and prowess, they are of the highest quality.

'I Will Remain' is their anthem, their track in which to hang their weather-beaten hat.  The song starts with a lively acoustic rhythm, and lead Matthew Hegarty sings through it, giving it depth and weight.  He is a young man, still in his twenties, but his voice is reminiscent of an old folk storyteller, the old man in the corner who seldom speaks, and when he does speak everyone listens, because they know it to be worthwhile.

Like Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind' Hegarty sings of a man who has wandered on roads, roads that winded through meadows, past woods, seeking the one to whom the song is addressed, the silent listener, the one who the man hopes will hear his voice whispering in a willow.  The imagery of 'stone', 'wooden floor', 'meadow', 'widowed home', conjure up an image of the English countryside, one that abounds in rolling hills and folk who speak of things that once had been.  In this Hegarty remains.

The song is communal, lively, with a constant stomp-clap accompanied by a banjo rift and chorus.  It's a song that could have been sung a hundred years ago at a family reunion, or could have been stumbled upon in the appendix of some old English hymnal - it has that texture.

'I Will Remain' is an anthem indeed, distinct but not exclusive, vibrant but no poppy, seasonal but could be played anywhere.  It's a masterpiece.

Here's the song: