Wednesday, July 18, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Three: Completely Conspicuous by The Pursuit of Happiness

It's a Coulda-Shoulda-Been Bigger Band circa
the recording of the song discussed...
The Pursuit of Happiness remains one of my favorite bands, and it's a fine example of The Band That Is Killed By Its Early Success.


Pursuit--or TPOH as it was colloquially known by its fans--was an Edmundton-by-way-of-Toronto powerpop unit devised primarily as a vehicle for the idiot-savant-like genius of Moe Berg. While it's inherent Canadianness gave TPOH a little bit of a higher profile in its native country, we here in the States first became exposed to them through 'I'm An Adult Now,' a snarky, partially spoken word ode to struggling with growing old. It became something of a hit, wandering around the lower parts of the Top 40 in 1986....and then the follow-up single, "She's So Young," was launched, and most people realized that this wasn't a Funny Band Whose Lead Singer Made Jokes About Impotence, but a legitimate band with a real insight and a good trade in male/female harmonies. Berg and Co. struggled with their label, Chrysalis, and were dropped after the disappointing sales of their (admittedly artistically disappointing) second album, Two Sided Story. This led to their signing with Mercury, scoring another very minor hit with 'Cigarette Dangles, and then a spiraling out of control with two albums on Iron Music, a never-really-official break-up, Berg going off to write a rock opera, and the band kinda, sorta re-emerging in the last few years to record covers of Prince and do scattered shows in their native Canada. They never quite got over the disappointment most Americans had that they weren't the band 'I'm An Adult Now' promised, and is now a footnote in books about power pop and bad movies, as they were the featured legitimate band in the ill-advised sequel to Rock N' Roll High School, Rock N' Roll High School Forever.

Unlike the rest of Americans, I liked TPOH as a whole and sought out and eventually acquired all their albums. This song is from Where's The Bone, the first of the two Canadian-only albums they recorded for Iron. I actually feel that Bone is their best album (unlike everyone--including Razor And Tie--who toe the party line and claim that first album, Love Junk, is the only one worthwhile), containing a selection of songs that I get the impression are very personal without getting too personal like their final one, the embarrassingly confessional The Wonderful World of Pursuit of Happiness.

One of the reasons I liked Moe Berg's songwriting is the persona he adopts in most of his songs of the horndog who doesn't have the degree of control over his life he thinks he has, and 'Completely Conspicuous' is typical of that persona. This song takes the structure of Berg trying to defend himself to his significant other when he is caught talking to another woman. Berg's trademark whine jumps from protest to protest, coming up with justifications seemingly out of thin air (this is the 'modern world' of equality), then throws the situation back in his girl's face with his accusation of inequality when it comes to their social guidelines and the way she denigrates the woman he's speaking to, points out that this is why their relationship is in crisis...and yet, there are hints that the woman he's defending himself to has justification. This is demonstrated not only in the lyrics, but in the way we get female counterpoints whenever he stumbles back to the choral justification of 'she's just a friend'--followed by his admission that yes, he wishes she could be more.

I've always said that the female/male harmonies are something that makes TPOH stands out. Most line-ups--Berg has never seemingly been able to keep a female vocalist for long (I suspect Kris Abbot, who joined in 1988 is the only one who's last more than one album)--contain not one, but two female musicians who help him with this. And in the case of this song, the harmonies serve another purpose, namely to be the whisper in Moe's ear that reminds him that yes, he does have some nefarious purpose in talking to this woman. It's the typical Berg persona getting him in trouble again, and trying to scamble to recover when it all goes wrong.

I'm pretty sure everything TPOH is out of print, although the albums are available at some sites, including iTunes, digitally.  And if you're curious about the band, you can visit Incompletely Conspicuous, the official fan site, that contains a wealth of information including a massive amount of rare and live mp3s....

No video for this one...but here's one from the single for this album, the nasty 'Young And In Love'....

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Two: Bull Black Nova by Wilco

"Hey, you!  Yeah, you!"
Hey, it's a murder ballad! It's a pop song about anxiety! It's both!

I'll be upfront in telling you I am not as enthusiastic as some people are about Jeff Tweedy and his band of musical misfits. It's not that I hate them; they just don't jump out at me the way some other bands do. Most of the Wilco tracks I have in my hard drive dedicated to media are cover songs (I recall a blog actually releasing a massive zip file of all of them, which I downloaded), since Jeff seems to delight in being eclectic when it comes to choosing what he'll cover.

Doesn't mean I can't like one of his originals. And I like this one.

I've always had this weird fascination for America's enjoyment of the murder ballad. After all, there was this weird period in the late 50's and early 60's where something like two dozen songs about people dying due to horrific tragedies and their loved ones pining away for them or--in some extreme cases--committing suicide to join them became Top 40 Hits. That obsessive need to see lovers torn asunder by the grim reaper has faded away from the 70's to now, but that hasn't stopped occasional examples of this time-honored tradition from breaking through to the pop charts periodically. Hell, Maroon Five--Maroon Fucking Five, the most boring pop band on earth--managed to get a Top 40 Hit out of 'Wake up Call,' a song about Adam Levine coming home and finding his wubbie in bed with another (assumably more interesting) man and shooting them dead.

On the surface, 'Bull Black Nova' is in this tradition. We have our POV character watching from the titular muscle car as 'they'--presumably the police--approach. We learn that something is all over our guy and his car....and his sofa, and his sink, and you get the idea. He's aware that whatever he did can't be undone and can't be outrun. Sounds like a man who murdered someone, maybe a girlfriend, and realizes he can't go back on this. He's snuffed out a life, and it's going to be with him the rest of his days; ultimately, judgement--whether flesh and blood or spiritual--will catch up to him. The melody, with its aping of a police siren through repetitious piano/synth chords, emphasize that this judgment will happen sooner rather than later.

Except....

There's a definite change of the tonality as the song progresses. The siren chords get higher, becoming somewhat playful. The filling out of the melody, particularly in the bridge, give the song, eases the tension somewhat until you realize....you never get any real specifics. Hell, the only reason we presume it's the police that are approaching is because of the connection we make with sirens when we hear the chords of the first part. There is a very strong chance that Jeff Tweedy is playing a little game with us, and that this is a metaphor for something less dire, but no less life or death to our POV character. Maybe this isn't a physical murder but an emotional one--his lashing out at a girlfriend that leads to her leaving him. Or maybe it's not a murder but a physical trauma, like a car accident, that is causing our guy so much anxiety. Jeff's not telling, and I respect him for it; after all, it seems it's not the event but the after-effects he's interested in.

I like this song because of its ambivalence and the slow way it introduces doubt to our system. It's up to us to decide if this is the murder ballad it seems to be on the surface, or something a little more ethereal. Unlike some other recent practitioners of this form, Jeff doesn't want to spell it out, trusting that the scenario we build with his music will be much more satisfying to us than anything he can spoon feed us.

Here's the song....

Friday, July 6, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty One: Lavender by 50 Foot Wave

Is she smiling at you, or is she just smiling?
Just so you know, I just upgraded my MP3 Player with a new 8GB microcard--that's an extra 6GBs of stuffage that should mix things up even more...


Anyway...this week it's the half sister of one of my first really intense musical crushes, Kristen Hersh and her present project, 50 Foot Wave.

I first became aware of Ms. Hersh through her first project, The Throwing Muses...and I became aware of The Throwing Muses solely because I wanted to do evil, evil things to Tanya Donnelly. Incidentally, this is the one musical crush that had the weirdest arc of all. Back in the day, the Muses were an incredibly accessible group of people; when they toured, they hung with the civilians and didn't get all creepy-weird if you approached them and said hello. This led to one night at Maxwell's in Hoboken where my friend at the time Lorne and I endeavored to score an interview with someone from the band. Not only did we succeed in netting about forty minutes with Dave Narcizio and a few minutes with Kristin, I actually got to stand in front of Tanya, profess my adoration and got a laugh, a hug and a few minutes of genuine warmth.

(Which led to me getting interviews with Tanya both when she fronted Belly and when she struck off on her own, including one in the very cramped storage room of Maxwell's where our knees were touching; an answering machine message she gleefully did with me, chanting 'do it! do it!' when I asked people to leave their message; and always a few moments of conversation whenever I saw her after that....but those are stories for another day)

There are a handful of musicians I met when I was running Sticky Carpet Digest and writing articles for other fanzines and magazines who seemed genuinely interested in connecting with me as more than an opportunity for publicity. The Throwing Muses were prime amongst them.

And I get the sense that Hersh has never lost that desire to connect with people directly I saw in her and her bandmates that one night in Hoboken, which might explain why so much of 50 Foot Wave's backcatalog is available for free here...although given the massive amount of stuff she's giving to you, I encourage you to give her a little something back by visiting her website.

50 Foot Wave is definitely a shout back to that earliest version of the Muses, where Kristin and Tanya were exploring the crossroads where punk and folk met. It's a harsher sound than both the later Muses albums and Hersh's own solo work, with lots of fast guitar strumming and hard drumming--apparently the group was designed as a power trio--all designed to couch Hersh's ambivalently sinister lyrics in a dissonant context. It's funny how this latest project of hers, done after she has managed to keep her bipolar disorder under control, is the best musical expression of her bipolarism since those first few EP's put out by the Muses.

And the lyrics to this song represent what kept me a Throwing Muses fan past my lust for Ms. Donnelly. Hersh is really, really good at writing these little portraits that are like rorschach tests for the listeners. In this song, which begins with her waking up to find a lavender stain on her lover's mouth, what does that stain mean--is it evidence of adultery? The aftereffect of strenuous lovemaking? Hersh isn't telling, seemingly throwing contradictory phrases about whores and freedom at us to muddy the waters. But that's her game, and has always been so; to obsfucate what she's really saying because she knows deep down inside that what we think she's saying is much more interesting that what she is telling us.

Apparently, Kristin Hersh is a busy woman these days. In addition to 50 Foot Wave, she's continuing to write essays, is working on new songs for a solo project....and has reunited with Dave Narcizio to create a massive new, listener-funded Throwing Muses album that is rumored to have 38 (!) songs on it. Try to keep up with her at her website; the link is above.

And here's a video from a live performance....

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By the way---for those of you who missed out, I guested last weekend on Maurice Bursztynski's excellent podcast Love That Album. This biweekly podcast sees Maurice, usually with a guest host, discuss and dissect one album that one or both of them like on a song-by-song basis. The episode I was on tackled one of my favorite musicians, Ben Folds, and put forth the idea that his album Songs For Silverman is the first proactive breakup album, seeing as how it was released before the break-up actually happened. Plus we talk about the cult of Fiona Apple, the general sadness of Art Aleakis, 're-recording' albums, and more. Check out the episode on his website...and while you're there, check out his other episodes because all of them are fun and a half, and come highly recommended.