The French Pop Update

A couple of days ago, I decided to give Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new record 5:55 a listen. Her being the daughter of French pop royalty Serge Gainsbourg sparked my curiosity, and the inclusion of Air, Nigel Godrich, and numerous others as songwriters and producers motivated me to devote my all too abundant free time to a couple of listens. And after those listens, I’ve realized I downloaded an album that’s not bad, but certainly not good. As a whole, it comes off as a perfect cliché of what one would expect from a project involving a French actress and Air.

Let’s start with what’s glaringly obvious. Ms. Gainsbourg’s voice is breathy and light in a way that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of personality. It seems to take countless cues from not only the women her father recruited to sing with him, but also Air. Personally, one thing I look for in vocals because it can portray this quality so strongly is the character of a singer or band if of course it’s done well. Listening to this record, I find no personality whatsoever except for someone trying especially hard to do as her fellow French colleagues and predecessors have already done a few times before.

The production and also much of the backing tracks seem to use Air’s Talkie Walkie as a starting point from which all ideas emanate. Although it is in fact Air’s Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel who penned the music for the album, I would expect them to differentiate one project from another especially when it carries someone else’s name. I will give them some credit though: when the songs pick up some steam and move away from slow ambient pop, the songwriting does begin to show some marked differences. In most songs, however, the piano sits in the forefront becoming the primary supporting instrument for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s vocals using so many variations on the arpeggios we heard in Talkie Walkie. Check out “Little Monsters” and between the piano and the synthesized strings and beats, you’ll begin to wonder which record you’re actually listening to. You may even mistake the beats in the intro for those at the beginning of “Universal Traveler.” Production can also be compared in the same way. Ambience in 5:55’s title track practically mirrors what someone can find in “Venus” except that strings offer a slight timbral alternative to the synthesizers we’re used to.

As a fan of French music, I’m certainly not disappointed by 5:55, but as someone that demands a certain level of originality as well as personality from music, I have no reason to come back to the album after a few cursory listens.

What New Directions Will Your Life Take Now?

With such high levels of excitement in anticipation of the new record by the Shins “Wincing the Night Away,” it’s difficult to imagine that a sizeable number of people will be impressed with this, their third album. The success of “Chutes Too Narrow” and of course the role the band’s music played in “Garden State” will only invite very acute criticism. Basically, I just want to join the club and let loose a disappointment or two.

As a whole, I really do like “Wincing the Night Away,” but the record is supersaturated with the Shins’ newfound ego and sometimes misguided ambition. You don’t have to wait long to notice it: the first track “Sleeping Lessons” is one of its better examples. It’s more or less a three-minute build of textures centered on a rather simple keyboard line that is transposed as the chords change (conservatively) and a vocal part typical of James Mercer. It serves as a solid example of what I see as the indie overture where the first track of an album displays much of the timbral material as well as the character of the music to follow. Another such indie overture is Wilco’s “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” on “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”

On the other end of the spectrum, their brazenness contributes a confusing instrumental section to “Sea Legs” whose use of electric piano and synthesizer reminds me of “Head Hunters” era Herbie Hancock more than anything else. Add to that the use of synthesized drums and strings throughout the song, and an overwhelming mess of sonic ideas presents itself. In general I am not opposed to new idea, approaches, and influences, but when traversing new ground you must be aware of what past ideas new personal timbres and styles reference. Or maybe I’m over thinking it, and this section is merely an appeal to the jammy community.

With only the exception of this arrogance, “Wincing the Night Away” is a strong effort from a band with seemingly insurmountable expectations. Their penchant for inventive, lyrical melodies remains in “Phantom Limb” and throughout the record, and that for me really is enough to make this a worthwhile album.

Another recent find

One thing that really keeps me listening to music through periods of boredom is the random surprise you’ll get from a record you never expected to be good or never expected to even listen to at all. When I heard the Dresden Doll’s single “Coin-Operated Boy” early last year, I was slightly turned off by its cabaret kitschiness. At the moment, this aversion towards cabaret is a bit difficult to explain, but needless to say it pushed the name Dresden Dolls to the back of my mind for a good year and a half.

Unexpectedly, a couple of weeks ago I began listening to them once again. This time it was because my girlfriend downloaded their last album “Yes Virginia.” As you can already gather, I was surprised and excited by the album. The first track, “Sex Changes” put aside most of the kitsch that characterized their past single. Filling that resulting vacuum was the kind of raw passion and energy that one usually associates with punk coming primarily from the urgency of the drum part but also that of the piano. This use of a punk mentality with instrument unconventional for the genre leads me to compare the group to Mates of State who achieve a very similar effect from bass, drums, and organ most of the time.

The cabaret flavor tends to remain slightly in some of the piano parts, but it has a stronger presence in the affectations in the vocals. Paired oftentimes with dark and comical imagery in the vocals, the Weimar-era cabaret influences tend to accentuate lyrics. To my ear, this background for the group no longer pushes me aside, but rather directs me attention towards the vocals and the absurdly dark stories that they tell in songs like “Dirty Business.”

However, there are some songs that disrupt this formula: the second track, “Backstabber,” unfortunately begins to sound like a mediocre Ben Folds replication. If it weren’t for the dramatic vocals that are at times characteristic of the Dresden Dolls, the song would be entirely hopeless. Another instance of this is “First Orgasm,” which feels like a joke whose punch line is coming soon, but as each moment passes you begin to lose hope that the song really is in fact going anywhere at all.

As a whole, the album’s unconventionally punk approach by far outweighs the moments of mediocrity and boredom – at least they do at this moment. You may have to ask me how I still feel about the album in a month, but this is one of the few pleasant musical surprises I’ve had in the past few months.

Is it art or just simply crap?

Several years ago around the time she released “Vespertine”, Bjork mentioned in interviews how she had become bored with how new digital electronic devices work so precisely without wavering. Using the example of a CD player, she explained how it produces the exact same sound each time whereas vinyl is riddled with slight imperfections. When a CD however is scratched and damaged, she continued, the sound it can produce is wild and unpredictable.

I was recently reminded of these comments when my girlfriend Natasha took a Casio digital guitar that she found in the trash, and I tried playing it. Perhaps the strings weren’t tight enough because they wouldn’t always respond. While trying to play some fairly simple songs, I would have to ignore how sometimes notes just wouldn’t sound and just continue playing. Like the damaged CD in Bjork’s example, this digital guitar produced music that was unpredictable, or at the very least somewhat difficult to predict.

Taking this very idea of faulty machinery to yet another level, I want to pose this question: Can the music created with the use of faulty electronics be considered chance or aleatoric music much like that of John Cage? This would of course take the idea of a prepared piano to the electronic world, but one with similar results nonetheless.

But then I had some other ideas too. For example, is it also aleatoric music if you have a faulty (i.e. un/under-skilled or a drunken) musician playing a piece? Or does this border on trying to legitimize shitty music?

Here's some music theory for you (apologies in advance)

It’s been a while since I have truly loved what can be classified only as an indie rock song without any of categorical flourishes that make it possible to straddle numerous stylistic boundaries. I’m talking about what can undeniably be placed solely into the realm of indie rock. However, all that has changed. I can now put off the complete immersion into minimalist music and its more contemporary offshoots for maybe a couple of weeks; we’ll see. No matter. For now I have on repeat “The Funeral” by Band of Horses.

My surrender to the bandwagon of horse/wolf/assorted animal bands happened just the other day. Checking out some free downloads I had spotted on the Internet, I fell in love instantly how this song does everything right – that is follow conventions to a T, then throw in a few moderate twists. Actually, fall in love depicts pretty accurately what I thought of the supporting falsetto vocals. Simple and slow vocal movement with the occasional anticipation or suspension hanging over a pulsing distortion that is often typical of bands such as Built to Spill pulled me in instantaneously.

After a few more listens, which was of course inevitable, I noticed a few of the subtle twists that for me make a good song an outstanding one. For starters, the IV-I-V-vi chord progression that carries most of the song is actually 5 measures long considering you count in cut time. This lack of symmetry keeps the listener from letting his attention stray from the music for too long. Keeping in mind that anyone can get used to a 5 measure-long pattern with enough listens, Band of Horses changes the pattern length in the bridge to six measures. These quirks in the length of cycles the chord progression passes through not to mention the length of melodic phrases and rests adds currency to how gripping and enduring this song is to the listener.

One other twist that makes a significant difference is how the IV-I-V-vi chord progression that characterizes so much of the song changes oh so subtly in the end to IV-I-V-I. With this seemingly small adjustment, all tonal ambiguity disappears. Having a progression mostly in a major tonality end with a deceptive cadence to vi each and every time creates tension between the tonalities and also ambiguity as to which is the strongest and dominates the song. As that sixth scale tone in the vi chord lowers to the fifth scale tone, the progression makes a sudden transformation to one that signals a release and ultimately closure. Though I actually miss that ambiguity after a couple of passes through the new chord progression, I appreciate immensely how it brings the song to a close.

Looking at the band’s use of inversions and chord voicings also confirms how the “The Funeral” at times uses very simple ideas, but at others adds subtle, unexpected twists to them. Beginning the song is a set of arpeggios outlining the IV-I-V-vi chord progression that characterizes most of the song. What stands out is how each arpeggio is the first, third, and fifth scale tone of each chord. With such an overly simple collection of arpeggios, one may begin to imagine that the band simply does not know anything of inversions at all. This impression however is quashed by the use of inversions in the final chord progression of the song where it changes over to IV-I-V-I. Where the use of a deceptive cadence once added interest to a fairly simply progression, now a heavy emphasis on the third and fifth in the bass of the harmonies has the same general effect. As a songwriting strategy, this move allows the band to create a sense of resolution without oversimplifying its music.

Basically, it’s these little quirks that allow the song to occupy what I imagine is a coveted space between formulaic songs and snobbish arrogance. Being able to be characterized as classic and clever simultaneously makes “The Funeral” work on numerous levels and allows it to remain interesting after having it on repeat for entire days straight.




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The inevitable death of the Album?

I've noticed this for a while, and maybe a lot of other people have to, but when I check other people's playlists on last.fm they seem to just have their music players on random. Actually, I also notice sometimes that they have them on repeat as well, but what's missing here is playing through an album. Now there are a couple of factors at play here that explain why people are straying from the album format. First of all, having a music player on random is essentially a personal radio station. And/or maybe this is part of a general movement away from the album format and back to the single format.

I can attest to how nice it is to surrender all decision making responsibilities to the algorithms of a software program. Plus there are the little surprises you get from having a song you haven't heard for a while come up. But what is lost when people ignore the album is the sense of continuity that is sometimes (not often enough if you ask me) at the heart of a record. You are basically eschewing the band's choice of songs and song order and handing the power to a cold digital process by which your playlist is chosen.

On the topic of a general return to the dominance of the single, we don't have the mp3 player to fault but instead the downloading software, especially those that specialize in individual songs. That basically exempts the vast majority of bittorrent downloads. Whether you get your music from a free p2p program or through a pay by the download one, you can cut through the flab of worthless, forgettable songs that occasionally characterize the space between singles on countless albums (most of which are of course single-focused for the sake of radio airplay to begin with). This is why I was absolutely baffled when Christina Aguilera released a double album recently. It will inevitably have more throwaway songs and be a waste of money for her and her label since so many more people can buy only the singles at a tiny fraction of the album's cost. I could care less about what kind of money Christina Aguilera and her backers make, but what I'm truly worried about is that this practice of downloading only fragments of an album might spill over into more album friendly (frequently indie)genres and begin to trivialize those types of albums as well.

With both factors at play, the album format might not have (as much of) a prominent role in how people listen to music in the coming years.

Are you with me or what?

So who here is tired and bored of Pitchfork? I've been reading it regularly, probably about once a day give or take the occasional disruption in access to the internet for the last 3 1/2 years. I guess the basic jist of it has remained fairly solid - good reviews, news, etc. of independent music and anything else in music that's noteworthy, but Pitchfork has increasingly taken on this persona of trying to be your absurdly sarcastic and literate friend. Let's take the example of yesterday's review of the new Basement Jaxx single "Hush Boy". The first sentence is solid: great! an amusing analogy about how there was bound to be a day we wouldn't like the first single to a Basement Jaxx record. Then astonishingly they carry out the analogy, which is actually about a relationship, breakup, and a freaky related dream, for an entire two paragraphs.

I only read the whole thing out of astonishment and also so I could see what kind of wreckage would result from all this. Trust me, I was not disappointed. The punchline included a dream where your girlfriend breaks open like a shell only to reveal "the head of Dikembe Mutombo who yelps, 'if you want me for your girlfriend!'" Really, who even know who the hell Dikembe Mutombo is? I do only because I grew up around Philadelphia where Mutombo played when I was young and still a fan of the Sixers, but what person today reading Pitchfork without that same connection would know who he is? Nonetheless, the analogy is fucking ridiculous. I agree with the review, but when did music criticism become a half-baked exercise in creative writing?

But Pitchfork wasn't always like this. I remember checking out a review of the Jeff Buckley album "Grace" from 1996 when Pitchfork was still in its infancy and didn't have the digital clout that it has today. After reading it, I was surprised to find out how short the review actually was - maybe only 1 or 2 paragraphs. That's how much text they devote to a single track review nowadays; and remember, "Grace" was a seriously respected album back when it came out 10 years ago probably meriting some serious commentary.

Although my frustration with Pitchfork goes well beyond this, reading the Basement Jaxx review made it oh so clear.

I thought it was a good idea more than four years ago, but I finally got to it when it became automated and required no work whatsoever. Audiodiary, spring from the womb!

The numbers for last week:


...and the totals: