Archive for August, 2009
Dancer
One of my guiltier pleasures this year has been my recurring enjoyment of the album ‘Day and Age’ by The Killers. It’s actually more like half the album. I listen to the first three songs over and over then I skip to ‘Paper Tiger’ and the title track. The music feels slight and insignificant but it also feels fun and I do really like Brandon Flowers singing voice.
At any rate, the hit song on the record, as many people know, is the song ‘Human’ and along with ‘Spaceman’ I’ve listened to it a couple hundred times this year. Mostly because I like to run to it. [ed note: a couple hundred times this year? really? that's just really weird]
Anyway, the song is ridiculous and fun and I love the delay on the guitar and the tone of it. It’s great sounding.
The most frequent criticism levelled at the song is that the chorus is inane and silly (which I guess is more probable than not) and that Flowers doesn’t use the plural of the word ‘dancer’ so the line is ‘Are we human or are we dancer?’ which sounds bizarre to most people. And, again, I concede that it might be. Bizarre and maybe just plain stupid.
But, the game I like to play is that I imagine that Flowers is actually being clever (he comes across as weirdly intelligent in what I’ve read of him) and that he’s using ‘dancer’ not as a noun but as an adverb. Imagine if he sang, “Are we human or are we faster?” or “smarter” or any other modifier of the word human. In that sense, the question is (I can’t believe I’m writing this) more profound, right? He’s sort of articulating a baseline human condition and then wondering if we might be something more than ourselves and, in that sense, the question is almost aspirational and quasi-religious.
Because maybe we’re dancer than human.
We’re imbued with rhythm and grace and movement and are, in a sense, and maybe he means when we listen to this specific song or maybe just when we listen to music, we are more than human. We are dancer. We’re not dancers. It’s not a separate thing. We’re just dancer than your normal person, under certain conditions.
Ok, I’ll stop now.
It Might Get Loud
I saw the film ‘It Might Get Loud’ this week. While the structure of the film is slightly odd, I found it nevertheless inspiring. The premise is putting Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge in the same room and giving them an afternoon to hang out, play guitar with each other and expound on their philosophy as it relates to the making of the music and the playing of the guitar. The film is this afternoon plus some backstory on each of the guitarists, the backstory being far more interesting than watching presumable strangers warm up to each other over the course of an afternoon.
A couple undercurrents run through the film and are effectively juxtaposed. One is the differences in approach, most notably between Jack White at one end of the spectrum and The Edge at the other. For Jack, instruments are obstacles to be wrestled, sometimes near literally, into submission. Further, instrumentation and, in a sense, sound itself, is an obstacle to a deeper truth, feeling. And the varnish and acoutrements on top of which we layer sound is often besides the point. To wit, Jack’s favorite tune is a song by Son House that features only a foot stomping and a ghostly vocal, spare, sparse and unattended. The goal for White, seems to be, truth. And we must agitate against falsehoods and challenge them in the hopes of pursuing this truth.
Kickstarter
There’s a new website called Kickstarter and I’m not sure if you’ve seen it but it’s modeled on the notion of patronage, in the old style of things, and for that reason it’s kind of cool. Within the context of Kickstarter, what you do is you set up a project and then you give people the opportunity to pay into the project and then you give different rewards based on the level of commitment. There have been some people that have benefitted from this project, notably this singer/songwriter from Georgia named Allison Weiss.
Also, Venice Is Sinking, the great indie-rock band from Athens, has a project up on Kickstarter with the aim of helping them finance the production of their latest record on vinyl. As worthy a cause as any I can think of. So click here to donate.
So, in general, this seems like a pretty cool thing. For the people who have enough of a following to generate a large amount of donations, it’s perfect and a more scalable way of approaching potential donors than a letter writing campaign or a mass email to all your friends begging for money. And there are a few people that have managed to surpass their expectations and generate the investment they required to do whatever it was that they needed or wanted to do.
The larger question, in my mind, seems to be one that Bob Lefsetz addressed in his commentary on Imogen Heap and I suppose that question is, “What is the point of all of this?” On the one hand, I myself have thought about the notion of the music industry as a service business. Kickstarter has clearly expanded on that idea and accelerated this notion that there are levels of service and engagement dependent on your relationship with the artist and not everyone should get everything.
Broken Bow
I really love this video. It’s beautiful. Paul’s work on the bridge, which is the part of the song featured, is really something special. Monte’s images are gorgeous. What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh I remember. Haunting.
The Dirty White Coats Fade to Black Remix
“Brutally Honest and Haunting”
Verbicide is a new webzine that just relaunched and gave TFC the cover story review. Favorable comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel, Pink Floyd and, of course, the Jewish prince of Canada, Mr. Cohen. Matt Edmund got the record and I’m grateful. Here’s the best part of the review:
By the end of the album, you feel as if you watched a movie. You truly feel Jacob’s pain and regret. There’s something brutally honest and haunting about the collection of songs featured here. They will pull at your emotions and leave you in a state of awe. Pain Is A Reliable Signal will not only please the ears but it will also leave your imagination reeling as it rides this emotional musical roller-coaster of pain, love, and fear.
Good stuff. Wait till he hears the next one. Thank you, Matt.
