Monday Music #26 (Rose Kemp, Lilian Hak, Stephanie Kirkham)

So the Internet has been abuzz with the story of Amanda Palmer and her earnings from Twitter, as compared to her record label. Most of the commentary I've seen is either along the lines of "Yay!" or "Boo!" - not surprising, I suppose, considering this is the Internet, with more flames than an average adaptation of Dante's Inferno. I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I was one of the people who bought her solo album, and quite enjoyed it (although I bought it too late for it to feature on that year's list.) Most of the "Boo!" arguments irritate me more than the "Yay!" ones do. (Criticizing her singing voice really doesn't advance the argument, so why are people doing it?) On the other, she sold T-shirts. I don't wear T-shirts. Every T-shirt I've ever owned has turned into a piece of ephemera worn only to the gym if I can find it. Part of that's undoubtedly because most of the T-shirts I've owned have been remarkably unflattering, but that's a separate matter.

I suppose my main issue is with how it's being framed. Numbers are being tossed around, numbers of revenues and of money. And to me, that's getting away from things. This is what I was getting at with my rant. And it's what Kristin Hersh, I believe, was getting at with this Twitter post after the fact:

"i appreciate that you all're interested in alternative revenue streams for musicians-but wanting $ isn't admirable, playing unsucky music is"

Bull's eye. Bingo. Nail, meet hammer at the head. In subsequent posts she clarified what she meant by sucky - it's the bimbos again. This, incidentally, is one of my Facebook profile quotes. But I'm one of the smart people who likes junk music. It's nostalgia, and it's earworms. It's what I don't post about. But it brings me happiness, too. This is a bit troubling.

So I responded that crap I can tolerate, but mean-spirited crap I can't. I have almost no tolerance for mean-spirited crap. Let's try a thought experiment for a second. What might our world look like if it was built upon being nice, not being mean? Parsing it the way I do, it'd look a lot different. Sexism is based on a mean premise, as is racism and homophobia and every other kind of discrimination.

So it probably isn't all that surprising that I hold lyrics to higher standards. There's a disturbing amount of just plain meanness in what people say and what they sing. And it makes me uncomfortable (literally; it's psychosomatic, a gut reaction) just being in the same room as it. I'm sure it's possible for sounds to be mean-spirited (maybe if there was such a thing as a brown note in real life? let's not follow that train), but most of what qualifies as "junk" sounds kind of great. Maybe it's that so much of it is minor-key porn. It's like holding down a button of catchy. It makes me happy and it makes me sing.

(Let's make something abundantly clear, though - if I post or have ever posted about something or someone, that's my endorsement that they are worth sharing and categorically not junk. Junk is something you don't want others to share.)

But then there's the issue of being "flimsy," a word I never though to connect with the whole thing, but that fits perfectly. I don't like flimsy clothes or flimsy houses; I prefer things that last. The idea of the Timeless has entered into almost everything I've written in the past month, and that's no accident. Good things are usually timeless. And some of the best music reaches out of the present to things that have always existed. It haunts you, and it isn't anywhere near flimsy.

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As Maddy Prior's daughter, Rose Kemp was undoubtedly exposed to a bit of the timeless herself. I'm fairly sure I've posted about her single "Nanny's World" before, and with good reason; it's one of the gutsiest, arresting songs I've ever heard.

But today I'm quite taken with her song "Wholeness Sounds." At least in the beginning, it's rather different. The beginning broods more than it lashes out, murmurs instead of strikes, paces over the melody. About a minute through, though, it starts to build, up the scale and in scope, but only for a little bit and then Rose is back to mulling over the same theme, punctuated only by a few stray drums. A catharsis does arrive, in its colloquial as well as musical sense, and with plenty of guitars, but even this is temporary. If this sounds repetitive, it isn't; it's a wonderfully unsettling sound, whether it's being brooded upon or thrashed about. And it's nowhere near flimsy.

Listen here.

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"Wholeness Sounds" works mainly with acoustic brooding, but that's by no means a formula. Take someone like Lilian Hak. Her music is electronic, and not subtle about it all - the site describes it as "dirty," and pretty well. These are songs full of buzzing, of sirens and of many things that might count as noise if they didn't sound so good.

The lead single from her last album, "Faces," would work pretty will a dance song. Now, I like a good deal of dance songs that are rather flimsy, but they're not always connected. Something can't be flimsy if it's carefully crafted, and there's an abundance of craft here. Not just craft, though, but menace. This is a dance song about paranoia, about one's perceptions falling away. "I am not sure what's in my head or on my skin and in my bed," she sings, and if that wasn't enough to unsettle you, there are enough ghostlike background vocals and synths like little daggers underneath the beat. "Morning Glory" is much the same, starting out like a folk song used for tug-of-war by a couple machines until all the desperation at the heart is ripped to the surface. This is timeless too. A song can make you jump for joy, or out of fear. Either way, it moved you.

Listen here.

Official site.

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If anyone's purposefully invoking the timeless, it'd be British singer-songwriter Stephanie Kirkham. Honestly, all of her songs are great and well worth listening to. I had the hardest time choosing one to feature, but "Never in a Million Years" has stuck with me, and it doesn't hurt that it's about, as the lyrics state, "love that never dies." Now, of course, plenty of songs claim to be about this. If people don't act out timeless love, they sure do sing about it a lot. But not many of the songs can get the music as right as this song does.

The melody's simple, and absolutely perfect, accompanied just by a couple bells. Even these fade out eventually. The choruses add backing vocals, and a piano line, but it's all stripped down. This is how you make music haunting. If you have a melody good enough, why bury it? Maybe the old hymns used to be sung by choirs because they thought instruments were somehow evil, but I don't think that's the whole story. Voices resonate. When we sing, we can get past the years, truly get past them. And it's a gorgeous thing when people do.

Listen here.

June 23, 2009: Quick hits and mental bits

- Bullet and Snowfox's latest song "Bad Days" reminds me of the Chalets. Which is a great thing.

- Autamata put "Goldilocks" back on their Myspace! To give you an idea of just how catchy it is, I was yelled at for singing the chorus too much. Go listen to it while you can, and then go buy the CD. (And if you find someone selling Colours of Sound, let me know!)

- Turns out IF veteran Andrew Plotkin's got a trophy to his name on Kingdom of Loathing. Awesome, but not surprising - they've had the Strange Leaflet for years, and Riff entered IFcomp a while back. The surprising part is that they didn't do it sooner.

Monday Music #25 (Tara Busch, Bat for Lashes)

(To be edited later; I'm at a town council meeting all night.)

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Today's post (a quick hit right now; again, it'll be edited later tonight) is on Tara Busch; specifically, her remix of Bat for Lashes' "Daniel." I remember hearing some songs from Girl on Fire about a year ago, when it was mentioned on Ecto. It turns out they've evidently disappeared into the ether, or at least from CD Baby. So when I read that she did a remix of "Daniel," it was about the joltiest jolt of recognition I've had in a while.

The remix, incidentally, is wonderful. It replaces lush with eerie, for the most part, and while I'm more than amenable to lush, The beginning casts her voice almost in a Stina Nordenstam mold (always good in my book), and then the original song is stripped down, taken apart, and reassembled with all these lovely bits of spookiness.

Listen here.

June 18, 2009: Timothy Findley - Pilgrim

To Kessler it seemed that two wind-blown angels had tumbled down from heaven and were moving towards the steps. The figures of these angels now stood in momentary disorientation, reaching out with helpless arms towards one another through windy clouds of snow, veils, shawls and scarves that altogether gave the appearance of large unfolded wings.

In case you somehow didn't know, there are a lot of novels out there. For someone who likes to read but cannot make decisions, this isn't good. When I was in elementary school picking out books wasn't a problem at all. I thought I'd be like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, going down the library shelves one by one until I read everything in there. This is a lot less intimidating at a small private school. I didn't read them all, but I'm sure I got through more than, say, a third by the time I transferred out. It'd be nice if I could bring myself to do this again.

The other problem is that there's something about book jacket blurbs that just seems to repel me. It's not always like this. There are a few subjects that can pretty reliably hook me (sopranos, fairies and dystopias, for instance. That would be amazing: a fairy dystopia with lots of singing. Or maybe it'd be an opera if I could compose opera. Which I can't. If you're reading this and you're a composer, get on it and I'll be your biggest fan.)

But most of the blurbs out there trot out stories about family reconciliation or father-son bonding or whatnot. There have been timeless stories written about these things, but laid out on a blurb of a book I've never heard of, it all seems like the shell of a writing exercise.

So in order for me to read something, I need a hook. It doesn't matter what. A good deal of my reading choices are leeched off other people's blogs. Some come from reviews, Amazon recommendations, and the like. The Guardian posts an excellent Top 10 Books series which has provided quite a few. If I find an author I like I'll be loyal to him or her, but that requires a starting point.

To my knowledge, only one book "recommendation" came from song lyrics: Timothy Findley's "Not Wanted on the Voyage," from a Christine Fellows song. If her taste in books was anything like her taste in music, I figured, I must like it. And I did, to say the least. But the novel completely, completely changes the song from quirky and irreverent to downright haunting.

There weren't that many books by him at our library, which isn't surprising considering he's best known in Canada. Of what they had, Pilgrim seemed most interesting. And I'm impressed, again.

This is a big book, not in the sense of pages (although it'd make a pretty good doorstopper) but in the sense of scope. You have lots and lots of characters in the main story and so many more in Pilgrim's journals. The premise: The protagonist, Pilgrim, is admitted to the Burgholzi Psychiatric Clinic after he attempts suicide but fails. Eventually, he becomes the patient of Carl Jung. Pilgrim, as he calls himself, claims to be immortal, not by choice but by circumstance. He's kept journals of all the people he's met during his lifetime: Henry James, Leonardo da Vinci and Oscar Wilde, to name a few. Some are as they are in real life. Many are monsters. But despite all the atrocities he's seen, he can't escape; something won't let him. In one of the more chilling scenes, he wakes up from a dream about World War I, which hasn't happened yet. He dreams up trenches and airplanes and all the horrors the world has yet to see, and he knows he must witness those, too.

There's a hook there that I wasn't really anticipating. One of my friends is convinced that within his lifetime, scientists will have achieved immortality with nanotechnology. (I'm really skeptical of this, but that's beside the point.) He couldn't wait; in fact, he was afraid governments would outlaw it and he'd have to find it on the black market. There'd be no dying then, no rushing to accomplish things to soon, no being behind.

That's the positive side of it. But I'd never want to be immortal, I told him. It's something with no escape clause. If there's an apocalypse, would you want to be around for the aftermath? It's a weak argument, sure, and quoting a fictional book as argument isn't much better, but I imagine Pilgrim would have some things to say on the matter.

Of course, the book's equally about Carl Jung. He's certainly characterized - masterfully so, I'd say - but he isn't the most compelling character to me. This has everything to do with my own memories and probably nothing to do with Findley's book, but I found Tatiana Blavinskeya, the ballerina who thinks she's an expatriate from the Moon, to be infinitely more compelling, along with her nurse Dora Henkel. Her sections have some of the prettiest prose, and it's fitting; her existence might as well be carved out of crystal. She dresses in her old ballet costumes, all taffeta and wisps. And then there's Dora, wispier still, in love with the Moon and with her. It's all romanticized, yes, but if you've ever felt like a body is a useless lump and you'd much rather be a breeze or a painted picture, there's something quite beautiful to it all. The Countess does have a backstory - a rather sad one - and her story arc is both inevitable and absolutely heartbreaking.

A nitpick: Towards the end, the book turns into what's almost a crime caper, rather suddenly. It has a definite point, but it's still a bit jarring. This is minor, though.

Also, there's apparently an opera based on the book. My first reaction is that the characters are all wrong. This is about as knee-jerk as knee-jerk can get, though, and the creators clearly have a better sense of the book than I do. So there you go.

Monday Music #24 (Kim Sanders)

This week it's time for something a little different.

Schiller did a song with Colbie Caillat. I learned this a few days ago, and I'm still shocked. Why shouldn't I be? There is nothing about this that makes sense to me. Schiller does moody, atmospheric electronic music. Colbie Caillat's best-known song is an innocuous and totally placid song with lyrics about giggly feelings in silly places. I didn't hate it or anything. I'm not sure it's possible to hate. But I certainly wasn't moved to go out of my way to listen to it.

And then I found out Colbie Caillat did a song with Schiller. I keep repeating this because I still can't quite process it. And it's a pretty good song. At first their styles seem a bit mismatched, but I attribute that mostly to my not processing it; they come together soon enough, and it's quite lovely when they do.

As far as Schiller vocalists go, however, she's a relative newcomer. Some people have worked with von Deylen for years. Kim Sanders, for instance. I've written about female-vocalist syndrome before, and it's sort of in effect here; a lot of what she does is behind the scenes. But what she does is excellent. She's a fantastic vocalist, with the sort of honeyed voice you can listen to all day. And she writes songs, which are as good. "Pay No Mind," for instance - Sarah Brightman's lamentably brief excursion into dance-pop (yes, lamentably) - was a cover of one of her songs, admittably minus the high C's.

Apparently she's coming out with a second solo album. (Her first, "Pretty on Edge," is on my list of things I really want to find.) Nothing's been released from it yet, unfortunately, but last year she sung on another Schiller track, "Let Me Love You." And I love it. It let me love it. The song's got the drama and moodiness you'd expect from a Schiller song. It soars like the best of them. When you close your eyes, you're swept up. This alone would be good enough, but on top of it all is the melody. Everything about it is gorgeous - the way Kim's vocals flutter on the verses, soar into the chorus, and edge the song that much more into beauty.

Apparently there are two versions, or at least that's what YouTube's bringing up. One is calmer, one's more dramatic. I usually prefer dramatic, and that holds here. If I'm going to be swept away, might as well do it all the way.

Listen here.

Bonus: Previews of songs from her other solo album, Pretty On Edge.

More bonus: A video. It's the calmer song, but it's a great video.

June 10, 2009: The state of the Internet

Quick post. Bad and good. I like to end on a good note. I promise that I'll have more substantive writing later.

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It seems that more people than I thought cite Extruded Article Products as sources. Stop doing this! In more cases than not, they're cobbled together with all the finesse of Koko the gorilla flinging gravel into a Jenga tower. And that's if you're lucky enough to get an article written by one person - and one real person, not an automatic generator or rewriter. Not all of them are like that, but still. What gets left out of this process? Fact-checking. Proofreading. All those things that distinguish trustworthy sources from the thirtieth iteration of the telephone game. Just don't!

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And now for the good! I don't care if this turns out to be viral marketing. I love Alice and Kev anyway. Well, I love Alice and think I should take her in. There's the whole matter of not being real, but still. It reminds me of my own neglected Sims who will stay neglected until I finish this WIP.

Monday Music #23 (Soft Power)

Every time I read about a business using Twitter for marketing my heart sinks. This is why we can't have good things! There are enough ways to sell me stuff or make AdSense pennies. If I wanted to sift through days on end of copied-and-pasted press releases, I'd go to my spam folder. It doesn't help that most people are so bleeding obvious about it. I have a standing policy from a year back that if you try to follow me and your feed consists of nothing but links to your own scintillating blog posts about how to Make Money Fast with Internet Marketing and Getting Bigger and Shinier Skin Hair Made Entirely of Acai Berries, you get blocked on sight. I mean, the plus about the system is that it's pull, not push, so that if I don't want to see your advertweets I don't have to.

Why I like it is the personal element. As every tabloid will tell you, Celebrities are People Too! And the place where it intersects with my personal sphere of interests is most often music (see, there is a tie-in after all!) I joined before all the press about it (well, there was probably press about it, but nowhere near the amount there is now) because Kristin Hersh had an account and there's more personality in 140 characters by her than entire interviews by other people. A month or so ago she got a ton of feedback from her listeners about her music, about CASH, about all those things, and it was just a sight to behold. It's not at all just her, either. I think Juliana Hatfield's rapid-fire tweets-of-consciousness are absolutely fascinating (and the person who told her - told her! he was unfollowing her because of them was a jerk.)

And it's also a good way to find out about other artists. It's sort of structured - there are the nicely alliterative #musicmonday and #followfriday hashtags - but it doesn't have to be. I found out about Mary Timony's new band Soft Power, for instance, through completely spontaneous posts by people I follow. First it was through CASH Music, then a lot of other people. Not enough to start a trend (although it'd be more worth a position than half the other trends, but I digress), but quite a few. An odd bit of right place, right time which I love the Internet for making possible.

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I hadn't really heard much by Mary Timony before, though. Her name was vaguely on my radar, but as far as sounds go, what I'd heard was her work with Carrie Brownstein in The Spells, when NPR had them up. (Apologies for namedroppiness, it came out a bit overkill I think.)

When I first got here it was Izabella that I had on repeat, but that's switched over to La La La. What strikes me is how comfortable this all feels. That's not an insult. There's innovation and creativity and excitement just bursting here. Instead, it means I've only heard the song for a couple days and it already sounds like it could have been one of my favorite songs for months. There's the main melody, which is about as earwormy as you could possibly ask for, but steps around itself at the most unexpected times. And then, about halfway through, the song takes all sorts of detours, strange and yet still wonderfully fitting. I don't generally describe songs as "old friends" - it used to be a pet peeve - but I can't think of anything that'd better describe it.

Or, in the newfangled modernized lingo: Listen to this. Retweet it. Pass it on.

Listen here.