Monday, January 12, 2009
January 12, 2009: Monday Music #2!
Yes! It's that time of the week again. Last week I featured songs that were somewhat similar. This week, I'll do the opposite. I love both of these songs but they're nothing like each other.
First up is Dressy Bessy - "Ten Million Stars", from their 2008 album "Hollerandstomp" (haven't heard the whole album yet, so it wasn't in the running for my best-of) Dressy Bessy is pretty popular with a lot of Throwing Muses and Tanya Donelly fans, and it's easy to see why. Musically, they're a bit like you'd think Throwing Muses might sound if you extrapolated out from The Real Ramona. The songs are still angular, and lead vocalist Tammy Ealom sounds a bit like early-era Kristin Hersh, but as you'd guess from the album title, the song's pretty much made for energy and joy. And what joy it is! Damn catchy and something I really wish I had looked into last year.
Listen here.
Second song: Polly Scattergood - "I Hate The Way". Polly Scattergood's music could not be any more different than Dressy Bessy's. Of course, critics have compared her to Kate Bush and PJ Harvey. (I should just key that sentence into a macro. CTRL-SHIFT-ARGHNOTAGAIN. I'm seriously considering buying a panic button just for this.) These are not the right comparisons. Their musical style is, for the most part, extroverted. Expressive voices, big arrangements, everything expansive, directed outward.
Polly Scattergood directs everything inward. I mean, just listen to her voice: pure, a bit studied, a lot tentative, like ice you think might shatter if you pay attention to it for too long. Nicola Hitchcock from Mandalay has a voice like this, and Sarah Brightman when she's not singing classically, and the ur-example, Stina Nordenstam. Her music is the same way: cocoonlike, built for one, and reticent to the point where you almost feel like you're intruding just listening to it, until you realize that yes, it may be a cocoon, but she's made room in there for one more person.
The beginning of "I Hate The Way" is the spookiest thing put to record in a long, long time. This is not hyperbole. It isn't a cappella, exactly. There's a faint sustained note, a few footsteps of a drumbeat, but Polly whisper-sings like she's in another room altogether, hiding, and with good reason; every sound that isn't her voice is something trying to claw its way in. It's chilling.
By the second verse things pick up: you get your chord progression, and the background tracks sound like background tracks, Polly's singing picks up force, and the song becomes, more or less, a song. And then there's - a big chorus? What? Not only that, but a big major-key chorus that, if it was plucked out and put into another song, wouldn't sound out of place on the radio? It's deliberate, though. "My doctor said I'm going to sing a happy tune, but my body gave up too soon." Polly says. The bombast is that frantic attempt to do this, but, as the lyrics suggest, the guitars and chords eventually peter out into silence. The song's perfectly crafted, and I'm really eager to see what other craftswork is going to be on her upcoming debut.
Listen here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment