Subject: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
Dude, I just read the second interview of the new Arcade Fire, and both Spin and P-Fork compared the lyrics to The Boss. What is it with bands these days and Bruce Springsteen? I like it, though; The Killers and the Arcade Fire have been accused of bullsh*tting their audience, but it’s hard to be insincere when you have working-class lyrics. It helps balance the fact that there are at least 4,576 instruments on each Arcade Fire song.
The new one, Neon Bible, did get 4 1/2 stars from Spin and an 8.7 or something from the Fork. Buy it, and tell me what you think! I think it came out today, so I’ll probably snag it.
What else should I buy???? Should I buy TV on the Radio?
What else???
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
THE HOLD STEADY “BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA”!!!!111111
It’s the best thing in my life since Common in December ’05!
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
Okay, I will! They are getting the Springsteen comparison, too! I will buy it!
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
Yeah, Bruce is hot now. It’s kind of cool; at least people are getting inspired by a truly good musician. The Killers dressed him up as a Vegas show; I’m still debating how that turned out. Haven’t heard any new Arcade Fire; I liked “Funeral” well enough, but not as well as Pfork did.
I’m liking TV on the Radio, but I’m not ready to recommend it yet. But if you *already* want it, you’ll probably dig it. It’s definitely not bad or dissappointing or anything – I’m just not sure its “Kid A” like everyone seems to think.
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
I haven’t really wanted TV on the Radio, so I think I’ll wait on it.
In the past few days, I’ve been thinking about Arcade Fire and other like-minded bands, and I have this weird love-hate relationship with these albums/songs. When I listen to Funeral, I really enjoy it, and I think it sounds cool, but I feel like most of what’s likable about the record is the fact that it sounds “cool.”
There was this interview with Trent Reznor along while ago, and he was asked what he thought about Franz Ferdinand (the “it” band at the time of the interview) and he said something like “I guess I enjoy listening to them, but the entire time their record is playing, I can’t help but wonder if I’m being bullshitted.” And I guess that’s how I feel about bands like Arcade Fire. The songs sound awesome, and the songwriting is clearly
pretty good, and when I listen to the music without consciously thinking about it, I’m like “yeah, this sounds pretty rad,” but then when I ask myself, “Why this production? Why these lyrics? Why this vocal style?,” I find myself wishing that the earnestness in their record was more apparent. Like, I want to hear the SONGS. I mean, if they have so many instruments on each track and the lyrics are yelped, that’s fine, but I want to know that it would sound cool without all of the gimmicky theatrics.
I guess that goes back to our discussion a week or so ago, but I wonder if everyone would like the Arcade Fire so much if they were a trio (bass, drums, guitar) who dressed in t-shirts and jeans instead of huge pilgrim outfits and weird mortician hats, and played places like Knickerbocker’s instead of abandoned churches, and sang without all of the pained vibrato.
What do you think??
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
A) I feel the same way do you.
B) At a meta-level, I wonder about / am concerned / feel a bit guilty? for elevating “songs” over “layers/production/style/mortician hats” as criteria for aesthetic value?
Is there a case to be made that “songs” carry more aesthetic weight than “not-songs” (producation/theatrics).
Is it already a pre-conditioned value judgment as to what makes up a “song” (chords, melodies, lyrics) and what is “extra”? It’s an identity question; is it answerable in somewhat-objective terms?
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
I think you can and should elevate the value of songs over production/visual/style stuff. I mean, if you take a hip song that people like(d), such as “Take Me Out” from Franz Ferdinand, and you play it on just guitar or piano and just sing it, will it still sound good? I guess maybe there’s a difference between “cool” music and “good” music? So if
you can play an Arcade Fire song minimally (just the chords and vocals) and you don’t like it, but you like listening to it when it’s all dressed up with cellos and accordians and whatever else, you must not like the actual song that much, but it can still sound cool, right? Probably most of the reason I like listening to “Power Out” or whatever it’s called off of “Funeral” is because of the drum beat. And you can take a song that’s not all that good and add a cool drum beat to it, and it’ll be fun to listen to.
I recently listened to LCD Soundsystem’s “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” for the first time because I’m going to sing it with Somasphere (Jesse Hodges’ new other band) in concert, and I found that although it sounded pretty cool, there was almost no actual song there. The lyrics were kind of lame, the singing took almost no talent, the chords are predictable and kind of stupid, but because of the production, it’s fun to listen to, kind of.
When a rock song is cool and good, it sounds like Spoon! Spoon is super cool sounding, and super good. With hip-hip, it’s Common or Kanye or something; the beats sound really really cool, but the rapping is good and thoughtful and intelligent.
Maybe this “good” vs. “cool” distinction is why I’m so hesitant to give a shit about so many bands that people love these days. And why I like folk music so much; there’s hardly a way to mask mediocre songwriting when it’s just vocals and guitar; you really have to be a GOOD songwriter for your songs to be good when played that way, because all that’s there is the song.
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
I get the “good”/”cool” distinction on an intuitive level. It makes a lot of sense. It’s how I listen to music, definitely.
But does it stand up to serious inquiry? What are serious grounds for the distinction of substance over style? How do we know that lyrics are “substance” and tone/timbre is “style”?
(Are you interested in wading into this mess with me?)
I suspect it’s reductive to privilege the tools of rhythm and pitch (“songs”) over tone and production (“style”). Let me amend; I’ll argue it *is* reductive, until we find solid ground for making the distinction.
And yet, with or without ground to stand on we’ll probably still care about Beethoven in 500 years, while Girl Talk (who is absolutely phenomenal at manipulating texture, timbre, and meta-level cultural associations) will be forgotten. Why is that? It appears that we value the manipulation of the more foundational elements of music, rhythm and pitch, over the secondary levels. I think I can say “secondary,” because making music with rhythm and pitch is a necessary condition to making music out of tone and style.
Is that leading somewhere?
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
I think that this is leading somewhere! I think we should keep talking about this. As always, I’m approaching it with a “maybe I’ll say something right, maybe I won’t, so I’m just going to think thoughts and spit them out” attitude, rather than with a serious attitude, but I’m glad you’re interested seriously in finding out what the cool/good distinction is, what seperates them, whether they CAN be seperated, and which is more important. I think there are necessary elements for music (what it takes to be a song and have a value of good or bad), and there are the extras(what it might take for a song to be cool or uncool), but I have no idea where to draw the line. Obviously a few notes in a row with a relation to each other is necessary for music, but background crumhorn probably isn’t, I guess. I guess it’s why pop music IS so popular (“Toxic” by Britney Spears DOES sound cool, and I think the music/beat might even be good) but there are some seriously good songs that no one seems to want to listen to on a mass scale because they don’t sound COOL.
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
If I’m serious, it’s mostly because of self-interest; I want to make the best/coolest music I can!
Looking at my path so far is kind of illustrative, I think. howie&scott v1.0 was all about rhythms, pitches, and lyrics – foundational-level stuff. “Songs” trying to be “good” songs. v1.1 went on to add the texture of electric guitars, a basic element of “cool.” Tape/echoes attempts to up the catchiness factor, which falls under both substance and style I think. Sally Ride pushes that farther, especially with It’s A Trap.
Now, Five Star Crush is attempting to maximize both categories, but actually prioritizes the “cool/style.” I think our songs have good substance as well, but it HAS to sound cool to us. And maybe as a reaction to that, You Have To Wear the Boots is relying completely, intentionally, on songs/substance. There may be some cool sounds too, but they are only added to the best songs we can write.
I will have to look up the eight or so elements of sound the author of “Your Brain On Music” talks about – we might find a line between “core” (essential) and “secondary” (non-essential) aspects of the construct “song.” Lyrics complicate things, but I think we can figure out something to say about them. I think this way, we might be able to put together a reasonable defense of a distinction between “good/substance” and “cool/style” in terms of both description and value.
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
i looked at “Your Brain On Music”‘s discussion of the various aspects of
musical sound: tempo, rhythm, pitch, tone/timbre, reverberation, etc. it
didn’t suggest to me a clear line between the substantiative and stylistic
elements of a song.
it did get me thinking back to “identity,” though, and i think a
resolution lies there. whatever is essential to a song’s identity is
“substance.” so, 84 layers of instruments in an Arcade Fire song is not
“substance,” because you could play the chords and melody of the song on a
piano and an average listener would recognize it as the *same* song.
however, if you changed the intervals of the melody, it would no longer be
the same song.
does that address our intuition adequately? i think so – i think it makes
a clear enough distinction, so we can figure out what parts of a song are
substance and what parts are style.
is it sufficient grounds for a value judgment, that the substantial
elements carry more aesthetic weight than the stylistic elements? the
words we’re using already tip us in that direction. but i think it’s
deeper than that. apply it to people; an decently moral citizen in dirty
sweatpants is still a better person than a mass murderer in a tuxedo.
???
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
I think you’re right; I think songs have a certain “thisness” that, if taken away, make it a different song. I wonder if other things are like that? I guess if you had a traveler mug for your coffee, and you took away its ability to actually contain coffee, it probably wouldn’t be a traveler mug anymore. If you were to take a song and sing the same lyrics but change the music/melody, I’d argue that you’ve taken away one of the song’s essential properties, and so it’s not that song anymore, but just another song with the same lyrics as the first song. I guess you could say the same thing if you took a song and changed up the lyrics ala Weird Al but kept the same music/melody; it’d be a different song also.
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: howie@work.com
To: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
Precisely! Melody, lyrics, and harmonic structure are required for “same song” identification. Some rhythms can, too (for example, the rhythm of the melodic line), but I think things like drum rhythms usually aren’t strictly necessary.
Weird Al is a great example. Covers are, too; even where cover versions make changes, the changes have to be heard *in relation* to the original substance in order to make the proper identification. I could change a chord or two (C to Am, for example) but I could not change every chord and the key and sing the original melody and qualify as an authentic version of the “same song.”
Is it OK if I edit this conversation and post it as this week’s MFR blog?
-h
Subject: RE: DUDE
From: Cory-Kibler@education.edu
To: howie@work.com
Dude, edit the crap outta this convo and blog the crap out of it!
Dude, I bought: Arcade Fire, Fall Out Boy, The Hold Steady, and Joanna Newsom. I’ve only listened to Arcade Fire so far, but it’s really good. I recommend it. I think it has more song-substance than their last. And I think two good albums in a row helps convince me that their popularity/hype/success isn’t just a fluke. But OMFG, these songs DO sound a ton like Bruce Springsteen! If you get a chance, listen to both “Keep The Car Running” and “(Antichrist Television Blues)”. “Keep The Car Running” is like the most Boss-like song that was ever written that the Boss didn’t actually pen himself.
Cory
