Post-Exams Update: Thoughts and Murmurs on Orchestra of Bubbles and Kensington Heights

I need to work on some long-overdue reviews for Audrey (sorry Audrey!), but here's some quick thoughts on some things I've been listening to lately (please make use of the imeem player above to sample the songs I mention, and let me know if it's working for you!):

Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles

It's been exam-studying time, and that means a greater than usual dose of instrumental music. Last semester it was Tortoise; this time I went with the Disintegration Loops, Stereolab (vocals, yes, but it's only distracting when you can understand what they're saying; unintelligible French cooing presents no distraction) Aphex Twin and recently, this album. I find it hard to put my finger on what separates engaging, interesting and listenable dance and electronic music from its less fortunate brethren. The album is melodically and rhythmically strong, sure, but there is also a pure pleasantness and organic warmth in the sounds themselves. On album standout "Jet" for example, the warm pulsing synth that mirrors the bass pulse and the delightful little scuttling noises that strafe across it like tiny crabs on a sandy beach, exemplify how the best tracks on the album build tension piece by piece, with simple melodic elements that display an exceptional sonic tautness. Not every track is as successful, but some are, "Turbo Dreams", among them.

The Constantines - Kensington Heights

Still delving into this record, but it sounds promising so far, an interesting development in the wake of the surprisingly sparse and trad-rock influenced Tournament of Hearts, both expanding on that sound, and re-integrating more of the spikier post-punk of earlier albums. Opening track "Hard Feelings" is the perfect example of this melding of worlds: The song has classic rock swagger and even a decent straight-up guitar solo(!), but also an unmistakable angularity and metallic bite that evokes Fugazi, not Fogerty (in fact, the band's sound has often been pegged as "Springsteen fronting Fugazi"; an application of the "Band X meets Band Y" device that music critics often overuse at the expense of actual insight or description. This particular descriptor is stubbornly persistent as a lazy shorthand for the band; it's like the statement just gets copy and pasted from review to review). The song channels its ample energy into stuttering, interlocking keyboard and guitar riffs, which contrast nicely with Bryan Webb's always-satisfying rasp of a vocal delivery. Also deserves mention: the awesomely pounding repeating post-chorus riff that evokes both an air siren and some giant machine press crashing down and resetting itself over and over. The rest of the album I don't know as well, but some other preliminary thoughts: "Million Star Hotel" is a formidable second track; where "Feeling" took a horizontal approach (barreling forward momentum) Feeling is more vertical: the tempo more deliberate as riffs soar, tower and crash. "Trans Canada" rides a chunky bass riff to an impassioned climax, although the build is so brief, I'm not sure the payoff is fully earned. "Shower of Stones", the first misstep, is sung by Steve Lambke instead of Webb, and confirms just how effective Webb is as a vocalist, and how much the band loses in his absence. And I'll agree with Pitchfork's Jason Crock, that I could do entirely without the odd, cheesy keyboard effects on "Credit River". I still haven't quite parsed the lyrics on the album; although I'm not a big lyrics guy, lyrics are usually a plus point for the band, who employ a hyper-romantic sort of street poetry tempered by rootsier, blue-collar sensibilities. Sometimes I feel like they can overdo the affected poetic mannerisms, but Webb's impassioned vocal delivery is so effective, he tends to make almost anything work. A sample of some nice lines at the front end of the "Trans Canada" climax:

"I had that vision, brother/the one about you, brother/we did ride, ride on the shining path together"

I will say that I don't particularly like the album cover, though. For what sounds like, so far, such a lively record, that cover is surprisingly drab and dull, and the airplane propeller silhouette, unless I'm really missing something, just seems like a total non sequitur. Really, it looks like something slapped together in Photoshop in about 45 seconds. But minor gripes aside (and I'll admit, I'm actively searching for them because I am a bit biased towards the Constantines; "On to You" is a personal favorite of mine), initial impressions suggest thatKensington Heights just may eventually prove a worthy development and extension of the Constantines' already accomplished oeuvre.

Alright! For now it's back to work on that Jesus Lizard piece, and maybe even the Stereolab one I was hoping to do. I'll post them here after I'm done. I've got a lot of ideas for this blog that I'm excited about implementing, and now that it's summer, I might actually have the time to implement, but we'll see!

Putting my Hiatus on Hiatus

Well, I certainly didn't intend to take an almost month-long break after my first substantive post. I'll see if I can make contributions with a little more regularity, even if that requires them to be a bit more compact.

Thank you for the comments on the last post, everyone. Chen pointed out a great example of a song that totally embodies the sort of cloud-bursting, huge, minor-verse to major-chorus transition, "Happy Together" by the Turtles, and inadvertently brought "Days" by Television to my attention at the same time, which has little inverted major-verse to minor-chorus action as well.

Koko pointed out a composition of his own that fits in the conventional minor-chorus, major-verse scheme too.

Laurel nobly came to the defense of the slandered "The Fool on the Hill", advocating lyrical primacy as well as the active-listening pleasure of surprising effects in music. While I don't agree with her, I can't say that she's alone.

For one, she's got Alan W. Pollack, musicologist on her side. Here's what he had to say about "Fool":

"This song surely belongs in McCartney's top drawer. On one level, it is one of his most explicit efforts in the evocative direction of the Early Romantic (19th century) 'art song'. Yet, on another level, it can also be described as an intriguing fusion of the sort that is arguably one of Paul's specialties of the house."

I guess I can see where Laurel and her scholarly comrade stand, and I'm trying to really see why I personally don't think it's one of his better compositions.

I think a lot of it has to do with the awkward juxtaposition of that dopey-sounding, oompah rhythm and syrupy-sweet instrumentation with the elongated diction Paul uses to sing the lyrics. It comes off to me like this weird blend of naivety and condescension; when the song goes into its minor key chorus, it's like this concerted effort to "get deep". The moment Paul sings "he knows that they're the fools", is kind of the kicker, the clinching moment of the faux-fool's spiritual snobbery. [Wow, this little digression turned out way more bitter-sounding than I intended... ^_^]

That quote, by the way, was taken from Pollock's analysis of "Fool on the Hill", which is itself part of a huge compendium he composed, a complete music theory analysis of the entire Beatles catalog. (!!!) Entitled the "Notes on..." Series, it consists of Pollock's exploration of the melodic and harmonic structure, lyrical usage, compositional structure, just about every aspect you can think of, for every Beatles song.

You can find it here arranged in alphabetical order (the numbers on the far right signify each song's place in chronological order), here arranged in the order Pollock wrote them, and here in the form of a 751-pg.(!) pdf file (Don't worry, it's all kosher, authorized by Pollock himself).

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift (and Vice Versa)

Ok then! Introduction complete, hopefully this post will serve some example of what I intend for this blog:

So, one thing I listen for when I listen to music is how a song uses and transitions between major and minor keys. The typical, or at least more conventional approach, is to meander about in the minor key for the verse; brooding, building tension and intensity and then bursting into glorious, golden-hued release with a big major key chorus. One can often see the device clearly at work in big pop ballads.

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, is one of the quintessential 80's uber-ballads, truly the cream of the Aquanet crop, and provides a solid example of the major/minor device at work (as an aside, I HIGHLY recommend you check out the video by clicking on the link and experience, for your own cultural edification, the truly peculiar magic of big budget music videos in their awkward formative years). Undeniable schlock-appeal of the accompanying video aside, though, what a set of pipes on Ms. Tyler, eh?

The song's structure is actually not as straightforward as I initially thought. Check, to cite but one example, the little false-lift into major key at 00:38, before collapsing back into minor. Such quirks actually come as no surprise now that I've discovered that Jim Steinman of Meatloaf hit-making fame wrote the thing. but on the whole, the song still serves as a solid illustration of the minor-verse major-chorus device. For another solid example, check R. Kelly ubiqui-ballad "I Believe I Can Fly".

The minor-verse major-chorus trope exists for a reason I think, as I mentioned above. It is undeniably effective, and people will probably milk it until the end of time, with equally unending results.

But what I began to notice were the little odd-balls that bucked the predictable trend; the ugly ducklings that, sometimes awkwardly, took the reverse approach: setting up in major key only to move into minor for the chorus.

A good example of this phenomena is provided by pop indexers The Beatles themselves, in Paul's "The Fool on the Hill". My pop sensibilities are a little jarred every time I hear this song. The explicit and abrupt shift to minor key in the chorus just seems to introduces so much tension to the song, especially after the big major key setup of the verses. It's like the musical equivalent of a feel-good movie climaxing with the disgrace and untimely demise of the likeable main character. In this case I don't think Paul really earns his little musical manipulation. The song ends up an odd sort of spiritually-bent trifle, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" sitting in lotus position, a doofy smile on its face.

Much more effective I think is the Arcade Fire's approach in "Rebellion (Lies)". Where intensity and desperation are already the name of the game, why not write an anthem that starts in major key and then ratchet up the intensity even further with a minor key shift in the chorus? Win Butler and co. seem to have asked and effectively answered just that question, and skirts the pitfalls of "The Fool on the Hill" by augmenting their minor key chorus with (and this is all over the Arcade Fire's work) BIG everything: an enormous, stomping drumbeat, even higher pitched backing vocals chirping the titular parenthetical refrain, and a soaring wonder of a string melody (Actually, I just realized "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" also seems to employ this inverted, major-verse, minor-chorus structure to some extent. Anyone see another Arcade Fire song structured along these lines?).

One might be inclined to think such a compositional gambit would be restricted to the arsenals of pop mavericks like the Arcade Fire or auteurs like Mr. McCartney, but Marc Anthony's "My Baby You" puts the lie to that notion.

As a pop ballad tear-jerker expressly engineered and immaculately constructed specifically for mass consumption, I have to say that this was the most surprising of the three entries into the major-verse, minor-chorus catalog. I think it's interesting that the song's intensely minor key chorus, evocative of uncertainty and pathos, seems to undercut the intended conviction of Mr. Anthony's professions of love. Was such bi-level analysis intended? Should you take offense if your loved one dedicates the song to you? Are J.Lo. and Marc Anthony headed for stormy relationship waters? The answer to these questions is, of course, undoubtedly no, and, it is in noting that my analysis has somehow taken me into the realm of the deciphering of pop songs for their prophetic tabloid fodder content that I close this discussion.

If anyone has any suggestions or entries of their own that fit the major-verse, minor-chorus dichotomy (especially those that do so in a BIG way) please, by all means, let me know! There were a lot of songs that seemed to fit the standard, but just not as exuberantly as the above examples (Belle & Sebastian's "I'm a Cuckoo" and Arcade Fire's "Une Année Sans Lumiére" come to mind).

Also, if any standout examples of the standard "Total Eclipse" "I Believe" minor-verse major-chorus format come to mind, please let me know too! I would love to bolster the meager hard evidence I have that such a structure is even the standard at all.

If you've made it all the the way down here, kudos on your persistence! Until next time, happy listening to you all!

-Yoshi

An Introduction

Welcome to Magnifiers! My name is Yoshinori Sasao, and I will be your host.

Inevitably, as a human, I am a music fan (and thus, inevitably, so are you). I love music, and I especially love to think about music (I acknowledge my analytic tendencies). I draw upon a bit of music theory knowledge, a smidgen of instrumental experience, and many, many hours of listening. These are my tools, my arsenal of analysis. I love to construct systems, to decode patterns across disparate grounds. Magnifiers is where I will post these systems and patterns and my thoughts on them. With my enthusiasm and my empirical eye, I stake out a new territory in music criticism.

But really, producing this blog will be a pleasure, pure and simple: the pleasure of unfettered and uninhibited self-expression. Honestly, I've waited too long to try my hand at this, out of paralyzing self-consciousness and infinite, perfectionist self-editing. This blog will be driven by directness, exuberance and enthusiasm(!!!). After all, however inscrutable and obscure these systems might get, they are systems constructed out of joy, the joy of listening, a joy I am happy to now share with you.


-Yoshi