Category: Music

The Month in Review: TV and Music

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

Despite my infrequent updating, November and December of 2010 were the most successful months that Mouth of the Beast has ever had. The blog has now passed 20,000 pageviews. Thank you for visiting!

I don’t actually know that you’re all men,and it’s been more than a year.

December flew by this year due to the combination of an unusually busy finals week and the fast-paced holiday season. Still, I managed to watch, read and listen to quite a few things.

TV is what I’ve paid the least attention to this break. Just after Thanksgiving, I finally finished the fifth season of The Wire, which killed my appetite for TV dramas. I did watch the third season of In Treatment, which I liked immensely through about the middle of the season, then lost interest in. I don’t think I’ll go back and watch the first two seasons. In other kinds of TV, I enjoyed the first season of Darker than Black, an (English dubbed) anime series available through Netflix. It was a worthy contender in my ongoing quest to find a series that can stand with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which is my favorite anime series and my favorite animated show, period. Less worthy, but also good was Fullmetal Alchemist, which I somehow hadn’t seen before. The only series that I’ve watched over the break has been season two of Parks and Recreation. Many of my friends like P&R, but I’m having a hard time getting in to it. It’s an awkward hybrid between realistic, observational office humor (à la vintage The Office) and absurd wacky hijinks humor that I get really tired of. Part of my problem with the show is that I really don’t like Amy Poehler, I find her really annoying and not funny. I am enjoying Rashida Jones, Aubrey Plaza and (in small doses, because the show leans on him way too hard) Aziz Ansari.

I haven’t been listening to much classical music–I usually give my ears a break after finals. One new work that I’ve enjoyed very much is William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony from 1934. Dawson was an important arranger of spirituals and one of the preeminent black composers of his time, but I love the symphony for the gorgeous orchestration and colors. Another piece that I’ve been trying to grapple with is Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Times. Messiaen is one of the composers that I’ve constantly revisited over the last three years because I always feel like I’m gaining a new appreciation for what his music does, even while not completely understanding it.

I’ve been catching up with a bunch of my favorite pop artists this break, as well as discovering or re-discovering new artists. The most random rediscovery has been Fleetwood Mac’s album Tusk. I’m not familiar with much of their other music, so it might be that all of their music is like this, but this album is a great blend of tight harmonies, heterogeneous song styles, 80’s production, and these little musical details that I seem to discover again every time I listen to the album. After taking a break of three or four years, I started listening to the music of Owen Pallett, formerly Final Fantasy. I discovered him around the same time as I started listening to Andrew Bird, but I have always thought that Pallett was the better songwriter. Bird’s songs always seem like novelty songs, even though his musicianship and arrangement skills are better than that (I should confess that one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to was an Andrew Bird concert). Pallett has continued to push himself, and his 2010 album Heartland is really interesting and really good. Another band that I’ve been looking back on is The National. Boxer is one of my favorite albums, and I’ve been trying to listen to their two other critically acclaimed albums, Alligator and High Violet.

I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks grappling with two enormous, deeply interesting albums, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Sufjan Steven’s The Age of Adz. I don’t think these albums are that dissimilar, and they’re interesting in similar ways. Sufjan’s album was surprising, and perhaps upsetting, so some people because it incorporated a lot of electronic elements and seemed to turn it’s back completely on the formula that made him popular through the album Illinoise (although this turn in his music was not surprising to anyone who heard “You Are The Blood” on last year’s compilation album Dark Was the Night). Even more, by using T-Painesque Auto-Tune, he seems to be poking a stick at those of his fans who use “Auto-Tune” as a shorthand for the moral decay of modern music that Sufjan’s bardic banjo-and-flutes music was supposed to be a corrective against. Still, the differences between Illinoise and Age of Adz are more superficial than aesthetic, and I think any fans put off by the glitchy noise are going to misremember their opinion of the album in 10 years. I feel pretty unqualified to write anything about Kanye’s album, as I don’t listen to much rap, nor have I heard his other albums (except the near omnipresent “Stronger”). Still, I’m critiquing the album mostly as pop music. Although it’s not as dramatic a stylistic shift as the Sufjan album, MBDTF is a rejection of a formula as well, something that I only began to appreciate after listening to his 2007 album Graduation. There’s no trace of the good-natured cockiness of “Good Life” or “Champion.” Instead, everything–from the album’s unwieldy title to its obscene and weird cover to the filthy Chris Rock routine at the end of “Blame Game”–seems calculated to dare listeners to pull away. And like the Sufjan album, it’s polished, it’s catchy as hell, and it’s great.

 

Björk Project Part 3: Post

Matthew Eilar1 Comment

Björk’s 1995 album Post is a good example of what I’ve come to think of as the Björk Universe Theory, the way that I understand most of her music. The theory holds that there are multiple styles, ideas, and musical textures that run throughout her music, and different combinations of these elements produce her different albums and the songs on those albums. At the center of this universe is her voice, which is used in a pretty consistent way in her music. While this idea is somewhat present in Debut, this album takes a big step towards the mixing of these different elements, sometimes moving from one to another in the course of a song. Each of these elements bears her signature: many artists use electronics, but nobody uses them quite like her, and the same thing could be said for the big, dance flavored beats that pop up from time to time or the orchestral and choral elements that she sometimes uses. I’d like to look at the different bodies in this universe by looking at three of the standout tracks on the album, “Hyperballad” “Isobel” and “I Miss You.”

[Note: Even though I am embedding some videos of live performances, all of my comments refer to album versions.]

“Hyperballad” begins boldly, but on a small scale. The first thing we hear is a held note in the strings over a very low repeating bass line, followed by a tight, subtle percussion beat. Even as she adds elements, a synthesizer pattern, some harp arpeggios, it’s still a small, intimate song. Even the first chorus sounds like she’s holding something back. Over the next, verse and chorus, the song builds to an ecstatic peak. Then, the song starts to fold into itself, then ends.

It’s a much more polished sound than anything on Debut, and also a more spare sound. The way that she uses the elements of the song is pretty representative as well: the strings have a repeating pattern that fills out the sound. Synthesizers are used to provide structure (the bass line) and to add flavor (the small synth pattern). Dance beats amplify the energy of the song, but are not a focal point. One thing that I find consistently amazing about Björk’s music is how much weight she’s willing to put on the voice–many of her songs have hooks in the high register and low beats and bass, leaving her voice alone in the middle register.

“Isobel” strikes a completely different tone: this is the music of retro-futurism, where big Hollywood strings co-exist with slinky, tribal drum beats. Again, there are elements of her earlier music–the drum and bass line, vocal harmonies, strings–but they’re used in completely different combinations yielding distinctive and different music.

Likewise with, “I Miss You,” one of my all-time favorite tracks. It’s another omnivorous piece of music; it sounds to me like Martian Carnival in the year 2040 or something. It’s extremely rhythm-driven, with layers of percussion, glitchy electronics, horn riffs and a killer accordion loop.

One of the things that I’m not so in love with is Björk’s music videos. The video for “I Miss You” above is particularly gross, but I’ve never been a fan of Ren & Stimpy either.

Björk Project Part 2: Debut

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They’re terribly moody
And human behaviour
Then all of a sudden turn happy

But, oh, to get involved in the exchange
Of human emotions
Is ever so, ever so satisfying

-Björk, “Human Behavior”

Listening to Björk’s Debut in the context of her other records, as I did, provides several modes of interpretation. I was struck by how essentially Björk-y it sounded; from the very beginning, she seemed to have her own aesthetic that is consistent throughout all of her music even as they are all different in sound. It’s a little less polished of a record, and also doesn’t have the coherence of her later albums. Unlike Vespertine, for example, which has its own sonic signature and seems to be working with the same musical material, Debut seems to have three different threads running through it:

Continue reading “Björk Project Part 2: Debut” →

Björk Project Part 1: Prelude

Matthew Eilar2 Comments

Like most thinking people, he admires Björk…

-Alex Ross, writing on Esa-Pekka Salonen

That extraordinary statement is found in Alex Ross’ new book, Listen to This. In another chapter, he profiles Björk, presenting her as a rare artist with a unique aesthetic that borrows freely from many musical traditions while still retaining its own identity. Ross observes her working method during the creation of her 2004 album Medúlla. She seems to work as both a composer, holding an idea for a piece in her mind, and as an Eno-style studio technician, blending a multitude of tracks and takes into a whole. Yet still the boldness of the statement surprised me. Not only do thinking people admire Björk, but most thinking people admire Björk. I recognized that the statement is hyperbole, yet I was eager to discover the music that would lead someone (much less a critic that I greatly admire like Ross) to make that hyperbolic statement. So I decided to listen to her catalog.

Björk was an artist that I only knew at the periphery. She existed more in my consciousness as a pop culture figure than as an artist. Before embarking on this project, I was only familiar with three of her songs: “Hyperballad” from Post, “Jóga” from Homogenic and “The Dull Flame of Desire” from Volta. I liked all three of these songs, but they seemed to exist in a musical space that I couldn’t quantify, and for whatever reason, I didn’t pursue the music further. The only other time I remember listening to her music was to play Medúlla once during high school. I didn’t get it, and since I didn’t get it, I assumed there was nothing to get.

Maybe because I’m more musically mature this time around, maybe because I didn’t start with the most difficult and abstract album first, but I’ve completely fallen in love with Björk. Her music is vibrant but frequently profound, always interesting, and can withstand close and repeated listening. This week, I’m going to go through Björk’s catalog, from 1993’s Debut to 2007’s Volta.

[EDIT: It’s inevitable that I write that I’m going to post these all in a week, then get completely behind. These posts are taking a little longer than I expected to (in a good way!).]

David Lang

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This tidbit in this Capital New York article on David Lang made me laugh:

He met Michael Gordon at the Aspen Music Festival when Gordon was 21 and Lang was 20. Gordon was the first person Lang had come across who knew anything about new music; since each was possessive of the Glass and Reich music they both adored, they hated each other immediately. It was only a few years later, when both were in grad school at Yale, that they quickly became best friends, sitting next to each other for hours and writing music.

Isn’t that just the way that it goes?