5 Songs I'm Feeling

Here are 5 songs I been really feeling lately:

"Darling Nikki" (off of Purple Rain) is just such a great song. There is always a lot of emphasis on Prince's lyrics on this song, and rightly so. I mean, there are countless people of my generation that had whatever they were doing arrested at age 11, 12, 13, 14 by hearing "I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating to a magazine." And his groans and screams, the desperation in his voice and the unintelligible sections ("Nikki's love willakickayourbehind / Oh just show ya no mercy!") all make the song work and conveys everything the lyrics only suggest, but listening to the song lately I am struck by what the Revolution are doing in the background. They are riding this almost mechanistic self-arresting orgiastic groove. The drums are so fragmented throughout the song, just occasionally falling into an almost tic-toc two-feel, before stuttering on the cymbals. Really, it is Wendy and Lisa's guitar and keyboard work that carries the song, especially Wendy's little flair that serve to ornament Prince's singing. Then again, I am attributing this stuff to the band, but according to Purple Rain's liner notes, Prince played all the instruments on the recording.

It is really the stops that make this song work, the sexual tension they emulate, until the keyboards hit that hard coda over and over, like a relieving rush. The backwards singing at the end of the song over the sound rain is the calm of post-orgasm. The backwards recording is a play on the fears of satanic messages recorded backwards on rock records, except true to Prince's occasionally creepy Christianity, played forwards it says: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon."

"Love Dog" is off of TV on the Radio's Dear Science which I have been listening to with an obsession I have not had for a record since Radiohead's In Rainbows came out. More than any other song on the record (so far) "Love Dog" seems to hit it right both lyrically and musically, from the perfect "Ooooh ooh ooohs" to open the song, to the tight drum part, perfectly and crisply recorded. And the mellow electric piano sound that buoys the prayer-like delivery of the lyrics. The straining backing harmony that sometimes comes in also helps to convey the plaintive sadness of the song's subject. The whole song has a very subtle build as more and more elements join it, soft horns - filling out the sound, eventually joined by strings and whirring electronic sounds.

At one point they sing:

Nameless you above me
Come lay me low and love me
This lonely little love dog
That no one knows the name of

Curse me out in free verse
Wrap me up and reverse this
Patience is a virtue
Until it's silence burns you

. . . and it speaks to me in a way I cannot quite articulate.

Speaking of In Rainbows, "Nude" is a haunting song that never quite escapes me. "Haunting" is the perfect word, because the "ooohs" here do sound like ghost whispers, and there is a sense of disorientation from what sound like some kind backwards effect on the keyboard, maybe even the snare hits might be brushed with the effect. The bass is so stripped down and bouncing along perfect and dub-like when it comes in to carry Thome York's strained voice. "Don't get any / big ideas / they're not / gonna happen," he sings, holding back the syllables to create tension and build up the anticipation. All there is for that first verse is the bass and voice with some ghostly keyboard way back in the mix until a guitar comes in to echo the bass notes with some soft chords. "Nude" seems to capture the ineffiability of the ephemeral perfectly, "Now that you've found it it's gone / Now that you feel it you don't." All the musical elements come together perfectly with a subtle build similar to that I described in "Love Dog" - and that final accusatory "You'll go to hell / for what your / dirty mind / is thinking" the last syllable drawn out back to the "ooohs" that die down and then rise back up to something almost heavenly - a soul fleeing its mortal vestments and ascending in contrast to the sad pronouncement of the final lyrics.

I think the reason this song started hitting the nail on the head for me was because at the time that I started listening to the record I was going on a lot of first dates that were serving more to disappoint me than to give me hope of meeting someone that could burst my ambivalence.

"For You" is off of Greetings from Asbury Park, a record I have been listening to with some obsession (along with other early Springsteen) since the Super Bowl. I am so easily influenced when it comes to music getting into my heavy rotation - all it takes is one listen to a particular song or artist in a particular setting and something clicks in my mind and I won't be satisfied until I have gone back to plumbing their discography. "For You" is much more of a straight-up rock song, and as such I feel like I have little to say about its instrumentation. It just starts with the snap of drums and the little piano rhythm and the acoustinc strumming that accompanies Bruce's voice. Really, this song is all about Springsteen's crammed lyrics and his delivery. . . I remember the first time I heard this song it was the mid-90s, when I was standing out front of a bodega on Flatbush avenue waiting for the bassist of my band to come out with beer, and Zooey leaned over and began to sing it into my ear.

To me the song speaks of the impossibility of "saving" someone no matter how you might desire it - and how it martyrs the savior as they absorb the abuse of it "like some soldier undaunted." The strongest part of the song is the refrain which is savored by the fact that it is only sung twice, as after the second verse instead of returning to it the song builds out the anticipation as if it were to come and instead has a brief acoustic guitar break and then a bridge with descending chords. Bruce sings then screams, "And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds / Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?" But what I was talking about was the refrain that is arrived at by means of the music moving to feel as if the band were trying to put on the brakes but somehow the momentum will not be restrained, until the drums tap and the Boss sings, "I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but you did not need my urgency / I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but your life was one long emergency / and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free." I am not even sure what "my electric surges free" is supposed to mean. The "cloud line urges me" makes sense because of that urge to rescue, to cast aside the storm clouds of someone else's life.

There may also be a suggestion here that the "you" in the song doesn't want to be saved, "you did not need my urgency," which makes sense when your life is one long emergency, since the very idea of what an emergency is loses its meaning when stretched out indefinitely as timeliness is part and parcel of its definition. A little bit of organ ends the song. . . Ultimately, it is the very unneeded urgency of how the song is delivered that makes it work and that gives the sense that perhaps the speaker is the one who feeling an urgent desire to be saved. I mean, it is the "you" in the song that is compared to Superman: "Didn't you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive / able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?" I don't know. I just feel it.

"Sometimes I Forget," by Loudon Wainwright III (of off History) is another song that is more about the feeling and lyrics than any particular musical achievement. Written for his father that passed, whenever this song comes on I cannot help but think of both my nephew and mi abuela who died in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The song is just Loudon singing accompanied by nothing but his guitar, and explaining how a person's absence is most strongly felt in those moments when we forget that the person is "gone and not coming back."

It's as if all you've done is go out of town
You'll be back soon, that's just how it looks
But your suitcase is empty, it's right here in the hall
That's not even the strangest thing
Why would you leave your wallet behind?
Your glasses, your wristwatch and ring?

The song is just sparse and sad and raw - and when I hear, "And there was something I wanted to tell you so bad / Something I knew that you'd want to know" I am overwhelmed by the thought of all things I would have liked to tell my nephew and never got a chance to. And when I hear "Momentos, memories, tell me what good are they?" I think of all the things mi abuela left behind and the process of going through to clear out what wasn't needed, what could be donated, what could be thrown away and what we would each keep to remember her by. And while the song ends with a hopeful note, "Sometimes I forget that you've gone / Sometimes it feels like you're right here / Right now it feels like you're right here," ultimately, the feeling the song leaves me with is irrecoverable loss.

Just a Castaway. . .

I started writing this month's essay on one of my favorite albums - Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen, but the close-listening just confirmed what I had been considering for a while, which is that the record does not do it for me the way it once did. Perhaps I have "outgrown it," or perhaps I am just not in that same bitter recently broken up moving through a weird relationship mode like I was when I first became enamoured of it. And while I wrote more than half of it and at first I was going to just muddle through and finish examining it, this morning I put Regatta de Blanc by The Police on my iPod and it struck me that this is a classic album that my appreciation for has deepened in the 20+ years I have been listening to it. This was the album I should write about.

I started listening to this record at the end of my freshman year in high school, so 1986, seven years after it had been released. My Police obsession had penetrated my bubble of hip-hop, soul and R&B that I lived in then when Synchronicity came out while I was in 7th grade, but it would not be for a couple of years before I began to explore the rest of their records. For a good part of my high school years if you asked me what my favorite bands were I would have replied, "The Police, Prince and Pink Floyd," and true to teen-aged obsession with obscure meaning, I used to try to figure out what it was about the letter 'P' that made me like the bands - or maybe I was just high. . .

When I first started listening to the Police it was probably the lyrics and the reggae feel that drew me in ("Regatta de Blanc" is supposedly some bastardized French for "White Reggae"), but like any good band as time went on different aspects of the music appealed to me. For a long time it was (and to some degree still is) Steward Copeland's phenomenal drumming, but more recently I have come to feel that Andy Summers' guitar-playing is underrated and is just as phenomenal. I mean, it is so understated and perfect as to blend in and be almost forgotten, but when you train your ear to break the parts up and really listen you can hear both the intricacy of the progressions and the deceiving simplicity of the rhythms he plays. He is not a shreddy lead-guitar kind of guitar player (though he can do that), but rather his rhythmic flares keeps things moving over Sting's journeyman basslines and Stewart's expressive drumming.

The opening track is an example of a song that I might have just heard too many times in my life to still have the same effect on me. "Message in a Bottle" may just forever be one of those teenage songs to me, expressing the collective alienation I was beginning to sense at that age and that is so easy to wallow in at 15 or 16. If anything, it is definitely one of the most straightforward of their songs with the pounding snare and the driving descending progression, but Copeland's fills and his ever-excellent cymbal work fills it out nicely. Of course, I shouldn't discount Sting's ability to carry the song vocally. Sometimes I forget what he was once capable because of the intervening years of his mostly stinky solo records (with some exceptional tracks).

While the title track is nothing impressive lyrically with some fake "world music" nonsense words and sounds, the instruments themselves are excellent from Copeland's great rim-taps to Summers' airy slow appregiating of chords to open the song and just showing how much you can do with nothing but rhythm (even if the bass parts are rather simple and repetitive). "It's Alright For You" might be the weakest track on the record (perhaps second weakest depending on how you feel about "On Any Other Day") with its psuedo-punk approach and rapid-fire lyrics. It just has no depth and musically is not all that interesting - I guess the little "turn around" riff between the verse on the guitar is vaguely interesting, but I can't help but wonder what this song is really about. Hmm, take it back about being completely muscially uninteresting, I guess the guitar break a little more than halfway through the song shows some interesting effects on the guitar making it sound like two different instruments.

"Bring On the Night" would be my favorite song on the record if it weren't for the first song on the second side. I just love how it builds with the high-hat hits and the nearly helicopterish guitar that transforms into one of the most interesting chord progressions in any of their songs, almost behind the beat and finger-picked I can spend 4+ minutes of the track doing nothing but listening to that part alone, but when the chorus comes, the bass is that simple boucey feel that carries you through and perfectly expresses the relief of the night's arrival, aided by the reggae strumming that comes on the guitar. Copeland plays the highhat almost throughout and again, Sting's voice is perfect here, perfectly expressing both the desire and relief. According to wikipedia, the song is supposed to be about the execution of Gary Gilmore, but I never knew that until recently, and I don't know the source for that information. Seems irrelevant. "Deathwish" has no chorus. Just three verses sung amid what is mostly an instrumental. In fact, it is easy for me to forget there are lyrics at all. Like a lot of these songs it has a driving rhythm that is accented nicely by Andy Summers' guitar (great mix of struming, arrpegiating and use of echo). I like the lyrics.

Deathwish in the fading light
Headlight pointing through the night
Never thought I’d see the day
Playing with my life this way

Gotta keep my foot right down
If I had wings I’d leave the ground
Buning in the outside lane
People think that I’m insane

The day I take a bend too fast
Judgement that could be my last
I’ll be wiped right off the slate
Don’t wait up ’cause I’ll be late

Side Two begins with what is probably my favorite song by the Police, "Walking on the Moon." From the instantly recognizable bassline to the echoing guitar chords and jaunty reggae feel that imply some loss of gravity, the song's simplicity is its strength. Again, this song displays Stewart Copeland's excellent highhat work, but it is the feeling it more than adequately describes that is the best part of it. Or perhaps it is just me, the silly romantic that I can be - but the sensation: "Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Your feet they hardly touch the ground. . ." I know it so well, and I love it. It is a moment divorced from the future, just like you'd feel divorced from gravity making giant steps across the moonscape. The song ends with more of Copeland's great cymbal-work and the echoing "Keep it up" suggests not only a common call out in ska and reggae, but also the weightlessness itself. The song is just as close to perfect as you can get, if you ask me.

"On Any Other Day" was written by Stewart Copeland and he does most of the singing on it. It starts with him saying "The other ones are complete bullshit. . " which suggests not only that his other offerings are worse, but that they think this track is bullshit as well to some degree - and I cannot disagree. It just has a jokey sophmoric feel that just doesn't sit well with me and doesn't age well. I guess the horrible things listed in the song are happening on the protagonist's birthday. . . But really, I don't care. It isn't even very interesting musically and ultimately not all that funny.

"The Bed's Too Big Without You" on the other hand is another of my favorites off this album. A kind of reggae ballad that puts the guitar, bass and drum pieces together beautifully. The song fades in from the left channel and then comes in stereo (I have heard a mono version), and has the perfect tempo for Sting's languid lyrics.

"Contact" is a weird song with a droning bassline and obscure lyrics, though I like the chorus. "Have we got contact, you and me? Have we got touchtone? Can we be?" It not a very long song, and neither is the song that follows it that at one time I would have probably said was my favorite on the album, "Does Everyone Stare?" This song is unique in that it starts with piano and Stewart Copeland singing a kind of muffled lead that echoes the verses to come until the song really starts up and Sting takes over the lead vocals - just before he does there is a sample(? - can I call it a sample?) of a man's operatic voice further back in the mix, not sure what is up with that, but it works. Again, this is a song that I think my teenaged self related to because of the awkwardness it conveys (reinforced by the purposefully slightly off-time kind of marching drum that goes along with the the trotting piano chords). "I change my clothes ten times before I take you on a date / I get the heebie-jeebies and my panic makes me late / I break into a cold sweat reaching for the phone / I let it ring twice before / I chicken out and decide you're not at home." Of course, the very idea of staring at a woman reinforces the awkward creepiness of it.

The closing track is "The Other Way of Stopping" is a fast-paced frenetic song with some amazing drumming.

Overall, I find Regatta de Blanc to be the Police's best album, though I am leaving aside the problematic aspect of cultural appropriation that come along with the idea of "white reggae," mainstreaming it beyond even the broader popularity that Bob Marley gave it. Reading this over I also find that my enthusiasm for the record is lacking compared to what I wrote about 1999 last month. I think that might because of my recent discovery of TV on the Radio's Dear Science, and right now everything I am feeling about it is what Regatta de Blanc is not. It fills that bottom middle in a way that the sparseness of the Police's tunes do not, and while I love that sparseness, the negative aural space that it creates, right now I am appreciating that fullness contrasted with the falsetto voices and the frequent handclaps. I have also been kind of obsessively listening to some early Springsteen records and they too have a "full" sound laid over with that cramped lyricality with endless eternal rhyme that Bruce was into back then. I may have to write about Greetings from Asbury Park next month, that is, if I am not still so into Dear Science that I just have to write about it.