Fluxblog Weekly #53: Case/Lang/Veirs, Beyoncé, Formulars Dance Band, Little Scream, Elijah Blake
April 25th, 2016
They Don’t Love You Like I Love You
Case/Lang/Veirs “Honey and Smoke”
“They don’t love you like I love you” is a poignant phrase to hear in a song because as earnest as it may be, it can only come from a position of insecurity. The one being addressing is obviously not convinced, or perhaps sees the difference in how you love them and how others love them and has decided they prefer the latter. Intensity of feeling is not a guarantee of a stable, healthy relationship. The singer is an unreliable narrator; maybe they’re delusional or in the wrong. Who can say?
K.D. Lang sings “Honey and Smoke” with the suggestion that her character is a bit deluded, but totally respects that perspective. She’s looking on as other people attempt to woo her ex, in awe of how easily they attract suitors while seething with jealousy and desperate to relive the seduction rather than observe it happen for others. She dismisses her rivals’ sentiments as “all honey and smoke,” insisting that there’s no way these others could understand or fully appreciate them. It’s romantic jealousy as aesthetic snobbery – sure, these people can fall in lust, but only she can fall in love. She’s a connoisseur. This is echoed in the sound of the music, as any anger or overt jealousy is buried beneath a slick, sophisticated affect. Lang’s voice conveys a bit of sadness, but the real emotional truth of the song is in Neko Case’s backing vocals, which condense all the bitterness and sorrow in the song to a few plaintive notes.
Buy it from Amazon.
Beyoncé “Hold Up”
Beyoncé is singing “they don’t love you like I love you” too, this time directly quoting the chorus of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps.” “Hold Up” is the second track on Lemonade, and it’s the point in the album’s narrative about infidelity in which she’s processing the reality that she’s being cheated on by her husband. Beyoncé has approached this before, notably on “Ring the Alarm,” but unlike that song, which said more or less the same things with an apocalyptic rage, “Hold Up” is serene and composed. She’s furious, yes, and cycling through severe anguish and anxiety, but she’s graceful and confident through sheer force of will. You probably can’t get to where she is on “Hold Up” without having experienced “Ring the Alarm” first – it’s easier to be composed and collected when you’ve been through it before, right?
A good chunk of “Hold Up” is Beyoncé deciding how much of her emotions she should be comfortable sharing with everyone else. “What’s worse, lookin’ jealous or crazy?,” she sings, aware that any honest display is likely to get dismissed by misogynists. She comes down on the side of not giving a fuck, and that opens the floodgates for the rest of the record – one song later she’s approaching “Ring the Alarm” levels of righteous fury with Jack White at her back, and that keeps up through the middle of the album. “Hold Up” is the crux of the album, though, and her mature approach to dealing with emotional catastrophe here is what sets the table for the reconciliation at the end of the record. If there’s a message here, it could be that you should honor your jealous, crazy feelings, but not let them consume you. In this case, the “they don’t love you like I love you” sentiment could actually be the very thing that holds everything together.
Buy it from Amazon.
April 26th, 2016
The Only Good Thing That I’ve Got
Formulars Dance Band “Never Never Let Me Down”
It’s pretty easy to get sucked into the gravitational pull of this song. There’s something about the way that gentle groove, tinny guitar, and softly buzzing keyboard come together that’s slightly off in exactly the right way. The notes seem to shake slightly in the air, the treble sounds like a dim glow. And then there’s this guy’s voice, which is the richest, deepest tone in the mix, and delivers English lyrics with what sounds to me like a Nigerian accent approximating an American accent. He’s singing about this fraught relationship, and though his passion is obvious, there’s also this sorta serene quality to his voice.
There’s one lyric in this song that really gets to me, partly because I know it in another context: “You’re the one good thing that I’ve got.” George Michael sings that in “Freedom ’90,” and it’s something that always stings me. I know that feeling too well, that desperate, sad thing of clinging to something you feel sure of – a talent, an achievement, a person, whatever – because it’s the only thing that keeps you from thinking you’re pathetic. The line feels different here, though. Whereas George Michael sings it with a lot of ego, this guy sounds very humble. He’s holding on to something, but more out of love for someone else than a fear of losing his sense of self.
Buy it from Amazon.
April 27th, 2016
When We Were Strangers
Little Scream “Dark Dance”
“Dark Dance” is essentially about the private moments of clarity and joy we can have quite suddenly, which you can never plan for but can have the power to entirely shift the focus of your life. In this case it’s dancing alone in the dark, but it could be anything, really. The sound of this track tilts between haziness and ecstasy, and approximates this very specific late night feeling of being both exhausted and totally wired at the same time. The beauty of that sensation is in connecting two very different states of being — the mind relaxing and fading into dream, and being so alert that your mind is just racing. It’s the best of both worlds, really, and maybe the easiest state to be in to have a random epiphany.
Buy it from Amazon.
April 29th, 2016
This Ain’t A Rhetorical Question
Elijah Blake “Whatever Happened”
“Whatever Happened” is right on the edge of self-parody, with vulnerable sentiments about being rejected presented in a way that seems like it’s at least partly meant to be taken as a self-deprecating joke. But…maybe not? Some guys are not very self-aware. Elijah Blake is singing about a college girl he hooked up with after a Future show at SXSW in Austin, and he’s totally incredulous that she’s ghosting him now after he spent so much money on taking her on trips to Paris. (Three times, exactly.) “I was ’bout to pull you out that dorm and put you up in a suite,” he sings. “It could have happened!” Blake is totally flabbergasted that this young woman – possibly a teenager still – didn’t just drop everything to live a fancy life off his money, as if desiring some agency or following through on her own ambitions are totally outlandish concepts. I’d like to think that the joke’s at his own expense, and that we’re meant to laugh at his thinly veiled insecurity and his inability to deal with being used by this girl when he thought he had all the power in that relationship. But he really does seem upset about this, and I’ve come to side against men in most contemporary R&B songs, so who knows.
Buy it from Amazon.