Fluxblog Weekly #56: Radiohead, Fascinations Grand Chorus, R.E.M., Chance, Car Seat Headrest
I've been in California for the past two weeks, and that's kind of a running theme in this week's posts.
May 16th, 2016
The Touch Is Like A Breeze
Radiohead “The Numbers”
The first time I heard A Moon Shaped Pool I was walking through an unfamiliar chunk of West Hollywood at twilight, finding my way back to where I’m staying. I’ve only heard it in Los Angeles since, and I’m sure I’ll associate it closely with the city for the rest of my life. And sure, a lot of that is just how memory works, but I think it matches this setting rather well. There’s something in the negative space of this music that feels right here – other Radiohead records feel claustrophobic, but this is so light and airy, like it’s just drifting in a daze. The music is crisp and elegant, but Thom Yorke seems numb and disconnected. Most of the songs address his recent divorce from a woman he’s been with since he was still in school, and he sounds like a man who’s trying to figure out a new way to exist.
The circumstances of my life are very different, but that search for a new way of being in the world fairly late in life resonates with me a lot right now. One of my favorite things about my life in this moment is being pushed out of my comfort zone, and discovering that it’s not actually uncomfortable. I don’t think I’m about to make any major life changes, but it is nice to feel like I can change and adapt, and that there are other contexts I can feel at home in.
“The Numbers” feels like it’s in motion, it sounds like a feeling mid-transition. The piano notes and guitar chords seem to float in mid-air, and drift by in slow motion. There’s a lazy drag to this song, and it’s slightly at odds with the majestic string arrangement that drops in about two thirds of the way through. It’s like stumbling around in the dark, and making a turn around a corner to suddenly behold a gorgeous waterfall or a stunning vista. The sense of implied scale seems important, particularly in the context of dealing with loss and change.
Buy it from Amazon.
May 17th, 2016
To Roam Endless Nights
Fascinations Grand Chorus “Welcome”
The best fun I’ve ever had has come on nights that feel ripe with possibility, but have no particular plan. You can definitely have fun without surprises, and fun on a schedule, but it’s never quite as pure as jumping gleefully into the unknown. That’s basically the theme of this song, but the singer announces this with a defiant tone, declaring the distinction between night and day fundamentally absurd and insisting that we’re all free to roam. This is all in a garage rock/60s R&B tune that sounds like driving around a city at night, and somehow every color you see is super saturated, and the air feels unusually crisp. It’s an extremely convincing argument. I mean, I’m totally sold! Pick me up in your car and take me with you. Oh, take me anywhere, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
May 18th, 2016
You Are The Star Tonight
R.E.M. “Electrolite”
The problem with writing about “Electrolite” is that Michael Stipe already did it, and he summed up the concept of the lyrics with such remarkable clarity and grace that I would find it very difficult to discuss the song without deferring to his explanation, or straight-up plagiarizing him. Back in 2006, he was asked to write about the song for an article in the Los Angeles Timesabout Mulholland Drive, which is the setting for the lyrics.
This is what he wrote:
Mulholland represents to me the iconic ‘from on high’ vantage point looking down at L.A. and the valley at night when the lights are all sparkling and the city looks, like it does from a plane, like a blanket of fine lights all shimmering and solid. I really wanted to write a farewell song to the 20th century.
20th century go to sleep.
Really deep.
We won’t blink.
And nowhere seemed more perfect than the city that came into its own throughout the 20th century, but always looking forward and driven by ideas of a greater future, at whatever cost.
Los Angeles.
I name check three of the great legends of that single industry ‘town,’ as it likes to refer to itself. In order: James Dean, Steve McQueen, Martin Sheen. All iconic, all representing different aspects of masculinity—a key feature of 20th century ideology. It is the push me-pull you of a culture drawing on mid-century ideas of society, butt up against and in a great tug-of-war with modernism/rebirth/epiphany/futurism, wiping out all that that came before to be replaced by something ‘better,’ more civilized, more tolerant, fair, open, and so on … [see ‘reagan,’ ‘soylent green,’ ‘bladerunner,’ current gubernatorial debates]
The ‘really deep’ in the lyric is, of course, self-deprecating towards attempting at all, in a pop song, to communicate any level of depth or real insight.
Mulholland is the place in films where you get a distance, and the awe, of the city built on dreams and fantasy. Far away enough to not smell it but to marvel at its intensity and sheer audacity. Kinda great.
It says a lot about the mindset of Michael Stipe that he decided to write a farewell song to the entire 20th Century about five years before it was even over. The song memorializes the past, but it’s really about wanting to move on to the future, and standing in awe of the possibilities offered by the blank slate of a new era. Stipe’s sentiment is extremely optimistic — he imagines that it is possible for us to move on into a future that is not fully poisoned by even the best bits of the past. Over twelve years after the song’s release, and with only two years left of the century’s first decade, its hope for the future seems at once depressingly quaint and idealistic, and inspiring because we still have so much time left to make this era — our era — a time of progress, and a source of pride.
The music for “Electrolite” is gorgeous, albeit in a very low-key sort of way. It seems very likely that the arrangement was settled on before Stipe wrote his lyrics, but either way, it has a sound of recent antiquity that complements its concept rather well. It’s nostalgic for the past, but is firmly rooted in the romance of its present tense. True to the era, the band give the decade a perfect Hollywood ending, literally and figuratively. It’s one last slow dance, and a long, slow kiss goodbye before heroically heading off into the sunset, ready and searching for new adventures.
Buy it from Amazon.
This post was originally published on June 11, 2008 on Pop Songs 07/08, a site where I wrote about every R.E.M. song from 1980-2006.
May 19th, 2016
All The Blessings
Chance the Rapper featuring 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne “No Problem”
The best word I’ve seen used to describe Chance’s music, particularly his third record Coloring Book, is jubilant. He’s working in a genre that goes heavy on party music, but he’s the guy in rap who sounds like he’s truly celebrating all the time. Celebrating life, celebrating God, celebrating family and love and creative independence and music and the past and the present and managing to survive against bleak odds. There’s a joy in his songs that is so strong and undiluted that I know some people can find it kinda corny and childish – one friend of mine who has generally good judgment dismissed Chance as sounding like Sesame Street rap, but hey, he’s a big Drake fan so I can see why he’d be defensive about the guy who’s basically set up to be the Nirvana to Drake and Future’s hair metal. I definitely welcome any sea change in hip-hop, especially if it’s a move towards joyful gospel and a richer, more harmonious sound after too many years of flagrant fuckboy bullshit over icy, depressive minimalism.
A lot of Coloring Book, particularly the sunny “No Problem,” call back to Kanye West’s most joyful ‘00s music, so it’s not exactly radical in the context of recent-ish rap history, but Chance’s character is substantially different. Kanye has always been at war with his own contradictions and conflicting social pressures, but Chance is a far more secure and coherent personality. He’s defined by this sense of clarity – he seems to know exactly who he is and what he wants and how to achieve his goals entirely on his own terms. Given that he’s mostly speaking to a generation of people who’ve built a lot of their identity around obsessing on anxiety disorders, his unshakeable certainty must seem like a superpower.
Get it from Apple Music.
May 20th, 2016
That Shake In My Voice
Car Seat Headrest “1937 State Park”
One of the many great things about Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial is how the band rocks out in this very casual way that’s hard to come by in music released after the ‘90s. It’s not sloppy at all, but it has a very physical energy, kinda athletic in a way. They make playing a rock song sound like a fun activity, and listening to it gives a vicarious thrill that nudges you to mime along to the motions of playing the music in a non-ironic air guitar sort of way. I love that sensation, and it was such a big part of the rock music I bonded with in the early to mid 90s that listening to a record like this feels like going home again.
“1937 State Park” has the sound of something I would’ve loved when I was 13 – on a structural level it’s very Nirvana, but the vibe is a bit more early Pavement or Modest Mouse. But it also captures the feeling of being a particularly cynical and depressive sort of teenage boy, right on down to the line about avoiding graveyards because they’re a cliché of his “death-obsessed generation,” which is funny to me because I was exactly the sort of teen to extrapolate way too much from random people I knew just to find new ways to be snobby as an excuse to opt out of social situations. “Ah, I hate my generation, so obsessed with death!” Sure, dude! Whatever. Meanwhile you’re the guy singing about feeling a pressure to commit minor crimes so you can act out a “live fast, die young” narrative.
A lot of this song is a joke at a expense of the narrator, but it’s also totally heartbreaking because Will Toledo gives you so much emotional context for being this sort of mixed-up teen. He’s putting up all these walls, but he can’t hide his vulnerability no matter how hard he tries. The chorus kills me every time – “I didn’t want you to hear that shake in my voice / my pain is my own!” Again: I know this kid, I was this kid, I probably still am this kid. I know what it’s like to feel ashamed of feeling anything, and know how much energy can go into wanting all that to be private and trying to construct a better version of yourself for other people. From a bit of distance, it’s a comical thing to do, but when you’re inside that frame of mind, it’s just a survival instinct. It’s not always easy to learn that people are more likely to connect with the part of you that is crying as you walk home, especially not when you’re totally convinced that other people witnessing your weakness is the absolute worst thing that could happen.
Buy it from Amazon.