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Welcome back to the second edition of the Suicide Watch Songs Blog. It is dedicated to songs that one listens to when at their lowest. There are many subgenres within this large group, and with these first few posts I hope to show examples of as many of these as possible. "Sea Anemone," the subject of the first blog post, falls into a genre I like to call 'The Pit,' which is reserved for the deepest, darkest, nothing left in the tank kind of songs. Today's selection falls into the 'apathetic' genre. These songs exude a hopelessness like no other. Nothing the protagonist does can change their situation. Here you are, lost and the loser once again. This weeks selection is Jason Lytle's "Rollin' Home Alone."
"Rollin' Home Alone" by Jason Lytle, from Your's Truly, The Commuter
Note: This song is not 8:51 long, only 4:15. The video has 4:35 of silence at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWUTMF_ArUs
Grandaddy is one of my favorite bands. Unfortunately I only started to get into them after they already come through Detroit for the last time. Sure, I was lucky enough that an EP and LP were still to be released, but I never got a chance to see the band live. It is my understanding that Lytle broke up the band because the band was getting bigger, there were more expectations and obligations, and it wore on his creative spirit and became an unhealthy environment for him. Afterwards, Lytle moved to Montana. While I was certain he would continue to make music, I was deathly afraid that one of my favorite musicians would never release anything to the public again. I was absolutely thrilled when I found out he was releasing a solo album only a few years later. I waited until his Detroit date opening up for Nico Case to purchase Lytle's solo debut, Yours Truly, The Commuter. I figured this would be a good way to check out the new material as well as hoping that he would get some more money than usual by buying direct.
There were two songs that made me tear up at that concert, one of which was "Rollin' Home Alone." It is one of those songs with few lyrics that repeat with small changes to augment the story. Again, while interpreting every lyric is not the aim of this blog, there are so few that my options are to dissect the entire thing or not at all. That being said, lets dig in.
"Rollin' home alone, here we go again, as if it's not alright, as if I need a friend." The second time through last couplet changes to "As if I even care, I might as well pretend." The tone of the verses come off in a slight sarcasm that truly sets up the hopeless feel of the song. One really gets the idea that this has happened many times before and the character is self aware enough to know he is headed down the same path as always and once again without recourse.
The chorus is what really gets me. "But I bought you something nice, yeah I got you something warm, for when the weather turns, when will I ever learn." "For when," becomes "And then," in the second chorus. The character tried his hardest. I got you a gift, not only a nice gift, but a thoughtful gift. It is getting cold out, and I bought you something warm. When will I ever learn...
Unrequited love is so hard because one has the hardest time realizing that it really has nothing to do with them. There is no way to make someone love you.
Musically there are many great things about this track. First off, a colleague of mine put it best when he said that Jason Lytle sings in such a way that any song could be reviewed for Suicide Watch. Lytle's voice is so beautiful, high and so fragile that it feels like turning the volume up too high might break it. The song certainly has the texture of a Jason Lytle song. It is driven by a rhythm section of acoustic guitar, bass, and drums, with synth and mellotron intertwining. My favorite part of the entire song is after the first chorus a guitar feedback loop builds out of the last chord and continues through the interlude, which chordally consists of a verse and chorus. This loop clashes with the verse chords and then resolves perfectly with the chorus chords. The tension and release of this is just amazing.
Now we come to the the concept that I think is the most interesting and most important about this blog. Lytle's record label, Anti, has a video up on their Youtube page in which Lytle speaks about the meanings of the songs on the record. He states that "Rollin' Home Alone" is about "... just feelin free. I don't know, either not having a girlfriend anymore, or not having a girlfriend, or just not really, not really caring, either way, and just skateboarding, drifting, rolling down the street; rolling home alone." The songwriter himself not only has a different view of the song, he has an almost completely opposite view. This goes to show that every piece of art is completely open to the full range of interpretation, and furthermore amplifies the idea that once a person creates something and submits it to anyone other than themselves it is no longer theirs, it belongs to everyone.
This brings to conclusion the second edition of The Suicide Watch Songs Blog. As always I encourage discussion and suggestions. Feel free to comment or email me at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net. Next time we'll explore the genre I call "Devil May Care." Thanks for reading.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Sea Anemone
Welcome to Suicide Watch Song of The Week. It's a bit of a misnomer because I'm actually going to publish every other week. You can look forward to a post on the 1st and 15th of every month. What is this blog about? I'm going to review and analyze the music that I love best; anything that one would listen to when they want to kill themselves. You'll come to see shortly what this means to me and I hope to find out what that means to you. I am always interested in hearing new music and would love to hear what songs that you listen to on Suicide Watch or if there is any you would like me to feature on this blog. Feel free to email me at:
SuicideSongs@CommunistDayCareCenter.net
And now to this week’s song:
"Sea Anemone" by Jets To Brazil from Orange Rhyming Dictionary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jU5jcGGzc
Jets To Brazil was the brainchild of Blake Schwarzenbach, who put the band together after the breakup of his former band, Jawbreaker. "Sea Anemone" is the sixth track off of the first Jets To Brazil album, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, and it is this week's Suicide Watch Song.
If you were to listen to the rest of the album (as I highly suggest you do; it is brilliant) you would immediately notice that it has a different timbre than "Sea Anemone." The album has that later 90's grunge/pop kind of sound. It reminds me a lot of Matthew Sweet but not as pretty. Sea Anemone certainly fits on this album, but it also stands apart.
It opens with a single clean electric guitar soaked in just the right amount of reverb. The opening chords are played, then "The curtain's a sea anemone," and then space. "Anemone" is a hard word to say and Schwarzenbach articulates it beautifully. It is so clear, and then a momentary pause. He gives you enough time to think. One doesn't hear the word Anemone often. You are given the time to recall the image of a sea anemone. "in the way it sways," pause, are you thinking of the curtain, or the movement of the anemone? "To the slow breeze," Schwarzenbach completes the metaphor. Note that it sways "to" the slow breeze, not 'in' the slow breeze. The curtain reacts to wind in the same way one might react to music. It is a character, not an object.
The next couplet, "I lay spread out on the floor, looking at these things," pause "most of them are yours." Once again you are given time to think about what those things might be, and then you are filled in on the story. It continues, "And it's so nice, sitting very still, without those old shoes I could never fill." From the time one is a child they are conditioned to not give up. One is given the 'Quitters never win, and Winners never quit!' kind of bullshit. We all want to be perfect. We all want to bend reality with our will. We all want the spoils of war, and it hurts when you lose, but sometimes losing is the greatest relief because it means you don't have to be perfect anymore.
And then the band kicks in.
I could go through and analyze every single line, but I don't think that is necessary. One of the things that drew me to this song is how it is completely accessible and it lacks gullibility. By that I mean that Schwarzenbach has succeeded in writing a song that is straightforward in telling you everything you need to know, there is no mystery, yet the lyrics are delivered in such a way that you still feel you're figuring the song out.
We'll do one more verse for example:
"And it's so nice, sleeping here all alone ..." You picture the character in bed.
"with my ashtray ..." He's a smoker, the ashtray is next to the bed
"and white courtesy telephone." OH! HE'S IN A HOTEL!
Wait why is he in a hotel? He's living there? Oh, yeah, it must have been bad.
"and now I'm making out the shapes, like the shower rod ..." And it gets quiet here. This line hits me hard every time. "Can it take my weight?"
"I will tell you that I'm fine. I've got news friend, feels like 'm dying." I am forever thankful that he didn’t end that line with something like “I’m lying.”
Interestingly enough this song is redemptive at the end, even if it doesn't feel like it. Throughout we learn that a man has been forever changed and in a rough way. There is no more of the original man left, and though he is not ready to, he is forced to start anew. "It's the first day of my second life" "You can even keep the name, it never fit me anyway."
Here is a man reborn through pain. Maybe reborn is the wrong word. The man that was is not anymore. The man that now stands in his place is new, that new man knows but one thing: The man that lived before him left him a lot of pain to inherit.
The music is great. It is minimalistic and layered thick with simple lines, many times coming down to just the drums and voice on the heavy lyrics with some guitar ringing over from last measure. The mellotron at the end is an absolutely gorgeous touch and of course the song is in D minor, the saddest of all keys.
This is a great song from a great band with a lot to say. Orange Rhyming Dictionary listens like a Quentin Tarantino move in the way that you get more and more details about the story filled in with each passing song. You get all the details out of order and the whole thing makes sense by the end. That is not to say you have the whole story by the end, but I think the point is that there is no end. I just found out about this band and am eager to take in the rest of their catalog as well as Schwarzenbach's other projects.
That does it for this first installment of Suicide Watch Songs Of The Week. Feel free to email me at SuicideSongs@CommunistDayCareCenter.Net
SuicideSongs@CommunistDayCareCenter.net
And now to this week’s song:
"Sea Anemone" by Jets To Brazil from Orange Rhyming Dictionary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jU5jcGGzc
Jets To Brazil was the brainchild of Blake Schwarzenbach, who put the band together after the breakup of his former band, Jawbreaker. "Sea Anemone" is the sixth track off of the first Jets To Brazil album, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, and it is this week's Suicide Watch Song.
If you were to listen to the rest of the album (as I highly suggest you do; it is brilliant) you would immediately notice that it has a different timbre than "Sea Anemone." The album has that later 90's grunge/pop kind of sound. It reminds me a lot of Matthew Sweet but not as pretty. Sea Anemone certainly fits on this album, but it also stands apart.
It opens with a single clean electric guitar soaked in just the right amount of reverb. The opening chords are played, then "The curtain's a sea anemone," and then space. "Anemone" is a hard word to say and Schwarzenbach articulates it beautifully. It is so clear, and then a momentary pause. He gives you enough time to think. One doesn't hear the word Anemone often. You are given the time to recall the image of a sea anemone. "in the way it sways," pause, are you thinking of the curtain, or the movement of the anemone? "To the slow breeze," Schwarzenbach completes the metaphor. Note that it sways "to" the slow breeze, not 'in' the slow breeze. The curtain reacts to wind in the same way one might react to music. It is a character, not an object.
The next couplet, "I lay spread out on the floor, looking at these things," pause "most of them are yours." Once again you are given time to think about what those things might be, and then you are filled in on the story. It continues, "And it's so nice, sitting very still, without those old shoes I could never fill." From the time one is a child they are conditioned to not give up. One is given the 'Quitters never win, and Winners never quit!' kind of bullshit. We all want to be perfect. We all want to bend reality with our will. We all want the spoils of war, and it hurts when you lose, but sometimes losing is the greatest relief because it means you don't have to be perfect anymore.
And then the band kicks in.
I could go through and analyze every single line, but I don't think that is necessary. One of the things that drew me to this song is how it is completely accessible and it lacks gullibility. By that I mean that Schwarzenbach has succeeded in writing a song that is straightforward in telling you everything you need to know, there is no mystery, yet the lyrics are delivered in such a way that you still feel you're figuring the song out.
We'll do one more verse for example:
"And it's so nice, sleeping here all alone ..." You picture the character in bed.
"with my ashtray ..." He's a smoker, the ashtray is next to the bed
"and white courtesy telephone." OH! HE'S IN A HOTEL!
Wait why is he in a hotel? He's living there? Oh, yeah, it must have been bad.
"and now I'm making out the shapes, like the shower rod ..." And it gets quiet here. This line hits me hard every time. "Can it take my weight?"
"I will tell you that I'm fine. I've got news friend, feels like 'm dying." I am forever thankful that he didn’t end that line with something like “I’m lying.”
Interestingly enough this song is redemptive at the end, even if it doesn't feel like it. Throughout we learn that a man has been forever changed and in a rough way. There is no more of the original man left, and though he is not ready to, he is forced to start anew. "It's the first day of my second life" "You can even keep the name, it never fit me anyway."
Here is a man reborn through pain. Maybe reborn is the wrong word. The man that was is not anymore. The man that now stands in his place is new, that new man knows but one thing: The man that lived before him left him a lot of pain to inherit.
The music is great. It is minimalistic and layered thick with simple lines, many times coming down to just the drums and voice on the heavy lyrics with some guitar ringing over from last measure. The mellotron at the end is an absolutely gorgeous touch and of course the song is in D minor, the saddest of all keys.
This is a great song from a great band with a lot to say. Orange Rhyming Dictionary listens like a Quentin Tarantino move in the way that you get more and more details about the story filled in with each passing song. You get all the details out of order and the whole thing makes sense by the end. That is not to say you have the whole story by the end, but I think the point is that there is no end. I just found out about this band and am eager to take in the rest of their catalog as well as Schwarzenbach's other projects.
That does it for this first installment of Suicide Watch Songs Of The Week. Feel free to email me at SuicideSongs@CommunistDayCareCenter.Net
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