Phoenix, Bon Iver, and Birdy's Law

Birdy is a 16-year old singer and pianist from Britain who won a national talent contest, released a covers album that was a hit in Europe, and has racked up millions upon millions of YouTube views. Needless to say, that's a remarkable accomplishment at that age, and it's clearly backed up with genuine musical chops.

She also appears to have pretty impressive taste in covers. Her biggest hit to date is a cover of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love," and she's also covered Phoenix's "1901," which I'd consider two of the very best pop songs of the past five years.

So it bugs me a little that, as impressive as she is, I can't help but hear these as distinctly inferior covers of great songs. Musically, they're just fine- both are very well-sung (particularly "Skinny Love"), competently played, and effectively set a mood- but to me, the stripped-down arrangements seem to have taken most of the life out of the originals.

At first listen, I found this hard to reconcile with my opinion that both originals are great for melodic reasons. Before I heard Birdy's versions, my highest praise for the originals would have been that their melodies are strong enough to manage the difficult feat of sounding instantly memorable on the first listen and still sounding fresh and engaging on the twentieth. But if that's true, why wouldn't I hear Birdy's simpler presentations as simply reinforcing that strength?

The answer, I think, is that I implicitly define melody as something more than just the notes strung together. What I hear as strong melody is typically those melodies fleshed out with additional qualities of rhythm, harmony, performance, and arrangement, and it's those qualities that lend the original versions much of their power.

Of the two covers, "Skinny Love" clearly sounds more similar to the original; all the basic melodic pieces are there. But Bon Iver's album version simply does more with those pieces than Birdy's. Rather than quarter notes on the piano, Justin Vernon's accompanying himself with a syncopated guitar rhythm that, to these ears adds more momentum and power. Birdy's accompaniment also uses very stable harmonic structures, while Vernon's guitar flavors the melody by occasionally breaking down into dissonance or unexpected minor chords (the 2:20 mark, for example). And Vernon's vocals are adding more as well; the way he hits the word "told" on each line of the chorus lends a power Birdy's smoother vocal performance lacks.

By contrast, the "1901" cover doesn't even sound all that much like the original song, because a lot of what Phoenix does to lend melodic power- on this song and others- comes in their substantial ability to arrange multiple, interlocking melodies, rhythms, and tones. The strongest, example, for me, comes at the 0:40 mark (and each verse thereafter). The vocals, overlaid on the high, fast guitar melody, overlaid on the stable five-note synthetic bass riff that anchors the entire song, accompanied by a drum pattern that hits entirely different beats than any of the three melodies, creates what I find to be a tremendously effective, four-part dynamic. Any one of those four lines would probably sound fine on their own, and two or three of them together would sound very good, but it's the ability to integrate all four so organically that allows Phoenix to create a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts.

In short, Birdy loses power, to my ears, because she's using such a limited range of her musical options compared to the originals. To repeat, her stripped-down versions still create an effective mood on its own, and there are clearly plenty of listeners who find that perfectly effective. But to me, this makes clear that an essential aspect of my personal taste is the use of a large musical toolbox. There's any number of different ways of doing so, from Justin Vernon doing a lot with a simple arrangement to Phoenix's maximalist approach, but perhaps one way I define "craft" is the effective use of numerous different musical nuances.

Let's call it "Birdy's Law." I'll admit, it's partly just that I'd enjoy someone arguing that Birdy's law is not governed by reason, but I think it works anyway. I'll put the law to the test again in future posts.

Why I've Stopped Listening to Mumford and Sons, and Why Scott Hutchinson Should Be Nicer About It

Scott Hutchinson, the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, raised a spot of bother in the British music press the other day for saying that he "fucking hate[s]" Mumford and Sons. He proceeded to explain that he "thought the first record did something that I appreciated, but with the second they were just shoveling the same shit. And that's one of the reasons we're trying to separate ourselves, because it's a huge insult to someone who's invested in the band to give them more of the same."

Obviously, the headlines highlighted the hating and the shit-shoveling. But he does have a point, even if it's expressed in a way that will cause lots of people to miss it. In fact, I think his underlying point is spot-on, and I suspect the poor expression comes from the problem that led me to start this blog in the first place- it's not clear how to clearly and powerfully express that value without devolving into such harsh terms.

I can't speak with certainty for Hutchinson, but what I read into his statement are the same implicit values that underlay what I've defined as the Saturation Principle. I'm sure that he, like I, has listened to an enormous amount of music in his life to date, and that he therefore values new music that departs from the familiar. He clearly makes that a value in creating his own music, which I very much respect. And I hear in Mumford and Sons the same thing he apparently does; the way I think of it is that they've brought the Saturation Principle upon themselves.

I originally explained the saturation principle in terms of new bands sounding too much like others, and that is the most common way I experience it. But the less inflammatory parts of Hutchinson's statements capture very well the other scenario where the principle comes into play- when a band who stands out at first repeats themselves with so little variation that they create diminishing returns. It's happened before; Will Oldham's done too many spare acoustic albums at this point for the new one to sound fresh to me, even though I still like his more arranged work. However, Mumford and Sons are such a clear and powerful example that they now own the concept in my mind. Let's call it the Mumford Corollary.

Below are four Mumford songs- two singles from the first album, the first single from the second album, and the opener from the second album. There are three dominant instrumental characteristics I hear in each song- and they're the same three, deployed in exactly the same way:

1. A chugging guitar melody on the verses that follows the same rhythmic pattern- four or five notes, accent on the second or third note, followed by two final notes close together. (Put another way, it sounds something like ba-BA-baba.) I can't hear ANY difference between the rhythm on Roll Away Your Stone and I Will Wait, and the other two have only negligible variations.

2. A pounding kick drum that steadily plays either quarter notes (on the 4/4 songs) or on the first and fourth beat of Babel's 6/8 time signature. It arrives every time they hit a chorus, drops out for verses, then comes back louder.

3. A banjo playing steady sixteenth notes within the existing chord, which is in precise tandem with the bass drum- drops out during the soft verses, comes in to add drama at the choruses.

I liked Little Lion Man when I heard it, enough to buy the first album. Each song after that, of the four above,  has sounded progressively less interesting. Most artists have something like a signature sound, such that you know who it is when you hear them. But Mumford's appears to be based on a particularly limited range of musical characteristics- basically the three above- deployed with particularly minimal variation. By the third and fourth songs, I don't feel like I'm getting ANYTHING that isn't exactly what I've gotten before- no different instruments, no different rhythms, no different melodic approaches.

To be sure, Mumford is capable of more variation than the four songs above. I still think their strongest song is "The Cave," which goes directly against the grain of some of their methods above- a note line rather than a strum for the verse guitar, different instrumentation (the piano has a relevant countermelody), and a structure that changes keys by modulating upwards, rather than sticking with the same chords the song started with, and gradually builds rather than whipsawing between soft and loud. Now, it still sounds plenty like a Mumford song- they still use the kick drum and the banjo in exactly the same way on the choruses- but it still sounds fresher than even their newer songs, because the core characteristics of their sound are integrated with some slightly different musical decisions.

If Mumford was producing more songs that pushed and pulled their sound in even those limited ways, I might still enjoy them as much as I did after the first few songs. I'm guessing the same is true for Scott Hutchinson, whose band sounds fundamentally similar across their albums. The difference is that we're both looking to balance core sounds with new ideas- to make every song sound like both the band's song and its own unique entity. Scott's applying that value in the music he makes himself, he does a great job of it, and it's part of the reason Frightened Rabbit is one of my favorite bands. (Seriously, they're terrific. Check them out, starting with their new single, below.)

Where Scott still goes too far, though, is in saying Mumford is "insulting" its fans by following such a narrow path. Mumford and Sons are not meeting one of our shared musical values, and it's totally fair to say so. But the band certainly seems to enjoy what they're doing, and they still have plenty of fans who continue to enjoy what they're doing, and I think that's wonderful for both sides. Music is bringing them pleasure like it does for us, just in different ways. I'd prefer to focus on that shared pleasure and keep figuring out polite ways to explain why we get it in different ways.

Avoiding the Saturation Principle: My Logic(?) in Judging New Music

I'm pretty comfortable citing the Saturation Principle to explain many of the cases where I'm not interested in a certain piece of music. I'll work in future posts to further apply the principle and some nuances in the concept, but I'm sure it's there. It underlies the conscious mental process I go through when I listen a piece of music for the first time- I'm looking for something that doesn't sound familiar that has some characteristic that makes it feel like a new musical experience. If something doesn't pass the test, it's the flip side of that- it doesn't seem to expand upon the (large amount of) music I've heard before.

I have a harder time explaining for myself what helps a song or album to pass the test. I do know that I tend to have one of the following two thoughts:

1. This sounds unique. I touched on this in the original post- after 10-15 years of familiarity with a certain type of music, a twist can go a long way. I know a lot of people find the vocals on Hold Steady songs off-putting, and I can see why, especially in earlier songs like the below. But for someone who had heard plenty of music that already fit the description of raise-the-goblet-of-rock arena anthems, overlaying it with Craig Finn's half-crazed ranting made some of the more familiar characteristics sound fresh again.

This isn't to say that any twist will do. In this particular case, the unhinged quality Finn achieves by largely avoiding rhythmic and melodic integration into the song might well be too much to take if it wasn't balanced by the fact his lyrics are consistently thoughtful, vivid, even literate. (I particularly like the the image of trashy John the Baptist-type with crosses made of pipes and planks leaned up against the nitrous tanks he's taking hits from.) More broadly,  what I'm interested in listening to has always remained within the standard sorts of rock/pop/folk/blues musical forms.

In short, I know that "unique" for me is a matter of balancing the new with the familiar. What I find harder to explain why the balance works for me in a case like the Hold Steady, and doesn't for, say, Antony, who has a similarly unique voice and works within another musical form I frequently like.

2. This is [insert name of genre] done really well. Plenty of bands I like would sound perfectly normal and familiar to more casual listeners than I. I'm guessing most of you would be quick to peg the Ron Sexsmith song below as soft rock, adult contemporary, or whatever other genre term you use to the describe the types of radio stations that air Delilah and John Tesh. I just consider it a superior example of the genre.

When I try to explain why, though, I tend to lean back on terms like craftsmanship or say it's simply good songwriting- exactly the sort of language that I'm trying to expand upon here. Something "unique" tends to at least be identifiable, even if I want to better explain why some such qualities work better for me than others. But there's something more holistic to explaining an idea like craftsmanship, so it's more difficult to define what exactly that is.

For purposes of this blog, then, both parts of this logic are only starting points for discussion, ones that raise as many questions as answers. In writing about music I like here, the focus will be on how I define terms like "unique," "well-done," and "well-written" in each particular case.

Saying Something Nice: Train

I consider some music lousy. I think I have good reasons. Even so, I've never been able to answer for myself one question: if that music brings other people pleasure, who cares? I like music; why should I denigrate anybody else's enjoyment of same? And it seems even less arguable that MAKING the music is a pleasure to the people involved, who almost always also have far more songwriting skills and/or musical chops than I do. Who the hell am I to criticize?

I want to focus this blog on music I like, even if some of the discussion will come in the form of constructive criticism. But if I'm trying to find a better way to talk about music, it's also important to be able to apply it to the music I like least. And any honest way of doing so needs to acknowledge that I still have reasons for disliking the music, even if I'm trying to get away from the sorts of blanket dismissals or snarky one-liners that ultimately attack people who are just enjoying music.

So my first shot is this: after acknowledging my snarky worst impulses, I'd like to try to find something genuinely and substantively nice to say about music I dislike. Then I'd like to return to criticizing, but with the hope that saying something nice results in a more balanced and constructive critique. 

I'll give myself a relatively tough assignment to start: Train.

Tempting Snarky Dismissal: Middle-aged guys trying to act half their age by making drippy, dumbass pop music.

Hey, Say Something Nice: They consistently try to do something a little different with their lyrics. Most traditional pop lyrics, in English-professor terms, use terminal rhyme, where the rhymes occur at the end of the end of each lyrical clause. A clear example from the Magnetic Fields ("I Don't Believe You"), where the rhyme occurs at the end of each distinct statement:

So you quote love unquote me
Well, stranger things have come to be
But let's agree to disagree

Stephin Merritt is often clever enough to write interesting lyrics within this scheme, but a lot of pop music ends up relying on clichéd, overly familiar rhyme schemes to make this work. Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" is the first major offender that comes to mind- sorry, Lenny, but it just sounds thuddingly unoriginal to sing about how you want to fly so very high into the sky.

So credit to Train for breaking out of this structure by using internal rhyme, where the rhyme occurs in the middle of the second statement, rather than with the last word. This is standard in "Hey Soul Sister":

I knew I wouldn't forget you
So I went and let you blow my mind

The way you can cut a rug
Watching you is the only drug I need

Using a different scheme allows the lyrics to achieve a different sound and cadence on what's otherwise a rather straight-ahead pop song. And that also provides a melodic twist, since the vocal melody and phrasing is modified from the sorts of standard patterns that fit terminal rhyme.

Why That's Not Enough: They may be structured differently, but Train's lyrics are still awful enough to detract from whatever musical qualities they may have. I don't mind bland or vague lyrics that fit a song- early Beatles songs, for example, aren't exactly masterpieces of lyrical sophistication, but they fit the simplicity of the music, and they don't distract from the quality of the songwriting. But I do find that if lyrics don't sound at all like something actual things humans would say, it takes me out of the song. Take this internal rhyme scheme in "If It's Love":

My feet have been on the floor, flat like an Idol singer
Remember winger, I digress, I confess you are the best thing in my life

A different structure is more trouble than it's worth if you have to throw in a distractingly random reference to an '80s hair band to make it work. And even that's not as bad as "Calling All Angels":

When children have to play inside, so they don't disappear
While private eyes solve marriage lies 'cause we don't talk for years
And football teams are kissing queens and losing sight of having dreams
In a world where what we want is only what we want until it's ours

Who has ever used the phrase "marriage lies"? Who are the "queens"? How can you lose sight of HAVING dreams, as opposed to losing the ability to achieve them?

I find these lyrics bad because they're silly and laughable enough to dominate my listening experience and my post-hoc memory of the song. But they bother me for a deeper reason, too: they sound lazy. It clearly sounds like they threw in "cut a rug" because it's the first thing they thought of to rhyme with drug. And I'm guessing they weren't intending to take a stand against gay football players, but they apparently didn't think enough about their lyrics to realize that's the most logical way the "Calling All Angels" passage reads in context. I care enough about music to spend time on this blog trying to express that in writing. I think it's fair for me to ask musicians to make more of an effort than this in return.

How The Joy Formidable Could Be More, Um, Formidable

That title is lame, I'm sorry. I suspect there's a correlation between the quality of a band name and the ability to mine good turns of phrase from it, but that can be a topic for another post.

One common criticism in reviews of The Joy Formidable's first album is that The Big Roar was all too accurate a title. Pitchfork concluded that it too often "sound[ed] like a big blur," while the Guardian's reviewer called it an "unyielding assault." I agree, and I think there's a specific songcraft issue behind it. The band is clearly skilled at writing anthemic riffs and choruses, but they often don't use the kind of melodic and harmonic additions that would add some nuance and clear up the blur.

Take "Magnifying Glass." There's a lot of good stuff here: Strong, instantly memorable initial riff; punchy transition from verse to chorus, thanks largely to a switch to a clearer, sharper vocal recording. I particularly like the way they use the final bridge (starting at 1:36) to add some rhythmic power to the end of the song. After using steady quarter-note beats through the song to that point, dropping to a sparser, syncopated beat serves makes their final return to the core riff sound much more forceful

Still, that final return (at 2:02) feels a little empty, because the rhythmic build isn't melodically well-supported. The band adds a squealing high-pitched guitar to the mix, but it would be stretching to say it even offers a melody- it stays on one note for most of the riff before spiraling into some short notes that don't bear a clear relationship to the beat or (to these only kind-of trained ears) the harmonic structure created by the underlying riff. As a result, the guitar doesn't add anything to the song, much less help with the song-closing power the band is going for. It's just...there.

Other song structures also rely much more heavily on rhythm than melody/harmony for their anthemic force. The last minute or so of "Cradle" does better than "Magnifying Glass" at adding some melodic effect to their build- there's a guitar tone playing a two-note melody that feels organic and sounds rich. But it's not very prominent in the mix. The listener is probably going to feel more impacted by the repeated drum fills, and the ending phrase at 2:35 that utilizes the same approach as "Magnifying Glass"- a final return to the riff, accompanied by forceful quarter-note pounding by the drums.

The aggregate effect of this tendency over a 50-minute album is indeed an assaultive blur- a lot of rhythmic force, not offset by much melodic nuance. It's a good album, but it's a lot to take.

That said, the first single from their new album, out shortly, suggests some improvement. The use of the piano immediately sets a different, less pummeling tone. And there's more melodic flavor to the build at the end of the song (starting shortly before 3:00). The guitar melody is higher in the mix than in either of the songs above, and it's sufficiently well-integrated, melodically and harmonically- especially when it speeds up after 3:15- to carry much of the anthemic weight of the song. Here's hoping the rest of the album follows suit.

The Saturation Principle

I've got plenty of friends who enjoy them, but I just can't muster any interest in the Lumineers. Just my latest example of the hipster's lament: dismissing some popular band, even one that works within a broad genre (acoustic singer-songwriters) I listen to a lot.



It's fair for you to question whether I'm dismissing them for their popularity. Hell, I probably have dug a hole with those of you who have known me for a while by being pretty douche-y about those kind of arguments in college. (My wife is nodding right now.)

A lot of those college-age musical arguments were mostly just less-than-graceful efforts at self-definition. (My fellow socially awkward, indie-listening friends are nodding right now.) But older, fairer, more secure me still thinks the same way, and I think it boils down to two differences I still have with the sort of "average" listener that may like a popular band I dismiss.

1. I've listened to a LOT of music. I own around 850 albums, and that number grows almost weekly. For about the last 12 years, I've been listening to music an average of 6-8 hours a day, and that usually includes at least 15-20 minutes spent reading music-related sites and articles. 

2. I listen to music for its own sake. Less obvious, perhaps, but just as important. I don't primarily treat my albums as background music. More often than not, when I'm listening, I'm trying to actively engage with my music- listening to albums numerous times to catch their nuances, thinking about how it compares to that band's body of work or to other bands in the genre, listening to spot songs or moments that I think are great, maybe even starting a blog so I can pontificate about what I'm listening to.

In combination, those two facts make me vulnerable to what I'll call the saturation principle: the more music I listen to and actively engage with, the more likely I'll find it difficult to engage with a new piece of music, because to me it will sound similar to music I've heard before.

The effect of this principle is more or less a generalized version of the experience of listening to an overplayed song. You probably feel exhausted when you hear "Rolling in the Deep" or "Somebody that I Used to Know" or some other song you've heard literally hundreds of times in the past few months- the song becomes dull as you feel like you can predict the next notes, as the exciting or emotional moments lose their sense of surprise, as you can remember the lyrics in your sleep. Well, a similar thing happens for me with the Lumineers on much earlier listens, because even if I haven't heard the song, I feel like I've heard the instrumentation, the chord changes, the general melodic outline in a number of other songs I've already listened to. (In this case, Jay Farrar's work in Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt is one clear reference point.)

Which doesn't mean there's anything wrong with liking the Lumineers, at all- other people haven't listened to the same other music in the same way, and I might very well have liked their songs better 10 years ago, when I hadn't listened to the similar music that's now saturated my musical experience. It just means that at this point in my life, I'm looking for things that sound different, or that at least do a familiar thing in a unique way- and under my definition of "familiar," the Lumineers don't work for me.

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect that the saturation principle is relevant for a lot of my fellow, so-called hipsters. (At least the ones who get the title due to actual interest in music as opposed to just being irony-obsessed and annoying to New York Times writers.) The flip side of feeling "saturated" about a band like the Lumineers is finding an eccentric, hipster-loved band like Animal Collective or Sunset Rubdown or the Flaming Lips more appealing, in large part because they do sound different. What twenty year-old hipster me didn't appreciate is that it doesn't necessarily mean that music is incontrovertibly "better," or that others were missing out by not liking it- it just means that their musical experience was different (and probably less intensive) than mine.

A Statement of Purpose

"...if the aesthetics and criticism of music are ever to move out of the realm of whim, fancy, and prejudice, and if the analysis of music is ever to go beyond description which employs a special jargon, then some account of the meaning, content and communication of music more adequate than at present available must be given."
--Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, p. viii.

Yeah, another music blog. But I want to try to approach it in a slightly different way.

The main reason is that, nearly sixty years after the quote above was published, I don't feel like I have the "more adequate" account Meyer is referring to. I love music, and I listen to a lot of it, and I think I have the ability to make credible judgments of whether a certain piece of music is good or bad or somewhere in between. But I don't feel like I can articulate why I make the judgments I do as effectively as I want.

Obviously, there's plenty of music criticism that's designed to make those judgments. And a lot of it does a good job, in a particular way. After nearly 15 years of being a serious music listener, I'm very confident that reviews can give me an understanding of how, in general, a song or album sounds, how it compares to other music I'm familiar with, how it compares to the artist's other work. I've also read enough from certain reviewers or websites to know that when they rate an album as good, bad, or somewhere in between, there's a good chance I'll agree with them.

I find those reviews valuable. I first learned of the vast majority of the artists I like from reviews, and I don't know how easily I would have found out about them otherwise. Considering how much music I buy, reviews also deserve a lot of credit for helping me spend efficiently. (Those of you who know what a cheapskate I am know how much that means to me.) And if the writing I do here simply does the same for a few other readers, that alone will make it worth the time I've put in.

Still, even when I read the good reviews, I feel like there's something more that can be said. Many reviews have good musical description, and many have grades or ratings I consider reliable, but the language I have to connect the two isn't quite there.

When addressing exactly why an album deserves four stars rather than three and a half, or why an artist stands out within a familiar genre, the best tools that seem available to me (and to the reviewers I read) include descriptions of how the music feels, comparisons to other albums, or simple proclamations of an album's quality. Each of these tools has their value, because each of them often makes intuitive sense. I genuinely think that the Tallest Man on Earth "is so natural a songwriter that his tracks feel predetermined," that Wolf Parade songs have a special, "fervent intensity" I don't hear in similar bands, that Max Tundra songs are so "sui generis" to sound like nothing else I've heard, and that that's why I think each creates good, even great music. And I'm glad reviews with those statements existed to lead me to seek out those artists, and to help articulate and affirm what I like about them.

But I'm not sure I really know what any of those statements mean, or how to explain why each is true. At least I can't without falling back on basic descriptions or attempts at creative adjectives or general praise, and hoping we're on the same intuitive wavelength. And if we're not, then I may have lost an opportunity to explain things in a way that helps someone find a different way to connect to the same music, or to find a language that allows us to constructively disagree about music without devolving into the sniping and snark I see even in relatively friendly music discussions.

I'd like to see if I can do more: to listen to music more closely and see if I can develop a way of talking about it that makes sense even to someone who doesn't share my taste, and that better defines why I may like something you don't or vice versa. This may involve approaching my writing in a different way than the structure of a traditional album or track review; perhaps some broader posts trying to unpack my general standards for good music, or some focused posts trying to hone in on some specific, concrete characteristics that lead me to endorse more general statements such as the linked ones above. It may involve analyzing other reviews along with writing my own, especially those that make perfect intuitive sense to me, or make no intuitive sense at all. Or maybe I'll come up with other approaches as I'm just trying to explain what I want to articulate.

This is an experiment, to be sure. My attempts may not communicate any better than the existing reviews, or they may turn out unbearably dry and dull to read, or they may just lead me to appreciate why traditional reviews are written as they are. But I'd like to put my taste to the test and see if I can find a more precise and more constructive way to explain my musical opinions.