Fanfarlo and the Challenge of Craftsmanship

To this point, I've identified my definition of craftsmanship in terms of music having unique characteristics, or maximizing musical nuance (aka Birdy's Law), or enjoying the unexpected. All of which combine to support my longstanding tendency to like songs with multiple layers and complex arrangements.

It's tempting to suggest that there's a basic principle of probability at work: the more that's going on in a song, the more likely there's something that appeals to me through nuance or surprise.  To the extent that's true, though, there's also a risk: it may increase the probability that I come across something that I think doesn't work. Particularly since precise, complex arrangements aren't exactly easy musical accomplishments to achieve at all, much less make effective.

Fanfarlo reflects both the pleasures of craft and the difficulty of finding that complex alchemy that makes it work. Their debut album, Reservoir, consistently hit my sweet spot for arranged, nuanced pop. In "Ghosts" alone, there are a half-dozen pieces of craft that stand out as quite effective on their own terms, and even more so taken together.

1. The ability to integrate, and smoothly move between, a wide range of different instrumental tones and timbres, from the thumping bass at the beginning to the airy vocals at :46 to a mix of horns, piano, and strings for the bulk of the song.

2. Their ability, once those various layers are introduced, to combine them in varying ways to d.rive numerous dynamic shifts through out the song- the build on the bridge, after 2:30, is the most prominent example.

3. The drummer's effective use of his whole kit to support the instrumental tones of the song, relying on crisp hi-hat to support the thumping base, than switching to cymbals to support the lighter horn harmonies on the chorus.

4. The winding horn hook on the chorus, which hits a gratifying resolving chord at 2:01, but toys with expectations by spinning off into different variations on the melody line rather than overusing that resolution.

5. The singer's (and trumpeter's, a few times) effective use of controlled vibrato on his high notes, especially valuable for minimizing any vocal strain that could conflict with the bright, smooth instrumental tones.

6. The use of handclaps to reinforce the snare beat (first starting at 1:26)- subtle enough I didn't recognize them on the first listen, but very effective in strengthening the beat while avoiding any sharp rhythmic that could conflict with the smooth tones.

I could do the same for most of the other songs on the album. And 2011's follow-up, Rooms Filled With Light, demonstrated that they certainly hadn't lost that skill set; "Dig" does a similarly fine job of arranging multiple tones, and while also evolving their sound by focusing more on keyboards and synthesizers than the organic tones of Reservoir.

However, many of the other songs on Rooms Filled with Light make other arrangement choices that are significantly less successful. "Tunguska," for example, makes its slow tempo sound plodding through heavy drumming that stays almost unfailingly on plain, quarter note beats, and a zither with a strum so heavy it takes nearly a full beat to register. There's just as  many different layers and tones as the songs above, but the plodding takes much of the energy out of the interplay, and the use of a low organ that fills the space between other layers also dampens that spark.

The band also tries to push the boundaries of its sound by including some overt dissonance. There's nothing inherently wrong with dissonance, but the band doesn't integrate it well enough into the full arrangement to make it work. The verses of "Tightrope" start the song off with the same kind of bouncing bass and loping rhythm that worked so well for "Ghosts," but the chorus loses much of its momentum through dissonant and monotone vocals that coexist awkwardly with the clean harmonic work underneath. And the friction sounds even more off-putting during the bridge at 3:10; while "Ghosts" worked within its harmonic structure to develop a rich, impactful build on "Ghosts," the band instead chooses to use aharmonic horns that sound more an intrusion.

The album's first single, "Shiny Things," is perhaps an even clearer example of the same issue. The band uses a dissonant guitar bend as, in effect, its primary chorus hook (starting at 1:34 the first time out), but does nothing in the rest of the arrangement to make the sound feel like a natural fit. They might have been able to achieve that integration by introducing a few dissonant tones somewhere in the verses that would establish the dissonance as part of the harmonic structure of the full song, or by using the first occurrence of the dissonance to influence the arrangement thereafter. Instead, the bend occurs just on the two choruses, and again sounds more like an intrusion.

The typical critical terminology in a case like this is to say that the second album is a "decline" or a "disappointment" after the strengths of the first, but that doesn't feel right. Fanfarlo is still trying to do right by my values; they're very clearly working to find an effective balance between maintaining an effective core sound and trying to find the variations and new ideas that make it fresh. To these ears, they just misfired a few times in trying to do so, and that doesn't make them any less of a respectable and able band. It seems a lot more fair to point out what this misfires, do so in as constructive a fashion as possible, and express a sincere hope that they can find their way back to the right alchemy the next time out.

Poking at Albums with "Pokey Midsections"

I am a major cheapskate who buys a lot of music, and still buys it in album form. (I attribute the album-buying primarily to the presence of good used CD stores near home, but inertia and creeping curmudgeonliness probably have something to do with it, too.) The listening habit I've developed to square that circle is to listen to every album I buy at least 10 to 12 times, usually concentrated over the course of a week or so before I move on to the next album.

The habit is partly a means to ensure I feel that I'm getting my money's worth out of my purchases, but I think it's stuck because it's also paid off musically. A number of my favorite albums- Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock" and "Spirit of Eden," The Flaming Lips' "Embryonic," Panda Bear's "Person Pitch," the Mountain Goats' earliest albums- I found either unremarkable or off-putting on the first listen; it was the concentrated, repeated listening that revealed their qualities.

I by no means consider this the "right" way to listen to music, just the way that's worked for me. But I'm sure it has had a significant effect on the fact those favorite albums are what they are. For one thing, it probably ties in to how I define terms like "craftsmanship" and "good songwriting". I'm probably going to be more impressed by musical decisions that don't fully pay off until the seventh listen than someone whose listening habits are less intensive or systematic, and emphasize them more heavily in my personal definition of those general terms. (There's probably a lot of writing to be done on that topic; I'll save it for future posts.)

I've also found that I tend to disagree with the common album-review complaint that an album has a "slow midsection" or starts strong before declining in quality, and I suspect I can define that difference very specifically in terms of listening habits. I can't speak authoritatively for any given reviewer, but I think it's fair to say that they're listening to music with some different parameters than mine. Most clearly, they're facing deadline pressures to finish reviews by release dates, while I take as much time as I please- and this may place fairly strict limits on the time they listen to the album, depending on how soon in advance they can get review copies. While I'm devoting my leisure time to these albums in as deliberate a fashion as I like, I assume most reviewers are trying to juggle one review among various other work tasks. And while I can ramble on as long as I like on this here blog, many reviewers are probably facing some degree of restraint on their word counts, creating the imperative to highlight their most concise criticisms (or praise).

The result I frequently see is that I agree with reviewer criticisms of weak sections of albums on roughly my third or fourth listen- and disagree after several more of my listens. Pitchfork hung much of its criticism of Elbow's most recent album, "Build a Rocket Boys!," on the criticism of a "pokey midsection" that "abates melodically." As far as I can infer, this has to be the two tracks between "Neat Little Rows," which the review itself highlights as "stomping," and "High Ideals," which has arguably the most complex arrangement on the album. Those two tracks didn't register with me much, either, for a while. But listened to on its own terms, it sounds to me like "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" has just as much melody as anything else on the album- it just took a while to come through in the album context because it's so much quieter than its surroundings. I'll still grant that "The Night Will Always Win" may be one of the weaker songs of the album, but it can't bear the weight of a "pokey midsection" all by itself.

Pitchfork similarly criticizes the songwriting on the Title Tracks' "In Blank" for "petering out a little" after a strong first four songs. (Not intending to pick on Pitchfork here- I see this in reviews from plenty of sources, these are just the examples that are coming to mind.) Which, again, is consistent with my experience on early listens; the first four songs were so immediate and consistent to dominate my experience. But that eventually smoothed out a few listens later- the chorus of "All Tricks" has just as much melodic snap as anything on the album, it just took a few more listens to sink in.

I'll admit I don't have authoritative knowledge of the process by which the reviewers listened to these albums. But this is a pattern I see often enough to make this a reasonable hypothesis: reviewers can tend to have less immersive listening experiences to an album than I will, and that are more likely to diverge in opinions on album pacing as a result. To be clear, I don't find anything wrong with this. Reviewers may be less immersed for reasons outside their control, and there may be plenty of other listeners who listen to music differently than I do anyhow.

I should note that I also believe my system may bring its own biases to the table. I may have a tendency to underrate albums that are oriented towards immediacy and don't gain as much value-added on the tenth listen. This may drive me away from, say, even the best of simple punk-pop, as much as I might enjoy the first-listen experience. I also may have a tendency to dismiss albums that don't vary much in tempo, tone, or melody for the entire duration, even if I might enjoy any given song on the album if it came up in an iPod shuffle. At some point in the future I'll have to revisit some music that could fit either description and put these guesses to the test.