Lyrics, Love and a Box of Crayons

Those primary school kids have the idea; you know, fold a piece of paper in half, pull out that box of crayons and take care of Valentine’s Day in a jiffy. Yes, the heart on the front is out of proportion, and colouring inside the lines is out of the question, but they nailed the sentiment in the purest way: I like you, do you like me too? The industrious kids might even pluck a couple of petunias from mum’s flower bed (unless that’s the sort of thing that gets you beat up at school these days).
The cynics will tell you it’s a sham, and that you can’t turn love into a commodity, but for those amongst us that aren’t that jaded yet, Valentine’s Day grants free reign for those confessions of tender intentions.

This said, by now we are all too aware that roses are red and violets are, well, violet (yeah, they got me with that fib too), so let’s sidestep the poetry path and move over to that expression of love that has trumped since time immemorial: music. Hopefully, this musical exploration of the love’s due courses might sway even the most cynical of you, as I do my damnedest to offer a platter of songs suited to Valentine’s Day ranging from light finger food to the spare-ribs sans a napkin kind of deal. So, whether you have a significant other or you’re navigating the day solo, you can feel you’ve eaten your full.


The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
A sweet number delivered with distinct certainty. It’s the certainty of feelings against the odds of distance. With the plague of indifference running rampant in society, it’s refreshing to hear declarations that are so sure-handed. The intro builds anticipation with bursting bubbles of synths leaping from speaker to speaker before Ben Gibbard delivers the opening line: “I am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images, and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned. I have to speculate that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes”. We are richer for Gibbard’s fondness for the Casio keyboards jettisoned at the bottom of a box in your garage marked ‘toys’.

Rilo Kiley – Portions for Foxes
You’ve been warned, and told to steer clear, but temptation from a talking snake moonlighting as a produce salesman is just too hard to deny. The consequences are secondary – that’s hedonism for you – but oh what fun, we’ll clean up in the morning. Easily the band’s most accessible track, ‘Portions for Foxes’ is an ultra-catchy ode to indulgence of the carnal kind. The song alludes to an acceptance of self-depreciation on the dominant moral scale of society, but it’s more of a sneer in light of that scale having ridiculously high standards. Forbidden fruits are the best kind.

Something Corporate – Konstantine
This track is the epitome of high-school sentiment, but it’s comforting to know it was written by someone of that age, and not a forty year-old pandering to teenagers. From the piano crescendo to the overly earnest vocal delivery, the song captures the idealism of youth, big dreams and all. The songwriter Andrew McMahon now fronts a more mature outfit, but there are rumours of reunion concerts planned which speaks to the idea that although you may be far-removed from such romanticizing, there is significance in remembering you once felt like that, and that it was enough.

Queens of the Stone Age – Make it Wit Chu
On first impression, it seems odd that a band that is primarily known for heavier rock could pull this off. However they have always had a knack for killer guitar licks, and in this case Queens of the Stone Age have put that to use in creating this bluesy, suave (although not-so-subtle) number about sex. If the piano doesn’t already have you itching to disrobe, the guitar on this track could wrest that belt from your pantloops all by itself.

Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand in Mine
An instrumental track that manages to be incredibly affecting over its eight minute length. If your dreams had a resident electric orchestra, this is sort of music you would want your nightly adventures conducted to. The song is wide-eyed and graceful in its intricacy, and momentous and weighty at its crests, but poignant throughout, offering the overriding sensation of hope. The best part, though? You get to fill in the words.

Bloc Party – This Modern Love
This track was tucked away on the band’s sublime debut. It’s a lo-fi contemplation of modern relationships, but focused in the personal sense on the selfishness that marks one’s incongruity with them. There is a tangible impression of claustrophobia here from both the hushed vocals and spare instrumentation. The questions the song poses are those you would have visited in the throngs of hesitation already, but once more, “What are you holding out for, what’s always in the way?”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
On ‘Maps’, listeners got their first taste of the tender side of Karen O, who up until this point had seemed simply beyond restraint. The song is best experienced with its superb music video counterpart, so as to witness the utter vulnerability in the lead lady’s eyes on stage in front of a small, scrutinizing audience. The microphone howls we became so accustomed to are, here, replaced with a desperate plea to a lover in the most important and certainly the most delicate song the band have produced.

Why? – Simeon’s Dilemma
A song for the stalker in you. Come on, we’ve all taken an indirect route that just happens to pass a certain somebody’s house. This isn’t even a case of unrequited love, so much as it being flat-out unnoticed. Thankfully the topic is in the hands of a gifted wordsmith, Yoni Wolf, who never shies away from excruciating honesty. He claims “You’re the only proper noun I need” over the rising chimes of the piano, and later “Are you a female young messiah for stowaways… are you what church folk mean by the good news?”. Looking to be saved has taken a wicked context in our hyper-aware state of living; the result is a lot of lonely, disconnected people… and things called restraining orders.

Say Anything – Alive With the Glory of Love
The nervous tapping that you mistake for a foot spasm which is actually your body begging you to act on something; that is the place this song occurs. The fact that it details two lovers’ escape from a prison work-camp validates the song’s request for revolt. Charismatic front man,
Max Bemis, is at his most vigorous here, and it’s positively infectious if not for the raspy guitars behind him. If you ever wanted to elope and needed a love-crazed soundtrack for the getaway, here it is.

Stars – One More Night
The band has always had a flair for pretty pop music, emphasized mainly by the interplay between the male and female leads. In this song that interplay resembles a conversation between lovers in celebration of their concluding relationship. There is clarity in their dissolution, an awareness of things becoming unhinged, but also a reclamation of the good things discovered along the way. Hints of this duality are found in lines like: “The bed is unmade, like everything is. Dark little heaven at the top of the stairs.” The violins and brittle piano notes back up lyrics that betray knowledge that can only be learned through intimacy.

The Format – Inches and Falling
Exuding the same contagious joy found in his new project, Fun, Nate Ruess urges us to forget the pitfalls of romance and simply affirm love for the capital L’s own sake. The track doesn’t have an object of affection, instead, serving only as a reminder of the righteousness that spews forth as a by-product of meeting love’s embrace. The uplifting ditty is made complete via enthused horn sections and parade-like delights. Think of it as a nursery rhyme for adults.

Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up
Backtracking to Ryan Adams’ first solo record is a double-edged sword, because for all the splendour of its country styling, it casts a long shadow he hasn’t yet been able to surpass. The lack of self-editing in the current state of his career is a bane, where he seems to suffer from musical verbosity. But returning to that other edge of the blade, on ‘Come Pick Me Up’ the harmonica and steel guitars accompany what is essentially a song brimming with the reckless abandon of love. The unforgettable chorus is delivered with Adams’ characteristic southern tone in a lingering appeal for emotional violence.

Mazzy Star – Fade Into You
A sweeping lullaby from the 90’s, ‘Fade Into You’ is the song missing from every wedding playlist. Granted, in the pre-internet age it didn’t even appear as a blip on the music landscape radar. Singer, Hope Sandoval, has an unmistakeable seductive voice that manages to soothe and entice simultaneously. Regardless of how many feet you would step on in the process, this song deserves to be slow-danced to.

Bon Iver – Skinny Love
The story goes like this: a relationship dissolves, sending boy retreating into a cabin in the woods to exorcise the demons in the afterglow. The outcome is stripped down, devoid of resentment and anger, instead electing to radiate with the embers of resignation. You would be hard-pressed to find somebody sounding so exposed in such an insightful way. It’s a counter intuitive move; where most of us would choose to keep our cards pressed firmly to our chests in an attempt to salvage what remains of our pride, Justin Vernon lays his hand down in plain sight. The song is completely defenceless, and so much prettier for it.

So, after all the lyrics are said and done, I’ll add to them in this peace-offering that, whatever you make of Valentine’s Day, even if you aren’t singing along, at least try hum the melody.

Techno-Metal Anyone? By Michael Coetzer

The early nineties was a polarizing time to be a pop-culture sponge. Where I lived at the time, you were either a Greenday follower, or a Nirvana fan, rarely both. There was a clear-cut social distinction between two, one on hand frivolous brats, and the other brooding miserablists. Artists seldom strayed from the confines of their genres, keeping proceedings primarily by the book.
The musical climate of today is quite different, not only in production, but certainly in consumption. (When last did you purchase a cd, cheapskate?) Genres that were once clearly demarcated have become permeable, and it’s evident that dialogues have developed between musical varieties. The digressions music has taken have spurned hundreds of coined terms attempting to categorize all the cross-pollination going on, and while there will always be unholy matrimonies (Techno-Metal anyone?), all this genre hopscotch has produced some exciting amalgamations.
The term ‘indie’, entailing independence from major record labels, doesn’t describe a genre so much as a fluid aesthetic. Where labels (read: The Man) push for marketability above artistic integrity, indie has always provided an outlet for those intent on sticking it to said Man. Previously encompassing sounds that resided only on the periphery, indie has now entered the mainstream consciousness; this inevitably creates a tension between those lamenting its popularity, and those embracing it. With the general indifference prevalent in our globalised society, it’s hard to imagine the arrival of a unifying anthem or cause; but the tension has to amount to something right? A little bit of friction is productive; it worked out okay for those guys that stormed the Bastille didn’t it?
It’s futile trying to establish who fits under the indie umbrella because the movement has a secret weapon in assimilation, cherry-picking musical sensibilities from the deluge. It’s a wide berth, spanning from the grandiosity of The Arcade Fire, the poise of slackers, The Strokes, to the post-millennial drone of Radiohead. Without the restrictions of convention to follow, artists have run rampant, borrowing sounds from any and every other genre; Vampire Weekend somehow roped in reggae, The Killers revived new-wave, The Hold Steady channeled The Boss, and boy wonder, Conor Oberst, took over the confessional vacated by Dylan. So hey, man, my electric guitar can totally be friends with your trombone now, fudge it, bring your glockenspiel too.
Listening to Japandroids debut Post-Nothing with its fuzzy guitars and bang your steering wheel to bits drumming, on ‘Young Hearts Spark Fire’ as they sing "We used to dream/ Now we worry about dying/ I don't want to worry about dying.”. A line so simple may seem suspect, but it’s delivered with contagious conviction, the energy and sheer velocity of it is incendiary. It seems prudent, all things considered then, to be less concerned about where music is situated and how to classify it, and more about where it’s going. Be excited.

Michael Lifts the Latch… by Michael Coetzer

I’m a selfish bugger, but I’m learning slowly. A friend once told me that songs are like birds, and you see, I harbour the habit of wanting to keep them in cages. She was quite right in saying that they should be able to fly freely and fall on willing ears, so here goes, I’m lifting the latch.

Let’s start with the state of the nation. Album sales are continuing their steady decline, and anachronistic record labels still refuse to embrace the new model of democratized art the internet has allowed, instead choosing to persecute their customers, but all hope is not lost. Commercial radio seems to have gained some sensibility, embracing indie and electronica acts like Kings of Leon, Mgmt and Empire of the Sun. Alas, the members of Nickleback are still allowed to touch instruments.

If you manage to sift through the swirling cultural void currently occupied by auto-tune vocals and bands like Brokencyde, you’ll find that creativity is alive and well, even flourishing, fervently denouncing kitsch as king. Just listen to the bluesy, punk tinged ‘59 Sound’ by New Jersey’s The Gaslight Anthem, or the flippant (what economic meltdown?) swagger of Tv on the Radio’s ‘Dear Science’, and it’s evident not everyone is caught up in the malaise.

The year has run half its course, and the annual best-of lists are going to prove tough to compile. We’ve had stellar records from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver continued to amaze, the quite frankly bat-sh#t crazy Patrick Wolf gave a nod to Bowie, and both Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse put out solid ep’s.

Besides musical musings, all the advice I can offer is that a comfy pair of shoes goes a long way; I’m excited about doing this blog, and surprisingly about things in general. To quote the sultry Emily Haines, “Help I’m alive, and my heart is beating like a hammer.”