The Deconstruction

I am not usually prone to deconstructing the lyrics of pop songs. The craft of presenting a fine pop song includes melody, instrumentation, vocal style, production, and many other elements, lyrics being just one part of the equation. And I can fully appreciate a song with lyrics like:

My baby does the hanky panky
My baby does the hanky panky
My baby does the hanky panky
All night long

Yeah, not much more to say… Put just about any lyric in front of the right jangly garage band sound and you've got a winner in my book.

On the other end of the spectrum, lyrics at their best describe a specific and sublime human experience. Reducing the lyric of a lover’s lament to something like, “It’s about this guy and he really likes this girl, but she’s not really into him,” doesn’t really add much to the body of human knowledge.

My apologies to the late Joseph Campbell, but as far as I understand it, his main idea was that there are some central human truths that are unknowable and inexpressible except through metaphor and myth. He was speaking of why all cultures have religions, but perhaps it is also true that poetry, and by extension lyrics, can sometimes reveal a tiny little corner of Truth with a capital T that can’t really be further clarified.

But sometimes, I just can’t help it. That moment when a song that seemed completely opaque or much too simple starts to give up its secret is, for me, one of the great pleasures of being a listener.

Recently I purchased Heretic Pride by The Mountain Goats. There are a number of fine songs on the album, all of them lyrically interesting. One that at first seemed just pretty and sad, but later revealed a fuller meaning, is Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident.

Slumped up against the sink
Hair plastered to her cheeks
Marduk t-shirt sticking to her skin
Refugee from a disco in old east Berlin

Weightless, formless
Blameless, nameless

Stray syllables were gurgling
From her throat one at a time
Face hidden from my view
I let myself imagine she was you

Only weightless, formless
Blameless, nameless

And when I washed my hands
I ran the water hotter than I could stand

Half rising to a crouch
Sinking back down to the floor
In you’re walking keep your head low
Try to leave no traces when you go

Stay weightless, formless
Blameless, nameless

Obviously about a woman somewhat worse for wear half passed out in a men’s room somewhere. But when I really heard for the first time the line - I let myself imagine she was you…

Ahh, he imagines a moment of intimacy with this woman, or he imagines the woman in his life as this vulnerable stranger. Neither the woman slumped on the floor nor the ‘you’ he is speaking to are literally weightless. He means that the life, the past, the meaning of the woman in the Marduk tee has no weight or significance to him, the shape of who she is doesn’t exist for him, he has no shared history with her and has nothing to blame her for, he doesn’t even know her name. And in a moment of weakness, he is drawn to that. To cleanse himself of a feeling that hovers between guilt and disgust, he washes his hands in water that burns.

The loveliness of those few lines became so clear to me in that one little moment, I almost cried. Realizing all the emotion and experience compressed into those few simple lines put me in awe of the craft of the songwriter and of the human capacity for expression and understanding. And that is what it is all about.

There's plenty more to this song, but take a listen for yourself. And don't miss the comic book promo for the album.

I Dropped My Lollipop in the Dirt

Lust Lust Lust - The Raveonettes 8.5/10

I admit to being smitten with noise, fuzz, crunch and feedback. But as in all things, there are ways to do it well and ways to do it poorly. The Raveonettes do it well, very well. Sometimes dreamy and sometimes steamy boy/girl vocals mostly about... well, lust... float above or trade the spotlight with crashing noise and fuzzed out guitars. But it isn't just noise for noise's sake. Here the washes and walls of feedback propel the melody and provide the tension to raise the pretty and sometimes silly lyrics to the level of an immediate emotional rush.

You Want the Candy sums up the direction of most of the album. The pop/noise mix makes the comparison to Jesus and Mary Chain apt, but if the Reids were dipping in The Beach Boys' lyrical well, The Raveonettes have gone straight to The Archies. But it bops and pops and the fuzz dirties everything up until the whole thing sounds sexy as hell.

The other tracks are perhaps less "bubblegum gone bad", but this isn't an album to listen to for its searing lyrical insights. Aly Walk With Me succeeds as a droning love song to a real or imagined absent lover with heartbreaking, if somewhat ear-shattering, feedback playing off sad-sack vocals. Dead Sound is the heaviest on lyrical content, but its charm lies mostly in pretty harmonies and echoing bright guitars and keyboards juxtaposed with walls of fuzz and static, finally all crashing in on each other.

Blitzed draws more from some secret cache of surf pop that several bands seem to be tapping into lately. While perhaps not a standout track, the simple little riff that lays its foundation is enough to make you feel nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. Sad Transmission is underlaid with a teched out hand-clapped beat that would have felt at home in a 1963 girl group release. In fact, almost every track is some kind of reference to something that is in your musical subconscious or even conscious. Not just J&MC, but stuff from The Ronettes to Velvet Underground to Suicide to your favorite trip-hop to some forgotten film noir soundtrack. But Lust Lust Lust doesn't really sound derivative.

It sounds like dirty fun.