The Speculative Voice (Ken Stringfellow's "Shittalkers!" redux and The New Pornographers "The End of Medicine")

In my previous post on Ken Stringfellow's song "Shittalkers!" I glossed over some of the content of the song in order to discuss its emotional tenor, but now I want to return to the final section of the song to highlight something else. In claiming some kind of speculative content to these songs, that is, some sort of philosophical reflection upon the fundamental features of human life, I have largely neglected any discussion of the form that this content takes. To a certain extent this is because there is no preset way it has to be, although either a harmony or an extreme disjunction between form and content makes for the most interesting scenario. With regard to their harmony, I would like to look at a style that I think is particularly fitting as the embodiment of a mind reflecting upon itself and its conditions. I'll start with "Shittalkers!" because it is freshish.

As I noted in that previous post, Stringfellow sings in a couple of different tempos in "Shittalkers!". There is the first section which is sung but at a slower pace, and then there is the much fasterr chorus ("Back when you started....."), and then there is the second main section ("I got news for this town..."), which was my main focus previously and which is slow to the point to being more declaimed then sung. Then there is a return to the faster tempo chorus, which then continues on at the same pace into a new and final verse. Here are (as far as I can make out) the lyrics to that final section:

          Oh but innocence it never was a good game
          Sooner or later you’ll flicker in the eyes of fame
          Immolation’s absolute
          You can’t say what you said and give up the cutest eyes
          Defamation’s obsolete
          Take it all back what you said now,
          Take it back
          You went behind my back for the very last time

Stringfellow's delivery of these lines is impressive--from the chorus onward he is singing at a fast pace, maintaining the emotional intensity of his delivery while navigating some very tricky lines: the double f's of "flicker" and "fame" (and the thwarted expectation that it will be a flame that flickers, not fame), the rhyming of "game" and "fame," the half rhyme of "absolute" first with "cutest" (but he toys with us there with cute at bit before turning it into cutest and adding that little trill with "eyes") and then a double half rhyme (i'm not sure that's a term but oh well) with "obsolete" and of course, "immolation" (not a word you here in pop songs often) with "defamation" (also not a particularly common one). If you can gauge the complexity (or perhaps the fecundity) of a series of lines by the number of parenthetical remarks required to explain it, then these ones certainly rank well. And that makes Stringfellow's rapid-fire delivery, bouncing from line to line, even more impressive. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but I see a certain kinetic quality to the progression through these lines, as if the lines themselves possessed a form of internal self-propulsion, bouncing off each other. I think that, in the best cases, this happens on both the level of form and content. In the case of "Shittalkers!" we can see both: the aural links between the various final lines, along with the deployment of the distinctions between innocence and pretense, defamation and fame. Indeed, the unpacking of a concept or the articulation of a distinction provides an excellent pivot or joint (esp. given the connection between articulation and jointure) on which lines can turn, furthering their "propulsion."

The notion of a thought's "internal self-propulsion," as it were, is an eminently speculative notion, and lines that generate that kind of impression through the energy of their delivery and internal relationships seem to me to be particularly appropriate as vehicles for speculative thought, and even where the speculative content itself is lacking, the kind of imaginative capability that they demonstrate itself has speculative worth. And something like this doesn't have to be limited to music either, it should not be surprising that two of my favourite TV shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Pushing Daisies, both feature intelligent and playful dialogue at a rapid-fire pace, managing to balance humour and pathos in a rare and delightful way. As a side note (in a blog full of side notes), the two shows also both tackle the subject of what it would mean to come back from the dead, and do so in genuine and unflinching ways, and that itself is a particularly speculative topic (and speculative in a variety of ways too).

Because this is a bit of an airy notion, one no doubt grounded as much in my own musical and intellectual preferences as anything, let me provide another example, the song "The End of Medicine" by The New Pornographers.

As a kind of supergroup including the ever-excellent Neko Case, and with a lot of the song-writing duties divided between Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, one of the specialities of the The New Pornographers is crafting immaculately upbeat rock songs with great hooks and harmonies. Their first album, Mass Romantic, was a real breakout critical darling, and it is full of (nearly) unbridled energy, and I am tempted to pick a song like "The Body Says No" as a great example of what that energy could do. However, because of that "(nearly)" I am going to give props to their not quite-as-well-regarded second album Electric Version, which takes that energy and hones it to a fine edge. (And as a further side note I actually think their third album, Twin Cinema, is their best, but Electric Version is most illustrative of the particular quality I want to discuss here.)
The lyrics are here, and they are delivered in a kind of rapid-fire style with one almost bouncing off the other:

The angel cries, "You bastard!"
As we analyze the accent
So look out, you rock 'n' rollers

Over forty million served
And that's a record for the master
It stood forever after

So are we, are we, are we, are we facing
The end of all, of all the drugs we're lacing
With common sense and courtesy
And other things we thought would be the end of us but now
They won't allow us our intentions

Oh, the mother of invention
It's her pleasure to repeat with feeling:
Are we, are we, are we, are we facing
The end of all the medicine we're taking?

Somewhere in the system
There's an open-ended list
Of all the lies we tell
Unblinking, thinking
What could we be living?
Is it life
Or is it even in the realm of possibility?
You see it when you're missing
Who you came to see, is this thing
Even on and on and on?

Are we, are we, are we, are we facing
The end of all the medicine we're taking?

There are a couple of things to notice off the bat. First of all, there is a lot of play with language in the appropriation of various sayings and catchphrases: "over forty million served"; "the mother of invention"; "repeat with feeling" and "is this thing even on?" Second, there is a definite concern with repetition, both in the taking of medicine (we rarely ever just a drug once), the forty million servings, the "pleasure to repeat with feeling" and also the many "are we" 's happening throughout (plus the "is this thing even on and on and on." And third, I've made at least one change to the lyrics: it's a grammatical thing, but from small things big things can come.

Most people put a question mark at the end of the lines "The end of all, of all the drugs we're lacing" in the third stanza (and maybe that's how the lyrics appearing in the liner notes, I don't know having long since abandoned cds), and I can see why they do since that line does sound like it ends with a question given the rising intonation at the end. However, I've left it without one because I don't think that the question ends there, being simply about whether they are facing the end of medicine. The "with" that starts the next line logically follows the previous line--it is all of the drugs they are "lacing with common sense and courtesy," not simply the end of all the drugs they are lacing (especially since that leaves the question hanging about what they are lacing). But there is also the possibility that the third line ("with common sense and courtesy") actually modifies the first one, so that they are facing the end of medicine with common sense and courtesy. In either case, the issue is not just that the end of medicine may be at hand, but of how one faces this end and understands how it came about.
And I think this also opens up a fuller understanding of just what the song is about, which I see as an exploration of how a compulsive practice, say, drug-taking (perhaps a stand-in for any pleasurably repetitive habit, including music-making, "look out you rock n' rollers"), can change and develop out of itself by way of some kind of internal process. The idea is basically contained in these lines that I've been agonizing over:

          So are we, are we, are we, are we facing

          The end of all, of all the drugs we're lacing
          With common sense and courtesy
          And other things we thought would be the end of us but now
          They won't allow us our intentions

Because of casual changes that they made (like introducing the "grown up" qualities of common sense and courtesy into their pleasures) the subjects of this song find themselves alienated from their earlier intentions. Perhaps without even realizing it, they have become different people in the sense that they have embraced qualities and practices that their earlier selves explicitly rejected.
The practice has evolved, potentially evolved out of itself, and this is an ambiguous thing. If the end of medicine (as both its goal and the actual finishing point) is health, then it is a good thing. Whether we are talking recreational or medicinal drugs, it seems to me that drugs serve as a sign that something is not right. In the case of medicine, something is wrong with the body that needs to be rectified, and in the case of recreational drugs, there is something lacking in the life that the drugs supplement, or failing that, in the case of particularly addictive drugs, that level of dependence is just plain bad. (Now, some will no doubt claim that I am being too moralistic in my treatment of recreational drugs, and that's fine, there's an argument to be made there, but I take the position that most recreational drugs are a scourge.) The final full stanza can be read as a realization of the problems of repetition:

Somewhere in the system
There's an open-ended list
Of all the lies we tell
Unblinking, thinking
What could we be living?
Is it life
Or is it even in the realm of possibility?
You see it when you're missing
Who you came to see, is this thing
Even on and on and on?

I think these lines capture the numbing (and dumbing) effect of repetition--it is easy to do and say and think the same thing over and over again until they lose all meaning apart from the repetition itself. Life does become a lie that we just keep telling ourselves until we take it as the truth, until some sudden break in the routine, some unexpected absence, shows us the cracks in our lifestyle and makes us wonder of our lives, "is this even on?"

Of course, I said that this whole change was ambiguous, and it could be that the end of medicine, and common sense and courtesy, are themselves bad things. This final stanza can also be read as a diagnosis of the levelled-down, comfortable bourgeois existence that so many people trade their young pleasures. The repetition that turns life into a lie is not a matter of pleasure, but of respectability. The fun, manic energy of the song suggests that the band is on this side (and it would be just like me to go against it with the moralistic side). And in this regard I should mention the great guitar line that riffs off of the melody of the song. Starting at 1:55 and going basically until the song is done, this riff teases the listener, suggesting resolution at a number of moments before continuing on, keeping us anticipating the end of the song, the end of pleasure, the end of medicine.