Ken Stringfellow - "110 or 220V"

I could easily keep posting Guided by Voices content (and to a certain extent I will), but I will do something at least a little different and look at Ken Stringfellow's (one half of The Posies) song "110 or 220V," another song (like "Shittalkers," which I covered earlier) off of Danzig in the Moonlight. Here's the song

and the lyrics (as I've transcribed them myself, so any errors are mine):

I could never know you
And I never really want to
Is what love says to me

Pull some faces from a jar
And spread 'em on your outline
Until you have ceased to be

Reality is subject to cancellation
But whoever said I would be free
I created myself and volunteered
for the confederacy
I lost all the faith I had at the battle of New Orleans
Our country died, drowned in its sleep

Everybody thinks they are a lover and a fighter
A kind of spaceship hero
Well I was still leaning on that lie
And if they caught me again they'd sentence me so I could never die

But now the deals have all been struck
The prizes, they're all claimed up
There's nothing left worth staking

Put your hands into the darkness
And drive from your psyche
The model of modern efficiency
At 110 or 220V
I hope there's still something you still want to see in me

So, first of all, I've got to mention how gorgeous the harmonica is: its plaintive wail gets me every time. And it sets the tone for a pretty bleak opening: the initial lines are ambiguous, its not clear whether the grim picture that is "what love says to me" is a message that has delivered to the speaker through experience, or whether it is what that word/concept says to him. But either way it marks this song as one of loss and weariness. The song runs through these experiences, occupying what seems to be a series of historically dislocated positions.

The second stanza gets even deeper into the sense of dislocation by developing an image straight out of The Beatles' depressive tour de force: "Eleanor Rigby" (she who "keeps her face in a jar by the door"):
Pull some faces from a jar
And spread 'em on your outline
Until you have ceased to be
The face, rather than being the seat of personal identity, conceals and ultimately obliterates identity. At least for Rigby there is still just one face, the public face that she presents to the world, presumably a positive one that hides the lonely and impoverished reality of her life. 

In "110 or 220V" the situation seems even more extreme: there is no longer just a single face, but a jar full of them (and they are generically just "some faces," not even Rigby's "her face"), and like jam they get spread all over. What they cover is equally vague and empty, only "your outline." This whole situation reminds me of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," where Eliot declares that "there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." This vision of the social world treats it as a realm of pure externality: faces meeting other faces while the people behind them never meet.   

There are no guarantees to life or to experience, nothing propping them up, hence Stringfellow's play on the contractual terminology of reality being "subject to cancellation." I am not sure what to make about the part about the confederacy and the battle of New Orleans. I assume the latter is a reference to the battle in the American Civil War, not the War of 1812, but it's hard to say why this is THE detail in the song. Does the South stand for the last romantic vestige of the pre-modern, a time when we could create ourselves and determine our own lives? The lines that follow about the heroic (though also false) ideal of the spaceship suggest that there is some kind of historical contrast being developed here and that something has been lost: our faces, instead of being self-created, are mass produced and sipped in jars?

Certainly the final lines of the song bolster the idea that despite whatever illumination/ enlightenment may accompany modernity, there is a darkness that continues to linger, and above all, there is still the desire to be loved for oneself, whoever that self may be:  

Put your hands into the darkness
And drive from your psyche
The model of modern efficiency
At 110 or 220V
I hope there's still something you still want to see in me

 

Guided by Voices - "Twilight Campfighter"

"Twilight Campfighter" is the song, beyond any of the others, that really cemented Guided by Voices in my mind as something truly special. The album its from, Isolation Drills, is full of gems and hooks and the kind of sparkling, power pop sound that I love, and this track embodies that above all.

I'll start with the title, which I initially thought might be "Twilight campfire," probably because it would have made more sense at the outset. However, my mistake is a productive one, because on the level of sound the two are close, "campfighter" only adds a barely enunciated extra syllable and /t/ sound, but retains the /r/ sound of "campfire." But what it gains is reference to a person and a sense of striving and mission. The TC (twilight campfighter) is still associated with camp fires and all that goes with them: comfort, adventure, safety, vision, wisdom, and perhaps above all, something that keeps the darkness at bay.

The potential salvation described in this song isn't easy, as the second line makes clear ("You build your fires into an open wound"): if we are to be saved, the process will be painful like cauterizing a wound to kill an infection. And what an infection: the situation, as this song presents it, is indeed grim, it is one of a existence as a cog in the capitalist machine:

As we vegetate and wait around for brighter days

And can dance contented to the sound of money

These lines are pretty damning in their description of an infection that is both inner and outer: the word choice of "vegetate" evokes the passivity of a consumerist lifestyle down to the idea that life is about mindless growth and nothing else. The image of people "danc[ing] contented to the sound of money" speaks to the way that our movements through the world are carefully orchestrated from without. Our bodies (and minds) move in harmony with the system that envelops us. Even the fact that it is contentment that characterizes out dancing is damning: if we often think of dancing as a passionate and expressive act, if the highest emotion it gets is contentment then it would seem that much of our affective lives have been leveled off.

But, to further flesh out what this song has to say about the situation we are in, it is important to note that not all is dark: Pollard sings about how, "on these darker trails...to hike through dangerous weather you need twilight eyes." Ultimately it is a twilight time, in which things are murky and ambiguous and it is hard to make out distinct shapes. The upside is that this does mean that the light has not fully gone and not everything is lost, hence the tender and affecting praise of the TC's visionary "twilight eyes":

Could I have seen a sight

Much greater than your twilight eyes

That penetrate our silent lives (lies)?

Things are grim, but they are grim in a particularly murky way in which it can be hard to see just how and why they are so. That is why vision is one of the most important moral qualities. Someone who sees things as they really are--both with the world and ourselves--can help us see as well. Our lives are silent because we are not truly living them, but dancing to someone else's song, as it were (hence the sung ambiguity between "lives" and "lies," in the current state one cannot tell the difference). "Twilight eyes" can see past those illusory surfaces (and this world is made up of so many mere surfaces), to see what is really important and to help others see the same:

All for longing causes Racing minds and lengthy pauses All who must soon shed their veils And wipe their eyes.

As a final note that I suspect is entirely a matter of my own associations (although who can say for sure), the "twilight eyes" always make me think of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, specifically the figure of Tiresias in "III. The Fire Sermon." Without going too deep into it, The Waste Land is fiercely critical of the seemingly empty lives of those it portrays and as Eliot explains it, Tiresias serves the function of the blind seer who combines the experiences of both sexes, and can thus see better than everyone else:

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward

The "darkness" of modernity seems fixed in the violet hour, in the murky twilight where there are no clearcut distinctions to depend upon, something perhaps even more unsettling than simple night.

Hearing things in Guided by Voices "Heavy Like the World"

Last year's great musical discovery was Guided by Voices. First of all, I will say that I am pleased to be still having "great musical discoveries," as I take that as a sign that I haven't gotten too sclerotic in my tastes. (I say "too" as I have definite limits, a friend tried to get me into Kanye, and while I could see the interest in what he does, I didn't enjoy it myself.)

Now as for Guided by Voices, I'd known about them before--a friend from grad school lent me Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes and Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department back in 2008 or so-and I enjoyed them, but delve too deeply into them. For instance, a few surface gems like "Motor Away" and "Blimps Go 90" stuck. But last summer I came across Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills, and the latter in particular got me hooked. Isolation Drills is dense with hooks, craft, and gorgeous power pop sound. Songs like "Chasing Heather Crazy" and "Brides Hit Glass" are crazy infectious, and a song like "Twilight Campfighter" is just stunningly poignant and beautiful. I also like Do the Collapse but it definitely doesn't compare.

So my interest in those albums got me looking into the rest of the (gigantic) Guided by Voices (and GbV-adjacent) catalogue. I can't say I know (or love) it all by now, but most albums have some really excellent songs (and Under the Bushes Under the Stars is the best of all, I'd argue) so that over the last 9 months I have been listening to little else (to the chagrin of those around me).

There will likely be many post about them to come, but I will begin in the relative present with a song off of 2019s presciently named Sweating the Plague. The song is "Heavy Like the World," and its got some good rock and roll chops with some really strong bass and drum throbbing under some nice guitar arpeggios. The music is effective, but of course it is above all a vehicle for the prolific output of Robert Pollard (and occasionally others--props to Tobin Sprout for some really excellent work too).

Lyrically it is like a lot of Pollard's songs: more impressionistic and suggestive than clearly articulated, defying easy explanation. But there are always some really interesting lines (and often some really funny or weird things too--I appreciate the willingness to be surreal and strange).

In honour of this, the rest of this post will be more in the vein of the impressionistic as well, as I chronicle a few of the connections that I make between this song and others as a way of showing how it fits into my emotion life. One such moment is fairly early in the song, as Pollard sings:

"If I finally want to do
the puzzle of your heart"

The image is a neat one, but there is also something in Pollard's pronunciation of "heart" here (and some of this has to do with the style of the production) that reminds me of the pronunciation of the same word in Bastille's "Laura Palmer":

The two song share an appreciation of life in the midst of darkness, though in general Bastille's music is much more straightforward and the lyrics aren't super deep, but I can't pass up any Twin Peaks related content. Plus, I really enjoy the barking dog interruption in the video--I like the way it interrupts the feel-good chorus, not allowing the audience the pleasure of repetition. Similarly, the lines

"If you had your gun,
Would you shoot it at the sky?"

are effective because they frustrate the anticipated rhyme of "gun" and "sun," even going so far as to choose another s-word connected to the heavens.

To get to the other moment I'd like to dwell upon, we move to the end of the song where the phrase "heavy like the world," associated with the burdens of loneliness that have to be borne in order to seek like, transforms into
 
"Heavy like the words on your tattoos

Put some danger in your life
And more ink in your tattoo"

Now, despite being (barely) born within the slice of time alotted to millenials, I find myself (perhaps in a self-congratulatory way) unsympathetic to many of the tendencies attributed to them. Perhaps the one that I understand and appreciate the least are my generation's rage for tattoos.

However, I don't mind the appropriation of the symbolic potential of tattoos, or of the act of tattooing. The way that pain becomes inscribed upon the body, and can do so in an intelligible and uplifting manner is something interesting, even if the end result is usually less so. Its the symbolism of tattooing that Pollard is invoking here, and I can't help but think of The Mountain Goats song "Amy AKA Spent Gladiator" from their absolutely triumphant Transcendental Youth:

The song deserves a fuller treatment than I'm going to give here, but I want to zero in on these lines, as they remind me of the GbV ones:

"People might laugh at your tattoos,
When they do get new ones 
In completely garish hues"

Written after Amy Winehouse's death, the song itself is about staying alive, and doing whatever it takes to do so. As in "Heavy Like the World," these lines capture the idea that tattooing can involve an intensification of life, potential as a means of survival.

Tattoos straddle and interesting line between the external and the internal, as the point of them is to make something internal (a feeling, a relationship, an experience, a memory, etc.) into an external sign.  They are, in a sense, for other people, but only insofar as they serve to reveal the self, so even negative attention can still be a resource for the expression of the self. And when the self is particularly pressed, that may be one of the few resources for it to develop itself. But there is a somewhat desperate emotional logic to this (and to the song as a whole), insofar as the external reaction begins to take over as the motivation for the tattoo, thereby taking the emphasis off of the "original" inner reason (the sign takes over from what it is meant to be a sign of). Perhaps the way that exteriority can become the meaning of the originally interior is part of what is "heavy like the world."

Representing Lacerated Consciousness Part Two

Phew, long break with most of this post just sitting in "Drafts" for two years.  I've finally worked my way into a more sustainable set of obligations (plus a pandemic!) so here it is.

In the previous post I introduced my particular take on The Posies in terms of "lacerated consciousness"

This perspective is present in The Posies work from the very beginning. Their very first album was called "Failure," that should be a good indicator right there, and one of the best songs on the album, "I May Hate You Sometimes" already embodies this laceration on both the level of form and content. But before going on to that, I have two brief notes about the opening song "Blind Eyes Open."

First, the drumming in it is really fascinating. Now, I believe it is Jon Auer on drums on the album (since it was an independent effort he and Ken, the two main Posies, played all of the instruments on the recording), so we have him to thank. The interesting, kind of syncopated rhythm (I certainly don't have the "drumming knowledge" to characterize it) with which the drums are introduced at 0:10 is already very striking. The drums really catch my attention when they move to the forefront in the chorus starting around 0:55. The regular but sparse snap of the snare (?) and cymbal (?) together throughout this sequence is weirdly awkward and compelling. I don't have a lot to say about it other than: just listen.

The second thing I want to mention is that this song contains one of the most excellent puns I've ever heard in the song at 2:45: "my nerve ends send sensational headlines to my brain." "Sensational headlines" usually refers to the kinds of outsize messages that tend to get our attention at the top of newspaper articles, but the reference to "nerve ends" and the "brain" emphasize the "head" part of headlines. Plus there is the aural plays in the "ends -> send -> sensational" series of sounds.

Ok puns aside, let's talk about "I May Hate You Sometimes."

The basic meaning of the song can be found in the whole line of which the title is a part: "I may hate you sometimes, but I'll always love you." This line speaks to typical Posies ambivalence: intertwined feelings of love and hatred. Much of the song recounts the difficulties of one person feeling like they fall short of the standards of another. In one of their live recordings ("In Case You Didn't Feel Like Plugging In"), after "Please Return It" and before this song, Jon mentions that Ken wrote the former about him and that he wrote "I May Hate You Sometimes" about Ken. The brilliant duo embody self-laceration in their relation to each other as well.

The stand-out part of the song that I want to look at begins at 2:35 with the following lyrics:

Now that I'm filled with emotion
You're dispassionate
You only live for yourself
And now I live to regret
But don't ever think that
I could easily forget
Because I'm damned if I do
And I'm damned if I don't
I said that I would
But now I know that I won't
And the chance of being right
Is looking kind of remote

As with The New Pornographers' "The End of Medicine," this part of the song is just bursting with intellectual energy. The short rhyming lines give the song a tight dynamism which, coupled with the abrupt reversals, speak to the energy invested into self-reflection and self-division here. In terms of reversals, everything is subsumed in its opposite: the song veers from emotional vulnerability ("filled with emotion") to rejection ("You're dispassionate") and can only respond to self-centredness ("You only live for yourself") with regret at being sucked into that self-centredness, that leaves him in a seemingly impossible position in which all choices and all forms of escape look bad ("damned if I do / don't"). As a result he knows his resolve to do something will inevitably dissolve, and that it will also prove to be a mistake, and yet eve in full knowledge of this he can do no other.

The "speaker" here has analyzed the situation, taking past and present into account and projecting failure into the future.