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.

The New Pornographers - Live

I saw one of my favorite bands, "The New Pornographers," recently so here is quick post on the concert. Now, it was a relatively short set (1 hour) but without any breaks, so a lot of music got packed into it. While I can't reproduce the set list in order beyond a few notes (they opened with "Dancehall Domine," "Use It" was the 3rd song, and they closed with "The Bleeding Heart Show) here is a breakdown of every song they played by album (and note, they played at least one song from each album):

MR - "Mass Romantic"

EV - "A Testament to Youth in Verse"
"The Laws Have Changed"

TC- "Use It"
"The Bleeding Heart Show"

Ch- "All the Old Showstoppers"

T- "Moves"

BB- "Brill Bruisers"
"Champions of Red Wine"
"Dancehall Domine"

WC- "Play Money"
"Whiteout Conditions"
"High Ticket Attractions"
"This is the World of the Theatre"

As I begin I should also make a brief note about the lineup: Dan Bejar was not with them (he wasn't involved in Whiteout Conditions but I hope that it is simply a timing issue, I may not always appreciate the Bejar songs as much, but they added a lot of texture to the albums and  "War on the East Coast" and "Born with a Sound" were some of my favorite tracks off of Brill Bruisers), and neither was Neko Case. Being a huge Case fan I was hoping she would be with them, but her not being there wasn't too bad since Kathryn Calder does a great job. There was only one song, "Play Money," that really needed Case, the violinist/vocalist who did Case's vocals had a little squawk with the high notes and couldn't give the song the verve it needs to work. "Play Money" largely gets by on its attitude (it's not nearly as strong as the other cuts from Whiteout Conditions that they played) and it was probably the weakest song on the list.

The runner-up for weakest song would probably be "Moves," which seemed like a strange choice from that album. I was really hoping for "Up in the Dark," which is one of my favorite songs of theirs, period, but even "Crash Years" would have been better. Maybe "Crash Years" would have needed Case, and "Moves" was more familiar because it was in a car commercial. Oh well, as I noted, they played "Use It" three songs into their set, so at least I got what I wanted there. Playing it early alleviated my anxiety about whether I would get to hear at least one song I really wanted to hear: on that list were "Use It," "Sing Me Spanish Techno," "My Rights Versus Yours," and "Up in the Dark"; sure I only got one out of this four, but I thoroughly enjoyed the concert. "Use It" may be their best song and contains one of my favorite lines: "Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I'm s#it-faced." The time-bending dynamics of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" would be really fun live, too. As for "My Rights Versus Yours," if its about a custody battle (or divorce proceeding) I can see why it doesn't get live play, but it is a fantastic song and I remember when that album first came out and I got it and played it for a friend, and those early "ooooooh" notes were part of what got him hooked on the band.

Among the pleasant surprises were how good "Champions of Red Wine" sounded, its shimmering texture on the album translated well into a live context, "All the Old Showstoppers" is a song that never really caught my ear, and yet it was good live, and the climax of "The Bleeding Heart Show" really worked as a finisher. Great show.

Representing Lacerated Consciousness, Part One

While I don't have a lot of interest in the band Linkin Park, someone I am working with is a big fan, so I read this essay about them by Spencer Kornhaber. One part of the essay that caught my eye was where Kornhaber talked about how rock has long worked at expanding the potential range and form of emotional expression available to men. What this means is that (without necessarily giving up on misogyny or many of the traditional features of masculinity) it came to be acceptable for male singers to write songs dealing with angst, failure, and vulnerability without seeming like "wimps," as Kornhaber puts it. Kornhaber brings up grunge as an example, writing about how

"Sonically, the songs thrived on dichotomies of loud/soft and pretty/grating; the effect was less to gild aggression with sweetness than to wring drama and verisimilitude from the feeling of internal conflict."

For many this loud/soft dichotomy defines grunge, and a song like Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box," which I would say is all about the singer's ambivalence towards a woman (his lover? mother? its hard to say but I actually lean towards the latter: don't discount the fact that it was on "In Utero," the idea of being "forever in debt," "angel hair and baby's breath," and the "Throw down your umbilical noose" line). The ambivalent feelings the singer feels (attraction/repulsion) are mirrored by the quiet verse and loud chorus so yes, the form mirrors the content. I guess on a theoretical level I should enjoy this harmony of form and content, but I don't. Despite growing up at exactly the right time to be a Nirvana fan (so many people wore "In Utero" t-shirts in those days), I never really got into them and still haven't. And no doubt some what I say next is just a reflection of my own preferences (for thought, phrasing, and articulation), but that's what you get when I'm the one writing, so here it is.

The loud/soft dynamic in "Heart-Shaped Box" reflects the internal conflict, but it doesn't really develop it. And of course it doesn't help that lyrically it is an overloaded, obscure mess, so that even if the emotional aspect of the emotional situation is pretty clear, the situation itself remains murky. By the end of the song there is lots of emotion but it feels solipsistic and without understanding. Maybe this works for some people, and maybe I am asking too much (or the wrong thing) of it, but I don't feel like the song has really worked on its content, the attraction and repulsion don't seem to really interact with each other, the song just lurches from one to the other. Maybe if he could have expanded on the idea of being "forever in debt," or the "priceless advice" or something then I would be more satisfied.

If you want to see a masterful use of soft/loud work, I recommend The Posies' "Please Return It" (of course I do, it's pretty close to my favorite song) for its amazing (no disgrace) building and balancing of tension. The song is about the need (and perils) of reciprocity (of give and take-and returning), and way that the song handles its movement follows a real emotional contour, serving to embody the living, changing tension of a relationship. "Please Return It" does not offer the high energy discharge of the speculative the way some other Posies songs do, but these lines starting at 1:26 contain so much truth and tension in them:

"When you let me live my life,
You didn't do it completely,
But you were discreet.
Like the year I spent comparing me to you
Please return it."

I cannot stress enough the importance of these lines or the profundity of their grasp and expression of a fundamental kind of "internal conflict" in their own way. I have long thought of the overarching theme of much of The Posies' work in terms of an exploration of "lacerated consciousness," a consciousness divided against itself, cut open but still striving to heal. I draw the idea from my readings of German Idealism (particular Hegel) and the idea of the productive negativity (and the movement of thought) that can come from "diremption" (one translation of the German word "Entzweiung").

In "Please Return It" the idea is that all human relationships ideally operate according to a model of reciprocity, that for everything that we give to others we can also as "please return it" and expect our request to be honored. This is certainly a potentially fragile arrangement, and it means that there is a certain vulnerability to human relationships that makes autonomy tenuous. As the song puts it in an earlier line: "When we live the life we live, it's never ours completely, not completely." So, that this arrangement can break down in all sorts of ways comes as no surprise, but what is interesting is what is revealed in the breakdown, namely, how an external division can become an internal one.

From these lines it seems as though the singer escapes from the orbit of someone domineering and controlling (perhaps someone who is all take and no give), but soon learns that such an influence lingers in unexpected ways. The lines suggest that the other party is still responsible ("You didn't do it completely....You were discreet") but suddenly those actions are internal ("Like the year I spent comparing me to you"). The internal division takes the form of an internalization of a certain external standard and an accompanying sense of self-inferiority. The self is torn between what it is and what it thinks it should be, and this tearing is its own doing as an other (it does the other's bidding to itself). In this the situation is a bit like the one I analysed in the "I never did good things..." lines from Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" insofar as it is a matter of not being able to have a sense of oneself and one's own actions that are really one's own.

But the word "completely" in these lines ("You didn't do it completely") hearkens back to the earlier statement that life is "never ours completely, not completely") and suggests that in an important sense one's actions are never "completely" one's own. This song is the processing of the emotional impact of this fact that we will never escape the tensions and vulnerability that go along with sociality. Obviously there is no getting back the "year I spent comparing me to you," at least not in a literal sense, but there is at least the hope of redeeming it, where a "return" would be finding the "upside," i.e., the point at which you "bring the balance back to you in returning." What would it mean for the other to do this in this case? Given that the singer identifies it as being in the past ("the year I spent") and identifies its problematic part (the time spent "comparing me to you") he has already done the internal work of understanding it. But there is a difference between understanding that something was unhealthy and being free of that thing, and it may be that some kind of recognition from the other might help with that. To have long found oneself lacking in the face of the other, even if you get over that, it would still mean a lot for that other, on the one hand, to genuinely affirm your own worth, and on the other, to perhaps admit the he/she had a hand in creating those feelings of insecurity. This is a high bar and not one I'd expect to see from someone with a poisonous personality since it requires the other side to admit to their own vulnerability, but it is something you should be able to look for in "the certainly of friendship, you can ask, 'Please return it,' bring the balance back to you." Friendship is being able to bear your own laceration along with someone else's.

 (I should also mention the fact that the song makes perhaps the coolest use of the saxophone ever-I am generally opposed to the saxophone, especially in pop music, as it tends to be super boring, but here they are barely even recognizable as such and work amazingly. Live version of this song always lose something because the distorted saxophone sound isn't properly reproduced by guitars.)

The album that "Please Return It" is on, "Amazing Disgrace," came out in 1996, well after the heyday of grunge, and despite being based in Seattle during the whole grunge period they were always on a very different track, and even a grittier album like 1993's "Frosting on the Beater" is up to something quite unlike their contemporaries with, for instance, its spectacular harmonizing ("Solar Sister," I'm looking at you). But from their very beginning The Posies were exploring this theme of :lacerated consciousness." In the next part I will explore this further.

One Liners: David Bowie - "Ashes to Ashes"

Sometimes there is a line in a song that really stands out (and I'm talking in a good way, not in a "shape of you" kind of way) and I find myself turning it over in my mind. It may not be the catchiest line, but it has some extra depth which rewards rumination. One such line comes from David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes."

I'm not a huge Bowie fan, but I would say that this is definitely my favorite Bowie song, and there is undoubtedly a lot that could be said about the song as a whole, particularly in terms of how he uses it to reflect upon his own legacy and image. Or you could even just marvel at the angular slap bass line and eerie bleeps and bloops of the synth that open the song, and appreciate how they run through it, giving it a surreal atmosphere. But that is beyond the scope of what I want to address here, I just want to look at this line: “I’m stuck with a valuable friend”

I like this line because of the double meaning. Given the general drugginess of the lyrics, I assume the “valuable friend” is heroine. “Valuable friend” is an interesting substitute for “dear friend,” suggesting both the economic worth of heroine, and also less intimacy and caring than “dear.” Plus, the stuck refers both to being forced to stay with heroine—addicted—as well as the actual delivery method of the drug (stuck with a needle). The punning here reflects the theme of the song as a whole, which is that things can degenerate and become (or perhaps always have been) parodies (or puns) of themselves:

"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high,
hitting an all-time low."

The movement from "funk to funky" reminds the listener that just as funk is a kind of music (the song's groove is itself pretty funky) a funk is also a dejected or low mood, a feeling of fear, and a bad smell, the latter also being one of the primary meanings of "funky." Something catchy and full of dynamism can also be something low and foul just underneath. (And to reference the amazing video, a clown can equally be a figure of fun and terror.) The joke, of course, is that the otherworldly highs reached by astronaut Major Tom (from Bowie's early hit "Space Oddity," and already a drug metaphor) have their corresponding lows.

Ok, I thought this would be a quick examination of one line, but I have to mention one other particularly affecting line that comes at the end of the song:

"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."

Thinking about the subject of this song, it seems as though this cannot be accurate. Its pretty hard to avoid doing good or bad things in life (perhaps especially the bad things part if you are a junkie). But the last line helps to contextualize what this might mean: what does it mean to do something "out of the blue?" It means to do something unexpected, something not already predicted, planned, or determined. This could be someone who has lived a totally convention life and has never done anything that wasn't expect of them, but it could equally be someone who is unstoppably drawn by their urges, their desires, or their addictions. The issue thus becomes less about whether the actions that make up one's own life are good or bad, but rather, one's own relation to those actions as their cause (or, more accurately in this case, the lack thereof).

Something as simple as putting the "I" in these lines in bold makes this a little clearer:

"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."

For all of the things "I've" done, he is saying, it was never really me who did them, you could practically say that it was the drugs, or society, or whatever, that was responsible for these things happening. Whatever good or bad things I did were not things that I could take credit for as an agent, there was always some other thing pushing me. It doesn't have to be about compulsion (although obviously it can be), sometimes it is enough that there never seemed to be another option, that the authority of those influences were always just taken as a given. If everything you do is about the drugs, or if everything you do is because it's expected, then your actions may come to take on an "alien" character and may not seem like they are really your own.

That is why the particular example of doing something "out of the blue" comes up. To do something out of the blue is like doing something for no reason at all, or, at least, not for a reason determined long in advance, or as a foregone conclusion. It is thus one model of living one's life independently of all of these influences, free to act simply (ha!) as oneself as the situation and your own reaction to it demand. Now, as you may suspect from following my discussions of identity and agency in the other posts on this page, I'm not holding this up as a model of some pure, absolute freedom. I take this example to be just that, an example, but I think it helps to illustrate what Bowie is trying to get at here. 

The Shape of Sentence, or, Yes, How You Say Things Matters: Ed Sheeran "The Shape of You"

So now I'm going to go from raving about an interesting deployment of the pronoun "you" to a really frustrating one in Ed Sheeran's "The Shape of You."

Now I know I'm going against popular taste here, as this song has billions of views on youtube and got an overwhelming amount of radio play, but I just can't stomach it. Most of the song is just unremarkable, but I really hate the central line of the song: "I'm in love with the shape of you." That phrase, "the shape of you," sounds really clunky.

What do I mean by "clunky" ? Well, yes, it is grammatically incorrect, but grammatical correctness is not really that important when it comes to lyrics. There are plenty of songs that mangle grammar and sound good while doing it. But its bad grammar does have something to do with the problem. For one, it just doesn't sound like anything anyone would say. From a grammatical standpoint, we can see that it should be "I'm in love with your shape," or maybe "I'm in love with the shape of your body." The lameness of these two options tells us why Sheeran's version sucks. "I'm in love with your shape" falls flat rhythmically; there is something to the rhythm of two beats followed by the stress on "love" and then another two beats and the stress on "shape," but even still the "of you" just feels rushed. I prefer the similar rhythm as it plays out in the line: "I'm in love with your body"

Contrasting these lines also highlights how unsexy the word "shape" is--its way too abstract and geometrical. We might as well say "I love your outline!" or "I love your profile!" Sure, "I'm in love with your body" is kind of trite and boring, but that didn't stop Sheeran from using it a ton of times too. Plus, part of the reason why I don't like the actual version is it feels incomplete, as if I keep expecting Sheeran to sing "I'm in love with the shape of your body," which feels more normal if perhaps too wordy for a pop song.

I will just trash a few other lines which, if not as prominent as the main offender, are still pretty awful. Consider: "Your love was handmade for somebody like me." That's just a weird thing to say, the combination of specific customization ("handmade") with vague generality ("for somebody like me") is just an odd way to go when talking about love. It's the kind of thing you might hear in hawking some product: "You there, sir, try this, this love was handmade for somebody like you!"

Also, let's not forget the awkward phrase "Grab on my waist and put that body on me"-shouldn't it be "Grab onto my waist and put your body on mine," or at least "put that body onto mine" ? (Or is there a corpse in this song that she wants to hide under: "Quick, put that body on me!" I know I'm quibbling a bit here, but these are just really bizarre choices.

Let me finish with this gem:

"I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do"

It's always cute when wordsmiths decide to get fancy and go all rhymey, but that's a terrible line. "We push and pull like magnets" is still stupid but at least it is grammatical (the other easy way out that keeps the rhyme is "We push and pull like magnets do" even though the "do" is totally unnecessary). Both options also avoid raising questions about how two people are like one magnet. Is there an attraction-repulsion thing going on between them and other objects? At least if they were attracted like magnets they would be together, but I guess you don't get the vaguely suggestive "push and pull" part. Maybe Ed Sheeran has been getting lessons on magnets from the ICP.

There isn't too much else I really have to say about the song. It's a simple song in a way that The Shins' "Simple song" isn't.

Semi-Current Song Obsession: The Shins - "Simple Song"

A few months ago I was driving alone at night when this song came to the top of my playlist:

for quite awhile afterwards this song, and indeed much of the album its from ("Port of Morrow") were on pretty heavy rotation for me. Before I get too far into what I think clicked with it for me, I'll provide some background.

I have enjoyed The Shins' music for a few years now. I checked out their first two albums because they fit into the general mould of harmonic pop that I enjoy. However, it was never a "Garden State" situation where The Shins were going to "change my life," especially with the first two albums which I find a little too low key despite their pleasant twistedness (The Posies do that better anyway-and I remember an interview where one of the Posies complains that their moment never quite came but yet The Shins broke out a few years later). Anyway, I enjoy their third album "Wincing the Night Away" more because it is a departure from that style, but even now I still haven't spent that much time on it.

But while sitting in heavy traffic about a year ago I was listening to the radio (to give my wife a brief respite from a continual stream of Posies, Mountain Goats, New Pornographers, Neko Case, etc.) and I heard a really catchy song that sounded like The Shins. I remembered enough of the lyrics to look it up later and it turned out to be "Name For You" off of their latest album, "Heartworms" (it may not have even been released by that point). I didn't really get into the album until the end of the summer, but it really took off for me in the fall and there was a period when it was on my playlist practically nonstop. "Painting a Hole" is wacky and amazing with some serious groove, "Cherry Hearts" is so great to sing along with (if no one else has to hear me); there are a ton of stand-outs.

But "Port of Morrow," well, I gave it enough of a cursory listen to pick out the highlights like "Simple Song," but it wasn't until that winter drive that I started to get into it. It too took hold, especially "Its Only Life," "No Way Down," and "40 Mark Strasse," but "Simple Song" above all.

In some respects I have laden this post with biographical information because the song is in many respects as simple as its title suggests (although I actually think the biographical part is good to have because I don't add bands to my musical "inner circle" all that often so it is worth documenting). The sentiment is laid out as clearly as the thesis statement in a high school essay:

"This is just a simple song, to say what you done
I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."

The song is about the love and gratitude that the singer feels for his beloved and the way that she, among other things, helped him  conquer his fears and turn his life in a positive direction.

But I hesitate to say that things are really as simple as all that. Most songs are susceptible to being reduced to a quick description (hint: you've got a way better than 50/50 chance if you say "love" and don't specify whether the love goes well or not) without their subject matter being at all simple (to say nothing of their specific treatment of that subject matter).

The song actually takes a fairly unusual perspective in presenting a retrospective view of a happy, successful love. This isn't a song about wanting someone out of reach, or trying to convince someone to get with you, or a love gone wrong, or even just how wonderful the beloved is. It's close the that last one, but the difference is that many songs about the beloved just focus on the object, the beloved, whereas this one is about how the beloved changed and improved the singer's life, hence those lines about how "I told you about all those fears, and away they did run."

The lines that come next are where things get complicated (and interesting). They go as follows:

"You sure must be strong,
When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun"

Now, I think the speaker is here praising the beloved (the "you") for being strong, and by virtue of that strength, for making the speaker "feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun." The "you feel" in this line is thus not a feeling the beloved feels, but a feeling that the beloved causes in others. This second "you" thus occupies a complicated position, where it treats the beloved as an object, but as an active rather than merely passive one. The "you" in "when you feel" has a similar function as the "you" in "to say what you done"  earlier in the song.

It's a subtle point, and maybe I'm making too much out of it, but it seems to me that this construction is one way to elevate the "beloved" beyond the passivity usually designated by the term in order to give her strength and influence its due. As an addendum to this point, I just want to point out how enjoyable the pick-up in tempo is after he sing "being warmed by the sun," it's a simple, triumphant kind of pleasure. The strident strumming (along with the swirling synth) just crashes over the listener like the waves of a sin-warmed ocean.

But in thinking about all of this I find myself wondering about the "you" in the chorus:

"I know that things can really get rough when you go it alone
Don't go thinking you gotta be tough and be/bleed/play/plea (?) like a stone
Could be there's nothing else in lives so critical
As this little home."

I think that the "you" in the first two lines of the chorus is a rhetorical "you," rather than the beloved. I say this partly because of the "strength" of the beloved, she does not seem to be in any danger from going it alone or trying to put on a tough face. I also say it because the lead-in "I know" seems to signal a recounting of general advice rather than some kind of direct description, plus, the phrases themselves are curiously generic ("go it alone," "gotta be tough"). If anything, the chorus sounds like the speaker recounting advice he has received (perhaps from the beloved) and that he has had to learn to put into practice. Such a shift wouldn't be that unusual because the chorus is, at least to an extent, a separate part of the song, so it can play that dramatic role.

And speaking of drama, I would alike to point out the beautiful final lyrics of the song:

"Remember walking a mile to your house
Aglow in the dark
I made a fumbling play for your heart
And the ax drove the spark

You wore a charm on the chain that I stole special for you
Love's such a delicate thing that we do
With nothing to prove
Which I never knew

I do like the phrase "aglow in the dark," it is a romantic image that taps into the sun imagery and also leads into the clever bit about the ax (the ax image captures the endearing inexperience -"a fumbling play"- of the speaker, since it is only an ax that misses its target that causes a spark). But is the (nearly) final line, "Love's such a delicate thing that we do" that really resonates. Love is something active and shared ("something we do"), and like the complicated positioning of the"you" in this song, it is sometimes very subtle and delicate. So much for a simple song.