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.
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.
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 Versionis
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 withcommon 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 howa 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.
Recently I’ve been listening to Ken Stringfellow’s (one major
half of The Posies) latest solo album, Danzig in the Moonlight.
It’s not exactly a new album (2012) but I only bought it early in
the last year, and I hadn’t even listened to it much until recently
since I bought it at the same time as I bought the new The Posies
album (Solid States)
and that album quickly consumed my attention. Anyway, I’ve been
listening to it and I’ve zeroed in on one song in particular,
“Shittalkers!” Here it is
and here are the lyrics (as near as I can make them out):
(Many whoas) A bad sign It wasn’t overnight Wait kids in the clubs Won’t even touch this stuff It’s a hard sell Act not, heaven act not Stay your hand ‘Cause I can recall telling you how I feel the hurt, It was so real A batsuit won’t protect me from you boys You should have come to me first Who’s going to help you now Shittalkers, Who’s going to help paint your skies? All the unpaid beauty thieves
(Chorus) Back when you started there was envy all around You and your sedative sides became so acquainted Paranoia’s antiquated I was into you ‘cause you were so understudied Take it all back ‘cause I don’t want your blood money You were into me for the last time
I got news for this town, All you shittalkers, Unlicensed dog walkers, Rip out taxidermy heart stalkers You can take it all up the Wabash And put away the (?) Pope, Don’t even smile, anymore You only do it ‘cause your bored Shittalkers, I’ll be somewhere else Doing what I always did Keeping the streets safe From American kids
Chorus
You were into me for the last time 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
The obliqueness of some of the lyrics aside (a Stringfellow standard-I love the wordplay in the final verse, the flicker flame/fame switch, the immolation/defamation absolute/obsolete play), the song itself is a
pretty straightforward denunciation of shittalkers, i.e., people who
talk shit about other people behind their backs, and a dramatization of
the kind of hurt outrage that such behaviour can cause. Given the
nature of the subject matter, I think that the rather exaggerated and
outrageous nature of the song (the dramatic shifts in tempo, the
overstatements, the strong emotional delivery) fits really well. This
kind of situation lends itself to drama as emotions run high and
things get blown out of proportion, and I think the way that the song
stridently embodies this makes it really fun.
Why focus on the dramatic nature of the song? Well, I guess at
least one online critic wasn’t a big fan of Danzig in the
Moonlight (he also slags The
Posies in general in a
release notice for an earlier
album, Blood/Candy,
saying that they were the most boring thing to come out of Seattle in
the 90s—as someone who never cared much for Nirvana and who
puts The Posies in his top 3, my tastes definitely differ.) Anyway,
if you check out the review you’ll see he says that “Stringfellow
has a tendency to get melodramatic with his tunes” and singles out
the “overly-dramatic ‘Shittalkers’” in particular. So, the
interesting thing about that is that either Ken Stringfellow or
someone claiming to be him fired back in the comment section with a
long scathing review of the original review. That whole exchange was
entertaining, even as it degenerated into name-calling (no one really covered themselves in glory), given the
fact that one of the inciting elements was a song called
“Shittalkers!”
That whole exchange got me thinking about drama in songs,
particularly the way that singers capture some of the more rarely
expressed affects. There are lots of songs about heartbreak and
yearning, and there are even lots of angry and rebellious songs, but
the kind of righteous outrage coming from a place of hurt and
vulnerability like we hear in “Shittalkers!” seems fairly rare.
The breakout line in this regard is definitely “I’ve got news for
this town” (and the diatribe that follows it) which is probably
what the Snob reviewer was probably reacting against. It’s
over-the-top and exaggerated, but I’m not sure that is the same
thing as inauthentic, nor am I so sure that they are bad things.
Maybe its the same thing as the way that people tend to dismiss
romance and the sentimental as bad art because they have a notion of
art as being something only concerned with the serious and noble and
tragic, while that seems like such a crime to me insofar as it cuts
out a huge and important range of human experience worthy of
representation and regard precisely because it is how we are at our lowest. Not all hurt has to be mournful and
dirgelike and respectable, nor disguised as invincible anger and cloaked in aggression; there is
room for the exploration of the entire, messy range of emotions.
So that gets me thinking about another song (and, indeed, band) that you could call
melodramatic to its core, and better for it: The Mountain Goats’
“Heel Turn 2.” This song is from the Beat the Champ album,
which is all about wrestling, so the question of what counts as
melodrama is already at issue. As many others have already pointed
out, The Mountain Goats do a good job of adhering to their subject
(wrestling) while revealing the larger, human significance of it. As
the title suggests, “Heel Turn 2” is about a good guy (a “face”)
who finds the pressure of maintaining that course too much and turns
bad (turns into a “heel”). It’s
a melodramatic concept, good guy goes bad, but the way that the song
humanizes that decision and really works to inhabit its emotional
space transforms it into something totally different from mere
melodrama.
In terms of emotion, Darnielle
(the main Mountain Goat) puts a lot of emotion into the song throughout (not
unusual for him and not a bad thing at all—I remember a
particularly great YouTube comment from a live performance of “DamnThese Vampires,” which reads “the intensity of johns stage
presence can power a small town”--you rock Hilary Tong)but the crowning moment of "Heel Turn 2" is the line that starts at about 1:12: “You found my
breaking point, congratulations.” The bitter sarcasm of that
“congratulations” is stunning and raw. and perfect as what it is. Now, I would saythatthis song, and this moment in
particular, both is and is
not melodramatic.
I will try to
explain what I mean: it is melodramatic
in that there is nothing
subtle or artfully tempered about it, the emotion is all right there
on display and the music
takes a back seat to it, but
at the same time I don’t see it carrying all of the negative things
that go along with melodrama—the falseness of the emotion, the
sense that it isn’t earned. I
think part of the problem is just that it is an unusual emotion
(bitter defeat) to find in a popular song, so we don’t have the
same familiarity with it and guidelines for dealing with it as we
might with some more common ones like pining after an unobtainable
love or something like that. I think the other part of the problem is
the more general issue that I raised above, namely, the sense that
serious art has to mediate and sublimate emotion,
to rein it in with artifice. While I agree that some very great art
does just this, I also think that there is room for art to put its
resources to other effects, such as presenting and evoking strong
emotions, even of a negative sort. Indeed, for strong reactions that
have a powerfully dramatic element like the outrage of
“Shittalkers!,” I’m not
sure if any work that tried to tamp that down would really be very
effective in capturing that emotion.
And to the people who might say
that such emotions don’t need to be represented,
well, art has so many roles and functions that I’m not sure there’s
any basis for that position. Consider the what
people have to say about their use of The Mountain Goats’ music as
a kind of salve in this piece from the Toast, that’s just one role that music can play. Beyond helping people
comes to terms with their own feelings and experiences, music’s
objectification of emotion is important in a larger sense by
providing the means by which we can come to understand the emotional landscape
of human life in general. The “melodramatic” may not always be
pleasant, since it is so often bound up with failure and loss and
hurt, but that makes them no less worthy of treatment and
understanding--and perhaps even more so, since it is precisely at such dark points in our lives that we are most in need of understanding.
I posted the lyrics to The Posies song "Pay You Back in Time" for more than just altruistic reasons, although I certainly do want to spread the word about the band I consider to be one of the best out there. I first read about them on Wilson and Alroy's review page years ago when I was trying to broaden my musical horizons. I dug the songs of theirs I could get a hold of at the time, but it took a few years (and exposure to "Amazing Disgrace," which is the best album I know of) to really get to know The Posies. I couldn't agree more with what W & A say about "Amazing Disgrace," it is a 15-track tour de force in every respect. Anyway, I do want to promote The Posies, especially since they are so criminally underrecognized, but really you will see me return to them over and over again because I just can't help wanting to write about their work. I find it incredibly compelling, especially the "inscrutable lyrics are loaded with poetic allusions and head-spinning wordplay" that W & A give the nod to.
Speaking of "Amazing Disgrace," I believe that "Pay You Back in Time" is a demo that The Posies recorded during (or in and around) the recording sessions for "Amazing Disgrace." ("At Least, At Last," the compilation it can be found on dates it in the 1993-1994 time period, which is after "Frosting on the Beater" and quite a bit before "Amazing Disgrace," and there are lots of tracks from the latter on it such as "Daily Mutilation," "World," "Throwaway," "Everybody is a F*cking Liar," and "Fight It.") Anyway, the "academic" details of dating the recording aside, the interesting thing about this track, as its title suggests, is that it is about debt, and more particularly, the position of being in debt to someone and the attempt to get out of it. In a lot of ways this makes it the sister song to "Please Return It," which is also primarily concerned with being in an unbalanced relationship with another person.
What is particularly interesting about "Pay You Back in Time" (PYBT) is the way that the ambiguity of the very last line in the very last verse (not counting the refrain)throws the meaning of the rest of the song into doubt. The line, which is really quite stunning, is as follows: "All those lies that I told you, they must have been true." The song is torn between the potential ways of resolving the contradiction expressed by those "lies" turning out to be true.
The situation captured by the song is one of a fundamental misrecognition wherein what had seemed to be a pack of lies turns out to be the truth, but the question is, whose lies, and what is being misrecognized?
The song begins with the speaker (I guess I should say singer, but I'm so used to writing about literature, poetry in particular, the I'll stick with speaker) proclaiming that he never got to tell his side of the story because he lost contact with the person he is addressing (some former beloved judging by the reference to "love" in the second verse). The reason for this communication breakdown seems to be that other people were telling lies about the speaker and his intentions concerning whatever mysterious transgression or debt that needs to be paid back:
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
The most straightforward reading of the song's final line takes it as a reference to this initial situation. When the speaker first promised to pay the debt back, to make good on it, we can assume that all those people said that he never really had any intention of doing so. The claim that "I'll pay you back in time" may have been branded a lie, but by the end of the song when everyone but the speaker has abandoned this figure (the beloved debt-collector), it turns out to be true.
Now, this explanation is a pretty good one, and the story it tells is plenty interesting, especially with the devastating lines littered about the song, such as this one describing the sense of being in someone's debt: "Well, they say it never rests, like the sun on an empire in distress." Plus, it does make this last line into a minor triumph for the speaker, a final vindication of the truth of his love and character.
So why do I have to worry about alternatives? Well, I'm a cynical man and have known enough flaky people in my day to know that a lot of promises are cheaply held, and the more time people spend saying "I'll pay you back" the less time the spend actually doing it. So, while I think it
From this perspective the first verse, which I've quoted above, sounds a lot like the indignant protests of someone who resents being being in debt, and the blow to his self-esteem that it represents. The claim to be able to "explain it all" is the desire to see one's actions as justified, to somehow remove or mitigate the culpability of the debt or transgression, or at least the sense of responsibility that attends it. Explanation here is essentially an attempt to lessen the sense of indebtedness by means other than paying it back.
However cynical this may appear, this perspective actually makes the final line more interesting. If the speaker does by whatever turn of events end up being the only person left with the (ex)beloved, then, rather than a story of steadfast commitment it becomes a story of unexpected and perhaps unintended, reconciliation. Instead of the (ex)beloved misrecognizing the intentions and character of the speaker, the speaker actually misrecognizes his own character. What to the speaker had always been a self-serving lie, "I'll pay you back in time," becomes, by a simple twist of fate, the truth as he finds himself in the unexpected position of being able and willing to pay it back.
What is so interesting about this? Well, according to this reading the moral of this story is that we often only really know our own intentions and character retrospectively. We often tell lies about ourselves that turn out to be true, partially because we have told those lies long enough that we started to believe them, but also because we might not know enough about ourselves beforehand to know if they are really lies since our character and our actions are not exhausted by our explicit intentions. Now, perhaps I am misrecognizing this song in this way because I find this thought deeply satisfying, explaining as it does so many of the strange twists and turns of life, but it is certain that I only recognized this retrospectively.
Below are the lyrics to The Posies song "Pay You Back in Time." I am posting the lyrics rather than a link to a recording of the song because it never made it past the demo stage and is only collected on "At Least, At Last," which means there are no easily available versions online. You can find a copy to preview for about 45s here, but otherwise there's not much out there. This also means that the transcription of the lyrics is also my own, so I take full credit for any errors. Lastly, in terms of errors, any words I am unsure of I have placed in brackets.
Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they say it never rests,
Like the sun on an empire in distress.
And they say all love [needs tests],
But I think we've fulfilled that request.
Now, just let me catch my breath...
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
It's beneficial to both sides
We acknowledge the [work] we've both done.
It's better not to become what we hate
Or hate what we've become.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Well, they really took the cake
When they left you alone,
Now, what a mistake.
Now you're taking it all in.
So you started with nothing,
Well, better to begin.
Well, just look who's here with you,
All those lies that I told you,
They must have been true.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time.
I'll pay you back in time,
What you gave to me.
Disregarding the issue of my writing style in general, am I a terrible blogger? Most assuredly. Updating will never be one of my strong points, and when anything from a terrible heatwave to a pressing deadline looms, goodbye blogging. But the weather is cooler now so here I am with a song from one of my favorite bands, the relatively unknown 90s band from Seattle called The Posies. Lyrical brilliance, amazing melodies and harmonies to go along with those lyrics, and an excellent fusion of sweet pop and post-punk make them a real joy to listen to. This song, "Please Return It," showcases all of the above.
I think the key to understanding this song is to grasp the situation as it is laid out at the beginning of the song when Stringfellow (although Auer joins in throughout the song) sings: "Like a letter, / I just sent it, / please return it, / just forget it." If you have ever been in the grip of a really strong emotion and been compelled to put it into writing (a love letter or a really angry letter come to mind as the paradigmatic instances) and then sent that letter to its intended recipient, and then regretted sending it, I think you can understand the feeling behind this song. In particular there's that time of absolute helplessness after that letter has been sent but before it's been read that this song is about: the feeling of having totally exposed yourself to another and being unable to cover that up again.
Although this feeling is perhaps best captured by that experience with the letter, it corresponds to a much broader range of things than just that, which is why they (and, as I've mentioned, it tends to be a they--the harmony is especially significant here, although I'd have to do more work tracking it to make something more out of it) sing: "When we live the life we live, / it's never ours completely, / not completely." A certain amount of one-sided vulnerability is inevitable in most if not all human interactions, and this is why they catalog a number of different "imbalances" that require a "returning," capturing a surprising range of life: a movie (back in the days of Blockbuster video), a style (something unique that can be stolen which feels like a real violation), a favor (see, not all of them are necessarily bad, although favors can cut both ways), a glance (again, this can be fairly ambiguous), a servant (or server-referring to restaurants or tennis I guess), and a sewer (some things that we throw away we don't want back, but may not have a choice in the matter). The most psychologically acute of these instances, however, has to be the lines: "When you let me live my life, / you didn't do it completely / you were discreet. / Like the year I spent comparing me to you / Please return it." I don't think I have ever seen a more succinct evocation of the way we can lose ourselves to the judgments of other people, to foreign and inappropriate ideals, all by ourselves.
Of course, the real kicker here is that we have to be vulnerable, that the very possibility of legitimately two-sided interactions (the possibility of an "up-side" to all of these downsides) always has the potential to be one-sided. This is not a cheery thought, but it represents a truth that is not without its consolations: at the very least, "In the certainty of friendships you can ask / Please return it / Bring the balance back to you / in returning."
