Sad, Sad Song(s)
ADDENDUM: Apparently Hutch Harris has referred to music on the new Thermals album as "songs from when we were alive." Apropos and awesome.
I was thinking today, listening to Bon Iver, about how much I seem to love funereal* music. For Emma, Forever Ago is more precisely a breakup record, though if you didn't listen to the lyrics closely its solemnity could fool you.
Off the top of my head I listed three potentially top-50 records explicitly about dead acquaintances: Songs for Drella, Panda Bear's Young Prayer, and M. Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent. Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands sounds like it has to fit in here, but I've never read anything to qualify it conceptually. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here technically qualifies, though mostly I was listening to that five or six years ago. As far as breakup records go, there's also Blood on the Tracks and probably a few more I can't think of right now. I can't go much further in such a conceptual vein, but there's a lot of stuff that feels similar.
This is an important contrast from another mode, let's call it "alienated nostalgia," in which you'll find Junior Boys, "Marquee Moon," Thom Yorke's solo album and others. I tried to describe this one back in August of 2006.
Of course there's plenty of overlap. My Morning Jacket used to work very close to funereal, particularly on the first album and parts of their second, though it's not a place they go very often anymore, except live. Joy Division are closer to alienation, though "Atmosphere" would be funereal and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is very deeply so. LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends"/"Someone Great" diptych. Scores of hip hop tracks are shoutouts to dead compatriots, though I specifically think of Bun B's "The Story," which was already sad/inspiring when his partner was in jail, and then attained a level of brutal irony when Pimp C died not long after getting out. Black Mountain is loud and funereal on their most recent record, and the Thermals are loud and frequently nostalgically alienated, though it might not sound as such at first listen.
Dubstep is another "hauntological" genre, though strictly hauntology would be a third field of its own. Burial is mostly nostalgically alienated, but Kode 9 & The Spaceape are more funereal. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" is powerfully funereal, particularly with likely reference to the World Trade Center towers.
Properly very little of this is goth and really not at all emo. The first requires moody wallowing and the second aggressive wallowing and for the most part this is constructive, forward-looking stuff. Making a monument to get past something rather recording oneself jumping back in the same, sad puddle.
*The only thing I've ever played for anyone eliciting the word "funeral" (except Band of Horses) is Sagor & Swing. More properly, that's the sort of music you might hear in a funeral parlor when you go in to discuss details with the mortician than at an actual funeral.
I was thinking today, listening to Bon Iver, about how much I seem to love funereal* music. For Emma, Forever Ago is more precisely a breakup record, though if you didn't listen to the lyrics closely its solemnity could fool you.
Off the top of my head I listed three potentially top-50 records explicitly about dead acquaintances: Songs for Drella, Panda Bear's Young Prayer, and M. Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent. Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands sounds like it has to fit in here, but I've never read anything to qualify it conceptually. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here technically qualifies, though mostly I was listening to that five or six years ago. As far as breakup records go, there's also Blood on the Tracks and probably a few more I can't think of right now. I can't go much further in such a conceptual vein, but there's a lot of stuff that feels similar.
This is an important contrast from another mode, let's call it "alienated nostalgia," in which you'll find Junior Boys, "Marquee Moon," Thom Yorke's solo album and others. I tried to describe this one back in August of 2006.
Of course there's plenty of overlap. My Morning Jacket used to work very close to funereal, particularly on the first album and parts of their second, though it's not a place they go very often anymore, except live. Joy Division are closer to alienation, though "Atmosphere" would be funereal and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is very deeply so. LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends"/"Someone Great" diptych. Scores of hip hop tracks are shoutouts to dead compatriots, though I specifically think of Bun B's "The Story," which was already sad/inspiring when his partner was in jail, and then attained a level of brutal irony when Pimp C died not long after getting out. Black Mountain is loud and funereal on their most recent record, and the Thermals are loud and frequently nostalgically alienated, though it might not sound as such at first listen.
Dubstep is another "hauntological" genre, though strictly hauntology would be a third field of its own. Burial is mostly nostalgically alienated, but Kode 9 & The Spaceape are more funereal. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" is powerfully funereal, particularly with likely reference to the World Trade Center towers.
Properly very little of this is goth and really not at all emo. The first requires moody wallowing and the second aggressive wallowing and for the most part this is constructive, forward-looking stuff. Making a monument to get past something rather recording oneself jumping back in the same, sad puddle.
*The only thing I've ever played for anyone eliciting the word "funeral" (except Band of Horses) is Sagor & Swing. More properly, that's the sort of music you might hear in a funeral parlor when you go in to discuss details with the mortician than at an actual funeral.
Labels: Music
Posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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