The Descendants Review: The Morals Of A King

The miracle of The Descendants, the new Hawaii-based Alexander Payne film starring George Clooney, is that it holds itself together while dashing through the twists and turns of its plot. There is a comatose, dying wife and her mourning husband—two daughters struggling with separate problems of growing older—the realization that the dying wife had been unfaithful with a local realtor—a father who is kept (and keeps himself) from confronting the wildness of his favorite child. And that’s not even covering most of it. Payne and his ace cast handle all of these developments with great care and subtlety, appearing effortless in the execution.

But the overarching plot issue is the one that Payne et al handle best. For those entirely unfamiliar with the film, the film focuses on Matt King (Clooney), who must deal not only with his dying wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) and his troublesome daughters, but also with his role as the trustee of a 25,000-acre spread of land on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i. King and his family are the descendants of missionaries and native royalty, which pedigree entrusted them the land and the trust expires in seven years’ time. King and most of the extended family wants to sell the land to a developer, which will bring in millions of dollars into the family. There are a few relatives who oppose the sale, but Payne’s film doesn’t give them much screen time.

I cite this plot element as overarching because it winds in and out of the film, appearing largely at the beginning and the end. King’s dying wife and his deteriorating personal life quickly take center stage once he learns that his wife had been cheating on him prior to her fatal boating accident. King and his elder daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) take on the task of investigating and finally confronting Elizabeth’s hapless lover. As separate as the issues of land and King’s wife may have been up to that point, the melodramatic fates cast them into allegiance with one another; King learns that the realtor his wife had been seeing is the same man who would end up receiving the commissions on the 25,000 acres, should it be sold to this developer.

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With regard to the land, King makes the decision the audience already knew he would make: the land stays in the hands of the family. We have to thank that expectation the brief conversation between King and his two daughters in the middle of the film as they survey the entrusted land. After Alexandra mentions how she used to go camping with her mother on the entrusted land, Scottie (Amara Miller) disdainfully points out that, young as she is, she hasn’t had the chance (and implicitly will never have the chance) to camp on the land as Alexandra did. As dominated by the notion of inter-generational conflict as the environmental movement is today (let’s not ruin this planet for our children! [and our children’s children!]), I think anyone could have predicted the ultimate outcome.

The moral complexity of the film arises from how King makes his decision after having learning about the involvement of his late wife’s lover in the development deal. While I ultimately come down on the side of King’s decision regarding land (the development of land for recreational/resort uses is not the same case as mining the same pristine landscape for a necessary mineral such as copper; see John McPhee’s excellent and excellently objective book Encounters with the Archdruid for more on these matters) I cannot help but feel a distaste for his final decision. Amidst the triumphant environmentalist feeling in the wake of that scene, there is a lingering dissonance. Is something still right even if done for the wrong reasons? Would King have arrived at the same decision without the knowledge of that particular realtor’s involvement in the plans?

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I must conclude by offering that the film, while quite impressive, had one glaring flaw, which was King’s overbearing voiceover narration that opens the film. The narration serves as an effective, if entirely clumsy, method of grounding the audience with plot details. This, I think, is in contrast to the rest of the film, which tackles scenes with an earnest energy and expects the audience to follow along. As much as I don’t like screenwriting guru Robert McKee’s dictum that voiceovers should never be used—famously parodied in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation—I think it applies to this film. The voiceover in The Descendants is a writer being lazy; I expect better work from the screenwriting team of Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, who did such a bang-up job on the rest of the film.

Also, perhaps some of you think that I have “spoiled” the film by letting you in on the ending. That, I think, would be a grievous underestimation of this film. As much as I have made of the plot, that is not where the film derives its power. The power is in the close writing of the scenes and the earthy, believable characters brought to life in a series of awkward, unfortunate moments. But those moments lead somewhere wonderful: the final scene provides the most heartwarming episode of domestic harmony I’ve seen in quite some time. Look forward to it.

Saturday Songs – Nov. 26

Posting them late again! Apologies – Taylor

1. “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” – The Lemonheads

A lost Gram Parsons tune, Evan Dando and The Lemonheads resurrect both this song and themselves on their 2006 covers album Varshons. Sure, it’s a covers album and it doesn’t exactly demonstrate a return to form, but it is, at the very least, a demonstration of Dando’s esoteric music taste and sense of craft. From country troubadour Townes Van Zandt to “post-punk” band Wire, Dando is all across the board. The song probably truest to the sound of The Lemonheads (circa It’s A Shame About Ray), however, is Dando’s take on this country lope by the grandfather of country rock.

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2. “Moving Pictures Silent Films” – Great Lake Swimmers

Just as there are certain concepts in a film that one almost likes more than the film itself—for instance, the concept of Louis Malle’s 1981 film My Dinner With Andre—I like the concept of Great Lake Swimmers’ self-titled debut album almost more the album itself. While we’re stuck on slow-moving folk music, I think it’s worth looking to Bon Iver’s rise to fame. Vernon’s real claim to fame—both in the music press as well as in personal conversations—was his winter say in a Wisconsin cabin. Everyone adored that idea: Vernon, broken up with his girlfriend and his band, moping away in a lonely corner of the woods, writing songs to make himself feel better.

Thinking in terms of these album concepts, this debut album from Great Lake Swimmers is almost better. The tragedy of For Emma, Forever Ago is that we can’t actually hear those months out in the woods on the tape itself. The album is full of haunting, sad sounds, but there is nothing overtly “woodsy” or “natural” about it. On the other hand, “Moving Pictures Silent Films,” the first track on Great Lake Swimmers, starts out with woodsy hiss and the chirping of crickets.

The entire album was recorded in an abandoned grain silo in southern Ontario over the course of several months. So, the reverberant threads of vocal, guitar, bass, piano, and percussion, bouncing eerily off the walls of the silo are drawn over that foundational layer of natural white noise. That, Justin Vernon, is “woodsy” for you!

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3. “God Is God” – Steve Earle

As far as I’m concerned, Steve Earle’s most recent album, I’ll Never Make It Out Of This World Alive, is fantastic throughout. But as some of you may know, I’ve got a soft spot for songs reflecting seriously on God and God’s relation to man. Naturally, questions of a religious, philosophical nature + Steve Earle = one helluva song. Earle, with this song, begins to approach the stature of some of Townes’s more elaborate, labyrinthine songs (such as “Only Him Or Me”).

I love some of the phrases Earle concots in this song, especially:

And as our fate unfurls,

Every day that passes I’m sure about a little bit less.

Even my money keeps telling me it’s God I need to trust.

And I believe in God, but God ain’t us.

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4. “Las transeuntes” – Jorge Drexler

Still on my binge of Spanish-language music, I’ve stumbled upon Jorge Drexler, who’s probably a familiar name for Oscar buffs out here, having garnered an Oscar for Best Original Song, thanks to his contribution “Al otro lado del río” to the soundtrack of The Motorcycle Diaries. Outside of the United States, however, Drexler is a big deal as a songwriter. “Las transeuntes” is a fine example of Drexler’s craft—not only of his songwriting, but also of his ability as a performer. “Las transeuntes,” along with the rest of the songs on his recent album Amar la trama, was recorded live in front of a small audience in a recording studio, lending it an earthy, warm sound.

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5. “The Sailor” – Ben and the Sea

While I don’t find myself as attracted to the three other songs on the first third of Ben and the Sea’s debut album A Life Outside, I really enjoy the first track “The Sailor.” This tune has a cutting directness and a delicate sense of craft that makes it easy to like. Get the song for free below:

Margin Call and the Death of a Dog

Given the financial death knells sounding in J.C. Chandor’s recent film Margin Call, it's surprising, to say the least, that the saddest part of the film is the death of a stockbroker’s Labrador retriever. Having grown up with two black Labrador retrievers, I sympathized with his plight; I suspect that the American film-going audience at large also sympathized. After all, Hollywood didn’t produce Marley & Me just for shits and giggles; people love to watch films in which pets die and then cry about it afterward. So perhaps that aspect of Margin Call was understandable. Throw in a dying dog and garner everyone’s sympathy.

However, I feel as if dying pets are (at least now—given their clichéd run in popular culture) a rather crass, childish way to approach underlying issues of human mortality. Indeed, the life and death of Old Yeller functions as a learning device for Travis in Old Yeller, the granddaddy of all dying/dead pet films. However, that childish device serves no ostensible purpose in Margin Call, something that should alert the viewer to the underlying issues that the film is exploring.

For one, it’s worth taking into consideration that Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) explains to Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) early on in the film that he’s been spending $1,000 per day to even keep the dog alive. Emerson, of course, had walked into Rogers’s office and caught him at a teary moment. As Rogers explains his emotions, Emerson seems entirely detached from the situation—his body language speaks for itself. He seems so uncomfortable with the entire idea of the dying dog that it looks as if he's not even listening.

That lack of empathy on the part of Emerson, however, skews the audience away from the important point the film is making: this financial executive (or however you want to term his position—I don't recall the particulars) is spending $1,000 per day on a dog. Granted, given the resources, people will go pretty far to save their pets. In fact, I’m personally familiar with the absurdity of the situation; my family's dog Otis ended up with pretty serious case of melanoma on one of his paws. Because we caught the cancer early, the paw was still operable and Otis is alive today. I bring up my own dog to make the point that I can appreciate Rogers’s desperation to save his dog at any financial cost. (After all, removing melanoma from a dog’s paw is not inexpensive.)

But that said, there are limits that should be placed on canine medical practices. My parents, for example, have stated that they won’t operate again if further cancer appears on Otis. He’s an old dog—11 years old—and it would do him no good to have a cast on his paw at this point in his life. But not only that, it also would do us no good as a family—particularly in a moral sense. I don’t mean “moral” in the sense that it’s wrong for the dog (which it might be, anyway), but rather in that we would simply be confounding our understanding of mortality at that point. When you’re putting as much effort into saving the life of a dog as you’d put into saving the life of, say, your grandmother, then a moral disparity emerges. How do we value the life of a dog versus that of a human?

For me, the contentious issue that arises out of that scene between Rogers and Emerson is that humanity seems to play second banana to the dog world in Margin Call. A second scene—this one between Rogers and his ex-wife—further illuminates the second banana-hood of humanity. Digging a grave for his dead dog in front yard of what was once his house, Rogers is the embodiment of pity itself…but not due to the death of his beloved dog or the failure of his marriage, but rather because, from his point of view, his own personal problems have escalated into the provinces of high tragedy.

That, of course, is a absurd notion, given the fact that earlier that day Rogers helped orchestrate an exodus of bad investments, the effects of which, looking to the financial crisis of 2008 and its repercussions, will change the lives of millions of people. How does that really compare to a dead dog and a divorce? Reflecting on the film, I have no sympathy for Rogers; any sympathetic feeling I had for him was an illusion, a phantom of a feeling. Sure, his dog died, but that doesn’t mean he’s any better than the rest of the characters in the film.

4 Things I Learned at MoMA Yesterday

1. Why Monet used all those damn water lilies

Monet and water lilies are so interwoven in art history that it’s hard to disentangle the two. In the art world, I get the sense that they might as well be synonymous. I offer that prelude as a kind of apology—an apology for the fact that until yesterday, I never understood why Monet loved them to the point that he painted them hundreds of times. To me, Monet and water lilies seemed like a given; the pairing was like pancakes and syrup or Hall and Oates.

However, sitting for several minutes in front of the multiple-paneled Monet painting Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond from his Water Lilies collection, I came to a startling realization. But before I get to that realization, I’ll offer a confession (this post so far is full of my shortcomings): I’m not really sure what one is supposed to do when looking at artwork.

Monet's Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond in the Modern of Modern Art; photo by trish thanks to the Wikipedia Loves Art project

Someone recently explained to me (it might have been a professor) that when visiting an art museum or gallery, you should pick a few pieces of artwork and then stare at them for a long time, letting them “do their work” on you. Yesterday I chose this particular Monet and sat there for a few minutes to allow the painting do with me what it would.

I won’t go ahead and tell you that I taught myself some art theory sitting there on this bench staring at this Monet; in fact, I struggle to reconstruct my exact thought process as I looked at the painting. But somewhere in the middle of my meandering thoughts, everything converged on the notion of “surface.” A painting itself is, after all, simply a surface imposed upon the surface of the wall. This particular Monet painting (I’m ostensive here because modern painters tend to break away from this traditional aspect) is essentially pictorial—a flat surface depicting depth, assuming no depth itself.

Like many other Monet paintings, the puzzle is such that while the viewer sees the literal surface of the painting, there is another surface to contend with: the water. The surface of the water exists within Monet’s painting at an entirely different angle from the surface of the painting; the surfaces are neither parallel nor perpendicular to one another, but rather they are somewhere in between. Exactly how the perspective of the painting (i.e. the literal surface of the painting) is oriented with regards to the surface of the water is difficult to say. The little gallery note at the side of the painting (alas, I have neither a photograph nor a direct quote) suggests that it is impossible to ascribe a perspective or orientation when looking at the surface of the water.

That is, unless you think about the water lilies. The water lilies break up the reflective surface of the water in the painting; without the presence of the lilies, the painting would look abstract or, at best, an upside-down version of a colorful cloudy sky. The lilies are the key to revealing the surface. Perhaps that’s a moronic realization to have so late in life, but, nevertheless, the recommended method seems to have worked out pretty well. Pick a painting, stare, and think.

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2. Serious art can be funny…very funny

It might be said by some that looking at people looking at art presents its very own, distinct set of artistic implications and concepts. Indeed, German photographer Thomas Struth has capitalized on that reality, with his series of photographs of visitors to famous galleries such as the Louvre and the Prado looking (or not looking) at pieces of famous artwork. Struth plumbs some serious questions in that series of photographs, implicitly addressing our assumptions about how to approach artwork and even how to envision a space for the exhibition of artwork.

In that sense, Struth’s work is not entirely different from some of the conceptual artwork on display in MoMA. The key difference is that while Struth’s work is serious and takes itself seriously, there is an entire world of meta-art and conceptual art that doesn’t bother with seriousness. In fact, some of these pieces seem bent on simply making fun of themselves and the people (like me) who bother to spend time thinking about them. In other words, they’re fun!

One of my favorite conceptual pieces was Robert Barry’s 90mc Carrier Wave (FM). A (terrible) photo of the gallery note is below.

Robert Barry caption in MoMA; photo by Taylor Coe

On one hand, Barry’s goal of “[challenging] long-held assumptions about what defines a work of art and [expanding] notions of sculpture, positing that sound, like objects, can define space” is a perfectly plausible piece of modern artwork. On the other hand, people can find this very annoying. “What’s the point?” they might ask. The natural reaction, coming from someone who can appreciate Barry’s challenge of traditional assumptions about art, is humor. It’s very funny to watch people read this little plaque and grimace before walking off in a big huff. As I pointed out to my unhappy mother later on, “This isn’t the kind of art you buy and install in your home.”

Another fantastic piece was Lawrence Weiner’s A 36" x 36" removal to the lathing or support wall of plaster or wallboard from a wall. Weiner’s piece was exactly what the gallery note claimed it was: a square area—36" x 36"—removed from the wall to reveal the plywood beneath. Weiner’s body of work, as you can probably guess, is wild. His “declaration of intent” runs as follows:

1. The artist may construct the piece.

2. The piece may be fabricated.

3. The piece need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.

While some viewers might find this clear lack of surety and total openness abrasive, I found it entirely amusing. Weiner, in A 36" x 36" removal, among other pieces, has created art that is almost infinitely connotative. To laugh, I now know, is not necessarily to scoff, but rather to enjoy in the process of interpretation, to grapple with these bizarre pieces and joy in their strangeness. To laugh, in other words, is not to dismiss.

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3. Art overload is a real thing

In the middle of trying to deconstruct a Mondrian (not really—I was just sort of admiring the neat 90° angles), my head suddenly felt cloudy and I had to turn away. All the pieces that I saw afterwards have fallen into a series of bewildered recollections. I think I saw a Man Ray or two…a Joseph Cornell piece…I had a glimpse of the Cy Twombly sculpture exhibit. However, all of it was lost on me. Too much art makes the mind go weak?

So before you do multiple art museums in a day, maybe you should reconsider. Either that or pick ten pieces you want to see and see ‘em. Maybe you’ll understand why Monet loves water lilies or why Van Gogh loves sunflowers (still working on that one…is that, unbeknownst to me, somewhere on Wikipedia?).

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4. Important art seems not so important in person…which isn’t our fault?

I haven’t seen the Mona Lisa, but I’ve heard from many that it’s an underwhelming experience. There are lots of people crowding around it and it’s hard to get any kind of good look at it…and it’s small. It’s a small painting with an oversize reputation. To be sure, the case is not quite the same with Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night—which is not small exactly, at 29" x 36¼"—but there is something lackluster about seeing it.

My impulse is to point out that I’ve seen posters that size of the painting, probably seen posters even larger than the actual painting. But the real takeaway came when I wandered over to Jackson Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950. Before I had seen a Pollock in person (I saw Number 2, 1949 at the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute in Utica, NY last year), I doubted the gravity of their impact. I had heard from others how they had been bowled over by these pieces.

But the moment I stepped in front of one of these massive pieces, I understood. They are so expansive, so gargantuan, so…wall-spanning that you can’t even really see the entirety of one of these pieces at once. Stepping in front of One: Number 31, 1950 was markedly different from my experience in front of The Starry Night. The size of Pollock’s canvases was, in a way, a part of the modernist reaction to the smallness of the canvases in the painting tradition. If you haven’t seen a Pollock, then you should.

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None of this is to say that Pollock is better than Van Gogh (or even vice versa). I mean only to point out the cultural establishments that certain artworks have become; everyone in the Western world recognizes Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. But that status it has achieved remains somewhat independent of, say, my own viewing of the painting. A question I might pose: How could you not like The Starry Night? (More modern artists such as Pollock and Rothko make that question problematic.)

My point is that all of us have been culturally trained to like the Van Gogh painting. We see the painting in textbooks and on the walls of classrooms and on the t-shirts of tourists. The painting is inescapable. We’ve built it up in our mind’s eye to the point that it’s a myth of itself. It doesn’t really have a physical being any longer; it is an abstraction. Confronted with the real deal, we feel…well…shortchanged.

Saturday Songs – Nov. 19

1. “On Your Porch” – The Format

Not too long ago, I stumbled upon this song—a sad, vivid depiction of a young man’s relationship with his dying father. Buoyed by a mellow harmonium line and a few toned-down drum parts, the song is largely acoustic guitar, partly strummed but mostly picked. Over that fabric, the singer collects some haunting images: “I was on your porch / The smoke sank into my skin / So I came inside to be with you.”

The entire time I was listening to this song (probably seven or eight times in a row at one point), I kept wondering: whose voice is this? The voice was unmistakably familiar. It was the same sense of familiarity I’d had when I heard Desaparecidos’ Read Music/Speak Spanish. When I found out that Conor Oberst was behind the raw sound of that band, I was at once shocked and yet totally unsurprised. Although I’ve never been an Oberst junkie, I have always respected him for being able to at once turn a phrase (more like several phrases) and write a melody. That fact that Desparecidos and Bright Eyes were both vehicles for a versatile songwriter was no surprise.

Likewise, I wasn’t surprised to find out that Nate Ruess was behind “On Your Porch.” For those unfamiliar with Ruess, not only is the voice of the now-disbanded The Format, he’s also the voice behind the indie band fun. (To be clear, that’s “fun.” with a lowercase f and a period.) In fact, fun. has previously been featured on Saturday Songs with their song “All The Pretty Girls.” That song, which I deemed a “maniccross-polination of Electric Light Orchestra and Queen,” could not be any further away from this mournful tune. But, as is the case with Oberst, that’s what you get with versatile songwriters.

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2. “Hymn 101” – Joe Pug

I’m almost at a loss to explain why Joe Pug hasn’t yet made an appearance on Pueblo Waltz. Although hailing from Chicago, Pug sounds as if he might have walked straight out of deepest Appalachia and then taken a few shots with Townes himself. I think the obvious comparison is to The Tallest Man On Earth, Kristian Matsson, but that would be a slight to Pug’s voice. Unlike Matsson, whose grating (if entirely interesting) voice has “Dylan” written all over it, Pug’s voice manages the neat feat of sounding world-weary, but never whiny.

There’s also my less explicable sense that when Matsson sings about “[holding] a pony by a flagging mane,” I buy the performance a few jots less than when Pug sings, “And I’ve come to meet the sheriff and his posse / To offer him the broadside of my jaw.” As much as I love Matsson, he comes across as a little too precious. Pug, on the other hand, sounds like the real deal.

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3. “Inní mér syngur vitleysingur” - Sigur Rós

As bad of a music critic as it makes me sound, I will admit that I listened to Sigur Rós for the first time this past week. As much press as they’ve gotten over the past several years that I’ve been an avid reader of music criticism and journalism, you’d think I’ve have been at least a little curious…especially given the fact that their body of work is almost entirely not English—either Icelandic or gibberish. After all, the success of non-English speaking bands in the United States is almost unheard of.

Anyways, feeling somewhat better than I was finally introducing myself to them, I sat down for their most recent album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. And I loved it. It was bizarre and otherwordly; some songs were perfect pop songs and others were meandering aural explorations. The sheer range of the album’s soundscapes was staggering.

This song was one of the songs I latched onto from the get-go. It’s fun—something I hadn’t expected Sigur Rós to be. It was also one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in a long time. Everything about it—from the mysterious, Icelandic lyrics to the final blast of trumpets and keyboards that closes out the song—was brilliant. Apologies, Sigur Rós, that I’ve ignored you for so long; I will visit Takk… in the near future…

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4. “The Fireplace Poker” – The Drive-By Truckers

I drop this tune into the Saturday Songs because I saw the Drive-By Truckers for the second time this year last Wednesday night. They were, of course, fantastic. In some ways, the show was an improvement on the concert over this past summer: more Mike Cooley songs, more stage chatter out of Patterson Hood, and an encore that stretched far away from the typical three songs into several.

But the highlight for me was the third tune they played—“The Fireplace Poker”—which is off their most recent album Go Go Boots. The song is the story of a small-town reverend who pays a high school buddy to murder his wife so he can take up with another woman. For those who don’t know the song, I won’t spoil the story, but it should be obvious that some serious problems ensue.

Despite how many times I’d listened to the studio version, the song assumed a new kind of life hearing it coming directly from Hood. The song might be dark as hell, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun one.

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5. “Come Back Home” – Matthew Mayfield

Entering into a solo career after the demise of his band Moses Mayfield, Mayfield pushes towards Goo Goo Dolls territory with this album—not that it’s a bad thing. “Come Back Home” is at once intimate and anthemic, breaking out into a giant chorus around the two-minute mark that you don’t see coming, especially on the tail of his warm, gruff voice. Download the entire album for free of Noisetrade below.

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I want to make an offer here: if you have any music to suggest to me or music that you’d like me to review (keep in mind that I want to maintain the directness and critical value of my site at all costs…so don’t go submitting your own music or that of a close friend unless you want to risk my hearty disapproval—I am not cruel, but I am honest), then I would welcome the ideas and suggestions. If you think you’ve got some music that I would really dig, then please pass it along! You can leave a comment below or send me an email at tjcpoet@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

Guest Post - Empty Distinctions: the Pernicious Sameness of Contemporary Music

By Chelsea Wahl

A few weeks ago, I was in a Payless Shoe Source with my friend Elly. A song came on that I recognized but couldn’t place. I remember thinking, “This is really catchy. Where have I heard this before?” The answer is, likely, everywhere: the song was “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. Since its release in September of 2010, “Pumped Up Kicks” has been featured everywhere from TV shows, such as Gossip Girl and Entourage, to films, such as Friends With Benefits and Fright Night. Even indie rock legends Weezer have taken notice, covering the song at the Orange County Fair earlier this year. And, to cap it all off, the song has topped charts in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Belgium, Poland, and New Zealand. Not bad for a two-year-old band with no credentials to speak of.

After listening to the song a few times, it started to sound a lot like another song I like. You know that weird cognitive trick, when you’re humming one song and then you start humming another? It kept happening with “Pumped Up Kicks” and a song called “Do What You Will” by Papercuts. After comparing both songs, I was shocked at the similarities: the syncopation between the drums and the bass,  the nearly identical fuzz in the vocals (not to mention low range vocals in the verse and high range vocals in the chorus), and even the same three-chord structure from verse to chorus. “Pumped Up Kicks” certainly benefits from cleaner production, and a few handclaps, but apart from that they are virtually indistinguishable.

Of course, the songs are not identical, for many reasons. Foster the People is signed to Startime International, a subsidiary of the colossal Columbia Records; Papercuts are signed to Sub Pop, the indie darling of labels. While popular on the festival circuit, Foster the People has a very mainstream following (as I said, I first heard the song at a Payless), while Papercuts has not even debuted on a Billboard chart. The bands are just “packaged” differently, which has an indelible effect on the popularity of their material.

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While this parallel may seem trivial, it says a lot about the way we consume music. Why should one song be so much more ubiquitous than the other if, musically, they are so similar? Music, in its popular conception, isn’t as much about music as we claim. A song’s popularity is dependent on the flexible preference of social groups (hipsters, Goths, punks, etc), the visual and verbal messages associated with songs themselves (music videos, lyrics), and more than anything, the marketability of the group and its musical products. If something can be marketed well, it will be accessible to a much larger audience.

“Pumped Up Kicks” is a commercial success precisely because its constituent parts form a neat, consumer-friendly package. The song is structured simply, and organized around an ascending bassline that varies only during the 8-bar bridge. What could be easier to follow? The band is a genial-looking gang of twenty-somethings. They’ve got Ray-Bans, so we know they’re cool, but they don’t have visible tattoos or gauges in their ears, so we know they’re not going to hurt anybody.

And while most music videos attempt to tell a story, or at least to add some visual depth to the auditory experience, the video for “Pumped Up Kicks” tells the viewer nothing that could not be inferred just by listening to the song. The video features the band members playing shows, driving around in a van, surfing, bopping their heads in the studio, and being admired by girls in midriff tops. The theme is, apparently, “These Cool Guys Are in a Band.” Plotless music videos, driven by presumably “intimate” shots of a musician on tour, seems to be a pattern for massive chart-toppers; see Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” for comparison.

“Do What You Will,” on the other hand, doesn’t go down quite as easily. First off, “Do What You Will” was featured on Urban Outfitters.com, on one of the apparel site’s digital mixes. While Urban Outfitters is nothing shy of a billion dollar corporation, it markets to a very specifically alternative demographic—it inspires the word “hipster,” in both noun and adjective form, more than probably any other singular corporate entity. That “Do What You Will” was featured on their site says a lot of about the target audience.

The video for the song centers on a bearded man, who leaves a party along with his bearded friends, and is subsequently chased around city streets by a mysterious gaseous substance. The gas follows him to his apartment, and soon the entire place is enveloped in a fog and the protagonist falls to the floor. He is motionless as the gas recedes. Seriously. Whether this video is meant to be a kitschy horror clip or a self-referential joke, it is nearly unintelligible to the average viewer. Indeed, the top-rated user comment for the video on Youtube states, “Indie rock beard chased by fart. Interesting concept.”

To be fair, music (contemporarily conceived) is not all about popularity. Papercuts probably markets itself as alternative intentionally, as a means of distinguishing itself from the seemingly endless horde of attention-mongering pop groups. But it speaks to our means of categorization that literally no band gets heard without conforming to a marketable, pre-established musical identity, as both Papercuts and Foster the People do.

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It really isn’t about the music, and it hasn’t been since the advent of technologies like the radio—technologies that widened and altered our understanding of music, and almost everything else. This redefinition of music has been crucial to our culture: where would we be if Elvis Presley had never swung his hips, if The Marvelettes had never sung “Please Mr. Postman”? But as the internet increases the scope of music to an almost infinite degree, spawning new genres and new forms of musical creation all the time, generation-defining music becomes less and less likely. Already, we see that the musical giants of ages past (the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Queen, Led Zeppelin, ABBA) have no contemporary counterparts.

This is why the musical similarities between “Pumped Up Kicks” and “Do What You Will” are so disturbing to me. The endless stream of internet sensations and college radio station hits has dulled our musical taste buds, and now nothing tastes quite as fresh. The only thing to separate one act from another is now the consumer package in which it is presented, because one could never actually listen to enough songs to form a truly educated opinion about musical forms today. This scares me a little, and maybe it should scare you too.

Saturday Songs – Nov. 12

1. “Once I Was A Bird” – Lauren Shera

This song seemed somewhat of a retread through familiar singer-songwriter territory until I reached the chorus. The chorus, with the introduction of strings and a beautiful vocal harmony, elevates the song right out of banal, repetitive singer-songwriter-land in a flash. It’s not a particularly polished metaphor that Shera is working with, but the image of a bird meeting the sky has an immediate resonance.

It was only after a few listens that Shera’s song really jumps out at me. There were elements that I hadn’t noticed the first time around, especially Shera’s delicate elocution, which is never pushy with the words she sings, but playful as well as the throaty warble that ducks in and out of her phrasing, coming across…well…as a frightened bird.

You can’t download this song for free, but you can find Shera’s song “Endless Love” for free on her website here!

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2. “Kingdom Of Your Own” – Matthew and the Atlas

A band that I imagine will shortly emerge out from under the giant shadow that Mumford and Sons casts on the English folk music scene, Matthew and the Atlas have a sound that effectively combines the ecstasy of a Mumford song such as “Little Lion Man” and a worn-down melancholy. Lead singer and songwriter Matthew Hegarty’s gritty, bluesy voice certainly helps carry that melancholic atmosphere.

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3. “If I Had A Gun…” – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

I don’t think anyone really expected that the quality of Noel Gallagher’s songwriting would substantially decline as he departed Oasis and moved on to his solo work. While brother Liam is still a better singer, there’s something to be said for Noel’s singing chops; he doesn’t have the versatility of his brother nor does he have the edge of vitriol in his voice that made Liam so popular, but he’s still got a voice.

One of the singles off the debut album by Noel’s solo project band, “If I Had A Gun…” has remnants of the classic Oasis sound, but I think it ventures into some interesting, new territory for Noel. The creepy and obsessive undertones in this seeming love song elevate it out of Noel’s former Oasis songwriting.

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4. “Alta Suciedad” – Andrés Calamaro

Continuing my explorations into the wide world of Spanish music, this past week I encountered Andrés Calamaro. Calamaro has been cited by some as the “Bob Dylan” of Argentina, which seems at least somewhat inaccurate judging by the heavy-metal crunch of this song, which is derived more out of Black Sabbath and Metallica than to Dylan.

Granted, I’m not exactly the right person to ask, with my years of learning Spanish a bit behind me, but “Alta Suciedad” doesn’t really strike me as Dylanesque in its lyrical content. Any Spanish speakers out there are free to judge for themselves!

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5. “The World Will Move Along” – Evan McHugh

The World Will Move Along by Evan McHugh

A Nashville-based singer-songwriter, McHugh distinguishes himself through his excellent construction of pop songs. The tunes on his album The World Will Move Along all demonstrate that craft, but the title song is an especially good example. With a voice that looks to fellow Nashville songwriter David Mead, McHugh’s delicate vocals are the best part of this song. You can download McHugh’s entire album for free below off Noisetrade.

Barthes, the Curse of Exercise, and the iPod's Power

Because I am the consummate nerd, sometimes I like to imagine that I am Roland Barthes and think about culture in terms of Barthean “myths.” The Barthean notion of “myth”—drawn out of Ferdinand de Saussure’s system of signs (signifier/signified/referent)—is such that “signs” in the Saussurean system are elevated to a second level, in which signs end up becoming signifiers for larger cultural notions. While you might be thinking that this sounds somewhat too theoretical to be fun, Barthes's treatment of semiotics in his collection of articles Mythologies is both fascinating and funny.

For example, one of the cultural myths explored by Barthes in the book is that of “red wine” in France. Moving past the nature of the word as a Saussurean sign, Barthes discusses how wine exists in French culture, particularly in terms of how wine functions as an equalizer for the proletariat—citing how “wine will deliver [the bourgeoisie] from myths, will remove some of his intellectualism, will make him the equal of the proletarian” (Barthes 58-59). On one level, the notion is somewhat absurd (do the French really conceive of red wine as such?), but on a structural level, the claims he makes have a fascinating resonance with one another.

So while I cannot claim to make quite such elaborately staged arguments as Barthes in Mythologies (he does, after all, have this entire system of cultural semiotics behind each strange argument in the collection) as I’m  going about my day, I do have some thoughts that aren’t so far from Barthes’s notion of red wine

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One Barthean thought that I have fairly frequently is regarding the gym. I find the modern, American gym a riveting space, whose inhabitants operate between the polar principles of necessity and aversion. The gym demonstrates to me that physical exercise, in our society, no longer centers on pleasure; the pleasure that people now associate with the gym is the pleasure of having gotten something out of the way, of having crossed that "work-out" line off their to-do list. Exercise has become somewhat of a scourge; exercise is what everyone must do and what no one wants to do. This, in fact, is similar to how I talk about exercise and, I suspect, not so far from how you talk about it yourself.

But what does this have to do with an arts blog?

The answer to that lies in how people mediate between those two opposing notions of necessity and aversion, how people inject pleasure back into the act of exercise. This new thought, while less Bartean, seems to me no less intriguing. Confronted with something that they would rather avoid but cannot, people do what they have always done: distract themselves. 

When I do go to the gym, which is less often than I’d like (see above paragraph), I witness a swarm of people with ear-buds plugged into everything from iPods and other .mp3 players to the small television screens on treadmills and ellipticals. There are others who bring books or other reading materials to peruse as they do their half-hour on the stationary bike. There are even people who do more than one of these things at a time; I have seen people on ellipticals with a iPad “open” to a book while listening to music and even occasionally glancing up to the bank of televisions hanging over the fitness area.

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I would offer that there are two problems here. The first one strikes me as the more Barthean claim; these practices of distraction only contribute to the general malaise that has fallen upon modern notions of physical exercise. These modes of distraction—what seem like solutions to the problem of evading exercise—end up being more like an exacerbation of the problematic nature of exercise.

The other problem, far more pressing in terms of this blog, is that of what happens to those artistic forms we digest while we are running or biking or elliptical-izing. Let's look at reading: do we really think we’re “getting” the material we read while simultaneously pumping out legs back and forth or in or out or whatever? However, it’s a fairly small percentage of gym-goers who turn to reading for entertainment. The bulk of distraction is, without a doubt, manifested in the presence of .mp3 players and television.

To be honest, I don’t care much for how television programs are transformed by their being watched in a gym setting. Television, in my mind, is a medium that (mostly) doesn’t demand full attention from its audience. There is a core of primetime programming that really asks its audience to sit down and pay attention, but there is also an entire universe of television that asks for only a modicum of thought. In my college gym, the television programs shift between sports, news, and reality television. Only occasionally are there films or formal televisions series.

Like I said, most television programs don’t demand the full attention of their audience; news and sports programs are structured with exactly that in mind. These programs don’t provide the kind of in-depth reporting you'd find in a print or online setting nor do they beg for a “complete” viewing. Organized into a series of segments, which are even further broken up by commercials, news and sports television shows clearly don’t really pine for attention. As for reality shows…well…I won’t even go there.

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Music, it turns out, is my real concern. What happens to music when we listen to it in a gym setting—not simply for the sake of the music itself, but out of some half-baked notion of spicing up our exercise routine and making it, in some sense, “bearable”? The music, obviously, changes. Becoming a crutch for another activity, music is subsumed into a category of "audience interaction" in which music functions less like an activity in and of itself and more like a distraction from another, entirely separate activity. [By no means do I mean to refute the notion of art as a distraction from the emptiness and nihilism of the universe, for there is some validity to that claim, but rather I want to point out that we’re not talking about distraction from life, we’re talking about distraction from exercise. That’s a pretty severe distinction.]

If it sounds like I’m one of those people who has never been on a run with music, that’s almost true. I’ve never really taken to running with an iPod or listening to one while exercising in the gym…and that’s not for lack of trying. Indeed, there have been several instances over the years when I thought to myself, “Hey! That whole music-thing while working out would be a great idea!” But that’s never really the way that it turned out for me: the ear-buds were always falling out…my iPod would die halfway through the run…I would end up breathing to the beat of the song (not a good thing!)…in other words, there were just issues with the practice.

So, now that you know of my failed attempts, you might read me as a failed music-listener, a kind of pathetic pariah now stuck decrying a practice that never accommodated itself to him, but nevertheless seems to “work” for everyone else. 

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But does that mean that what I’ve pointed out about music should lie by the wayside? I think, regardless of my stance on music, that there’s an issue with how readily we employ music as a distraction from something we’re convinced is necessary but not fun. But while I’m tempted to take an opinionated stance on all this, it would feel self-contradictory. I must admit that if I could somehow get used to listening to music during my workout, then I would probably fall in with everyone else.

Thinking over this post, I see that it clearly looks back to my post about the legacy of Steve Jobs in terms of how he affected our cultural conceptualization of music; this notion of music as distraction in the gym is only a new manifestation of that new cultural role music plays. So maybe it’s not so much good or bad—as I’m tempted to think—but rather just different.

Saturday Songs – Nov. 5

1. “Ofrenda” – Pedro Guerra

Spotify, as I’ve raved to quite a few people in the past weeks, is not just an easy source of streaming music, but it is also a world-wide playground of music that had never been open to me before. I’ve listened to albums that escaped me in past years and I’ve found new artists with such ease that I’m almost frightened by the sheer bulk of unlistened to (for me, that is) music out there in the world.

In particular, one area of music that has opened itself up to me through Spotify is that of Latino and Spanish music—particularly music coming from Spain. I’ve had somewhat limited contact with Spanish-language music, something that is doubtlessly evident to anyone who read my “Canciones de Sábado” earlier this year. But now, with Spotify leading the charge for me, I feel somewhat more territorial about Spanish-language music.

One of my recent finds is the artist Pedro Guerra, who, while new to me, seems to be quite a big deal on the other side of the Atlantic. One of his songs that really caught my ear is “Ofrenda” off Guerra’s 2001 album of the same name. The song, filled with punchy horns and a fantastic guitar part, is a beautiful plea asking for a lover to return. The song ends with the repeated line: “para que vuelvas” (so that you return).

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2. “Oh Yoko!” – John Lennon

One of those songs that took me a longtime to warm up to, Lennon’s love song for Yoko Ono strikes me as funny in that while I have somewhat of a grudge against Ono (partly for pulling John away from the Beatles, partly for her bizarre contributions to cinema), there is still something warm and fuzzy and wonderful about the song that I can’t ignore. This country-shuffle-of-a-song is simple and happy and that’s about enough for me.

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3. “Fuck This Place” – Frightened Rabbit

In a wonderful twist of fate (thanks to my girlfriend Kayla’s helpful contribution), my free offering this week is from one of my favorite bands, Frightened Rabbit. The three-song EP includes all new songs: two well-planned duets, “Fuck This Place” and “The Work,” as well as “Scottish Winds,” a cathartic ode to Scotland.

While all three songs are great, I’m particularly fond of “Fuck This Place,” a duet with Tracyanne Campbell, the lead singer of the Scottish band Camera Obscura. Campbell’s presence not only adds some stature to the song (Frightened Rabbit lead singer Scott Hutchinson was apparently flabbergasted that she wanted to record the song with them), but it adds a happy new texture to Frightened Rabbits gruff, extraordinarily male repertoire.

I also recommend checking out the other duet on the EP as well, which features legendary Scottish folk singer Archie Fisher (who penned one of my favorite songs, “Dark Eyed Molly”). You can download the entire EP here.

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4. “49:00” – Paul Westerberg

In my two-part discussion of track listing this past week, I used Westerberg’s single-track album as an example and inadvertently fell in love with it. The album (or track?!) is a roughshod, nostalgic trip through Westerberg’s basement recording studio, revisiting the ramshackle sound of The Replacements at their messy best and at the same time leaning on Westerberg’s careful pop songwriting. The secret of the album, I think, is that it sounds both breathless—almost nervously thrown together at the last minute—and self-consciously clever—jumping out of one song and into another, briefly citing famous rock songs, sending up the music industry. It’s a kind of joyous ride. I can’t really offer you a full listen or direct you to a place to buy it (it’s not being sold anywhere anymore), but I assure you there are ways… (take that as a hint, not a directive…)

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5. “Hangin’ Your Life On The Wall” – Guy Clark (and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott)

http://www.last.fm/affiliate/byid/9/7687888/6/trackpage/1281548363

Off of Clark’s classic 1995 album Dublin Blues (which also features the title track “Dublin Blues,” which counts as one of those songs that has made me cry), this tune is typical Clark: carefully constructed and nostalgic, sad, and funny all at the same time. There is a delicacy to his songs that you don’t hear in the country blues that Clark mostly plugs his lyrics into. This song, a duet with fellow country legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, is a laughable ode to old people not throwing out the towel and “hangin’ their life on the wall.”