Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Song of the Day

35-for-35: 2013 – “Don’t Lie” by Vampire Weekend

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I’ll always associate our friends The Crutchleys with being pregnant with EV because of two reasons

vampire-weekend-modern-vampires-of-the-cityThe first reason, and the most obvious, is that they visited our house to play Catan (which we bought for the occasion!) just a few hours before E went into labor. I’ll never be able to think of EV’s birth without thinking at least a little bit about The Crutchleys, Catan, and eating an entire Domino’s pizza all by myself in installments between E’s contractions the next morning.

The other reason is Modern Vampires of the City.

Two months earlier, we were paying The Crutchleys a visit in May for an evening of chat and games in May just after the LP was released. When the discussion turned to music, P said, “Oh, have you heard the new Vampire Weekend?”

I might have shrugged my shoulders in response. I liked the band’s second effort Contra well enough, but I had never had a particular epiphany with them like many of my friends did. Yes, they had an awesome vocabulary and plenty of baroque flourishes, plus an obvious affinity for Paul Simon. It was just that none of their songs really stuck to me.

(Also, I do give a fuck about the Oxford Comma.)

There was something different about Modern Vampires of the City from the opening notes and typewriter percussion of “Obvious Bicycle.” Vampire Weekend transformed from crafting baroque confection with endless streams of melody rocketing in all directions like silly string to wringing emotion from subtle veins of countermelody marbled through each of their songs.

That night, “Don’t Lie” stuck to me. I couldn’t remember the last time I heard something so beautiful and tragic, from the initial sigh of organ like the slow exhalation of breath, to the clipped heartbeat of massive-sounding kick and snare, to the elegiac slow surf guitar out of the outro, but nothing more than the chorus:

I want to know, does it bother you?
The low click of a ticking clock
There’s a lifetime right in front of you
And everyone I know

I feel that chorus thrumming in my cells. I’ve always held a nearly visceral terror of the click of a ticking clock, time made tangible as sound as it slips away never to be grasped again. One of my primary concerns during our pregnancy was time. How was I going to get by with so much less time? 

Later in the song, that chorus transforms:

I want to know, does it bother you?
The low click of a ticking clock
There’s a headstone right in front of you
And everyone I know

Those are the dual truths of time, laid bare in a pair of chorus. Everyone you know has both a lifetime and tombstone in front of them, but the great Rorschach test of life is asking someone which one they see when they hear the ticking of a clock.

35-for-35: 2012 – “Madness” by Muse

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]EV is a very musical child.

I know, shocking.

muse-the-2nd-lawShe not only pretends that she fronts a band, but actually writes songs for that band, rehearses them, and then sings them to us. She’s also got pretty solid pitch, can memorize most lyrics after two practice runs, and has started singing harmony to my originals when I play them for her.

She has a pair of musical parents, and has already sat in on dozens of rehearsals, but I like to think all of her musical interest and acumen is down to one song: “Madness” by Muse.

I’ve enjoyed Muse ever since I first heard an a cappella group sing “Time Is Running Out” back in college. There’s something about Matthew Bellamy’s rangy voice and the Queen-like bombast of their biggest songs that draws me in.

As with Kings of Leon, I continued to follow Muse’s releases oblivious to the fact that they were turning into the most popular band in the land. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law, came out on September 28th and I was already sure that I liked it when I heard “Madness” on the radio for the first time on Sunday, November 18th, on its way to being the longest-running Alternative Rock number one song of all time.

I remember the day, because that was the day we learned we were pregnant with EV. We were driving back home from seeing our friend Gina (not that one, the other one) in a play and the song came on the radio. We both sang along and traded the vocal percussion back and forth, smiled giddily at the “some kind of madness” that was about to take control of our lives.

After that car ride, Muse’s omnipresent “Madness” became the secret anthem of our pregnancy.

When we arrived at the hospital to deliver EV nine months later, we were met by one of the older midwives from the group of six we had been seeing. She was an authoritarian hippy, easy-going and new age-y but able and ready to command us at a moment’s notice. I know I wasn’t the pregnant one, but that’s pretty much everything I was looking for in a midwife.

Unfortunately, her hours of coverage were up midway through E’s labor. Just as we were getting comfortable with her, she was replaced with a young midwife who we’d only met once before. We were a bit bummed. How had we spent all these months forging relationships with a group of women who would deliver our child and missed getting to know the one who’d actually do the delivering.

The bummedness didn’t last long.

The midwife’s name was Erin, another E-name in a room with E and an nurse named Elizabeth and, potentially, a little E-named baby, if our baby turned out to be a girl.

Erin shared E’s birthday – not just the day, but the year as well.

Finally – and to this day, I find this last coincidental detail utterly insane – like E, Erin sang in a semi-professional a capella group.

Erin was meant to delivery EV. It was all part of the madness.

The first image of her I recorded somewhere other than in my gray matter. She is about 15 minutes old.

The first image of her I recorded somewhere other than in my gray matter. She is about 15 minutes old.

E and I had joked for a long time that she wanted the rocking soundtrack to Supernatural Season One playing throughout the entirety of her labor, but as the evening progressed I noticed she simply wasn’t getting into a good zone listening to all that classic rock.

The first time “Madness” came on she went into a sort of trance. I played it again and reflexively began singing the “mm-mm-mm-ma madness” part under my breath. Then, Erin began to sing along in harmony. Then, to our surprise, E began to sing too, quietly, between her contractions.

Almost every other moment of the labor process is a blur of details to me until EV emerged, but that moment remains frozen in time in that way all of my most significant memories are – where I can see it happen as an omniscient 3rd-person narrator looking in on the scene over my own shoulder.

Music. “Madness.” EV incubated in it for nine months, us singing along to it in the kitchen, trading the vocal percussion back and forth, and it summoned her into this world.

35-for-35: 2011 – “The Valley” & “Ambulance” by Eisley

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I have handed E a lot of her favorite records while speaking the words, “I don’t like this, but you should give it a try.”

eisley-fire-kite-epIt started passively in our first shared apartment in 2014. Even then I had a massive CD collection, most of which E hadn’t heard (this was still pre-iPod for us both). Sometimes she’d sample a record without me even realizing, which is how she came to love The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever To Tell.

Another thing that happens a lot is that E hands me back one of her favorite records and says, “I think you might need to listen to this one again.”

I’m telling you this not to try to take credit for E’s largely phenomenal taste in music (which would be a paradox to take credit for, since the contents of her old-school CD binder are one of the many reasons I love her), but to emphasize how she completely took me by surprise with Eisley.

I vaguely knew them as a “twee indie pop sibling band” and even after falling in love with them I think that remains a fair appraisal. Thus, I was relatively cool to their follow-up, Combinations, even after E had begun spinning it. It took our friend Amanda physically cornering me and placing headphones on my head to listen to “Sight To Behold” for me to finally come around to the band. She lifted one earphone halfway and mouthed, “is that eight voice parts?” when I hit the stunning bridge.

I still needed E to hand me their 2010 Fire Kites EP and say, “You need to hear this.” The pair of “They Valley” and “Ambulance” debuted on that EP and went on to bookend the band’s 2011 full-length The Valley.

“The Valley” takes the choral elements of Combinations and pushes them further, marrying an echoing chorus of voices to a see-sawing string section and warm vintage keys beneath. Part of the draw of the song for me is the riddle-like first stanza. It sounds like it’s own secret code, packed with packed with internal rhymes and off-balance stresses (bolded for emphasis):

Realheart-breaker come and take me
To the real heart ache that everyone is
Talking ’bout. You see me then you don’t,
But get it right, I don’t believe in magic.

From there it’s easy to get lost in a song that lives at an allegorical level, maintaining that air of mystery through the end, when she insists, “Take me home. I walk the night in the valley ’til everything is fine.” Is she asking for a ride to get to the valley, or because she has already walked off all of her worries?

I need an ambulance. I took,
I took the worst of the blow.
Send me a redeemer. Let me know

If I’m gonna be alright.
Am I gonna be alright?
‘Cause i know how it usually goes.
I know how it usually goes.

It’s a strange process to start any record with a song as resolved as “The Valley” and to end with one as shattered as “Ambulance.” From the first lines it conveys the trembling reaction to the worst kind of emotional wound. The repeated “I took, I took” that so subtle I missed it for years, even though it is followed by the pair of repeated lines in the second half.

4PAN1TSPBAnd Stacy DuPree King’s voice – had it been as supple and full as this on past efforts? On “Ambulance” her alto is rich like dark chocolate. Paired with acoustic piano and strings, the song is a near neighbor to Fiona Apple’s voice on her earliest pair of records. You’d never expect the next section to explode from with a ponderous and sizzling electric lead line.

‘Cause I was told to get out, told to leave
Told I have my things in the parking lot.
No no no, no no no no no no, baby yeah
Just send me that ambulance

By the end of a repeat of the “ambulance” line what started out a precious singer-songwriter tune has grown in scope to sound more like Radiohead’s “Karma Police” than anything off of Apple’s When The Pawn. Part of its strength is in the clever implication therein: if it’s really over, then she doesn’t need a ride to pick up her things, she needs an ambulance.

This pair of songs were tracked next to each other on Fire Kites but they accordioned open to reveal a whole album of a similar depth and playfulness on The Valley. It’s a shame that DuPree King has left the band since then (for her own fantastic act, Sucre), but E and I were smart enough to catch them on the tour behind this record and I’ll always have the memory of their crackling live performances of these songs stored in my brain.

35-for-35: 2010 – “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I went through a period in the late 00s where all I wanted was singer/songwriter dance music. For a while, the closest thing was Justin Timberlake or indie-rock pop like hellogoodbye, but neither quite scratched the itch I had. I wanted straight up, cotton candy, 80s style pop music with an auteur behind it and more texture than the typical radio tune.

And, of course, I wanted to hear women doing it.

Luckily, Lady Gaga arrived in 2008 with The Fame and rubbed my itch raw, but I would argue that if we’re talking about dance-pop auteurs we cannot even have the conversation without talking about Robyn.

Five years ago I would have had to follow that statement with “Yes, my 90s friends, the same Robyn of ‘Show Me Love.'” That’s not the case anymore, with “Dancing On My Own” in the credits of TV’s Girls and “Call Your Girlfriend” reaching surprising ubiquity in the year’s since its release.

I didn’t have that context in 2010, though. All I had was this queer record called Body Talk, Part 1 from the woman who sang “Show Me Love.” I had completely missed the “Konichiwa Bitches” years of Robyn’s second breakthrough because at the time I didn’t swim in those pop circles (because, I’d argue, she and Gaga revived those pop circles in the US).

I even wrote about my discovery process of Body Talk, Part 1, and how I was cool to “Dancing On My Own” on first listen but floored by the EP as a whole.

With hindsight, I’m also floored by “Dancing On My Own.” Despite the busy synth bass, the song has an uncluttered sonic aesthetic, adding in just one element at a time as in my 1994 pick “Closer.” (Note that the original version of this cut does not include the higher synth line that can now be heard in the video.)

“Dancing On My Own” has more than that common with that profane NIN cut. Each song is the perfect evocation of a near-universal human experience. Yes, “Closer” is more base and primary, but watching the person you want be with someone else while you sway on your own is something everyone has experienced at least once – from the most popular jock to the most ridiculed nerd.

Robyn turns that dejected feeling into something empowering – a chorus you are proud to shout along to on the dancefloor. It’s just an excuse to dance on your own.

35-for-35: 2009 – “Love Of Our Lives” by Indigo Girls

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indigo-girls-poseidon-and-the-bitter-bug[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]You don’t stop being an artist.

I haven’t written a new song in a few months, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being a songwriter. I never stopped being a blogger in the months this page lay dormant. You might not write as frequently as you did when you were 20, and you might draw inspiration from different things, but that doesn’t stop you from being an artist.

Being an artist has other implications in the commercial world, partially because there are costs associated with artistry. You may be a songwriter, but are you writing enough material to release full-length albums regularly enough that you won’t be forgotten? And, even when you do, will a likely-dwindling audience of tens of thousands of people like it enough to pay for it?

I don’t know how mainstream artists contend with all of those questions and still find the courage to make the art that drives them. I suppose that’s why you surround yourself with a team of managers and lawyers (although that’s a catch-22, since you have to keep making the art to pay for them to enable you to make the art!).

Somehow, despite all those odds, The Indigo Girls have continued to release some of their most vital, engaging work over the course of four studio LPs and a live album in the past decade. The live LP, Staring Down The Brilliant Dream, takes it name from this song, “Love Of Our Lives.”


(This acoustic version is from three years after the LP, but I think being able to see Emily and Amy trading the often unison octave vocals adds a lot to your listen.)

E taught me songs like “Least Complicated” and “Power of Two” note by note from her memory of many prior sing-throughs on long card rides back and forth in her little Corolla from her parents houses in New Jersey, young and in love.

We’ve been wanting to be helped by binding ties
We’ve been fighting for the love of our lives

This song flips that oft-told harmony-singing narrative on its head. We first heard “Love Of Our Lives” together in 2009, newly married (to the tune of “Least Complicated”!) and driving in our own car back on that same route with one window down and the wind whipping through our hair. We were equals as partners and singers, each naturally taking our accustomed parts (E with Emily, me with Amy Ray) and getting tangled up in each other as the two vocal lines merge back into a unison melody.

Fire and water, oxygen
Scotch and soda, or any combination
Starts the reaction.

Is there no mastermind of modern day
Who can blueprint a plan to make love stay
Steady and weatherproof usher in a new revolution?

I don’t know how are these two women writing such stunning statements of words and melody over 20 years into their careers, but I’m incredibly thankful that they are. I have so many favorite songs that remind me of the early milestones of our relationships, but this one will always remind me of the strength of us together.

After trying more, the hopeful ones still try.
How can we help it when we’re fighting for the love of our live?

(Also, a fun fact: “Love of Our Lives” include both of my favorite little marks of songwriting, the word “communication” and a reference to chemistry. They’re like the sigils of my and Gina’s respective houses, and also map onto Nathan and Martina in my novel. In fact, I’d say this song is specific inspiration for it, but to explain that much further would be a spoiler ;)