Category: Writing

Belle and Sebastian at the North Carolina Museum of Art

Posted on by kristen

When I saw an announcement, nearly six months ago, that Belle and Sebastian were going to be playing at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh this summer, I had mixed emotions. Most were good. I love Belle and Sebastian. They’ve been one of my longest-lived favorite bands, and I’ve continued to buy and really enjoy their albums, even nine albums in to their 19-year career. There aren’t many bands who can keep up that standard. It’s also been 14 years since I last saw them live, at the Tower Theater near Philly, in 2003.1 I’d been hoping for years that I’d get a chance to see them again, but if setlist.fm is to be believed, they don’t exactly favor the American South — and this appears to be the first and only time they’ve ever visited North Carolina.

Belle and Sebastian concert tickets
Three Belle and Sebastian concert tickets. Saving the stubs was a lot more fun in the old days.

All good, right? Yes, but I had one major concern — the venue. The North Carolina Museum of Art is lovely, but as a general rule I don’t love the type of outdoor shows that tend to happen at that sort of venue. The biggest issue is that it’s almost too nice, thus attracting people who are only moderately enthusiastic about the actual concert. Instead, you get people who are like “Yeah, I kind of like this band, and wouldn’t it be great to sit outside in the grass and have a picnic and hear some music?” It would be great, but for me it also encourages a less vibrant environment than you might get in other settings. By contrast, not many people are going to go stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd on a cement floor for several hours just because it sounds like a fun night out. (Well, maybe if they’re 19.) But, as a rule, at a more traditional club-type venue, you get a crowd that is there primarily because of the music.

The night of the show,  July 31, could only be described as charmed.  After several weeks of high 90s and oppressive humidity, the Raleigh weather was miraculously cool and dry. I attended the show with my husband and some of my favorite friends — two of whom brought chocolate cake. I purchased perhaps the nicest looking and best fitting concert t-shirt of my life. And the band was really good.

Belle and Sebastian — despite their advanced ages, which singer Stuart Murdoch joked about throughout the set — sounded great and appeared to be having a lot of fun. With nine albums to draw from, they were able to put together a really wonderful setlist. They favored their two best albums, Dear Catastrophe Waitress and The Life Pursuit, and played several of my favorite tracks from those two: the wordy, fast-paced “Sukie in the Graveyard,” the jaunty yet wry “I’m a Cuckoo,” and best of all, the acoustic ballad “Piazza, New York Catcher,” which manages to be both achingly beautiful and contain lines like “Piazza, New York catcher/Are you straight or are you gay?”2

Stuart Murdoch with keytar.
Stuart with keytar. I did not take this picture.

The band played a few lesser known tracks, including two new songs that will be on their upcoming album. New songs are always a hard sell at a live show, but if there’s one thing that will make people sit up and pay attention, it’s playing a keytar. Stuart broke his out for the brand new single “We Were Beautiful,” and it definitely caused me to poke my husband and say “Stand up, he’s playing a keytar!” It’s the first and only time I’ve seen one played live. I would recommend this approach to any band looking to garner some excitement for new songs at their shows.

The other best-represented album was The Boy with the Arab Strap, a disc I tend to forget about. But the band’s enthusiastic renditions reminded me of just how good those songs are. The title track was especially fun, as Stuart recruited a bunch of people from near the front to come up and dance on stage with the band, a scene that recalled all the kids dancing in A Charlie Brown Christmas. And, actually, the piano in “Arab Strap” is kind of reminiscent of “Linus and Lucy,” a connection I’ve never made before. It’s also a testament to the band’s skill and the sound quality of the show (as well as my increased pop knowledge) that for the first time I understood the line in “Seymour Stein”: “He reminded you of Johnny/Before he went electronic.”

So at this point, it sounds like my worries about the venue were unfounded. Not entirely. Despite the great music being played, the band’s obvious joy in performing, Stuart’s charming banter, and the overall idyllic setting, the vibe at the show was actually a little lame. Most people were sitting down, which dampens the excitement and poses a bit of a quandary. If you want to stand, are you being rude by blocking the view of those sitting behind you? Or should you say “screw it, this is a rock show!”? I went with the latter, though my self-consciousness at being the only one standing within a ten person radius resulted in a little less swagger than my internal dialogue might suggest. Not surprisingly, there were also a lot of people using their phones. This is a scourge of modern concert-going, regardless of venue, and I really cannot understand why people pay good money to see a show, and then spend a significant portion of it looking at Facebook, surely one of the least satisfying activities of modern life.

The overall effect of the crowd but a bit of a damper on my mood for while. I couldn’t help wishing that more people at the show were engaging with the music with a bit more abandon. However, my love for Belle and Sebastian’s music gradually overcame the subdued environment, and my enjoyment of the show grew — reaching a peak during the exemplary encore. The band came back out for two songs — an ideal number — and they were two of the best. “Party Line,” from their most recent LP, combines dance music with wit in a way that few bands have even attempted: “Don’t dance near the lights/Cause the bears eat the pretty ones.” And who doesn’t love hearing their favorite song played as the final number? “The Blues are Still Blue” is everything that’s great about Belle and Sebastian: clever and thoughtful, but also melodic and upbeat, with little falsetto bits and a hooky, sing-a-long chorus.

At the end, I suppose the question that I was left asking myself is “why go to a show?” Clearly people have different reasons: to hear music, to spend time with friends, to get out of the house. But for me, I think the answer is that it’s an opportunity to experience a bit of transcendence — to forget yourself, to give yourself over to music you love in a way you can’t in everyday life. It’s a high standard for a concert to meet, and many will fall short. There’s a degree of irony too, as this transcendence is a deeply personal experience, but also one that requires the cooperation of your fellow concert goers. It’s just easier to achieve when everyone around you is feeling it too.

While I enjoyed seeing Belle and Sebastian again after so long, I couldn’t help coming away from the show a little sad that it hadn’t matched the highs of some of my best concert experiences. Still, I never really regret seeing a band I love. And, hey, I got to sit outside in the grass with my friends, have a picnic, and hear some music that I loved — with maybe a few moments of near transcendence thrown in.

Pop Masterpiece: Main Course by the Bee Gees

Posted on by kristen

There’s a class of albums that, in my mind, have been awarded the title of Pop Masterpiece. These are albums that exemplify everything that’s great about pop: expressive melodies, memorable hooks, beautiful production, and a real depth of feeling. I’d like to write about all of these albums eventually, but I’ll start with the Bee Gees’ Main Course, as they’ve been the focus of much of my recent listening and enthusiasm.

The Bee Gees Main Course album cover

The album’s opening track “Nights on Broadway” might be called the Bee Gees’ career in miniature. The verse and chorus of the song have an R&B/funk influence that foreshadows the disco craze they would embrace a couple years later. It’s also reportedly the first time that Barry began to sing in his famous falsetto.3 “Nights on Broadway” sounds just enough like the popular conception of the Bee Gees to (probably) be recognizable to a general audience. To boot, the main portion of the song is actually more satisfying than any of the Saturday Night Fever tracks, as it weaves a measured dose of falsetto into the more dominant natural vocals, maximizing the effect without drifting into self parody.

Slipped into the midst of all of this is a stunning, crystalline middle eight that — as a good middle eight should — raises the emotional pitch of the song by several generous notches. The strings come in and suddenly we’re back in 1968, all pure harmonies and wrenched hearts. The line “Somehow I feel inside/You never ever left my side./Make it like it was before/Even if it takes a lifetime” is almost pathetic in its raw desire for the return of a departed lover. And then we slide back into the chorus so seamlessly, it’s hard to believe this middle eight was even there. It’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever heard.

With the exception of the gentle “Songbird,” the rest of Side 1 continues largely in this proto-disco vein with considerable success. “Jive Talkin’” has a hooky stutter, a breathy vocal, and a keyboard line that wouldn’t sound out of place had it been recorded in any one of the last 42 years. “Wind of Change” is an early draft of the urban commentary to come on “Stayin’ Alive.” But the track that gives “Nights on Broadway” the best run for its money is “Fanny [Be Tender With My Love].” Main Course was produced by Arif Marden, who had produced Hall and Oates’ Abandoned Luncheonette (another Pop Masterpiece!) just a year earlier. “Fanny” has a “She’s Gone”-style build, working from an opening acoustic guitar and soft vocal, through another excellent middle eight, to a fevered falsetto scream at the end. Blue Weaver, a keyboardist who worked with the Bee Gees, even admits to stealing the key change from “She’s Gone.” The overall effect is again one of beauty and extreme vulnerability: “You know how easy it is to break me.”

Main Course Side 2 labelWhile I’ve never owned Main Course on vinyl, the concept of sides feels very much at play here. Not withstanding “All This Making Love,” with its cringe-worthy lyric and silly tiger roar sound effect, Side 2 is effectively a last hurrah for the old Bee Gees sound. “Country Lanes” is the only Robin lead vocal, and it’s classic Robin — a quavering, haunting tale of loneliness. “Come On Over” has a countrypolitan sound, and the little tag of “so bring your love around” at the end of the chorus rounds it out beautifully. “Baby as You Turn Away” is basically a full-length song built on the musical idea of the “Nights on Broadway” middle eight. Another heartbreak song, it’s melody is gorgeous and more poignant than words could ever be.

“Edge of the Universe” is the high point of Side 2 and the album’s best deep cut. It’s mid-tempo, guitar-based pop-rock — something of a rarity for the Bee Gees. Blue Weaver once again proves himself to be the album’s unsung hero, contributing a spacey synth line that defines the song musically. Like “I Started a Joke,” “Edge of the Universe” is lyrically obtuse, metaphysical even. It starts out with the intriguing line “Just my dog and I at the edge of the universe/Well I didn’t want to bring her and I know it will make her worse.” But despite the ominousness of the opening, the overall effect of the song is one of triumph and acceptance — particularly on the middle eight: “Well, here I am and here I’m staying.” The song really could be about anything from a long hike to a journey of self discovery, but the overall effect is undeniably uplifting. 4

Main Course was released in 1975, and it was the Bee Gees’ thirteen album in ten years. It marked the start of the band’s unexpected late-period transition from a moderately successful vocal harmony group to worldwide disco superstars. What’s great about Main Course is that it teeters just on the edge between these two modes and — especially on tracks like “Nights on Broadway” — manages to  meld both into a cohesive whole. Is Main Course the best Bee Gees album? I’m not sure. It’s predecessor, Mr. Natural, is the running too. But Main Course is the album that I would recommend to anyone who wants to get to know the Bee Gees a little better and experience the breadth of their talents.

Ostensibly a review of The Beatles by Hunter Davies

Posted on by kristen

2017

The Beatles by Hunter Davies, 1996 edition
My 1996 edition. The White Album style letters are impossible to photograph.

I’ve had this copy of The Beatles by Hunter Davies sitting on my bookshelf for twenty years. When I was a teenager, my dad had a friend whose sister worked in publishing. She gave him a lot of pop music books, which he would then lend or give to my dad.5 Since I loved the Beatles, I tried to hold on to those when I could. But I never actually read The Beatles. Maybe it seemed too big, or maybe I was at a place in my fandom where the music was enough.

What’s a little sad now about the Beatles’ music is that I often feel that I’ve used up much of my lifetime listening quota. I can play any of their albums in my head note for note, so it can be hard to recapture those feelings of joy and wonder when actually hearing the songs. But even now, I find that reading about the Beatles still holds great appeal. It’s a way to bring back some of the magic, to want hear the songs again and to hear them in a new light.

The Beatles, originally published in 1968, is the only ever authorized biography of the band. My edition was published in 1996, and there appear to have been one or two newer editions since then. The book itself is a bit like a ramshackle old house that someone has built too many additions onto. There’s the core text; an introduction and postscript, both from 1985; and a second 1996 introduction. I’d also argue that the personal experiences of any serious fan have a way of sneaking in as well. Reading from cover to cover, you’re jumping around the timeline in an almost postmodern way.

1996

The 1996 introduction, which starts the book, brought on a bit of an emotional rush. This particular reissue was released just after The Beatles Anthology television documentary, which I watched with my parents in 1995 at the age of 12. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this was a life changing experience for me. While I had been listening to the Beatles since the womb — my parents, both born in 1951, are prime boomers — watching The Beatles Anthology inaugurated a period of intense Beatle obsession that would last for the next several years. Reading about it brought back just how much the Beatles meant to me as young teenager.

It was more than just the music. Discovering the Beatles essentially drew a horizontal rule through my life at that point in time. Before the Beatles, to be honest, I was kind of a loser. I mean, I was just a kid and a painfully shy one at that, but I really had no identity or confidence. If people at school were talking about how much they loved “The Sign” or “Whoomp! There It Is,” I would blindly agree, despite never having heard these songs before.6 Once a boy gave me a valentine in fourth grade, and I was so embarrassed I immediately threw it away and ignored him for the rest of elementary school. (I still feed bad about that.) My efforts at being invisible were sometimes successful, but more often than not marked me as one of the uncool.

Beatles patches
I still have my old Beatles backpack patches.

After the Beatles, I became a different person. It may sound unlikely that the simple love of a 30-year-old band could transform me, but it did. I think it gave me the fire of the true believer. I knew that the Beatles were great, and suddenly I didn’t care if the other kids thought I was a weirdo. Luckily I had one friend who also loved them too. We would get our parents to take us to the lame mall head shop where we bought men’s sized Beatles t-shirts that fit us like dresses. We sewed Beatles patches onto our backpacks. In eighth grade, we even convinced our social studies teacher to let us hold a memorial for John Lennon on the anniversary of his death. I believe it consisted of a moment of silence and playing a song on a boombox.

While these antics attracted occasional teasing from other kids, for the most part they actually upped my social cache. It was an early lesson in the paradoxical way that not caring what other people think makes them respect you more. I loved the Beatles simply because I did, and they made me myself in a way I had never been before.

1985

Right, this is supposed to be a book review. Getting back on track, the next layer of The Beatles is the 1985 introduction and postscript. The ’80s strike me as lost years for the  Beatles, though I’m too young to remember them myself. Davies’s reflections during these years are mostly about demythologizing the band — not harshly or gleefully, but realistically.

The introduction is where he acknowledges that some of what he wrote in the 1968 text was cleaned up for the authorized biography. He had to pretend that the Beatles swore less and took fewer drugs, that their marriages were happier than they were. He couldn’t say outright that Brian Epstein was gay, despite Brian granting permission prior to this death. In the postscript, we see the fairytale come to an end. Solo careers are launched, marriages end, legal battles ensue, and John gets shot.

Having not experienced this time period personally, it’s hard for me to conceptualize a world where the Beatles are not the admired musical and cultural heroes they are today. Some of it may also be a result of being an American, which is interesting. Davies describes John Lennon’s image in England in the 1970s as “a harmless eccentric, an oddball who had gone off with that funny woman and was doing funny things and producing occasional funny music.” In America, by contrast, “there had emerged a different John Lennon during the last decade, someone who had become an active spiritual leader, a symbol of a new generations’ struggles and hopes, who could still communicate with millions of young people, even when, for those five years or so, he had hardly been seen or heard.” That’s the Lennon — and the Beatles — I grew up with.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a more recent edition of the book, but I can guess how a newer introduction might read. Between 1, a Cirque de Soleil show, the availability of cute girl-sized t-shirts, the Beatles’ catalog on Spotify, the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper, and countless other reintroductions of their music and image, the Beatles seem to have settled into a near-permanent place as pop culture heroes.

1968

The Beatles is still a great read, despite being frozen in 1968. Davies wrote the book after spending over a year observing and interviewing the band, as well as talking with their families and friends. He has a easy, unpretentious style, and it’s clear that his respect for the Beatles, as musicians and people, is genuine. And despite the obvious whitewashing of potentially scandalous material, there are moments of candor that do seem to cut nearer to the truth.

The first several chapters detail the Beatles’ boyhoods in Liverpool, and Davies paints a vivid picture of a time that now seems very far away. Liverpool in the 1950s was a world where people’s parents had jobs like cotton salesman or steward on an ocean liner. Boys rode buses, skipped school, and went largely unsupervised. The idea of a rock group, let alone a British rock group from Liverpool, was still very new. To dream of making a living at it was crazy.

One pattern that emerges during the early part of the book is just how risky it was to hang one’s hat on the Beatles’ future success. John, Paul, and George themselves we so set on music from an early age that they never really took school or jobs seriously. But many of the other players have similar stories of giving up secure, traditional roles to pursue a dream. Ringo was working as an apprentice fitter when he got the chance to join Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.7 Neil Aspinall had a career in accounting, and Mal Evans worked for the Post Office. Even Brian, who admittedly had a better cushion, gave up the life of a traditional businessman to manage an unknown beat group. All of these people quit what they were doing, at great personal risk, to join The Beatles enterprise.

A photo of a photo of the Beatles in Hamburg.
The Beatles in Hamburg, undeniably cool.

The Beatles themselves were the reason for these leaps of faith. Their music was of course a part of it, but their personal magnetism seems to have been at least an equal factor. Davies’s narrative is drawn to that element as well, focusing more on personalities than music for most of the book. Again and again, we see portraits of fans and compatriots who are compelled by the whole Beatles package. A quote from Klaus Voorman, a fan and friend from the Hamburg years, sums it up well: “I couldn’t get over how they played, how they played together so well, so powerful and funny.” Davies makes the point throughout that the Beatles whole was greater than the sum of its members’ parts.

His portraits of each individual Beatle could hardly be called controversial, but neither are they fawning caricatures. He describes John moping around his house watching TV, and quotes Cynthia as saying that she probably would never have married him if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. He explores Paul’s dual nature as “the cute one,” adored by fans, but also driven and shrewd. George is too serious, deep into his Indian religion phase and not all that keen on Beatledom. And finally Ringo is sort of a regular guy, funny and self-depreciating, but traditional in his home and marriage.

On the whole, Davies doesn’t really try to draw a lot of conclusions about the Beatles. He observes and plainly writes down what he sees. What comes into focus is a a group of four people who, together, were able to create art that was full of beauty and humor. On their own, they are more like normal humans — four talented, lucky humans who nonetheless have their problems and hangups. Davies leaves us at a point in 1968 where the band’s future is an unknown. He resists the temptation to predict their future, and surely no one could have anyway. What The Beatles really does is capture the band at a pivotal moment, poised between past glories and a few more charmed years.

2017

Without really thinking about it, I’ve referred to the Beatles as “heroes” as couple times in this essay. I think that’s a particularly apt term, because as we get farther away from their active years, they become more mythological. Davies himself describes them as “folk heroes” at one point. I wonder if, in two hundred or two thousand years, people will talk about the Beatles they way we talk about Noah’s ark or King Arthur today. This way of looking at them would not be inconsistent with statements that have already been made about the band, from John’s infamous claim that they were more popular than Jesus to Bob Stanley’s recent framing of their success as a literal miracle.8

In that framework, the story of their lives becomes almost a holy text, a set of parables that not only describe literal events but that can be returned to time and again to show something new. Perhaps the lesson for me in letting this book sit untouched for 20 years is that there’s a time and place for everything, and that the Beatles, while they may grow old in some ways, can hopefully continue to offer new things as well — a window into another world, a meditation on success, or a prompt to revisit some of my own memories, forever entwined with my love for the band.

2017 so far: A good album is hard to find

Posted on by kristen

albumsI am an album person. I don’t consider myself to be a fan of a band unless they they have at least one LP that I know start to finish. When I hear a song I like, my most cherished dream is that I will listen to the full album and find it to be 45 minutes of similarly great songs. (I’m disappointed a lot.) I don’t have to love every song on an album to love the album. There are plenty of albums that have tracks that leave me cold, but I still listen to them because they’re an integral part of the whole. An album is not about individual songs, but about how they fit together and their overall effect.

I’ve listened to a lot of great songs released in 2017. In nearly every case I’ve pulled up their parent albums on Spotify, hoping to hit the jackpot, and wound up disappointed instead. Usually the biggest problem is not that the other songs on the album are bad — it’s that the album is just a string of slightly less good versions of the hit. There’s no sense of movement or wholeness.

The new HAIM album illustrates this phenomenon. The first three tracks are fantastic, but as it goes on, I’m either zoning out or working too hard to differentiate each song. (This is the one about a break up that’s a little bit dream pop, this is the one about a break up that’s about not trusting the guy.) HAIM are fully capable of writing a great song, and if I hear any one of their songs on its own, I usually like it. But their LP has that “same-y” quality that plagues many a just-OK record.

Successful albums on the other hand have the variety and forward momentum to make you want to keep listening. This is a tall order, and so it’s actually not that surprising that there are only two 2017 albums so far that hit the sweet spot for me. On the surface, you may not think these have much in common. (And I can’t help but wonder how many people actually like both of them.) But they are both by British singer-songwriters who embrace variety in their sound and idiosyncrasy in their storytelling. They’re both albums that make you want to keep listening.

÷

Ed Sheeran's DivideSurprising even to me, my most listened to 2017 LP has been Ed Sheeran’s ÷. This is pure pop, and it’s not burning down the music establishment or anything. But as an album, it’s just so damn listenable. After one spin, I could have easily gone back and told you something about almost every track. (This one’s about his childhood friends, this one sounds like Irish music, this is the sexy one, this is the sad one about his grandmother dying.) There’s a mix of sounds and themes that’s just interesting. For a million-selling pop record to be this good is pretty unusual.

“Castle on the Hill” is the big ballad, kind of like Coldplay or U2. I don’t really love either of those bands, but I think Ed makes the style work because his lyrics are warmer and more personal than U2’s grand political statements or Coldplay’s bland triumph. He opens with “When I was six years old I broke my leg,” and runs through a series of childhood memories, tempering the nostalgia a little with some present day snapshots of his friends: “One friend left to sell clothes/One works down by the coast/One had two kids but lives alone/One’s brother overdosed/One’s already on his second wife/One’s just barely getting by.” There’s no way to know if there are Ed’s real memories and real friends, but they certainly feel real.

I also like “Galway Girl,” because I love songs that pack in a lot of lyrics. “Dive,” “Perfect” and “How Would You Feel (Paean)” are all romantic, acoustic ballads, maybe a little cheesy, but still easy to get swept away in. They’re also spaced out nicely with the other material. “New Man” makes an attempt at humor that’s not always quite on, but manages to get in one really good zinger when Ed notes that your new man “owns every single Ministry CD.” Throughout ÷, Ed raps a little, strums a little, and belts it out a little, and the result, while not life-changing, is undeniably enjoyable.

Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding

The other record I’ve liked this year is Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding. (That’s actually the full title. I guess he couldn’t just call it John Wesley Harding.) Wesley Stace is usually John Wesley Harding when he’s recording and Wesley Stace when he’s writing novels, but I believe this album is property credited to Stace. It doesn’t really matter though, because his talents as songwriter and storyteller are both on display. Stace is also lucky to be backed by the The Jayhawks, with their jangly guitars and Karen Grotberg’s lovely backing vocals. While there’s less stylistic variety here than on Sheeran’s album (no rapping, I’m afraid), there’s a good mix of tempos and more than enough compelling ways of looking at the world to make you want to stick around until to the end.

I featured “Better Tell No One Your Dreams” on my June mix, and the song has held up with repeated listenings. It captures the experience of dreams really well, and it also makes an interesting assertion: “Tell them your secrets by all means/But better tell no one your dreams.” I’d never thought before that dreams would make you more vulnerable than secrets, but it’s a persuasive argument. If dreams reflect our unconscious to some extent, then they’re actually kind of like secrets that we don’t even know ourselves. They make sense to the dreamer on an emotional level, but become tedious when verbalized — “People get bored/And when they’re bored they get mean.”

A few other unique conceits: “Hastings Pier” is a wistful, piano-based song that recounts the history of an English pleasure pier that seems to have had a tough time of it over the years. Stace entwines the history of the pier with his own memories of it. He then watches it burn down in 2010 on his computer screen. More upbeat and hooky, “The Wilderness Years” uses biblical metaphors to illustrate “castings out” — from a bad relationship, organized religion, a dead-end job — that ultimately turn out to be blessings. I love the contention that “the wilderness years are my best,” suggesting that a little freedom and chaos are good for the soul.

I have a favorite Spice Girl in 2017 and it’s Mel C

Posted on by kristen

Melanie C aka Sporty SpiceThe other day when I was working on my post about John Wesley Harding, I made a tangential reference to the Spice Girls’ song “Say You’ll Be There.” I linked to Tom Ewing’s excellent Popular blog, where he has been reviewing every UK number one single. Ewing wrote a very complimentary review of the song, which made me feel a good about liking it. This train of thought also made me realize that, over the years, I have stumbled into a casual Melanie C (aka Sporty Spice) fandom.

I wouldn’t have pegged myself as a Mel C fan — or even a person who has opinions about the Spice Girls — until I started reviewing all of my favorite Mel C songs in one listening session. It turns out she’s recorded a solid handful of pop that I listen to on a fairly regular basis. Here’s a quick rundown of the highlights.

“Say You’ll Be There”

The aforementioned “Say You’ll Be There” is definitely the best Spice Girls song. I never actually liked the Spice Girls much during their mania days. As a teenager I was pathetically pretentious, too obsessed with The Beatles to pay much attention to any group who didn’t write their own songs and play their own instruments. It’s funny that I actually like a lot more of the pop of my youth as an adult than I ever did as a member of its target audience.

“Say You’ll Be There” is incredibly ’90s, but in a good way. It’s got that squealing synth running through it, which I now know is called the “G-Funk whistle.” It’s also got the previously addressed harmonica solo, as well as a super hook and a strong vocal performance by Mel C. The Ewing review points out how excellent her little ad libs during the final chorus are. You just never know what’s going to hold up well.

“Never Be The Same Again”

“Never Be The Same Again” was Mel C’s first solo hit in 1999. And while Wikipedia tells me that it didn’t make the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., I swear I can remember hearing it on the radio in high school. The overall sound is subtly more like the late ‘90s than the mid-‘90s, though I suppose you’d have to have been a teenager during those years to actually make this distinction. I just know that it reminds me of NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, which came out about six months later. Mel sounds more restrained than on her Spice Girls recordings, and the song has a nice wriggly melody.

What’s compelling about this song is the ambiguity of the lyrics coupled with a minor key. While a straight interpretation of the song might be “we were friends, then something romantic happened between us and now we’re embarking on a bright new future as a couple,” it could just as easily be “oh my God, what have I done?” Or maybe the singer doesn’t know, asking “Is this something that I might regret?” Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez of TLC ties things up with a cool rap verse and offers a little more optimism: “Though improbable it’s not impossible./For a love that could be unstoppable.” But on the whole, I like the ambiguity better.

“Independence Day”

This 2002 track was a deep cut from the soundtrack to Bend It Like Beckham. I picked up on it thanks to the late, great Pseu’s Thing with a Hook radio show on WFMU. It’s straight-up pure pop, with all R&B or hip-hop influences stripped away, and it’s probably my favorite Mel C song. It opens with some chiming guitars that later become crunchy, and it’s much more rock than any of Mel’s previous work. The arrangement is very good throughout, including a quirky middle eight with some distorted piano and a nice little coda.

More than anything, “Independence Day” comes across like a solo singer-songwriter performance. The vocal is mostly just a single track of Mel singing, without a lot of back-ups or harmonies layered on. The subject matter is also quite different from her previous hits. Rather than a relationship song, “Independence Day” is a textbook uplifting personal anthem, well-suited to the accompanying film and one suspects a new phase in Mel’s life and career as well. Mel is credited as a co-writer, and there’s a sincerity and exuberance to the performance that’s quite winning.

“I Know Him So Well”

First of all, I love “I Know Him So Well.” I’ve been obsessing over the original version from Chess for a while now. So when I saw that Mel C had recorded a cover of the song — as a duet with Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton! — I was pretty excited to hear it. Their version doesn’t really add much that’s new to the original, but it’s quite well executed. The arrangement is warmer, focused on piano and strings rather than synths. Mel is back to a belting-out style on her lead verse, but she also shines as a backup vocalist for Emma.  The material is just so good that I suspect that any two reasonability talented and committed singers could wring an emotional performance out of it. Still, I’ve come back to this version more times than I would have expected.

To sum up: I have a favorite Spice Girl, and it’s Melanie C. She’s the best singer of the group, and she’s recorded a surprising amount of quality material. It’s admittedly strange that I would choose to embark on this topic in 2017, but I just never know when one of these pop vortices is going to open up and lead me to (re)discover a set of tunes that I never would have chosen with my left brain.

Listening to “I Started a Joke”

Posted on by kristen

My husband and I were driving to Target when “I Started a Joke” came on. It’s on my Spotify favorites playlist, so the artist and song info showed up on the car display. 9

Josh: I didn’t know this was by The Bee Gees.
Kristen: Yeah, I’m loving this lately.
Josh: Really??
Kristen: You don’t like it?
Josh: No.
Kristen: Really??

Josh went on to say that the song was sappy and sounded like something Michael Scott would sing on The Office, thinking it was profound. That’s really not a bad analogy, although I take something different from it. Michael Scott is not cool, and he’s an easy mark for ridicule. But there’s a reason the character has become a cultural touchstone, and it’s because much of his behavior reveals an awkward emotional underbelly that we can all relate to on some level. Even though he’s an idiot, he evokes pathos as much as humor. Or in other words, “I started a joke/That started the whole world crying.”

The lyrics to “I Started a Joke” really are the crux of the song. While they don’t make sense in any topical way, they’re impossible to ignore because they feel so profound. My theory is that they have a cyclical construction (joke/crying, cry/laughing, died/living) that’s almost mythological, in the Joseph Campbell sense — endless cycles of joy and pain, birth and death, the old replacing in the new. The line, “I finally died/Which started the whole world living” makes me think of Jesus every time, even though I’m not at all religious. There’s something in the nature of these lyrics that touches a purely emotional, subconscious part of me. That feeling could never could be expressed in a rational way. 10

The Bee Gee's 1968 album Idea.Robin’s odd, reedy vocal is the other high point. While Barry is usually remembered as The Bee Gee’s vocalist, Robin often sang lead on the early songs, and his voice has a singularly haunting quality. On “I Started a Joke,” he comes in clear and quavering, building in power until the unsettling climax of the middle eight. The “fell out of bed” lyric suggests a nightmare, and the vocals echo a mix of despair and confusion.

Yet there’s great beauty to the song as well — the warmth of the low notes on the lead vocal, the enveloping “ahhs” of the back-up, the little string flourish at the end of the middle eight, . Getting back to the cyclical thing, this is a song of highs and lows, and musically it’s both uplifting and a little disturbing. Nowhere is that quality more apparent than on the wail that concludes the song. Does it signify despair or acceptance — or a bit of both? I think the answer is in the song, but it can’t really be spelled out here.

Listening to “I Should Have Stopped”

Posted on by kristen

John Wesley Harding’s “I Should Have Stopped” is a song that, for lack of a better phrase, speaks to me. But perhaps it’s an apt metaphor, because this is a very literary song — as much about words as music. It’s from Harding’s 2011 album, The Sound of His Own Voice, and it tells a short story with astonishing depth in a mere 3:55. It’s also melodic and jangly, sung with Harding’s trademark British accent and wry delivery. Give it a listen:

Song and Story

Harding (aka Wesley Stace) is also a novelist, so it’s not surprising that his songs should have a literary bent. “I Should Have Stopped” is one of his best in this regard as it contains a fully-formed plot, lots of idiosyncratic detail, and a series of clever transitions between past and present narratives. In short, the song is about a guy who sees a women at the laundromat with whom he once had the sort of unformed glimmer of romance that marks one’s early teenage years. He wants to talk to her, but he doesn’t.

What makes the story so compelling is the level of nuance Harding brings to the telling. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that the narrator and his crush shared a few awkward encounters but always seemed to be kept apart by their differences in status and confidence. In the example of the school play, the narrator “ended up as prompter for the matinees,” while his crush, the more precocious of the two “played Salome.” The present moment is equally vivid, as the narrator spots his former beloved in the midst of laundry day. She’s “looking pretty special in her disco hat,” suggesting that she retains some of her former panache, but maybe it’s become a touch sad and out of date. Or as he puts it: “You’re eyes look kind of tired, but you basically look the same (the same).”

All of this makes for a striking story, and Harding even commented that, “Everyone asks me about the song ‘I Should Have Stopped,’ and they go ‘Who is that woman?’; and the answer is that I just made it up!” The first-person narrative combined with such exceptional detail goes a long way toward making this song feel real.

“We will never know the mystery again”

But the seeming verisimilitude is more than the result of clever songcraft. What makes “I Should Have Known” so captivating is an emotional truth with universal appeal. I think many people have someone like the crush in this song, not even a first love, but a first infatuation, a first person who made them understand, if only to a tiny degree, what a first love might be.

There’s someone I count in this category, a boy I liked in 8th grade and danced with at many a middle school dance. I remember they played “Say You’ll be There,” by the Spice Girls, and he told me how he liked the song  specifically because of the great harmonica solo. (A daring admission for a boy, and perceptive too.)  Even now, I remember our connection as being somehow real, our conversations having depth, despite our youth and the general impossibility of the fledging relationship going anywhere. These connections, though seemingly inconsequential in the long term, stick with us.

The poignant side to “I Should Have Stopped” comes out in the fact that the narrator should have stopped — but he didn’t. And his circumstances are even a little bit desperate. He acknowledges that rather than stopping, he’ll be going back to “the mess at home,”  a mess that surely must make the appeal of a lost flame that much more alluring. But ultimately, he accepts the reality that you can’t go back again. “Because it’s ancient history and we are not the same/And we will never know the mystery again.”

The reason I love this song is that there are some mysteries that we will never know again. I don’t particularly want to see any of my old crushes at a laundromat. But one of the joys of great art is that it lets you relive the experiences and emotions you may never have again— and explore what-ifs that will probably never come to pass.

Related listening

The Kinks’ “Do You Remember Walter?” is another marvel of economic storytelling that also makes use of a past-to-present shift. Ray Davies tells a story of boyhood friendship and explores sad fate of adulthood, all in under three minutes.

XTC’s “Harvest Festival” is another story-song that captures youthful infatuation and the perspective of age. The line “more than enough to keep me fed all year” is almost unbearably brilliant.

And believe it or not, “Say You’ll Be There” holds up rather well.

Listening to The Bee Gee’s Number Ones

Posted on by kristen

Recently I started getting obsessed with the various strata of compilations and what they say about a band. At the bottom level, you’ve got your “best of,” which states that this material is the best the band has to offer, but doesn’t really make any claims beyond that. Next is “greatest hits,” which implies a certain popularity based on the assertion that at least some of these songs have charted. (I realize these two are rarely used strictly in this context, but that’s what they should mean.)Then you’ve got singles compilations. This is where it starts to get impressive, because a artist with enough a-sides to fill an entire album makes some claim to longevity and consistency. And on the topmost rung, the king of compilations, is the number ones album. Only a few artists have enough numbers ones to achieve this feat, among them Elvis, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and of course (or maybe surprisingly), the Bee Gees.

The Bee Gees' Number Ones album cover

And so the first stop on my beyond-disco tour of the Bee Gees is their hits compilation Number Ones. While the Bee Gees have plenty of great albums that are worth getting into, Number Ones is an ideal gateway to the band’s catalog. Arranged chronologically, it spans the bulk of their career and range of styles from 1967 through 2001. It’s also a testament to their popularity and the echelon of the music world to which they rightly belong. (It’s worth noting that the album represents worldwide numbers ones — many of them were not U.S. number ones, and their popularity here was pretty variable. I’d be curious to know more about how the Bee Gees are regarded in the UK.)

The earliest Bee Gees songs sound a bit like the Beatles if you were to strip away every sound and image that could properly be called rock ’n’ roll. The result is the purest distillation of pop: sublime melodies and vocal harmonies set against a backdrop of string arrangements and only the politest guitars. This music is not cool, but it is good. The first number one, 1967’s “Massachusetts,” sets the tone, and its narrative of failed hippiedom is a kind of metaphor for the Bee Gees themselves, out of place among their far-out ’60s peers. The first five tracks on the album stick to the same template, but the quality of the melodies prevents them from getting too same-y. For me, this early period ends with “I Started a Joke,” a song so beautifully abstract that it demands (and will get) its own blog post.

Next up is a run of songs that demonstrate greater stylistic experimentation. This is the Bee Gee’s creative, Revolver-like mid-period. “Don’t Forget to Remember” sounds like 1950s country, and “Lonely Days” tempers a classic Bee Gees verse with an almost rollicking chorus backed by a stomping piano and even some horns. This impulse toward a less wimpy sound would lead to the magnificent Mr. Natural and Main Course albums, of which “Jive Talking’” is sadly the only track that made it to number one. This one’s got a beat, and it’s one of the earliest uses of the iconic Barry falsetto, particularly appealing here thanks to a soon-to-be-abandoned restraint.

“Jive Talkin’” was the first step on the road to the disco years, and the next group of songs on Number Ones encompasses the Saturday Night Fever period. I’ve already covered the Bee Gee’s disco sound pretty thoroughly, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it here other to say these songs are great, and it’s fun to listen to them in the context of the band’s overall evolution.

Finally the album wraps up with the Bee Gees’ adult contemporary years. These songs are not the Bee Gee’s strongest, but they’re improbably listenable. The tracks from the hugely popular Spirits Having Flown album move away from disco but retain a certain dance/soul vibe. “Tragedy” is an earworm nonpareil despite the incomprehensible delivery, and “Too Much Heaven” captures a little of heart-gripping balladry of “How Deep is your Love.” I actually quite like “You Win Again,” the Bee Gee’s last real worldwide hit from 1987. It’s similar to late-period Abba, and the Gibbs have wisely abandoned their worn ’70s trademarks, most likely in response to an aging fanbase and disco’s tarnished reputation. It’s not a triumphant ending, but it’s better than many middle-aged pop groups could pull off.

(The final song on the album is 2001’s “Man in the Middle,” which as far as I can tell was not actually a number one. I believe was included because it’s a Maurice lead vocal and the album was released shortly after his death. It’s not bad, but “You Win Again” feels like the real ending to this disc.)

Taken as a whole, the Bee Gees’ career is one of the strangest in pop. They were hitmakers despite being deeply uncool. They were defined by disco despite dabbling in a variety of genres. They made forays into styles and trends that have not aged well, yet those songs are better than they really should be, largely on the strength of their melodies. But this lack of cred takes nothing away from the astonishing number of beautiful, memorable songs they recorded. Number Ones stands as an achievement in its own right and an excellent introduction to a deep and wonderful career.

Do you know what Saturday Night Fever is?

Posted on by kristen

Here’s a conversation I had with my dentist last time I got my teeth cleaned:

Dentist: Do you know what Saturday Night Fever is?
Kristen: Yes.
Dentist: Really? I’m surprised someone your age would know that!
Kristen: [At a loss] Well, my parents had the record when I was a kid.
[Satisfied with this explanation, dentist proceeds to begin a long and not all that interesting story about seeing a really bad production of the Saturday Night Fever musical.]

This conversation raises a number of questions: Do I look so young as to not know what Saturday Night Fever is? (No.) Do today’s youth not know what Saturday Night Fever is? (Possibly, but I hope not.) Is there any good way to explain to your dentist that you love the Bee Gees? (Not in under 25 words and with one of those wands blasting air at your teeth.)

The problem with being a Bee Gees fan is that expressing a love for the Bee Gees is synonymous with expressing a love for disco. That’s because the Bee Gees are synonymous with disco. Saturday Night Fever and “Stayin’ Alive” are two things that almost everybody associates with them — along with leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Bee Gees had a long, varied career dating back to 1966. During this time they experimented with a many different styles and produced some amazing songs that would be unrecognizable by most people as belonging to the Bee Gees. So when I say I love the Bee Gees, I want to express that I love them in a grand, sweeping, pop aficionado sense — not just a disco sense.

Leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair.
Leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair.

That being said, the disco era is an integral part of the Bee Gees’ career, and their songs on Saturday Night Fever are excellent. It can be hard to appreciate a song like “Stayin’ Alive” because it’s so ubiquitous that even when you listen to it, you don’t really hear it. But every once in a while, you catch it just right, and the brilliance comes into focus: the unforgettable hook, the funky guitar, the swooping disco strings, Barry’s falsetto joined in harmony by his brothers. My husband and I saw the music video on MTV Classic recently, and we were transfixed, both by the song itself and the undeniably striking image of the brothers Gibb. Josh must have repeated the sentence, “His hair is like a long, flowing mane,” about three times during the course of it all.

“How Deep is Your Love” might be even better, though less overtly disco. The piano and the more sparing use of falsetto give it warm tone, and I love the way that Barry’s voice gets a little low on the verse, before moving up to a falsetto on just the last word or two. The chorus — particularly the lines “’Cause we’re living in a world of fools/breaking us down/when they all should let us be” — has the kind of yearning melody that makes you feel like your heart will burst out of your chest. It’s one of my top five BeeGees songs.

The rest of the Bee Gees’ tracks on the Saturday Night Fever album are great as well — though a couple are re-releases, and pretty much all of them are better heard in other contexts. There’s also a bunch of other stuff on there, including some disco standards and what looks to be obvious filler. But to be honest, I couldn’t really get up the momentum to listen to a seven-minute song called “Calypso Breakdown.” So I wouldn’t necessarily advise listening to the whole album unless you really do love disco.

If there’s a conclusion here, it’s that I love the Bee Gees’ disco years, but I don’t only love their disco years. I’d originally envisioned this post as a guide to some highlights of the Bee Gee’s catalog, beyond the well-known disco hits, but it’s already gotten too long. So instead, I’ll plan to do a handful of Bee Gees posts over the next month or so, delving into some of my favorite songs and albums. Keep your mind open and prepare to have your mental model of the Bee Gees shattered.

Liam Gallagher’s new single is good!

Posted on by kristen

It’s funny that my first Oasis-related post should be about Liam Gallagher, when Noel is my true love. But I’m pleased and maybe a little surprised to report that Liam’s new single “Wall of Glass,” his first as a solo artist, is actually quite good. Like a lot of the best Oasis songs, it’s melodic and loud with a vaguely empowering message. It’s also got a cleaner pop sound, lacking the slathered on layers of Noel’s guitars and maybe even getting a touch danceable.

What’s exciting to me about “Wall of Glass” is that Liam co-wrote it with Greg Kurstin, a professional songwriter who co-wrote Adele’s “Hello,” along with tracks for Sia, Kelly Clarkson, and tons of other hitmakers. (Better still, Kurstin is also one half of The Bird and The Bee, purveyors of the fantastic “Polite Dance Song,” as well as an entire Hall and Oates cover album.) I generally love it when superstar songwriter teams up with a classic act. This combo has produced some unexpectedly enjoyable late career hits like Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” (co-written by Max Martin) and Aerosmith’s “Pink” (co-written by Glen Ballard). The addition of a co-writer seems to have given Liam some new life as well, especially after the disappointment of the second Beady Eye album.

Liam said in an interview that’s he’s happy to work with other songwriters and that his real gifts are his ability to interpret and deliver a song. Especially for a certain kind of listener, it’s easy to fall into the trap idolizing only those rare individuals who can deliver the whole package: writing, singing, playing, and performing. And that’s impressive. But it’s also important to remember that great interpreters of songs are not no-talent hacks. Liam’s voice sounds strong and brash on “Wall of Glass,” and the material really suits him. Given the synergy that Liam and Greg Kurstin have so far, I’m hopeful that the full album will deliver at least a more more winners.

It’s also worth noting that Liam as a successful songwriter is not unprecedented. Admittedly he’s kind of like the veggie burger to Noel’s real burger: usually a serviceable substitute, but occasionally transcending his status as an imitator on his own merits. The two Oasis singles he wrote — “Songbird” and “I’m Outta Time” — are both great. “Songbird” is uncharacteristically simple with a gentle harmonica and some basic two-chord strumming. “I’m Outta Time” is a solo-Lennon pastiche with a delicate touch of falsetto at the start of the verses, supplemented by Noel’s trademark poignant guitar. It would be great to hear a few of these more contemplative tracks on the new album, perhaps penned by Liam himself, as a counterpoint to the big, loud stuff.

This tension between obnoxious and contemplative is the crux of Liam’s appeal. (It’s probably Noel’s appeal as well, but in a less exaggerated way.) On Oasis’s DVD video compilation, Liam provides commentary for his two Oasis single credits. On “Songbird,” he talks about how the song was a really honest expression for him and concludes with a bit of insight only Liam Gallagher could come up with: “All these geezers walking around, thinking they’re tough and all that. If there’s not a songbird inside you, then you’re a fucking pussy.”

Liam’s kind of a lout, but I’m glad he’s back.