Music

Freethink Media’s Dan Hayes tweeted about a great NPR article about a lasting ambivalence inherent in modern music:

Six years ago, Glenn Schellenberg decided to do an experiment. …

“Happy-sounding songs typically tend to be in a major key, and they tend to be fast, [with] more beats per minute,” he says. “Conversely, sad-sounding songs tend to be slow in tempo, and they also tend to be in a minor key.” …

But while the grad student had no trouble finding fast, happy-sounding music in a major key when he looked at older musical eras — from the classical period up through the 1960s — it got a lot harder when it came to contemporary pop music.

There were plenty of fast-tempo songs, but almost all of the songs he found were in a minor key, and didn’t sound unambiguously happy; they were more emotionally complicated than that. …

The question, of course, is why? Why would consumers connect more to conflict and sadness now than they did in the ’60s and ’70s? Schellenberg says he doesn’t think it’s because people today are any sadder.

“I think that people like to think that they’re smart,” he says. “And unambiguously happy-sounding music has become, over time, to sound more like a cliche. If you think of children’s music like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ or ‘The Wheels on the Bus,’ those are all fast and major, and so there’s a sense in which unambiguously happy-sounding songs sound childish to contemporary ears. I think there’s a sense in which something that sounds purely happy, in particular, has a connotation of naivete.”

Personally, that’s an understandable but unsatisfying explanation.

The pace and focus of life has radically changed. We’re more connected now than ever before. This fundamentally changes our instincts regarding self-awareness, and our self-centered conception of the world.

Today’s society is intensely self-aware. Therapy and mind-altering medications from adderall to xanax are all widely accepted, and we have creative outlets for all of our internal thoughts, down to the most inconsequential tweets and instragram photos.

At the same time, we’re intensely connected, through many of the same avenues. In real time you have access to most anything you could imagine, be it art or politics, a favorite comedian’s best joke, and what your co-workers are having for lunch.

It’s no wonder we approach emotional messages with a higher degree of sophistication than prior generations. We’re more aware of our own reactions to these inputs, while also being more aware of outsiders perception of our reactions. Emotionally complex inputs allow us some measure of psychic guardedness. It becomes more and more difficult for others to completely or definitively interpret our inner state. It gives our emotional state a protective ambiguity, which is part of what John Cusack discusses in High Fidelity.

In writing this, I thought about art that mean something to me, and what they’re trying to say. The stuff that I cherish most, like The Avett Brothers, Laura Marling, and Mumford & Sons, are all freighted with questions and ideas that are complex, and I think, important. Songs like The Once and Future Carpenter or Timshel ask questions about what it means to be good, to be happy, or fulfilled. I feel these ways only occasionally, and I frequently churn these questions over and over. So maybe it’s just basic solipsism; we listen to the music that makes us most comfortable in our heads?

I don’t think the comfort contention is necessarily true, because I know very smart people who regularly deal with heavy thoughts, but also enjoy emphatically vapid songs like Party Rock or Call Me, Maybe. It could be escapism, or a vehicle for aspirational emotional states, that is, the opposite of John Cusack’s question. I listen to the Black Keys to make me happy.


The Black Keys – Gold On The Ceiling (Official… by Warner-Music

Buy The Avett Brothers The Carpenter

Buy Mumford & Sons Sigh No More

Buy The Black Keys El Camino

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Charles Bradley looks like James Brown would have looked if he were hooked on lattes, and not angel dust. He’s got the ‘fro, the style, and the rhythm of another era, and it’s glorious.

His life story is quite something. So is his album, No Time For Dreaming. It’s a sultry, raw reminder of what disco murdered in a back alley in 1971. Check him out, courtesy of KEXP in Seattle, at SxSW:

If you like that, support the guy and get his album.

Buy “No Time for Dreaming”. You know you want to.

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Is It Dusty In Here?

by Aaron on March 23, 2012

in Music

Over at Reddit, there’s a thread about the funny, wierd, awkward, and touching things you can find cleaning a deceased relatives house. This one really got me:

My Pop-Pop died a few years ago at the age of 86. He was a great man, and served his country as a navigator during WWII, which he never discussed, and later as a high school teacher and principal in the Midwest. He had two daughters, my mother and my aunt, both of whom he loved unconditionally. He never went a night away from my grandmother after coming back from the war – he said he’d done enough of that to last the rest of their lives, and shortly before his death, they celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary. After his death, I found a couple of cool things in his keepsake chest – a signed photo and personal letter from Jimmy Stewart, who had served in his battalion in the Air Force (didn’t know that prior to his death), and a GPS unit. The GPS unit had been a gift from my mother some years before, because he loved gadgets and was still a navigator at heart. The GPS unit had gotten him involved in some “treasure hunts” with other navigators who basically picked a spot in the middle of nowhere, buried a box with a trinket and then sent someone else to find it using only the coordinates provided. They would then exchange the trinket left by the previous person with a new treasure and record who had been there and what was left. Unbeknownst to us, my grandfather had left a box buried on our property in Vermont (he lived in Texas) during his last visit, some five years earlier, and left us directions to find it. When we tracked down the box using the GPS after his death, the box opened up with personalized compasses for each of his family members with the inscription, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

It just so happens that at the time, I was listening to The Avett Brothers “Murder In The City”.

Holy crap, I must be allergic to … uh … sad things? Whatever. GRRRR SPORTS!

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Réveillez Mon Ame

by Aaron on December 5, 2011

in Music

There’s something beautiful in a well-loved thing seen just slightly different. From Live With Johnny Flynn.

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I’m headed north today. I’ve got a fuzzy co-pilot and a trunk full of Fat Tire. These tunes should make the miles tick by.

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Every Friday Morning we kick off your weekend with a series of videos loosely gathered around a theme. This week, in remembrance of  the fallen, a round of introspective instrumentals. 

My father plays the guitar, but not often. As he’s gotten older his fingers are less fluid, a little weather beaten and a little stiff. Music for him is all about smoothness; his guitar is always subtle and smooth, not the loud brash stand-out licks of a rock-star, but rising and falling, coming back again to a persistent melody. The opening to Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” is one of his favorite pieces, rambling, precise, and understated. When I was 17, I started buying him albums on CD that he only owned on vinyl. Harry Chapin’s greatest lasted most of a drive to Gettysburg, and Leo Kottke’s 6 & 12 String Guitar ended up in my CD case. For good. Today is about remembering and introspection, and to that end, here’s some acoustic instrumentation from Andy McKee and Leo Kottke.

Leo Kottke – The Driving of the Year Nail

Andy McKee – Drifting

Andy McKee – Into the Ocean

Leo Kottke – Crow River Waltz

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FMM: Childish Gambino Is Awesome

November 4, 2011

Every Friday morning we kick off the weekend with a series of videos, loosely gathered around a theme. I love NBC’s ensemble comedy Community. A lot. The Troy Barnes character (Donald Glover) started as a dumb jock but has blossomed into the delightfully weird, nerdy, sweet guy. Sometimes he cries. He loves LaVarr Burton, but [...]

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New Avett Brothers!

November 1, 2011

A while back, I went to the Avett Brothers show, and told/showed y’all about it. One of the videos i linked too was of a new song, The Once And Future Carpenter. Unfortunately the creator of the video set it to “private”. But thankfully, the boys finally put out an official recording. It’s more countrified [...]

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FMM: Trick And/Or Treat!

October 28, 2011

This week just two videos to celebrate Halloween! Michael MacDonald – Trickin’ It To The Treats Jump to 38 seconds in for the good part. It’s not really Michael MacDonald, and it’s not good enough to justify 4 full minutes. TRICK. Does anyone else constantly spell Michael “Micheal”? I think I might have a brain [...]

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A (Very) Late Friday Morning Music

October 21, 2011

Whoops. Here’s the two songs I’ve compulsively listened to for the last several weeks. And to make up for my tardiness, I enjoyed this article about Scott Avett’s painting, and spirituality. Murder in the City – Avett Brothers Go to Sleep – Avett Brothers

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