the voice that inspires the moon
the twirling rise and fall of khaela maricich’s vocals during the verses — the circuitous, gradual climb and subsequent swift tumbles in pitch, always well phrased: melodic liaisons between the ends and beginnings of words, constituting a single tissue.
the first few lyrics, which strike me with their images of depth, distance, and the grogginess, separation and otherworldliness of being under water/being in (unfulfilled?) love: ‘i was out of your league / and you were twenty thousand underneath the sea / waving affections.’
the initial simplicity of the opening synth line and finger snaps that follow, giving way to the twirly vocals.
that toddlin town
Sufjan Stevens - “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!: Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition/Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream”
Frank Sinatra - “My Kind Of Town”
Wilco - “Via Chicago”
The Fiery Furnaces - “Sweet Spots”
Spoon - “Chicago At Night”
Thao Nguyen - “What About”
Andrew Bird - “Armchairs”
the order of things
the reissue of the microphones’ the glow pt. 2 has prompted me to return to the album; this article goaded me to listen closely. these lines in particular have been hovering over me since friday:
A recurring theme, on songs such as “I’ll Not Contain You” and “I Felt Your Shape,” is the impossible desire to hold on to fleeting things—people, feelings, the physical world, life itself.
and, regarding his drawn-out ambiguous relationship that served as material for the album, elverum says:
But as much of a struggle, frustrating, heartbreaking, back-and-forth thing as it was, it was also a learning experience and very productive. Not just the recording of songs or whatever, but the thinking and conversations that came out of that, between the two of us, and with myself. What does it mean to be connected to someone in a relationship and what does individuality mean? Where is the border? I guess it was a lens to reexamine my own existence, and be like, ‘Hey, what do I really want, and why am I so fixated on this person, what does it mean to be a good person with healthy attachments?’ I think that’s what those songs are about.”
He goes on, “Like, ‘I Felt Your Shape’ is basically about hugging, the difference between hugging someone and grabbing them and squeezing them and not letting go, or hugging them in a lighter way where you’re feeling their shape. Not in a desperate, grabbing way, but in a way that’s sensitive or something.”
i take elverum’s work as a response to or maybe reflection of this condition — be it modern or inherent in us — of the oscillation between on the one hand plurality, chaos, proliferation, illegibility, and on the other, the impulsive, perhaps even survivalist, response to these things: desperate grabs, division and heirarchization, structuration, containment. the latter pole results in any number of things — unordered, unorderable excess; the defiant turning away or resistance of those subject to structuration; misrecognition. the phenomenon is as evident in academic work on modernity as it is in personal relationships (though there’s definitely an admitted collapse, say, of plurality and illegibility, in my simplistic account)
i like this idea of a sensitive feeling of someone, something’s shape, even though the impulse might be to squeeze and not let go for fear of loss or of unnerving ambiguity. to settle, just for a little while, on loose definition in return for gradual but more accurate, responsible ordering or knowing. and i like that elverum’s process of figuring this out in his personal relationship spanned years, encompassed and enveloped in this album.
full first fiddles
i’m not sure if it’s a returning trend in indie rock or pop music, but it should be, or i hope it becomes one: robust, crisp string arrangements. i don’t mean the arcade fire’s integration of strings, which tend to weep in the background, pierce repeated staccato alongside or subsumed under guitars (still i’m a sucker for this), or flutter high notes, again under layers of other instruments.
the strings in this islands song are about economy, efficiency, purpose, it seems. they flutter at the start, sure, but they work as a crescendo-ing cacophany of an entry. the notes elongate and make themselves heard as the vocals sustain the ends of the verses, the violins creating a second voice to pick up and accent the vocal’s trail. the strings make the song — condition its brisk pace, create something of a southwest theme (cf. ‘alone again or’) — with their skipping (sixteenth? thirty-second?) notes. they march when they need to as strings are wont to do in pop songs, in some sort of dialogue with the guitars, but then there’s that wonderful waterfall of string layers toward the end of the song.
in short, the arrangements are interesting, and they in turn make the song interesting. the violins (islands have two) aren’t part of a messy cacophany of instruments, nor do they play anemically in the background. here’s to a return to the orchestral — mini-string sections, of musicians who can handle their instruments.