Song of the Week: "Everything was Black and White Except the City Lights" - I Hear Sirens

So, a while back me and some chums attended a chill little concert at the ever-charming back alley venue, Kilby Court. We were there to hear Eluvium, one of the more wonderful ambient bands that I know of. Eluvium was really great and the whole concert experience was really unique - it has been a good year for noticeably new concert experiences (i.e. Gene Loves Jezebel & Eluvium). Anyway, preceding Eluvium was a Salt Lake original called I Hear Sirens. Their opening set was quite nice and I sacrificed getting an Eluvium T-shirt so I could get I Hear Sirens' self-titled EP, which is quite good.

"Everything was Black and White Except the City Lights" wasn't played at the concert, but it is my current favorite track on the EP and a good example of what this post-rock band is about. The song isn't overly complicated. Even in the soft piano opener, the song drives forward with a purpose and intensity that isn't interested in doing anything frilly or elaborate, but seems always focused and controlled. The emotion and feeling in the song is nice and impassioned, but never to the point of boring melodrama. It's just a really nice song that probably sticks with me so much because of their seemingly simple and direct approach, which keeps the track strong and meaningful, whereas a more elaborate, flashy approach might have sent the song soaring, only to deflate at the worst possible moment. (Sidenote: I might get stoned for saying this, but Depeche Mode's "One Caress" flops in this way. I think Martin Gore shoulda cut his last repeated chorus to let the orchestra swell and crescendo; as is, Gore's vocals flatten the whole finish, creating an anti-climatic song that boasts some nice lyrics, but ultimately dull music). I Hear Sirens come close to going over the edge, but maintain a firm hold on the pace and tone, knowing when to pull up and rely on less to be more.

At the risk of getting this band wrong by inappropriately inserting characteristics I perceive them to have, I'd say that I Hear Sirens sound like a group who (obviously) like playing music, are a bit introverted and uncertain about some things, while holding to some personal beliefs that mean a great deal to them. They feel things in a way that they believe can be best expressed through music. If they succeed or fail at accurately communicating what they feel is, for me, the lesser goal; the primary objective being more to have felt something at all and to have expressed it - basically, to have done something, gone for something. Maybe sometimes the act of going is far more profound and valuable than whether or not you got anywhere.

Here below is the audio for the song with an image of an old line-up of the band in the studio. Below that is a grainy picture I took at the show.

Enjoy.

 

I Hear Sirens at Kilby Court, SLC, 5/31/2010

Also, if you like what you hear, there are more tracks to be heard on their myspace page.

Song of the Week: 'Worlock' - Skinny Puppy & Rabies Review

As a partial follow up to my earlier post on Skinny Puppy's concert at Salt Lake City's Club Vegas, I have chosen to spotlight their track 'Worlock' from their 1989 release Rabies as this week's Song of the Week. It might seem a cop out since 'Worlock' is overwhelmingly accepted as one of Skinny Puppy's finest moments, leaving little to still be said about why the track matters. All the same, I'm gonna go on about it for a few lines.

'Worlock' still remains my favorite Skinny Puppy song. I've listened to it and loved it since I was nine or ten years old, though at that age I had little idea what the song was about and why it was good. I liked it because my brother liked it and it sounded weird, but intriguing somehow. It still intrigues me and still blows my mind when I listen to it. 'Worlock' shows Skinny Puppy at their best, proving their incredible talent for creating solid pop beats, put to haunting, sad and pained music that is both abrasive and, at times, rather beautiful (just listen to that chorus and the rising finish). Ogre's ragged, raspy, cutting vocals transition for the chorus to a heavily computer-altered delivery that becomes almost overwhelmingly heartbreaking. During that final vocal delivery his voice soars to a flayed agony that suggests tragedy as much as it does horror. The lyrics are tough to follow and understand (this is Skinny Puppy after all), so here they are, so you can read along. In many ways the song is as significant today as it was upon its release - audio sample: "the police used to watch over the people, now they're watching the people", as just one example.

The 'Worlock' video has a long controversial history. It's a compilation of film clips from gore horror films linked together in a long montage. It covers over 20 films and is just one grotesque image after another. The video received an X rating for being pornographic. It is. But the images, combined with shots of slaughterhouse blades and uncooked hamburger suggest that what these images are saying is that the violence we do to each other has created a human slaughterhouse that we all should be disgusted by. We're killing ourselves, committing global suicide. Not a happy message, but one that the modern horror film often adopts and that many in the world at large seem to agree, giving rise to the opinion that it is really within the last century that the world went to hell. In the last century human destruction has accelerated at an alarming rate, with the nightly news is in danger of becoming more and more like the 'Worlock' video, or that we as viewers only see one gratuitous, pornographic image of violence and atrocity after another. Skinny Puppy might just be showing us a rather accurate portrait of the world, or at least how some people are beginning to see the world, and that should deeply trouble us and, like The Cure's blistering track 'Pornography', move us to demand, despite the overwhelming opposition, that we "find a cure".

Yet the problem still stands: even if Skinny Puppy wishes and pushes for change, they are still clearly enamored with their own brutality, creating a paradox that is as messy as their music, or at least as messy as the Rabies album, which has received mixed reviews since it was first released. But people are complicated and the art we make can be equally so. Perceived flaws in behavior don't always count as grounds for condemnation and dismissal, in my mind, both for art and people alike. People, and the art they make, misbehave - we are human after all. Sometimes it's those very flaws, fractures, and incongruencies that make the art or the person so interesting and wonderful.

Rabies is a case in point. This album is very close to my heart - admittedly for nostalgic, childhood reasons, as well as more stuffy critically analytical ones. I'm no music critic and speak here as an enthusiastic, obsessive layperson. Rabies was for a long time my favorite Skinny Puppy album (though Last Rights has since claimed that honor). It was the album that introduced me to the band; it's also one of their most accessible records, which turns some fans off (it always seems that 'accessible' is a big buzz-kill for hardcore fans, because it suggests the band has sold out to aspirations of top 40 radio fodder stardom). But it's also inaccessible because the record is uneven. 'Fascist Jock Itch', placed between 'Two Time Grime' and 'Worlock' seems a bad move. Maybe it is. But the track's spewed speed metal is so frantic and out of control that it actually helps us notice 'Worlock' better, because we're so out of breath and in need of a relaxant that 'Worlock''s soft synth fade-in sounds like the most blessed opener we've ever heard. It might be a stretch to say the uneven shift from the one track to the other is intentionally done to draw our attention to the tone of both tracks, and this tonal juxtaposition improves both songs. But it's an idea worth thinking about.

The album takes another strange shift from 'Rivers' to the end of the record. Here Ogre takes more of a back seat as cEvin Key and D.R. Goettel take over, working their instrumental and sampling magic. 'Rivers' is a strange compilation of audio samples and gentle synths. This atmospheric tone continues with 'Choralone': a bleak, strange track that isn't much of a song at all. It's more just stream of conscious thoughts supported by very effective textures and atmospherics. 'Amputate' follows nicely and seems to round out a trio of songs that don't work as well individually as they do together. But we're ground out of this bizarrely comfortable space that 'Rivers', 'Choralone', and 'Amputate' take us to with the sixteen minute concluding live brap 'Spahn Dirge'. Like 'Fascist Jock Itch', this mammoth ender undermines our position and leaves us feeling rather puzzled and unsure if we'd just heard the most vacuous, bloated waste of music Skinny Puppy ever made. I think they know it's a tough tonal shift and did it anyway to try something bizarre and difficult to test the limits and barriers of music and albums. I don't think it was to please listeners.
Maybe the album fails in what it's trying to do, but the attempt is the attraction for me. Some criticize Skinny Puppy for bringing in Alain Jourgensen to help produce. Some are just upset that Rabies wasn't VIVIsectVI, an attitude that I'm so bored with - they already did the VIVIsectVI album, why would you want them to just rehash it? When you try repeating what you've already done all you get is the likes of Godsmack, where every album sounds like the last; or Moby's 18, which sounds like a pile of forgettable outtakes from Play. If Skinny Puppy has proven anything it is that they are not afraid to push in a different direction and do something new for the sake of trying something yet unexplored - fans and critics be damned.

The album is an intriguing look at a band continuing to experiment and see what they can find and learn. At times they really capture something fantastic: 'Rodent', 'Two Time Grime', 'Worlock', 'Tin Omen'; sometimes they make something hypnotic and otherworldly: 'Rivers', 'Choralone', 'Amputate'. Sometimes it's just kind of perplexing: 'Fascist Jock Itch', 'Rain', 'Spahn Dirge'. But all of it combined makes for a real emotional, conceptual roller-coaster that leaves me still trying to grasp why it is so appealing. In the end, I think it's that the album isn't easy to explain or compartmentalize that makes it such a stand-out and important album.

To conclude, I have this video of 'Worlock' from the Salk Lake show. The quality is as we've come to expect from such raw video recordings. Such low-quality videos are often rather boring for me, but since I was there and saw this performance, it helps preserve that night in my memory. So I'm grateful to the person who shot this video for capturing one of the best moments from that night's show.

Song of the Week: 'Face to Face' - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Face To Face - Siouxsie And Th...

This week's spotlight I find appropriate for October and the coming Halloween/Day of the Dead celebrations. Here's one of the Goth scene's most celebrated acts: Siouxsie and the Banshees. Does anyone else think that's one of the finest band names?

Siouxsie and the Banshees' mark on music include work with Robert Smith on The Glove album Blue Sunshine as well as some of The Cure's output; The Creatures project; and this track done with Danny Elfman for Tim Burton's film Batman Returns (still my personal favorite Batman flick); as well as other stuff I don't even know. It all amounts to a musical career that has left a permanent and impressive mark on the Goth music scene.

'Face to Face' features Elfman's weepy strings at their beautiful best, reminding us again that while he has his film score schtick that he repeats in numerous film scores, it's a good sound that he does quite well. The Banshees' music is pained, brooding and everything enticing and enjoyable about 80s Goth rock bands. And Siouxsie's voice is ever stunning: inviting, knowing, and dangerous.

'Face to Face' probably isn't their best song, but it's one of my favorites, not only for introducing me to Siouxsie and the Banshees, but because it just seems so dang sad. It's almost like you took all the darkness of the band's output and then sucked the wicked playfulnes out of it, leaving only the knowing pain and passion of people who have experienced obsession, betrayal and lost too many times for keeping count to still matter. Perhaps it's the film that always plants this song at night in the freezing snow, but that's where I end up when I listen to this song. It's a cold one and perfect for those late hours, when you feel perhaps like Laura Palmer and "just know [you're] going to get lost in those woods again tonight".

If you haven't spent some time with Siouxsie and the Banshees, I'd highly recommend you make them part of your Halloween celebrations.

Enjoy.