song

When The Commitments came out in 1991, I was a 23 year old English grad student obsessed with both James Joyce and soul music (especially Otis Redding and Bobby “Blue” Bland), so you know that Alan Parker’s film (based on Roddy Doyle’s wonderful novel) would be a big hit for me.  I saw it twice in the theater, I believe, and each time I had to pinch myself.  How did they know?  I asked myself.  How did they manage to create a movie just for me?

The thing that struck me at the time about the film (I’m talking the film’s narrative now) was the fact that, at the end, all the characters seemed successful (singing in bands, having girlfriends, so on) except for the two guys who started the band in the first place–the guitarist and bassist.  In the final montage, we see them singing for loose change on the streets of Dublin (they call those guys “buskers” in Ireland).  No fair, I thought then and now.  Those guys deserved better than that.

Well, turns out the happy ending would come for at least one of those two buskers, played by real-life musician Glen Hansard.  He had already started his own band, The Frames, at that point, and after the film that band went on to dominate Irish music for over a decade.  They had some popularity in Europe and America, but it wasn’t until 2007’s film Once that Glen Hansard became known to a truly wide audience when his little film won him an Oscar for Best Song.  He and his co-star in the film, Marketa Irglova, developed the songs for Once (which was directed by former Frames bassist John Carney) and began touring as a duo, calling their collaboration The Swell Season.

I should say, first off, that I absolutely loved Once.  Yes, it’s Irish, so that’s no surprise.  In fact, I’m probably more interested in Ireland now than I was back in the early 1990s when I only had a vague understanding of Joyce and why I liked Joyce.  Now that I have a strong grasp of Joyce and the larger picture of Irish literature and history, and now that I have actually visited Ireland on several occasions and seen Dublin for myself, I can say that my enthusiasm for the country is richer than it ever was back in 1991.  Seeing Glen Hansard walking along O’Connell Street just brings back a ton of wonderful memories.  On top of all that, however, I thought the film was an enormous artistic success, as it’s one of the few musicals to actually take the music part seriously enough to dispense with the stupid dancing and simply show the role that music plays in the lives of musicians who would rather perform for each other than talk.  It’s a film about the development of a close, musical friendship, with the focus on the creative process first and foremost. It’s a great film.  I’ve seen it a dozen times, and I never get tired of it.  It doesn’t help that the music in the film is phenomenal.

Well, a lot of other people liked Once, too, and a lot of people bought the soundtrack and became interested in the duo, especially after it was revealed that they were romantically linked.  So the follow-up was bound to be a big deal, and it certainly is.  It’s called Strict Joy, and it comes in a regular version (just the one disk) or a deluxe edition (with the album, a companion concert CD, and a live concert DVD).  I’ve been listening to the album and concert CDs for the past few days, and I have to say…I like the new album, but I really love the concert CD, and its worth getting the deluxe version just to get that CD.

I always felt The Frames had their moments (“Revelate,” “Lay Me Down,” to name a few), but their albums as a whole seemed weighed down with too many mediocre songs.  The Once soundtrack contained mostly wonderful material, but even that work had its clunkers, too.  I’d say Strict Joy is similar.  There are some incredibly strong songs, such as the opener “Low Rising” (in which Hansard channels his inner Van Morrison better than Van Morrison himself), “In These Arms,” and Irglova’s standout track “I Have Loved You Wrong,” among others.  And while there are no real clunkers here, there are also a number of songs that really don’t grab me for one reason or another.  So I like it, but I’m not overwhelmed by the experience of listening to the music.

But the concert CD is an entirely different story.  True, a lot of the songs in the concert are from Once, along with some standout Frames songs like “Lay Me Down” and “Fitzcarraldo,” so the material itself stands on its own.  But the content here, I think, is less important than the presentation.  Glen Hansard is an incredible singer, and I think this comes through live in a way that really can’t be captured in a studio.  There’s a dynamism, a force, behind his voice when he’s in front of an audience that transforms decent songs like “Say It To Me Know” into epics.  He sings like the world is on fire and only his voice can put out the blaze–it’s a fierce, strong, barely-in-control megaphone that only works when it’s a bit out of tune.  That sort of chaos just doesn’t fit on a conventional studio take, where the tunes are modified and the cracks and grit of a real voice is limited and compressed to better fit to a perfectly-designed score.  And the audience knows it, too; listen to the roar of love that bursts out when the crowd cheers after the opening number; that’s an audience that understands exactly what it has heard.

But his singing voice is only part of it. Hansard is also a storyteller, like a lot of musicians.  And like a lot of musicians, he is very comfortable telling little stories before the songs.  Some of the stories are funny (like the one about the kid buying the grave for his girlfriend), and some are truly bizarre (about the “ghostbuster” couple who talk to the souls of 500-year-old children), but the stories all lead to a brief explanation of what each song is about emotionally and the messages that he, as the songwriter, sought to convey when composing it.  That’s different.  Musicians are generally fearful of prose; they want their music to speak for itself.  They’ll tell a story about the song’s origin, but they won’t usually follow it up by stating “this song means x” because that declarative statement limits the power of the song.

Rather than cheapening the songs (by telling us how to listen to them), however, Hansard provides an emotional framework that helps direct our understanding of the songs.  Think of Sister Wendy describing a painting at the Louvre; we can see the painting without her, but she draws attention to details we might overlook, allowing us to seen and appreciate the work in a whole new light.  Hansard does the same thing; we can enjoy his songs without the introductions, but those introductions draw our ears and our minds to ideas and to emotions that make the experience of listening to these songs that much more meaningful.

Here’s an example.  Before the song “That Low,” he tells a funny story about his last visit to Milwaukee (where the concert took place) and then says,

This song is about an idea that you’re in a rut, maybe in a relationship, and you’ve got each other but it’s not great.  The song is about the idea that this one person has to go and walk a new road, and this song was written from the perspective of the person who realizes that they’re about to be left.  It’s for a good reason.  It’s like a double-edged sword.  It ups the ante for you and makes you go, “Okay, what am I doing?”  So this is about the whole idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, and if somebody has to go walk their way then it kind of forces you to think about yourself.  The whole idea of this song is “thread the light, walk the light, speak the light, seek the light, crave the light, brave the light.” The whole idea is “be in the light” because if you’re in the dark, then it’s no use to you.

Songs, like poems, often need a frame of reference before they can be fully understood.  Before I heard his introduction, I thought “This Low” was a sad song about a couple breaking up.  Of course, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the song when I first heard it on The Swell Season’s debut (which came out before Once).  Once I heard Hansard’s introduction to this song, however, I was forced to consider the “light” part and what it meant in the context of the breakup, and I realized that, yes, it’s a sad song about a breakup, but it’s more than that.  The idea he’s conveying here (which is conveyed musically better than it is conveyed lyrically) is the sudden realization that a part of a person’s life has just ended but that this is as much a moment of possibility as it is a moment of despair.  That is, she’s gone, which means that what happens next has yet to be written.  The “shine a light” part is the speaker’s mind opening up to explore the possibilities that have suddenly emerged (rather than retreating into the darkness of despair and sadness).  It’s a beautiful song and a beautiful idea, and Hasnard’s introduction allowed me to better understand and appreciate it.

He does something similar to this with many of the songs, but he’s not alone.  Irglova also introduces several songs, providing her own take on those she has penned.  Sorry I haven’t mentioned her much here, but her role in this group is definitely a secondary one to Hansard; she performs a few songs here, and she shines whenever she sings, but he seems to be the focus of the group, and he’s the one directing things and arranging things and singing most things.  But when she shines, she shines brightly–and in a similar way to Hansard.  Her voice warbles and hems around just like his.  It’s not a powerful voice, but it’s an equally passionate one.  Heck, there’s enough grain in those two voices to fill several beaches.

In all, Strict Joy is good, but the concert CD is a wonderful document of the true power of this musical duo.  So if you’re going to get this, get the deluxe edition.

Update (10/2): The CD version of the deluxe edition doesn’t contain the entire concert, so if you want to hear all the cool stories and stuff from that concert, buy the deluxe edition on iTunes.

I got my downloaded copy of Sigur Rós’s new work on Monday when I was in Florida on a family trip.  I got it a week before the official release date because I pre-ordered at Sigurros.com (got the deluxe edition, which includes the download, a CD copy, and a deluxe copy of the album to be released in September and which will include a bunch of extras, including a DVD).  I’ve been listening to it off and on these past few days (I was traveling, so my active listening has been sporadic).  But I absolutely love it.  It’s brighter, cheerier, and more vibrant than their earlier works, and but it’s still Sigur Rós–operatic, emphasizing mood and tone over everything else.

On Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, the focus is less on the drone (as in earlier works) and more on the beat.  It’s not commercial, but it’s definitely more accessible to those who are turned off by the singer’s voice or the length of some of their tracks (there are two long tracks, but the rest are short) or by the rather melancholy nature of their earlier music.

For an example, check out the first two tracks.  “Gobbledigook” is a wonderful pagan song with lumpy beats, wails and cries, and a rush of energy and celebratory noise that was such a shock when I first heard it on BBC’s Radio 1 that I wasn’t even sure it was Sigur Rós until I downloaded it and listened again and again.  But it’s definitely SR, only with a very different focus: celebration, not contemplation.  I said it was a pagan song because that’s what it feels like to me–the rush of rhythms and emotions building across the song until it’s abrupt three minute end, like a mini pagan ceremony on the summer solstice.  It also doesn’t seem to follow traditional rock song formats–it seems to possess a form all its own, conducive to the odd rhythm (drums hit by sledgehammers) and the “lalalalalas” that flit like birds around the Jonsi’s vocals and the dueling acoustic guitar interplay.  There’s something very elemental about the song, that’s for sure–like it floated into our world from a very distant time.  The video–with its naked people running in the woods, reminiscent of the pagan scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev–is also a giveaway for the pagan focus.

The second track, “inní mér syngur vitleysingur,” is perhaps the best song (emphasis on that last word) Sigur Ros has ever recorded.  At the very least, it possess the catchiest melody, with (again) a thumping beat playing with a keyboard-lite ditty that mixes with vocals and choirs and strings and a whole mess of other stuff that all builds into a crashing burst of joy at the end (like all good Sigur Ros songs are supposed to end).  This one’s four minutes long–so taken together, the first two tracks on this album are about the same length as most of the songs on ( ) and Takk…

What this album tells me, more than anything else, is that Heima changed the band for the better.  The free concerts they did in Iceland brought a ton of positive vibes to the band in their native country.  The film also forced this naturally shy band to open up and discuss themselves, their music, and their ideas.  Finally (and most importantly), the acoustic performances at some of those concerts (along with other acoustic performances which were the featured in the film) allowed the members of the band to look at their own music in a new light.  Their music has always been beautiful and haunting, but I think playing songs like “Voka” in an acoustic setting revealed a lot of the joy that is at the heart of their music.  I’m not saying the band didn’t know their music was joyful–I’m sure they did.  But it’s easy to get lost in the passion and the power of this music when there is an emphasis placed on feedback and amplifiers.  Slowing down, quieting down the songs allowed them to breathe and be reborn in a way on Hvarf — Heim, and it’s this breath that I sense in Með suð. The acoustic renditions must have inspired the band in an immense way–particularly considering that this whole album was conceived, recorded, mastered, and released in the first six months of 2008 (and just after Heima was released).

And now I hear they’re coming to my neck of the woods in San Diego.  I can’t wait to hear the band live and experience all facets of their music, from the blistering noise to the quietest whispers of Jonsi’s wonderful voice.  They are one of the great bands of our time; this is one of the great albums of the year; and their live sets are truly events (as anyone who has seen Heima can attest).

Bonus: for those of you who are having trouble pronouncing the title of the album, here you go: the “ð” letter is pronounced “eth,” so “Með suð” is pronounced “Meth sueth” (and not the “Med sud” spelling I’m seeing on a lot of web sites).  “í” (with the accent) is pronounced like “ee” (as in peel).  “Eyrum” is pronounced “a-rum” (the “ey” is pronounced like the “a” in “pale”).  “við” is “vith” and the rest is pretty much just “spilum endalaust” (except the “au” is pronounced like the “o” in “pole”).  All together: “Meth sueth ee a-rum vith spilum endalost.” At least, I think that’s it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken Icelandic to anyone, so I’m probably screwing something up here.

[Thanks, BBC.]

Originally published 6/19/08

There’s a brand new Sigur Rós album coming our way in June, entitled Með suð í  eyrum við spilum endalaust (in English, With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly).  Apparently, the band just finished the album a month ago and they wanted to release it immediately.

As a teaser, you can now download the first single, “Gobbledigook,” at their web site–and if you do that you HAVE to check out the video, which is a wonderful complement to the song (plus, lots of nudity!).

I’ve been a big fan of Sigur Rós for a very long time.  Their music is ethereal, oblique, powerful, and [add more cool adjectives here].  I listen to them all the time–much to my wife’s consternation (though she can’t talk–she’s obsessed with Depeche Mode).  When I first heard the new single (earlier today, when it premiered on BBC Radio 1), I was amazed how different this song (and, ostensibly, the album) was from their previous music.  Their earlier music is, to me, very elemental–kind of a soundtrack to their native Iceland and its geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, fjords, and empty, open spaces.  I visited Iceland when I was 15 (spent two months there, as I noted in a previous post); that experience (over 20 years ago) permanently burned Iceland’s beauty and emptiness into my thoughts and dreams.  What shocked me most about the new single is how alive it feels–how human, warm, earthy, and even playful it is.  These elements are evident on earlier songs (especially on Takk…), but there’s a messiness here that is pretty new.  That’s messiness in a good way–in a Rolling Stones kind of way.

I’m still not entirely sure what I think about the new song–can’t say it’s the best thing of theirs I’ve ever heard.  But it is new and is very different from anything else in popular music, so I am excited by this direction and look forward to hearing the whole album so I can put the song (and the emotions that came with it) into their proper context.

I encourage you to download the new song, check out the video, and let me know what you think.