I Used to Be Smart.

I know that you’ve been waiting with bated breath for this. So here you go. Music of 2005, part 2.

Woody Guthrie, “The Asch Recordings.”
I’m not sure if I can completely describe the way I’ve gravitated to Woody Guthrie over the last few months. To be sure, my obsession is improbable. It’s not often that 24 year olds from Kentucky who really wish to be “sophisticated” get undeniably addicted to music sung by twangy little guys from Oklahoma who wrote music in the ’40’s and ’50’s, but my new fixations persists despite the odds. Woody had a funny way of captivating me. First, he charmed me with his sense of humor. Between his wild fish tales in “Talking Fishing Blues,” and his inexplicable car noises in “Car Song” or his ability for absolutely hilarious hyperbole in “Talking Hard Work,” there is no denying that Woody had a strong sense of humor, and a great ability to capture that sense of humor in songs, and to capture that sense of humor in the way that we’re laughing with Guthrie about the world he inhabits, never laugh at it. And while all of that may have endeared me to Woody Guthrie from the start, you find something deeper when look beneath the veneer of Woody’s sense of humor.

Woody is, at heart, a social commentator, and he does social commentary much better than he does humor. Whether he commenting on social justice issues, exploring the plight of factory workers and unions, explicating the lives of poor dust bowl farmers, Woody is always in touch with the world around him, and he is especially in touch with the way people are being marginalized in the world around him. Woody also has an uncanny ability to serve as a chronicler of the history occuring around him in ways that few songwriters have anymore. Whether he is singing about the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1910’s, or of Charles Lindbergh in the 1930’s and 1940’s, or about World War II and all the ways that it affected his world, listening to Woody Guthrie is like listening to poetic rendering of American history. It is not a rending without bias or dogma it, nonetheless, the poet historian capturing a period of America for posterity, and capturing it well. That is the value of Woody Guthrie. Despite all of the twang and the antequated recordings, more than any other singer I have yet come across, Woody possessed a pair of eyes that saw the world just a bit more clearly than everyone else, and he possessed an uncanny ability to record the ways he saw the world around him. So like Bob Dylan said, “There’s not many men that done the things that you’ve done.” And Bob’s always right.

The Format, “Interventions & Lullabies.”

It’s too bad that the draw fell so that The Format has to follow Woody Guthrie. No matter who had to follow Woody, they got a tough draw. However, though they’re in a different league, I think they can hold their own.

On the surface, The Format are pretty standard. They don’t sound much different than the alternative influenced rock that every other group of guys in their 20’s would make. They’re not particularly cut from any sort of “emo” cloth, and they don’t quite venture as far as a band like The Shins. However, what they have, in their own right, is quite nice. They write very good songs. They have great hooks that stay in my head for days at a time. They have nice guitar parts that are “singable” — as all good guitar riffs should be. (Do not pretend you can’t sing the guitar solo from “Hotel California.”) None of that is what’s particularly engaging about The Format. If it hasn’t become clear by now, the main impact that music has on me is very rarely contained in the instrumentation. It is, I believe, an essential part of the experience. However, I am much more drawn to artists’ lyrical ability. That is where The Format shines. They shine for one overwhelming reason — they realize the impact that relationships have on life. All of their songs are, at heart, relationship songs. And more than being songs about girls, they are songs about friends, and family, and all of the relationships that we encounter in life. Whether lamenting the struggles and fear involved in helping to care for a sick father in “On Your Porch,” or realizing just how much friends can impact your life in “Give it Up.” I am stirred no more by any lyric than the singing of “…and as for Mark, goddamn, I wish him the best…” from that same song. More than anything, The Format understand. They understand how important all of the relationships we have in life are. They understand how much those relationships affect all of us, and they’re fine with singing about all of the ways in which they have been affected by their relationships. When they can combine that with well written songs, nice guitar riffs, and good playing? I’m sold.

Bright Eyes, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.”
Attempting to describe and to make an apologetic for Bright Eyes, whose real name is Conor Oberst, may be the most difficult piece of writing I have ever done. Additionally, to explain why I even have the ability to like Oberst’s music is task unto itself.

Oberst’s songs are nothing if not otherworldly. They come from a world that I do not inhabit. A world of depression, of psychiatric assitance for that depression, a cutthroad world of one-night stands and an entire culture that I do not have the ability to understand. Mostly, I listen to Oberst from the outside looking in. He inhabits a strange world, even if it is a world that he has invented, and that world is nothing like the world in which I live. Nothing like it, that is, until I start to think about it. When I really think about it, when I genuinely take the time to reflect on the songs that Oberst is writing, I realize that we are kindred spirits. The names and the details may change from Oberst to Bobbitt, but at the end of the day, we’re very much tied together. There are to many ways to tell them all. There is the way that Oberst ruthlessly displays the way that the society in which we live is full of utter contradictions and hypocrisies, and the ways in which he pledges that he will expose those hypocrisies, and implores us to join him in his journey to “the bottom of everything” where “we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it!” and the way it comforts him to find out that the truth of everything is that he is nobody. I feel solidarity in Oberst’s feelings that, “We are nowhere, and it’s now.” I feel the way that he seeks so badly, with those around him, to break through the encompassing malaise, “just wishing” that he can find “some kind of truth” in the world around him. I feel the way that he wrecks relationships by his inconsistency and self-doubt. I feel a kind of happiness well up inside me with the acknowledgement of the ways how relationships change our outlook on life. I know all too well about liquid cures for landlocked blues, and I certainly know how to drip with the same political cynicism. And I know what he means when his sun comes up with no conclusion. It would appear that we’re not so different after all.

Oberst is something special. His voice his raw. His music his intense. Listening to his songs is an event. It cannot be done lightly, it cannot be with reflection of perspective. He is one of those rare poets who has the uncanny ability to inspire as much reflection as it appears went into the writing of his songs. He is not an easy sell. His songs are disquieting, even disturbing. However, that is the truth. The truth of the world is disquieting and disturbing. Anyone who is not afraid to take that truth, especially the hones truths of our interior lives and the malaise that resides there, and to air that truth for anyone who will listen to here, is either brave or neurotic (but probably both). This, more than anything, is why Oberst is important. He may be intense, he may be disturbing, but above that (and probably because of that) Oberst is true, and that truth merits listening, no matter how difficult the listening may be.

Damien Rice, “O.”
For most people, they only Damien Rice by association. If they only saw the trailer, Damien Rice is the voice singing while Natalie Portman walks down the street at the beginning of the Closer trailer. Oddly enough, if you have seen the movie, you will realize that it is not an unfair association. If I were forced to choose one word to associate with Rice’s music, “haunting,” would be the word. “Tortured” would be a nice runner up. It would be easy to “O” as a theme record, a folk opera of sorts, about a relationship that has wrecked the character narrating the cd, because it is that what unifies the project. The beauty of Rice’s cd is the way he makes being haunted and tortured such a beautiful affair. Listening to “O” had a strange way of making you happy to be sad. It feels good to be tortured and haunted when you’re listening to Damien Rice (Lisa Hannigan’s amazing voice helps that along). I think that’s why, after listening to “O” so many times that I still love it, and I still feel compelled to listen to it. Honesty compels me to say that there are times when I feel like the man singing those songs, and there are times when it just feels good to indulge those broken, screwed parts that we all like to keep secret.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 12:40 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.