Unhelpful

[devoca] This track says two words to me: “your ex-wife”. “Release me”, the dissonant parts. Dry lips indicative of lack of interest.

[delusion] There’s some interesting subtext to “Drylips”, I’ll get into it.

[devoca] The repeated refrain of “dry lips” could be a metaphor for disinterest. The middle beat-only segment has a couple of possible meanings: change of relationship to sex-only, or a mantra/attempt to level oneself emotionally, which fails in the end anyway with the third cacophonic bridge.

[delusion] There is some sexual subtext to this song, and some personal context as well. I very nearly committed an affair to this track before coming to what I thought were my senses. It still puts me in a very particular place: a muggy night, in a brand new sports car I was showing off to a coworker while at a party on a road of row houses in a cute Baltimore neighborhood. The whispered lyrics are typical of this group, Haloblack, which took the theme of industrial dance anger and took it to a more intimate, sexy place than a lot of their contemporaries.

[devoca] I noticed a bit of a trend with that: lyrics just underneath the surface. It suggests to me some fear of letting the lyrics/soul of the song above the surface, the artist/singer wants to keep them hidden below the surface.

[delusion] The second track is, in comparison, a bit of a relief in that respect, then.

[devoca] Legendary Pink Dots. You’ve sent me some of their music before I think.

[delusion] Yes, absolutely. This is very typical of their ballad material.

[devoca] This has a sense of melancholy, almost regret.

[delusion] Despite the fact that the verses are so sad, it’s actually a song that makes me think about a very good friend. I attribute that to the end, with the lyric “she is so beautiful tonight” repeated into the end of the track, which makes me see her as she was when she first opened the door when I came to pick her up for dinner.

[delusion] This is the Jesus and Mary Chain at the height of their powers.

[devoca] “I Wanna Die”

[delusion] “Reverence”, actually.

[devoca] Hits too raw to me to see any hidden context.

[delusion] I find it extremely fun more than anything else.

[devoca] Good dance song, but I’ve been too suicidal too recently myself

[delusion] This is a classic example of why English pop is criminally neglected in this country.

[devoca] The thing about suicide is that once it’s entered your deep consideration once, it will always be there next time you go through that level of shit.

[delusion] Yeah, it’s always something you have to gnaw on in the back of your mind once you’ve been there. But the audacity of two guys from England wanting to die “like JFK” pretty much takes the melancholy out of it for me.

[delusion] Yeah, I could send you about ten tracks from this group and you’d never guess they were all from the same artist. This is from the album that got them kicked off their label, 4AD, in fact. The one constant of His Name is Alive was unpredictable change. They’ve recorded feedback experimentalism, straight ahead pop, lush Cocteau Twins style songs, Beach Boys pop, and then they showed up at 4AD with a … straight ahead soul album.

[devoca] A sense of solitude, even rejection of people trying to help. Also been there done that.

[delusion] This was the only song that saved for me what was otherwise an irritating album.

[devoca] I’m afraid not.

[delusion] Really? I’m genuinely surprised. This is from Björk’s “selmasongs“, which was the soundtrack from Dancer in the Dark, which she starred in.

[devoca] Never listened to Björk. These lyrics too I can understand on a visceral level. “You are going to have to find out for yourself” reminds me of my own personal journeys in my own head, an exploration of what I believe. I can only figure these things out when I am ready. There are lots of things I’ve come to realize recently, I can only do, or understand, when I am ready. Diet change? Couldn’t until I was ready. Exercise? Couldn’t until I was ready. Political opinions? Spiritual beliefs? Didn’t form any until I was ready, and even then they are not necessary fully formed. That leads me into one of my indictments against religion - telling people what to believe, how to live, instead of letting them come to their beliefs themselves. Both madpoet and I have been working out our own beliefs lately, and I think both he and I are doing very well in that regard. Neither he nor I are evangelistic – it’s the opposite of what both he and I believe. But that’s starting to head into another topic.

[delusion] Heavens forbid. I adored this album, in part because it’s such a great contemporary example of taking musique concrète to the next level. All that ambient noise in the background starts out semi-random and only bothers becoming a song after the lyrics come in. The effect is even better in the film. The approach to musique concrète in the film is excellent; you can tell when the main character, Selma, is in her imaginary world because random ambient factory noise, for example, all of a sudden becomes rhythmical and funky right before heading into an industrial-age musical number.

[delusion] This isn’t exactly typical of this band, especially not typical of anything they’ve done since the early 90s.

[devoca] Is this an instrumental?

[delusion] Only for a little longer.

[devoca] O.K. have a hard time with most instrumental music. I find it hard to figure out the soul and meaning behind it.

[delusion] I used to, too, despite the fact that I was exposed to a lot of classical as a teenager. Now I’m heavily into minimalist electronic music, so it’s pretty much par for the course for me these days, once again. The only disadvantage is not being able to sing to it at work. Anyone who’s caught me in the act might not consider that a disadvantage.

[devoca] I’m focusing on the music, it’s hard to understand lyrics in this one, assuming there are any more.

[delusion] The thing that makes me enjoy this song so much is the (perhaps obvious) truism in the lyric “the further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get.”

[devoca] Yeah. It touched the back-of-my-head idea of moving my life to the opposite side of the planet.

[delusion] I felt a real affinity for the song when it came out and I was living in England. It was an excellent way for me to figure out who my friends were. To wit, they were the ones who didn’t act surprised when I initiated contact with them by letter, or who didn’t act surprised when I answered theirs.

[devoca] Well I actually met a high school classmate last night. It was amusing.

[delusion] Come to think of it, so did I.

[devoca] I simply can’t make out the whisper at the end.

[delusion] I’d have to cheat on that one too. That was the Cure if you can believe it; a b-side to one of their singles from Disintegration. It’s a far cry from “Friday I’m in Love”.

[devoca] >_<

[delusion] Agreed.

[devoca] Technical reminder of Trout Fishing in America’s “The Window”. I like the track, it’ll take multiple careful listenings to hear all of the lyrics; heavily layered.

[delusion] Yeah, some of which I’ve never been able to strictly pay attention to. I love the way it’s layered so simply and unraveled just as simply. It’s definitely a studio track. Imagine that one live.

[devoca] A word that’s coming out as a description, is “healing”, dunno why, just a vibe.

[devoca] This is striking me as a harder Blue Man Group.

[delusion] Funny you should say that. They tended toward buckets of fake red blood rather than buckets of blue paint. Their early live shows were on the order of GWAR without the irony or the silly rubber outfits.

[devoca] I was about to say sort of like GWAR.

[delusion] GWAR learned it from the masters. This is very difficult to interpret lyrically, and as far as that goes, it’s entirely representative of their catalog. Very stream-of-consciousness.

[devoca] There’s more under the surface, it’s hard to make out.

[delusion] I could provide you a lyric sheet and it really wouldn’t make things that much easier, trust me.

[devoca] OK, I’ll relax on that count for this.

[delusion] This was the song that really won me over to this band, after simply not being able to digest them for several years. Then I “got it” all of a sudden, and pretty much all at once.

[devoca] It’s not bad.

[delusion] It’s a little clubbed-up, given that it’s an extended remix of a single. They share a label with Sarah McLachlan.

[devoca] As you’ve probably figured out by now (and definitely will when you give my side a listen) I tend to prefer lyrics above the surface, so it’s easier to “get” them without having to hit “back, back, back” to re-listen to a line. Even given that, this isn’t bad (read that as a compliment).

[delusion] Yeah, I considered substituting a My Bloody Valentine track for the Spiritualized track, but figured against it because of how impossibly submerged the vocals are.

[devoca] This is something I’d file in the same area as Blue Man Group - music that I would listen to in the truck when I don’t have the mental-processing time to focus on making out lyrics, like when I’m driving around the Texas Christian University area observing the… “view”.

[delusion] I’m sure I more than made up for it with this next one, though.

[delusion] Two guys and a bunch of laptops. Welcome to minimalist techno.

[devoca] Heh.

[delusion] These are one of my favorite groups in the genre. Though this song, “Vaihtovirta” (it’s Finnish, don’t bother trying to parse that) has an actual beat, Pan_sonic are masters of texture and often don’t even bother (or care about) getting that far. And yes, that’s a space and not an ‘a’ due to a lawsuit which won’t surprise anyone this side of the Atlantic in the least.

[devoca] *nods*

[delusion] They released an album named ‘A‘, though, which I found pretty amusing. NPR has a travel show, The Savvy Traveler, that once focused a small segment on “music from cold climates”. I was crushed when they chose to neither include Pan_sonic from Finland or Boards of Canada, who are from northern Scotland.

[devoca] It’s… interesting in an exploratory sort of way.

[delusion] I really despise the concept of “background music”, but this is a song you can have a conversation over simply because there’s so little mid-range. If, you know, you should be so inclined to ruin it by talking.

[devoca] This is the sort of track I’d typically go lights-out, sitting cross-legged in a 5.1 setup, close eyes, and just focus/feel. I need to get a new amp to 5.1 >_<

[delusion] Been there.

[delusion] Heh.

[devoca] Ok, I have to know why you included this. There had better be a story.

[delusion] I’m sure there is. Tell it.

[devoca] Your mix. Your story.

[delusion] You once said something about how this song made you think about where you were in your life in regards to finding yourself. I was hoping you’d elaborate on that.

[devoca] Ah, yeah. Still not there yet, either.

[delusion] Welcome to a very large club.

[devoca] Well, it spoke to me a lot more a couple of years ago. A friend of mine actually commented on that Friday. He’s 35.

[delusion] At 31, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

[devoca] So to a lot of the stuff I’m going to through mentally, he just popped off “welcome to the club”, which is to say, who we are, what we want to do. Where we want to be. Who to be there with, etc.

[delusion] And whom to be.

[devoca] That too. I should dig up a decent live version of this. It’s incredibly moving live.

[delusion] I’m sure I have it. U2 isn’t a group I actively collect, but I’ve had a lot of it sent to me.

[devoca] Just tell me one thing… You didn’t put this in here as some sort of appeasement to a huge U2 fan.

[delusion] Would I do that?

[devoca] Just checking.

[delusion] And you believe me?

[devoca] Yes.

[delusion] You shouldn’t. Not this time, anyway.

[devoca] Hah, so that was appeasement to my taste? Asshole.

[delusion] Well, what I said originally was true, but yeah there was an element of that there, too. I figured it would be a more solid end than the more outer limits tracks by Skinny Puppy and Pan_sonic.

pink - “don’t let me get me”
missundaztood (arista, 2001)

[delusion] Is this Pink?

[devoca] Yes. There’s a reason for every song.

[delusion] If you promise not to tell anyone I said this, I can appreciate the sentiment in this song.

[devoca] The core of this song is self-esteem, and is a hard look at what happens to a person emotionally when their self-esteem is battered into nothingness. I can’t describe in words how much I hated being who I used to be. It’s probably her only track with any real soul.

[delusion] It does comes dangerously close to the type of song which has been a long-standing irritation of mine: the song about how being a successful pop star is so hard. Think everything Limp Bizkit has ever recorded, Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” and most notoriously, Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”.

[devoca] Understood, I know the stanza you mean. In that respect, it has a bit of a double-meaning, I choose the more general meaning.

[delusion] If there was any sort of reference to the music industry in this song, it’d have ruined it.

[devoca] So hit next.

[delusion] You’re not familiar with the phrase?

[devoca] Nope.

[delusion] The quote was Casey Kasem’s outtake during a bit after a U2 track, getting it hilariously wrong. Negativeland incorporated the outtake into a single called U2, shortly after which Island Records tried to sue them into nothingness over, despite the fact that U2 themselves didn’t have much of a problem with it.

[devoca] I recall that incident. U2 has a fairly free opinion on that sort of thing.

[delusion] Moreso than their label, as it turns out.

[devoca] Quite.

[delusion] I didn’t exactly shed a tear when Island Records lost a few million dollars buying Kevin Shields a new studio for which he never got around to making a follow-up to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless in.

[devoca] *nods*

[delusion] I’ve never heard this song before, I just recognized the guitar and the vocals.

[devoca] This rearrangement of this song doesn’t exist, as far as I know, as a studio track - it was rearranged for the Elevation tour. The appeal is largely due to how it is presented in a live context. It’s confusion, it’s overload, it’s going insane trying to find your path in a world that’s moving too damn fast. I favor this rearrangement over the original. There’s a sense that he has to go slightly mad to perform this, and madness is sort of the core of the song.

[delusion] The lyrics seem to dwell in post-regret rather than regret itself.

[devoca] The slow and soft melody I hope will counterpoint the previous track. The appeal: for no good reason, I associate this track with a girl I told you about recently. There’s no reason for me to, I just do. I can’t listen to this song very often.

[delusion] Yeah, I’ve got a few like that. “Sterre”, the Legendary Pink Dots track I sent you, is an example of that. I couldn’t listen to it for a few weeks after the person I associated it with and I stopped dating. Or any Legendary Pink Dots at all, for that matter, as emotional as it all is. It’s very difficult when you’re willing to accept things as they are after having given the impression that you’re not.

[delusion] When I first heard this song when it was a big hit, I understood it much differently than I do now. Then, I took it as as an affirming, extroverted embrace of the world, so to speak. Now, when I hear it, I hear someone running not to something, but rather from something, from himself.

[devoca] This entire album predates my interest in them - I got in with Achtung Baby, but this album owns me. This one is tied to an event more than by lyric or soul. Friday, October 16, 1992, Texas Stadium. Roughly 10:30pm. That was my first U2 show, and it was this song, from 1987 no less, that sealed things for me listening to them. I certainly have several live versions of this, but they’re too pale. The rush I got from this at the show was nothing I’d ever felt before, and the sheer joy and energy of 20,000-50,000 people going nuts at the same time amplifies it. Mental orgasm. This song is why I have ended up sharing U2 with a lot of people. During the last tour, I gave away a dozen tickets to the various shows. This just moves me in a way I can’t describe.

[delusion] Sometimes, I miss the old arena rock they used to do.

[devoca] Their last tour was arena, wouldn’t have worked in a stadium either.

[delusion] But as willing as they were to throw it all away and do something like “Numb” or “Discothèque”, you have to admire that, too. I think I’d rather miss their arena rock than wish they’d get the hell out of their rut.

[devoca] I don’t think they should ever go back to stadium either.

[devoca] I’ve never listened to Sarah McLachlan, so I lack a point of reference. For this artist, this is not one of the “pretty” songs sonically, but the sentiment speaks to me. If you haven’t figured out who it is yet, I’m slightly amused.

[delusion] The subject is pretty close to what I’ve said in regards to constantly being your own worst enemy. ‘Your’ meaning ‘mine’ in most cases.

[devoca] Alanis Morissette, “Sorry to Myself”. The sentiment behind this one is something I’ve been learning to come to terms with for myself. I have to give what I have to myself, I have to fix my own internal problems, before I can begin to give to others.

[delusion] I’ve only heard her pop hits, so everything else is a blank slate. At least I got the nationality right.

[devoca] I bought Jagged Little Pill when she was popular. Then I shelved her.

[delusion] And now you just dust her off every now and then?

[devoca] After a couple more albums, I caught up and had a listen. Between her 3 major albums I’ve sensed a growth.

[devoca] I suspect it won’t be hard for you to guess who this is.

[delusion] God, it’s right there at the tip of my tongue.

[devoca] You named them earlier.

[delusion] OK, so this is Anything Box?

[devoca] Yes. This is one I’m still finding words to adequately describe. Right now the best I can say is that I find this song beautiful. It also transcends style. This copy is the “studio/electrosynth”, version. I also have a “live/acoustic” club performance that works just as well.

[delusion] I was going to say Stereolab in a particularly straighforward moment, which really isn’t that far off.

[devoca] I’ve listened to this song at least once a day for several weeks and I still love it.

[delusion] I’ve avoided listening to them deliberately since I figured at least one of their songs would come up in this session, but I think this one may have been randomly selected in my playlist before. I probably figured it was Stereolab then, too. I’d be surprised if they’re not a lot bigger in the UK than in the US.

[devoca] They aren’t large at all, anywhere that I know of.

[delusion] We tend to get stuck into a dumb rock rut here. Hell, Kid Rock can sell how many albums here? It’s obscene.

[devoca] Anything Box has a history of maintaining absolute artistic control

[delusion] Electronic pop sans pithy irony does a lot better in Europe than over here.

[devoca] This plays against them getting widespread exposure.

[devoca] This was the last and probably the most “considered” track. For my friends more than anything else, and to a degree, the wife of a friend. Without them, and without her just being there as a friend a couple of years ago, I would not have been able to restart my life and improve things as I have since then. To them all, I owe everything, and am grateful.

[delusion] I’m reminded of William Burroughs “A Thanksgiving Prayer” when I hear this song. Have you ever read it? It’s a wonderful extended “thank you” to the dark side of American history and culture.

[devoca] Nope. Frankly her use of “U” in place of “you” aggravates the living shit out of me. Oh, I may have read this in the past.

[delusion] I quoted it in its entirety on r33t once. I’m sure most people didn’t appreciate it.

[devoca] REM, “Belong”. The appeal: the sound. I’ve never really even paid attention to the lyrics. It’s just the sound of this song that grabs me. Sort of a leveller, I guess. Get in the groove and just keep going. This last track was a choice between this and “Me in Honey” off the same album, and for much the same reasons. It’s not the lyrics I like so much as the sonic qualities.

[delusion] REM was always on a parallel track to what I was listening to when they really started getting Important. Very close, but never crossing.

[devoca] Out of Time is the only album of theirs I have.

[delusion] This isn’t Michael Stipe doing the monotone reading, is it?

[devoca] I don’t know them well enough to know their voices.

[delusion] They may be the last band for which the description “college rock” is actually an appropriate description rather than a (now dated) marketing slogan.

[devoca] “Alternative” suffered the same fate as a description.

[delusion] Alternative? Jesus, Mary and Gates, don’t get me started. I still have ‘Nam flashbacks when someone tries to use the word “alternative”.

devoca] No need to get started.