-
The National, Trouble Will Find Me: Music to Dance With Skeletons To
I have a weird relationship with the music of The National. Most of the music grips me in places I don’t want to be touched, yet I listen over and over again, letting it not only touch me but embrace me, pull me in close and whisper in my ear. Sometimes it’s ok and I get a certain comfort from it, like somebody sitting quietly next to you, just handing you tissues as you mourn a loss. But sometimes it pushes a button and takes me to a floor I didn’t want to get off on. And I stay there. I stay on that floor with that music, with that awkward arm around me, with emotions that flood my heart and my eyes and I revel in it.
There are some albums more than others that force these feelings upon me. Boxer and Alligator both have the ability to set me on a path that usually ends in tears and a feeling like having your soul poked with a stick repeatedly.
And here is Trouble Will Find Me, an album that took just one listen to surpass both Boxer and Alligator in terms of emotions felt and fists squeezed around my heart.
Make no mistake, it’s not simply a case of lyrics hitting home. No, there’s so much more to the National and especially to Trouble Will Find Me than that. It’s in the tone, in Matt Berninger’s beautiful baritone, in the presentation and arrangement. It’s all put together in carefully constructed layers; a cake made of ingredients you find in your brain at 3am. All this beauty and sadness, all the poignancy and melancholy, crafted so precisely, so perfectly layered you can barely tell one piece of the cake from another, you just devour it without knowing which parts are which and you taste everything at once. You’re smiling, you’re crying, your heart is soaring, your heart is breaking, you want to turn off the record and never listen again and you want to listen to nothing but this forever.
So you listen. And your heart goes one way while your brain goes another. There’s a tug of war between your rational self and your emotional self, part of you just wanting to enjoy the intricate melodies, the lullaby lilt of Berninger’s singing and part of you wanting to just find someone to cling on to and hold tight while you weep and sigh and love and rage.
The best thing about Trouble Will Find Me is the best thing about most of The National’s music; each song is immediately familiar and known, a friend you didn’t know you even had until it knocked on your door and let itself into your world. You pour it a cup of tea and sit there talking about love and loss and fear and anger like you’ve been friends forever. In a way you have. Trouble Will Find Me is a culmination of all your inner thoughts and emotions come to life. That friend you’re having tea with, that song you let into your house and heart is just really a piece of you. The National are best at being familiar, at turning a mirror on you while you listen to their music so you’re never listening alone, there’s always your Demons to hang out with, there’s always the trouble that will find you, knock on your door in the form of album full of salt for your wounds and then offer you a salve for the sting.
If you are your own best friend and your own worst enemy, Trouble Will Find Me is a manifestation of self, something to listen to alone - which is really the way to listen to all of their albums. But you’re never really alone. You share this one with your demons, with your hidden skeletons, with all those 3am ghosts that hover around your bed. And you don’t mind. You don’t mind them coming out because my god, the music is beautiful and heartbreaking, music that needs to be shared, even if it’s with just the other parts of yourself that understand how a simple set of notes strung together can make you feel so much.
I’ve tried to foist The National on others to no avail. Maybe they don’t hear what I do. Maybe they don’t listen for it. Perhaps The National is one of those bands that you have to have a certain mindset to get. To someone else, maybe all the songs sound the same, maybe in a perfect world that voice and these arrangements and the low key cadence shouldn’t work. Maybe if you live in a world that has its share of cracks and sharp edges you can hear it. You can hear it in “I Should Live in Salt” and “Sea of Love” and you can feel it in “Slipped” and “This is the Last Time.” In a perfect world a band like this couldn’t pull off six albums of sounding exactly like the other albums, but in a perfect world we don’t need the comfort of songs that sound like old friends to sit with us while we mourn. In a perfect world, everything sounds like a pop song played on a car stereo on a hot summer evening, but this is not a perfect world and sometimes things need to sound like this, like the world is cracked and peeling and falling apart and the only thing that holds it together is knowing you’re not alone. So you slow dance with your demons and skeletons and ghosts while you listen to Trouble Will Find Me, knowing your cracked world is, in a way, perfect for you and whoever else finds their heart in these songs.
-
4:13 for 4/13
Let’s talk about Squeeze, shall we?
A band that is never given enough credit for their talents, Squeeze tends to get thrown into the slush pile of funny looking 80’s bands that had a hit or two.
Unlike some other bands of that era that got famous because of their style or gimmick or just because they hit the right place at the right time, Squeeze was oozing with talent.
Difford, Tilbrook, Holland and all those other guys who didn’t matter as much as those three combined to make some of the greatest songs to come out of an era when great songs were not nearly as numerous as their overstyled, synth pop counterparts. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I loved the whole synth pop-new wave thing. I was just able to recognize that while most of the music of that genre was filled with fun beats that you could bop your head in time to after a few shots of tequila in a grungy-on-purpose club, Squeeze was different.
While a lot of people joined the Squeeze fan-wagon when East Side Story (1981) came out (and some, not until Squeeze Singles in 1982), I had a head start on the band due to my employment at a radio station in 1980. Ok, I wasn’t an employee so much as a phone volunteer, one of those people who answered the 24-7 request line and handled the contests and listened to a lot of heavy breathing and requests for sexual favors that were unheard of in my little, naive corner of the world.
Volunteering had its perks. Lots of free albums, meeting semi-stars, going on the air once in a while (I even made a few commercials) and getting a heads up on the up and coming bands, which proved to be a constant source of jealousy on the part of my friends when a band I predicted would become famous actually did and I could smugly say “I called that one!” Like I did with U2. But that’s another story.
This one is about Squeeze and about a copy of Cool for Cats that made it into my hands in early 1980. The record had actually been released in ‘79, but New York radio was slow to pick up on it. The station I was working at, WLIR, went by the slogan “Dare to be Different,” and they held true to that motto by daring to play the title song of Cool for Cats.
It was love at first listen. It was different, so far apart from anything I was hearing at the time. I grabbed a copy of the album and spent that night listening to it for hours, flipping the disc at least ten times. The lyrics to “Up the Junction” were simple, the rhythm almost monotonous. But somehow those two parts together formed a riveting song. Even “Cool for Cats”, with its machine-gun presentation of the lyrics (I give a little muscle, and I spend a little cash, but all I get is bitter and a nasty little rash) was just so out there that I couldn’t help but love it. “If I Didn’t Love You (I’d Hate You)” was the ultimate in relationship songs:
Singles remind me of kisses, albums remind me of plans.
Well, I thought that was pretty damn deep back then. In fact, I still do. And I still quote it.
I found a copy of U.K. Squeeze - their first album and the original name of the band- in some dirty record story in the city. While it seemed to be made by almost a different band, it was still some good shit, as we used to say in the ‘hood. “Take Me, I’m Yours” inspired many a late songwriting session on my part, trying to recreate that staccato delivery of passionate-in-an-odd-way lyrics.
Then along came East Side Story and Squeeze became a sensation. “Tempted” pushed them onto the charts and out of the dark, dingy clubs I had seen them in into Madison Square Garden. Elvis Costello worked wonders with the band, polishing their genius and creating a bigger, more diverse sound. Unfortunately, it was one I didn’t love. I liked it, but I didn’t love it the way I did Argy Bargy. I gave Sweets from a Stranger, their next album, a chance but was turned off when I found my mother singing “Black Coffee in Bed”.
Regardless of whether I liked them anymore or not, they were still damn talented. Jools Holland’s piano playing always amazed me. Difford and Tilbrook wrote some amazing songs. And those other guys did…other talented-like things. In between the breakup of Squeeze and the reunion of Squeeze, Difford and Tilbrook released an album together, the highlight of which was a wonderful tune called “Love’s Crashing Waves”.
At one point, I pined for the days when Cool for Cats was considered exciting and new. When new wave finally crashed and burned, that was the one album I went to (ok, that and the 12 inch single of Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy’s “Kiss Me”) when I wanted to sulk in my room and relive the glory days of night clubs, spiked hair and torn, black stockings.
Singles remind me of kisses, albums remind me of plans.
Yup, still holds up.
-
☛ Today at Forbes I wrote an essay about teaching your kids to love music
Teach your children well.
-
Today has been declared Jim Hendrix Day.
Feel free to join us in this declaration.
-
songs to fall asleep by on a plane when you have a hard time falling asleep on a plane
I made a (itunes, not spotify) playlist to help me sleep on the plane. If you have anything you think I should add to it, any good songs that will lull me into a false sense of non-anxiety and perhaps slumber, let me know.
- beach house - 10 mile stereo
- brand new - play crack the sky
- brand new - the no seatbelt song
- cake - arco arena
- cake - frank sinatra
- city and colour - as much as i ever could
- electric president - insomnia
- far - man overboard
- manchester orchestra - don’t let them see you cry
- manchester orchestra - ladida
- manchester orchestra - sleeper 1972
- the mountain goats - damn these vampires
- the mountain goats - you or your memory
- the mountain goats - love love love
- the national - all the wine
- the national - racing like a pro
- the national - apartment story
- the national - looking for astronauts
- queens of the stone age - in the fade
- queens of the stone age - this lullaby
- radiohead - nice dream
- taking back sunday - great romances of the 20th century
- taking back sunday - new american classic
- tony lucca - devil town
- straylight run - existentialism on prom night
suggestions?
-
If I ever need a visual description of my wild mood swings, I only need to go to my last.fm page.
-
republic of wolves///woolen blankets
any fan of BN’s Daisy needs to listen to The Republic of Wolves. Varuna sounds enough like Daisy to be amazing, but different enough to not be ripping off Brand New.
(via kingoftherain)
-
The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
For themesong, our new music meme. See here for details. Today’s theme (and here’s the calendar of themes) is: opening credits.
The movie of my life starts off like this. It’s a feel good kind of thing. The colors are muted and the film is grainy, like a home movie from the 70s. It’s summer and everything is beautiful and there’s the beach and the sun and children laughing and people playing Frisbee and dogs running around all footloose and fancy free. It a scene that makes your heart soar, makes you want to be in it, living it, immersing yourself in the moment.
And then this giant monster rises out of the sea and destroys almost everyone and the rest of the movie is a shaky handycam faux documentary of how one girl leads a band of frightened strangers to safety while fighting off giant monsters and people keep dying and horrible things happen and Good Vibrations goes from a feel good hit of the summer to an eerie soundtrack of blood, guts and glory.
[don’t forget you can add themes to any empty date on the google docs calendar]
-
themesong: a music meme
Lisa and I were bored so we put our boredom to good use and came up with a new music meme thing!
Music meme things have come and gone (and some are still around) and we love them because those of us who post a lot of music like to have a cue or a prod or something to write about to go with our music. We like to share the music we love with our followers. We also love getting to listen to what the people we follow are sharing. So here we are with another reason to post a song every day. Another meme. Another thing. This one is kind of a group effort.
Going off what was done with the 52 weeks thing on tumblr last year, we decided to come up with vague, open-ended themes that could be interpreted in a number of different ways. That’s right. A different theme every day. Every day.
That’s a lot of themes, you say. How are you going to keep coming up with so many? Well, that’s where you come in. We’ve made a Google Doc just for this occasion (anyone who wants to make this doc look nice or fix it up, feel free). We’ve started you off with two weeks of songs. Now anyone can go in and put in a theme on a day that’s open. We’ll just keep filling in the days until some time in the future when - as happens with all memes - interest wanes and drops off and something else gets our attention.
We just ask that you look at the themes posted already so you can see where we’re going with this. The ability to take a theme different ways is key to making this interesting.
We also encourage everyone who takes part in this - and whether you do it every day or just once in a while is completely up to you, there are no rules here - to write a little about the song you choose and why you chose that one.
So you’ve got 14 themes/days to start with. It’s up to you (us) to keep those dates filled with new themes. These themes are wide open. Maybe they remind you of something, or maybe you want to take it literally or maybe we’ll never know why you chose that particular song to go with that theme, and we’re ok with that. It’s all about the fun and the music and the randomness.
Mostly, it’s about the group participation. So go into that doc and start adding themes. This is wide open. Also, feel free to go into any month from now til December (yea, we have high hopes).
Tag your posts #themesong and feel free to reblog/pass around/whatever.
Hope you play along!edit:I know we said there are no rules to #themesong but there is a rule and it’s a pretty big one.
Once a theme has been entered for a date, do not go in and change it. Especially do not edit or change a theme someone else has entered. For real. That’s not nice.
Thank you.
-
Why I Love You - Jay-Z and Kanye West feat. Mr. Hudson
The most overused word on the internet is epic, yet I can’t find another word that so fits this album. There’s so much to love about it. There’s so much to take in. So much to absorb. I’ve lost myself in this album, sitting in my car long after I’ve reached my destination, waiting for a song to finish and then listening to yet another.
The bass lines, the hooks, the grooves. The god damn rhymes and beats. So much power and drama and then the softness and beauty. You get caught up in it. You’re really paying attention. And even though the words may not be aimed at you because there’s so much religion and so much culture you’re not immersed in, it doesn’t matter. They’re still reaching you. Yea, there are moments. There are moments when you’re like “Aww Jay-Z did you really just sing about banana pudding? Really? You want me to sing those words out loud?” but you get past that because everything else is solid. Everyone’s turn is solid.
Frank Ocean, Beyonce, Otis and Curtis Mayfield and James Brown coming at you from the beyond, it’s all solid. It’s all gold. “No Church in the Wild” is the best song of 2011. “Made in America” is an instant anthem. “Why I Love You” is a bombastic treat.
Yea, there are awkward moments. There are times when you feel the egos towering over you like a skyline made of money and fame. There are times when I want Jay-Z to stop being so damn colloquial or when I want Kanye to step it down a bit. But there are more amazing parts to this album than not. Musically, it’s pretty damn tight. It’s pretty damn epic.
