I don’t listen to lyrics much. I hear them, of course, I hum along with them, sing them loudly and mostly inaccurately. But the content of the lyrics – what is actually being said – rarely registers. Listening to this album was no exception.
Paying little mind to the words being sung, I still heard in this music the distinct sounds of restlessness, regret, and relief; I saw flickering neon lights, crumbling urban landscapes, and rusted railroads leading no where; I felt aimless and stranded yet carefree and cocksure alike. I sensed the definite presence of Dylan, Springsteen, The Grateful Dead, The Killers, and Deerhunter. I wanted to go with the album on a long, windows-down joy ride through the American Southwest, but I didn’t have a car. I considered instead hopping a freight train headed anywhere, but I didn’t have the guts. Hitching a riverboat downstream would’ve worked as well, but it was raining so I just stayed home.
I decided the sound should definitely be labeled “Ambient, blissed out, reverberating Americana folk rock,” mostly because that sounded cool. I noted that the album works best as just that, an album: The tracks – which, it seems relevant to note, alternate between buoyant, sun-burnt, sharply-hooked psych pop; mellow, meandering singer-songwriter fare; and droning, hypnotic instrumental interludes – melt into one another from both ends, occasionally bursting into flames.
Then I realized I had just burnt through every adjective I could muster to describe the sound. So, never having written about music before but being familiar enough with the form, I knew I had now to turn towards the lyrics.
So I played the album again, this time with pen and pad in hand, and tried to hear – no, listen to – the words. I found, perhaps not surprisingly, that their mood and imagery echoed exactly that which I’d gleaned from the instruments alone. And I mean the words literally echoed; lead singer and band creator Adam Granduciel’s voice seems at all times to be escaping from a wet cave, the syllables chasing after each other like trails of light across your retina.
In this distant, hazy way, you variously hear him sing: “I’ve been ramblin’,” “I’ve been movin’,” and “I’ve been strugglin’,” and those aren’t even lines from the same song. You hear countless references to geography and transportation:He’s been “down by the sea” and “up in the highlands”; crossed roads, taken trains, cruised on freeways, and spent time around harbors. He’s passed the “fog of city debris,” and felt “strong winds blowing through my mind.” He feels “a thousand miles behind with a million more to climb,” and wonders where all his friends are going, “and why they didn’t take me.”
These are no doubt the words of a restless man – geographically, psychologically, socially. Yet not a discontented man. In “Come to the City,” one of the catchiest tracks, Granduciel tells us for the umpteenth time, “I’ve been rambling, I’ve been driftin’.” This time, the angst is followed by a cathartic, carefree “Woohoooo!” at the top of his lungs, and as the “oooooo”s fade away like a yell from a passing train, you realize he doesn't seem all too worried about being lost and uprooted. Maybe, even, he relishes in it.
But you don’t need him to tell you so to know it. Just listen to the sounds.
...tj
No comments:
Post a Comment