Beautiful Song Of The Week

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I was a bit hesitant to listen to Thom Yorke’s first solo effort, The Eraser, upon its release in 2006.

While I loved his voice and his lyrics, I always felt that the Greenwoods were as important to Radiohead’s songwriting process as Thom Yorke was. Following Radiohead’s career arc, it seemed like any time Yorke’s influence over the band’s direction got stronger, the results got weirder. Not bad weird, but I got the impression that without the Greenwoods there to counterbalance his tangents, they would become more and more experimental.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Well, mostly. There’s some pretty strange stuff on The Eraser, but it’s mostly listenable, and the stuff that isn’t too listenable is still interesting. And besides, listening to things that are difficult to listen to is good exercise for your ears.

The title track is probably my favourite, and Christian Scott does it justice (and then some) on his 2010 album Yesterday You Said Tomorrow.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The…thing…that rattles. I don’t know what it is. It might be a snare. But every time the piano hits one of its chords, something rattles. At first it bugged me, because I thought something was wrong with my speakers. But now I like it.

2. The soft trumpet tone. Scott calls it his “whisper tone”, and it’s a trademark of his playing. I love it because it means that his trumpet needs to be recorded really close, picking up all the subtleties of his playing.

3. The tempo change at 3:20. In both the original and this version, it’s a startling switch that doesn’t seem to make at sense. But like everything else in the song, it works effortlessly and inexplicably.

Recommended listening activity:

Doing something that’s difficult but worth it.

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There are countless songs about growing up. It’s got to be the most written-about topic that doesn’t involve falling in love, being in love, or breaking up.

What bugs me most about a lot of growing-up songs is their tendency towards nostalgia. Lyrics about things never being the same, or wishing we could go back, or wasn’t that the bestest summer ever…it often feels like a one-dimensional look back. It feels like you should be pessimistic about being an adult.

Herbie Hancock’s 1968 album Speak Like a Child is, according to its liner notes, about retaining a childlike (but not childish) philosophy. Hancock was encouraging people to “think and feel in terms of hope, and the possibilities of making our future less impure”.

And so, while “Goodbye to Childhood” is probably the album’s most contemplative, introspective track, I don’t find it to be sad. I feel like Hancock wants us to say goodbye to the elements of childhood that we don’t need anymore, while retaining the joy and innate optimism that make childhood fun.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The opening sequence. (Which you might recognize from last week.) Ominous and spooky.

2. As ominous and spooky as the first moments of this song are, by the one-minute mark it’s settled into soothing piano and upright bass. Maybe it’s Herbie’s way of telling us that adulthood isn’t as bad as we think it’s going to be.

3. The ride cymbal. Through most of the song it sizzles away constantly. It makes me imagine that the drummer gave the job of cymbal-hitter to an excited kid, who could barely contain himself throughout the entire song.

Recommended listening activity:

Putting on hilarious underwear beneath your fanciest work clothes.

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Looking at the cover of this album, you get the feeling that the record label was a bit worried that the album wouldn’t sell because nobody would know who Bill Evans was.

The title, “Everybody Digs Bill Evans,” sounds more like an advertising jingle than a title. And then there’s the cover design; not a photo of the artist himself, but a list of celebrity endorsements (Miles Davis! George Shearing! Ahmad Jamal! Cannonball Adderley!) kind of like what you’d expect to read on the back cover of a novel, as if to convince you that yes, Bill Evans is more than just a boring name, he’s also a brilliant composer! Trust us on this one!

If the record label was worried about sales, they shouldn’t have been. While it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, it was acclaimed as one of the better albums of 1958, and stands up as one of Evans’ best works more than half a century later. And this song in particular remains as beautiful as anything recorded by any of the jazz greats quoted on the album cover.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The repeated chords in the left hand. Sounds less like jazz and more like Erik Satie.

2. While the right hand gets more and more discordant, the left hand stays grounded and peaceful.

3. It was improvised. Evans refused to play the song live, stating that it was the product of a specific moment in the studio, and that moment couldn’t be recreated. He ended up performing it just once, to accompany a group of contemporary dancers, two years before he died.

Recommended listening activity:

Watching an incredible sunset without taking any pictures.

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Lots of people hate winter. It’s cold, it’s dark, and the novelty of snow quickly gives way to the unpleasant, salty reality of slush. Last winter, I tried denial. This winter I’d like to suggest a more optimistic approach, by focusing on what makes winter good, and the opportunities it provides us that summer cannot.

So in the spirit of winter optimism, here are some ways to make winter better:

• Use a hair dryer to give your shoes/boots a quick hot blast before putting them on. Your feet will feel invincible as you walk out into the cold.
• Buy an advent calendar midway through December. They’ll be on sale for cheap, and you will have the moral obligation to eat a whole bunch of chocolate to catch up.
• In a public place (a bus stop would work nicely) start filling your jacket pockets with snow. If someone looks at you funny, give them a blank stare and say, “…it’s for my collection.”
• Mint tea. I guarantee you will like it, even if you’re not a tea person. It’s got the magical quality of being hot and cold at the same time. If Queen Elizabeth had Santa over for crumpets, this is the beverage she would serve.
• Once a week, listen to “White Keys” by Chilly Gonzalez, a talented pianist with a seasonally appropriate name.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The way he takes a simple pattern and moves it around the keyboard, using only (you guessed it) the white keys.

2. The way he begins the piece sticking strictly to eighth notes, but then after a while starts throwing notes in a bit earlier than expected.

3. The way the mic is so close, it occasionally picks up the sound of his fingernails on the keys.

Recommended listening activity:

Re-discovering the joy of snowpants.

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I couldn’t let Southern Hemisphere Month go by without including a bossa nova track.

Bossa nova (which, I just found out, translates to something like “new wave”) is the southern hemisphere’s greatest contribution to the jazz genre. And although many versions of “One Note Samba” exist, this one stands as my favourite, and as the one that introduced bossa nova to the northern hemisphere as part of the Grammy-winning album “Jazz Samba” by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.

Antonio Carlos Jobim was the most famous Brazilian of the 1960s (other than, maybe, Pele), and his list of hits is staggering. He was so loved in Brazil that the international airport in Rio now bears his name; fitting for someone who exported Brazillian music to the world.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The percussion. The soft brushes, the clinking high-hat, the delicate rim hits…it is physically impossible to listen to this without moving your head back and forth like a pigeon.

2. The guitar. It’s from the guitar that we first hear the “one note” referred to in the title. But it’s not the one note that gives the song its charm; it’s the way that the bass line creeps down chromatically under the note, like someone sinking slowly into a deck chair by the pool.

3. The sax. Smooth and silky and perfect.

Recommended listening activity:

Relaxing underneath a ridiculously slow-moving ceiling fan.

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Up to this point, this blog has been heavily biased in favour of bands from the northern hemisphere.

Considering that only 10% of the world’s population lives south of the equator, a surprising amount of good music has come from the world’s lower half…and yet, by my count, I have only ever featured two artists from that part of the world (a measly 1.5% of my total posts). So if you’re down there and you’re listening, please accept my apologies.

To make up for it, I’d like to declare November 2012 to be “Southern Hemisphere Month” here at BSOTW.  Let’s get right to it with a hypnotic song by South Africa’s electro-jazz duo Goldfish.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The piano. Dreamy and soft, and not really in time.

2. The drums. Pretty straightforward, but tight, to counteract the laziness of the piano.

3. The horns. They’re used very sparingly, and they sound like they’re yawning more than playing.

Recommended listening activity:

Studying an upside-down map of the world.

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Everything about the album Time Out is fascinating to me.

For starters, it was barely allowed to exist. Because of the experimental nature of its songs, the folks at Columbia records were sure it would be a commercial flop. So Columbia’s president, Goddard Lieberson, let them record it on the condition that they record an album of traditional songs first. This “eat-your-broccoli-and-then-you-can-have-dessert” approach ended up working brilliantly, as Time Out went on, despite initial negative reviews, to become one of the best-selling and most influential jazz albums of all time.

Then there’s the cover art. For some reason, I had always thought it was Picasso, but it turns out it’s by the Japanese-American designer Neil Fujita, who also designed a Mingus album cover, and book covers for novels like The Godfather and In Cold Blood. Fujita’s backstory is quite something: during World War II he was sent to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, which was an internment camp where people of Japanese heritage could be safely kept away from American society, but still made available for the draft. Despite this unfairness, Fujita volunteered to fight in the war, made it out alive, and became one of the prominent American designers of the 20^th Century.

But most fascinating, of course, is the music itself. There’s “Kathy’s Waltz” (named after Brubeck’s daughter, but misspelled on the album with a “K” instead of a “C”); there’s the legendary “Take Five” (the album’s biggest hit and also the only one not written by Brubeck); and then there’s this one, the forgotten little brother of “Take Five”, stuck on the album’s second side, but more than worthy of a listen.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The switching time signature. The album has many unusual time signatures, and in this song it alternates between 3/4 and 4/4. But like Time Out’s other songs, the unique counting isn’t done at the expense of a catchy melody.

2. The sax. Paul Desmond plays in such a soft, relaxed way that I like to imagine him playing this one in a comfy chair, with one arm slung over the headrest.

3. The ending. The piano creeps down chromatically for a while, and just when we’re sure we know how it’s going to end, crazy old Brubeck takes us up a few major thirds in a surprising melodic twist that sounds like the tone you might hear over the PA system in an airport before an announcement is made.

Recommended listening activity:

Stirring soup with one hand and snapping your fingers with the other.

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Bandcamp.

Everything about BadBadNotGood seems designed to freak out old people.

Their Bandcamp page proclaims that “no one over the age of 21 was involved in the making of this album”. They dropped out of a highly-regarded jazz program at Humber College, apparently bored with teaching methods that prioritize tradition over exploration (read the fallout here and here). Even their name flouts the common rules of typography with its blatant disregard for the space bar. Scandalous!

But whether you think of them as innovators or aggravators, you’ve got to love the spooky intensity of this track, from their 2012 release, BBNG2.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. It’s heavy. The percussion alone is enough to knock you out of bed; the fact that they don’t treat the drums with any reverb makes it sound like the drummer has set up shop somewhere in your inner ear. By the time the upright bass comes in, you’re not sure whether to nod your head or check your ear for a trickle of blood.

2. It’s moody. The great melody played on the electric piano in the opening minute is contrasted by the uneasy b-section that begins at 1:19. Chromatic and edgy, it builds in intensity until finally going back to the melody. (Random thought: the chromatic section of this song reminds me of the music at 7:39 in this video. Maybe I’m crazy.)

3. Instead of fading out, it grinds to a halt. Like a wind-up toy slowly running out of juice. It reminds us that even though some of the instruments sound synthesized, these are live players, and they’ll slow down if they feel like it.

Recommended listening activity:

Designing a brilliant homemade Halloween costume months before Halloween.

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I’ve always been interested in song titles.

When I first heard this song, I assumed that the title referred to something inherited, as in “second-hand clothing”. But after a few listens, I noticed that there was no hyphen in the title, and suddenly realized that it might be making reference to the “second hand” on a clock. For some reason, thinking of a clock made me hear the song in a different way.

For a brief moment, I sat there contemplating how amazing the human brain is; how our understanding of a song’s title can change our perception of the song itself. How our like or dislike of a person can be influenced by the person’s name. How our enthusiasm for a shirt can be influenced by the music playing in the store when we try it on.

Then the moment was over, and I went back to eating my sandwich.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Repetition. The piano’s simple, repetitive pattern of (mostly) thirds at the beginning of the song really reminds me of Philip Glass.

2. Surprise. The clarinet that comes in at 0:27 is an unlikely companion for the piano. I’m not sure what instrument I was expecting, but it wasn’t the clarinet.

3. Entropy. Much like “Turn the Koala” by Red Blue Green, this song gradually disintegrates into chaos. The thirds turn into all kinds of intervals, the regular rhythm they follow falls apart, and it’s capped off by the clarinet spinning away up a scale just before the 5-minute mark, like an unintentionally triggered firework.

Recommended listening activity:

Arranging your books by colour, rather than by title.

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One of the best things about the mp3 age is the phenomenon of iPod serendipity. This is when your iPod, happily shuffling its way through your library, suddenly seems to sense what’s happening around you and pulls out the perfect song.

You’re calling your accountant and “Taxman” by The Beatles comes on…you’re frying up some breakfast and it plays “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MG’s…you’re emptying the garbage just as “My Heart Will Go On” starts to play…

But sometimes, iPod serendipity isn’t that specific; sometimes the song that plays just seems to match the general mood of the moment rather than the particular event. It happened to me once with “Funk For Joy” by The Extremities.

I was leaving work on the last day before a summer vacation; it was a perfect, breezy, sunny day, and as I walked past a park I saw a group of kids chasing madly after bubbles that their mother was blowing. They were going nuts, in the way that only five-year-olds can go nuts. Their happy giggles sounded like part of the song, and two of them were jumping in perfect time with the beat of the song. It was as if they were dancing to the music that only I could hear.

At that moment, I realized two things: first, it was going to be a good summer, and second, I needed to stop staring at them, because their mother was getting uncomfortable.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The opening piano. It kind of makes me think of a ringing church bell. Because the interval is a fifth, you can’t tell at first whether the song is going to be major or minor. But then that soothing sax comes in and the joy-funk begins.

2. The piano flourish at 0.48. It’s pure piano happiness, and it’s mirrored by an organ flourish at 1.41.

3. The out-of-nowhere bridge section at 1:48. It would have already been a great song, but then they throw in this great moment, featuring a great vocal sample from a funky little ‘70s gem called “You And The Music” by Donald Byrd. It’s moments like this that separate groups like The Extremities from less thoughtful sample artists.

Recommended listening activity:

Breakdancing with your fingers.