Nicholas DiBiase
|
Poster: Nicholas DiBiase @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 11:31 pm
Though I am one of the very most far-gone of the music freak species, I very rarely write music reviews. This is mainly because music moves me on a very id-type level, a visceral nad mojo vibration thing that is very difficult to put into words.
When I put on some records, I just get totally enveloped by their atmosphere. I’m one of those people who will listen to a new LP on repeat for a few hours and just stare at the cover art, consumed by the environment that the record creates. You can probably tell by my references to ‘records’ and ‘LPs’ that I’m from a generation, probably the last, for whom the basic unit of musical consumption was the album. That started to change in my late teens as Napster started to revolutionize single-cut filesharing, but as a lifelong vinyl junkie I’ve always kept my affinity for the album. A good album, I believe, is a fully immersive experience, with emotional peaks and valleys, that a lone song generally can’t match.
This depth of feeling makes it hard to write about the experience, though -- at least for me. I really respect the few music critics who have been able to catch the transient bolts of sensation and turn them into eloquent words -- Lester Bangs being the foremost of these. A unflinching devotee of Rock ‘n’ Roll mythology and iconography, Bangs had the uncanny gift to make the reader feel what he felt when being liberated by bubblegum pop or dragged down the psychic dragstrip by the Stooges.
I haven’t been able to achieve this, however. I can paint about how music makes me feel, and can create music while in thrall to some great LP, but carving that feeling into text has always eluded me.
I want to get better at it, because there are a few records that have chiseled out permanent places inside me, and I want to talk about them.
One of these is “Queen of the Meadow” by New York goth-eros-lounge-pop group Elysian Fields. I bought this LP for two dollars in the Hoodlums bargain bin back in 2002, never having heard the band, only knowing their name in passing. Mostly I bought it because the band name is cool and the cover is rad. [Note : these factors are usually good guides as to whether a record is actually going to be good.]
I put this record on my stereo when I got home. I wasn’t prepared for the sex-and-death-drenched near-mystical dark jazzy effusion that poured forth from my speakers. Singer Jennifer Charles has this classic smoky almost-bored mezzo voice that drips lust and carries a plush malice. Instrumentalist Oren Bloedow weaves entire narrative tapestries out of spare guitar, drum, and keyboard lines. And the lyrics -- oh man. Let me tell you.
Good lyrics are rare in pop music because most people don’t care about or listen for them. I am myself guilty of this attitude sometimes. But Elysian Fields write lyrics that are so finely honed, I like reading them on the page as well as I like listening to them. They communicate such a powerful ennui and fatal urge that they wedge you right into the creepy forlorn sexworld inhabited by the band.
My three favorite moments on this essential and perfect platter are :
1) In the opening cut, “Tides of the Moon,” Charles lulls you into her doomed Oddessy-style tale of love adrift, and then eviscerates you with a perfectly-formed bridge “...You know I have been detained. And I feel...I could die.” She bends that last word with your soul upward toward the shrouded moon.
2) The bizarre, sick necro-lesbian tale “Rope of Weeds:” Grody to the max, but where else can you get lyrics of this kind of poetic quality? Whole song is outstanding, read ‘em online.
3) And finally, the cut that gets my vote for Best Goth Pop Music Cut Of All Time : “All Hearts are Open Graves.” Magically creating a gothic sex mood even in a major-key song, Elysian Fields offers up a kind of doomed reading of Massive Attack’s “Protection.” The female narrator is working to convince her damaged love interest that there’s no shame in bearing scars of romantic trauma, as those wounds are universal and terminal : “Never be ashamed, my love. All hearts are open graves. And no-one can be saved,” goes the chorus. “I’ll hold you there, and stare right in.” An amazing work that’s simultaneously dire and affirmative.
This record engraved itself into my brain on the first listen, and still didn’t leave my CD player for over year after that. A freaking classic.
One of these days, I’m going to find a way to plug a keyboard right into my treacle-soul to bring you a more faithful report of these tectonic records. Until then, by gosh, go listen to this LP!
-
Nicholas DiBiase
@Hepnova
(36,849)
|
Share
