I haven’t posted anything here in about two years, because life is kind of funny sometimes. You get a girlfriend, finish up your BA, and go on to grad school, and it’s only when you sit around with the flu for a few days that you start thinking of blowing the dust off your old blog and getting back on the horse. But it’s time to get back in the habit – and what with me now officially blogging for my grad program, any extra time I spend writing is probably a good thing. Also, the alternative is just sitting alone in my apartment and temporarily going mad and talking to those things you talk to when you go mad. Kings? No, trees, that’s it. Trees. Anyway, on to today’s argument.
Some of the most fun I have as a blogger, DJ, and amateur musicologist is drawing the most random connections possible between artists. I once mentioned going from the Alexandrov Ensemble to Willie Nelson on the same mix tape, somewhat as a joke, and have since found that people regularly find their way here by Googling old Willie’s name. So if you’re here because of that, welcome. Hopefully you’ll stick around to actually read something, right?
Connecting the thematics of music along with the more obvious stylistic and technical similarities is always absolutely fascinating. Music is an ever-evolving art form, and when you trace that evolution you feel like Darwin with his finches – you see the common threads that bind everything together with such artistry where the casual observer may only see pop music. Now, if you really want to feel like some sort of Pitchfork-mainlining indie kid, you probably trace everything from the Smiths, and if that’s the case, sit on a fencepost and spin. Your masturbatory fantasies about Morrissey are unnecessary and really just a waste of time – at this point, he’s a cliché. It’s all predictable. Like Barry rants at Rob in High Fidelity, “Couldn’t you make it any more obvious than that? What about the Beatles? What about the Rolling Stones? What about the fucking… fucking… Beethoven? Track one side one of the Fifth Symphony?” (Emphasis Hornby’s. You can’t make that shit up) And you know what? Fatass old Barry has a point. What about Beethoven?
Moreover, when's the next damned Tenacious D album coming out?
The answer? Everything.
Musical tastes ebb and flow throughout the years, and that’s fine. However, as generations progress, the desire to pay attention to the music of ages past – not simply that from a few decades or even a century ago, but truly that of bygone eras – continues to wane. Even with the Internet at our disposal (obviously, since you’re reading this), the majority’s desire to become broadly versed in musical tradition is, in my opinion, pathetically lacking. I mean, sure, people may know the hook from the Fifth Symphony, or the Ninth, or maybe a little Bach or Mozart or Brahms… but who’s honestly listened to the whole Hammerklavier Sonata? I’ll admit, I only heard of it through reading a novel that used it as a minor plot device. But, with Wikipedia as my trusty guide, I hunted it down, took a listen, and fell in love.
Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, technically known as Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, isn’t exactly the most soothing piano composition for modern ears. The performer must literally approach the keys at points with the mentality that his hands are indeed hammers, pounding their inner anguish into the piano with a poise that is simultaneously animalistic and refined. If I had to draw a comparison to a pop song, Muse’s “Space Dementia” comes to mind – it walks back and forth between the withdrawn and the overwrought, the passive and the manic, painting the sonic picture of not just the two-dimensional mental construct of your average 3:30 pop ballad, but the four-dimensional space/time construct of a broken and bleeding heart.
Now of course, broken hearts are truly the glue that holds pop music together. Yet it is specifically the sound of the Hammerklavier‘s third movement, the languid pounding of confused grief and hope, that can be found so readily in modern artists, such as the aforementioned Muse or my own personal favorite bourbon ballad band, Murder By Death. Seeing them live twice so far has really given me a greater appreciation and understanding of their work, as well as insight on just how complex this morbid bunch of indie rockers really are.
A track of theirs that interestingly parallels the Hammerklavier is “Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue.” Buried in the middle of MBD’s second album, Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? – nominally, a concept album telling the story of a devil waging war against a small Mexican/American border town – “Morale” is the kind of multilayered acoustic experience that can provide both an excellent atmospheric effect and a fantastically rich analytical environment. In other words, it hooks you with its honestly fantastic title and then proceeds to kick ass in the background or kick you in the teeth when you really sit down and listen to it. Or see it, rather – “Morale” was the first song that MBD made an official video for, which I’ll now throw your way:
Now, the video’s visual imagery certainly complements the album’s overall theme – the tattered frontier town, the funeral, the ragged inhabitants trying to just hold on. But the song itself is, thankfully, more universally applicable than that. At least, it speaks to me on a personal level, even though I’ve never walked the road from Tuscon to San Antonio, so I assume it can do the same to others. Lyrically, there’s a despondence and desperation that really can resonate with everyone. The Old West trappings of the video and the lyrics are a framework, crystallizing the stark reality of the singer’s monolithic feelings of loneliness into the kind of image that weighs down any soul that finds common ground there. We’ve all had those days when we’re wrapped up in masochism and trudge along just for the sake of trudging on.
Speaking of masochism, I’ll leave you with this question: who really counts as the Beethoven of our era?
And please, please don’t say Morrissey.
