Confronting silence
I asked my friend Emily about Death Cab for Cutie, and she answered with a few links. To get a devotee's perspective instead of an album's perimeters or a Related Videos box's scattered choices, finishing your sentences as well as a person who's never met you before today, is revelatory. Fans give you reaction. Devotees give you perspective, a vantage point, a dealing with both position and direction, and a basic artist can explain how perspective yields three dimensions from two.
Brothers on a Hotel Bed was the stunner in the selection, even though I'd been warned. The song's lyrics were limited but fantastic, and the notes caught you up before you reach the words. The notes, and the silences between them. Even when the keyboards and drums paired, you could still hear every moment each was quiet. Thinking, struggling likely, reconsidering nearly, grabbing a breath, or simply pacing — still true as the rhythm quickened — the song's silence was how the next step forward managed to land. The propulsion was involuntary.
I went searching for what Alex Ross might have said about silence. A blog post found Ross quoting an essay of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, and I knew I was done. "Music is either sound or silence," Takemitsu wrote. "As long as I live I shall choose sound as something to confront a silence. That sound should be a single, strong sound."
Graf prior: "Within our Western musical notation the silences (rests) tend to be placed with statistical considerations. But that method ignores the basic utterance of music. It really has nothing to do with music. Just as one cannot plan his life, neither can he plan music."
October 24th, 2009 at 1:37 AM
Did you get a chance to listen to "Company Calls (Epilogue)"? Guy attends ex's wedding; heartbreaking song ensues.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:38 AM
A link to the aforementioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm1GxskFtik&feature=related
October 24th, 2009 at 7:33 AM
Good stuff, thanks for pointing it out. Could see that being me, but in a good way. Any other songs that cross your mind for getting into them more, let me know, much appreciated.
October 24th, 2009 at 9:20 AM
Have you made it to Narrow Stairs? Cath, Twin Bed and You Can Do Better are brutal and great.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:36 AM
That's the one I do have — I like it — Cath is terrific. The extended Possess Your Heart is my favorite by far on the album — it pisses me off when the radio plays the short version. (I feel the same way about what radio plays vs. the 11-minute CCR version of Heard It Through the Grapevine. People claim to feel this way about Layla, but fwiw, I haven't heard radio play the short version in years.) How does Narrow Stairs fit vs. the rest of the catalog? Do they have a more raw period?
October 25th, 2009 at 9:25 PM
All of 'Transatlanticism' is worth a listen — it's still the best distillation of their powers, in my view. "The New Year," "Death of an Interior Decorator," the title track, and especially "Title and Registration." Great songwriting.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:49 PM
Cool, thanks for the recommendation — just found the whole album streaming here.
January 1st, 2010 at 3:13 AM
Extremely delayed thanks for the shout out. You Tubing some stuff to stay awake… it's always good to go back to DCFC.
January 1st, 2010 at 12:02 PM
Hope the staying awake worked!