Something Like Sound

Throughout his career, Ben Folds has written clever piano-pop-ballads. During his time with the Ben Folds Five, his songs focused on the ironic side of growing up. After he broke free of that group, his style matured and his songs became much more somber. However, throughout the entire time, his ability to match his music to his words was uncanny. Folds had seemingly mastered songwriting, in both his lyrical and musical content. On his new album, Way to Normal, he fails on both accounts.

The album certainly has moments of promise. The single, “You Don’t Know Me,” features fellow piano-ballad aficionado Regina Spektor and is a spectacular song. The track, which tells an interesting story (of a long-together couple who realize they don’t truly know each other at all) possesses an interesting and uncommon rhythm and an endearing melody. A number of songs, in fact, are quite good. “Free Coffee” presents a surprisingly personal story involving his recent divorce, as well a commentary on some social ills. Musically, “Free Coffee” is a break from Folds’s standard fare, but he presents an electronic-beat-heavy song very well.

Unfortunately, despite the three or four songs which recall Ben Folds of old, there are a number in which Folds simply does not deliver. The first track on the album, “Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)” tells the story of a time Folds was performing in Japan, when he slipped and hit his head. One of Folds’s greatest talents is his storytelling – his ability to tell a complex story, and convince the listener of its sincerity, without being overly literary. In “Hiroshima,” Folds tells an unimportant, simple story, to no effect. Further, the song relies on pop tricks and hooks which are much too simple and ineffective to be done by such a prolific songwriter.

Many Ben Folds songs are immediate classics. They linger in the heads of listeners like an unwanted relative – long after it seems necessary. Some songs – “The Frown Song,” “You Don’t Know Me,” and “Cologne” – keep with this tradition. However, for most of the album, Folds sounds like he’s trying too hard, with unnecessary musical embellishments, lacking the subtle jabs at life which proliferate the rest of his work. Folds seems to have finally turned into the angst-filled type of person he makes fun of in so many songs. In the song “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” Folds claims to “be all alone in [his] white-boy pain.” In Way to Normal, it seems like he’s been alone too long.

The Boettcher Concert Hall roared with the applause of adoring fans. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra had just finished its performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, and although the concert-goers were dressed to the nines, their whoops and hollers were as deafening as those heard at rock concerts. After the ovation died down, and the crowd began to disperse from the hall, one middle-aged man intoned to anyone who could hear him, “that was quite possibly the best concert I’ve ever been to, in any genre of music.”

This year (like years in the past), students at Mines have a unique opportunity to attend concerts just like the one described above. Because of a deal between Mines and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, students are able to get $5 tickets to a show, to almost any seat in the house. A student merely has to show up at the Boettcher Concert Hall the night of a concert, display his or her Blastercard to a ticket vendor, and ask for the best seat they can get. It is a wonderful deal; Mines students can receive $70 tickets for $5.

The CSO has a spectacular schedule for the rest of the year. Performances range from traditional Mozart Symphonies to world premieres. There are many highlights throughout the season, appealing to a wide range of people. Some of the key performances are the following.

January 30th and 31st, Principle Guest Conductor Douglas Boyd will lead the CSO in a performance of Haydn’s 6th Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Principle Conductor Jeffery Kahane will lead violinist Chee-Yun and the CSO in a performance of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with pieces by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky, on February 27th and 28th.

March 20th through 22th, Associate Conductor Scott O’Neil will lead pianist Barry Douglas and the CSO in performances of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, and a prelude by Puccini.

June 5th through 7th, Jeffery Kahane will lead the CSO in a performance of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony.

It’s an exciting time for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, with a cycle of all of Mahler’s major orchestral works being performed over the next five or six years and a new concert hall in the works. Because of the deal with Mines, it is extremely accessible to students, and provides a wonderful boost of culture to supplement students’ studies of math and science.

The Boettcher Concert Hall is located in the Denver Performing Arts Complex at 1000 14th Street, Denver, CO. Concerts usually take place at 7:30 on Friday and Saturday nights and 2:30 on Sundays. For a complete listing of times and events, see http://www.coloradosymphony.org/.

When Elliott Smith was found dead in his Los Angeles home in 2003, a great songwriter and extremely influential musician was lost to the world. The singer/songwriter, who was born in Omaha, NE and raised in Texas and Portland, released seven studio albums (the last two of which were released posthumously). His singing, which was ghost-like and subtle, and tendency to play merely acoustic guitar in his songs, helped to pave the way for modern singer-songwriters, such as ConorOberst of Bright Eyes. His fifth studio album, Figure 8, was released in 2000, and was his final album release before his death.

Overall, Figure 8 is more uplifting than any of Smith’s other albums. The chord changes and lyrics arewarmer than his previous works. There are certainly exceptions to this trend, such as the aptly titled “Everything Means Nothing to Me.”However, even in this song, a Beatle-esque psychedelic feeling is created, which is hardly moribund.

The first track on the album, “Son of Sam,” is a showcase for the dream-like and imagist lyrical quality that permeates throughout the rest of the album. Phrases jump from one thought to another, while still maintaining an overall consistency of idea. According to Smith, the song is about creation and destruction. This can be understood, as the song references the serial killer Son of Sam, as well as Shiva, a Hindu God of destruction, who “opens her arms now/ To make sure I don’t get too far.”

Throughout Figure 8, Smith showed an ability to write about dark and morose things, without being needlessly confessional. He demonstratedthathe could write about serious topics while distancing himself from many of today’s musicians, who are forced to document their own glum thoughts in a clichéd and often unappealing way. He did this in the context of rich and beautiful orchestration, complete with piercing and poignant melodies.

Figure 8 was the last album Smith made which was released while he was alive. It was the result of years of studying songwriting by an intelligent musician.Individual tracks on the album swing wildly from moribund apathy to warmth, a qualitythat is hard to find in other musicians. These transitions came from a musician who made music the way he thought it should be made, while those around him followed the preferences of the public and made music to make money. Smith was an innovative thinker, combining each layer of his songs so as to create a perfect mood, all the while making albums which create a lasting, and important, catalogue. Although all of Smith’s albums are excellent (particularly Either/Or, Elliot Smith, and XO), Figure 8 is a culmination of styles and ideas Smith accumulated through his short life. It is a masterwork of songwriting, with each instrument and each warble in Smith’s voice matching perfectly in what may be considered his best work, and one of the best albums released in the last twenty years.

Missouri band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (SSLYBY) released their second album, Pershing, on April 8th. The group, which is composed of Philip Dickey, Will Knauer, John Robert Cardwell, and Jonathan James, has been around since 2002, and released their first album Broom in 2005. Pershing is SSLYBY’s first professionally produced record (Broom was recorded in a band-member’s basement with low-quality equipment) and has received a large amount of buzz on music blogs and other websites.

Pershing begins with “Glue Girls.” The song, which is very similar to the material they’ve released in the past, is upbeat and makes use of fast chord changes and doubled vocals for some great effects. The song also has a few catchy melodies, both sung and played by electric guitar.

Other highlights of the album include “Dead Right” and “Think I Wanna Die.”

In both songs, backing vocals create memorable harmonies, which are offset by clean and crisp guitar playing and interesting rhythms, making both tracks very appealing.

Lyrically, SSLYBY appears to be trying too hard to match their upbeat, catchy melodies with equally catchy and cute lyrics. In “Oceanographer,” for example, almost every line has an end rhyme with the word ‘oceanographer.’ At times, however, the lyrics match the songs perfectly. “Boring Fountain” is a song about ennui and malaise, and the tired state these conditions cause. The words “by the way I feel nothing” permeate the song, perfectly balancing the melody.

Pershing finds SSLYBS more musically mature than Broom. They sound less like The Shins and The New Pornographers and more like a band creating its own sound. While this can act to their disadvantage at times, overall they’ve created a solid record whose upbeat and catchy tunes are sure to brighten a listener’s day.

In 1991, John Darnielle began recording folk-rock songs, under the name The Mountain Goats, which sounded like they were recorded on a boom box (as some of them were). However, strikingly intelligent and poignant lyrics, coupled with Darnielle’s urgent, bleating vocals, have created a cult following around The Mountain Goats (in which Darnielle is the only consistent member). In each of the nineteen albums released by The Mountain Goats, Darnielle explores the intensity of emotion experienced by people in desperate situations, while describing the human condition with marked accuracy. The Mountain Goat’s newest album, Heretic Pride, is no exception.

The three Mountain Goat albums released before Heretic Pride were all heavily influenced by Darnielle’s life – the only autobiographical work in Darnielle’s extensive catalogue. Heretic Pride, however, returns to traditional Mountain Goats fare, focusing on overarching themes and expertly crafted characters. Despite the album’s fictional nature, the songs on Heretic Pride describe characters who very well might exist on Earth somewhere. In each track, Darnielle turns a three minute song into a story which would take a less talented writer ages to tell.

Heretic Pride begins with “Sax Rohmer #1″ – a song named after writer Arthur Ward, whose novels describe master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu. This is the first song of many in the album which reference monsters and evil characters from literature and movies – H.P. Lovecraft’s monster Cthulhu, the mythical Tianchi Monster, a swamp creature, and Michael Myers are all mentioned in songs. “Sax Rohmer #1,” along with all those songs with evil characters in them, creates a pressure-filled atmosphere, with pulsing drums and minor chords issuing from the guitar.

These songs are sharp contrasts to the second song on the album, “San Bernadino.” It is one of a number of songs contently describing a failing relationship. In the song, a violin and viola emit graceful, melodic notes which contrast a constant, pizzicato plucking of the guitar. This juxtaposition provides an excellent background to the lyrics of the song, which are those of a man recounting the good moments of a failed marriage. “Heretic Pride” and “So Desperate” are particularly good tracks on the album. The former, after which the album takes its name, is a reconciliation of the album’s two themes, which involve both monsters and the satisfaction which comes from ending a failing relationship. The song is told from the perspective of a heretic who is being burned for his sins. This narrative is told over relaxing, even uplifting instrumental music, and the words said by the heretic are even inspiring: “I felt so proud to be alive,” he says in the refrain. “So Desperate,” on the other hand, seems – rightly – out of place on the album. It is the only track which contains no instruments other than guitar – which plays very melodic arpeggios behind Darnielle’s warm, longing vocals. The song, though dissimilar to others on the album, provides an emotional climax to the album.

It’s been over five years since the last lo-fi Mountain Goats album – something which longtime fans occasionally deplore. Heretic Pride could very easily silence those complaints. Although the album was recorded in a modern studio and edited for audio quality, the emotional impact is just as significant as any earlier Mountain Goats albums and Heretic Pride is one of The Mountain Goat’s best.

“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, “Upper West Side Soweto”, and “Oxford Comma Riddim” are just some of the adjectives that Vampire Weekend uses to describe their sound. If these “genres” sounds pompous, then the band has achieved its goal. Vampire Weekend is composed of four Columbia graduates from New York City, and they’re not afraid to make their preppy backgrounds known (ironically in some cases). Despite this, their self-titled debut album delivers a nice blend of African and Caribbean rhythms and harmonies with laid back indie-pop melodies and lyrics.

The band was relatively unknown until they started sending record companies and music blogs a blue CD-R, aptly titled Vampire Weekend: Blue CD-R. This contained un-mastered copies of songs which would eventually appear on their new album. Although major record companies ignored them at first, some well-known blogs were very impressed with the innovative style of the band, and gave them outstanding reviews.

Vampire Weekend begins with “Mansard Roof” – the album’s single – which makes obscure references to McDonalds (which have mansard roofs) as well as discussing the Falklands War. Although the lyrics are vague and needlessly obtuse, simple piano chords and arpeggios permeate the song, giving it a relaxed feel, while lead singer Ezra Koenig’s tenor voice conversationally sings about McDonalds the way only a Columbia graduate would.

In the track, “Oxford Comma,” smooth and light guitar riffs and African dance beats from the drums provide an ideal context for the song, in which the singer chastises someone for the same preppy attitude that pervades many of the other tracks. One of these tracks is “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” which talks about the very rich vacationing for the summer in Cape Cod. However, relaxed guitar riffs and informal singing still is the base of the sound, and the song ends up being extremely catchy.

Vampire Weekend combines the same laid back attitude toward songwriting displayed by the Strokes with rhythms common in South African pop music. Despite the odd combination, it makes for an addictive sound which, after the initial confusion caused by the style, will cause repetitive listening.

The National, formed formed by a group of friends from Cincinnati in 1999, have released three albums, featuring morose lyrics and soft, subtle melodies. Their most recently released album, Boxer, is no different, providing a melodious landscape which incorporates both Indie-rock guitar riffs and near-Baroque string sections, which are common in the latter half of the album.
The driving force of Boxer is the deep baritone of lead singer Matt Berninger, coupled with a forceful rhythm ruminating from the drum set. Berninger’s lyrics tend to be initially obtuse but turn poignantly poetic – even dark and looming at points – over time, tying in perfectly with the mellow feel of the songs.
The National, which garnered slight attention with its 2005 release Alligator, has created in Boxer an ambient description of the loneliness prescribed by an empty street corner in a major metropolis. However, the juxtaposition of placid guitar riffs and the almost violent drumming creates enough tension to prevent the album from simply being background noise.
Boxer provides a gripping take on a subtle sound – ominous dread looms in the lyrics, while mellifluous melodies soar high above and create an album which is certainly worth considering.