Violent Femmes – Add It Up – Song Dissection

Ramshackle and rowdy in its sound, rebellious and angry in its vocals, and imaginative and timelessly edgy in lyrics, Add It Up is an excellent example of Femmes’ folk punk sound and Gordon Gano’s timeless songwriting.

Add It Up is track 4 on Violent Femmes’ classic 1983 self-titled debut, one of the best examples of what 80s underground left-of-the-dial American music had to offer. The Wisconsin trio crafted a sound out of simplicity and emotive playing, in the process inventing a genre which would come to be known as folk punk. Quick side note here, the modern folk punk scene over the past decade or so has a lot of excellent music to offer in the vein of Violent Femmes. I highly recommend AJJ’s debut album People Who Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World. Violent Femmes at this time consisted of guitarist and vocalist Gordon Gano, bassist Brian Ritchie, and percussionist Victor DeLorenzo.

Thinking about it now, there are quite a few parallels between Add It Up and Wilco’s Misunderstood, the last song I did a dissection on. Both songs are endlessly addictive while only being made up of two alternating chords, an underrated songwriting skill which exemplifies the ability to build a great song out of very little. Additionally, both songs are incredibly interesting examples of ability to create engaging lyrical characters, making the music endlessly replayable and addictively quirky.

Add It Up opens with Gano’s solo vocal singing a verse which introduces a vocal motif “Day…after day…”. This line and melody are repeated throughout the song, including during the climax of the song, as a countermelody to the repeated chorus line “Add it up”. Once the guitars and percussion come in, the first character is introduced – an angsty virgin teenager, who feels as if he’s being deprived of sex. In these first verses, the character (who also sings the “day after day” refrain) moans about his inability to get just one kiss/screw/fuck, escalating his sexual goal in each verse. This character gets angrier and angrier as time goes on at his sexual inability, his sexual urges intensifying as time goes on as well. The “day after day” refrain is also repeated, this time the teenager saying he gets angrier and angrier as the days go on, until a day when he will “take a bow and say goodnight”, implying perhaps that he has suicidal thoughts.

At this point the second narrator is introduced. The “straight man” in this situation (referring to a comedy trope), this narrator addresses the first character’s mother, revealing that she is a single mother with issues of her own, as well as the fact that the first narrator is “walking around like he’s number one / cause he went downtown and he got him a gun”. Narrator #1 is an example of the modern notion of an “incel”, or involuntary celibate, a group prominent in 21st century internet culture and associated with acts of violence (remember the VA tech shooter? Remember Elliot Rodger?). While the notion of incels was not at all prominent when the song was written, the cultural association of sexually frustrated young men with violence proves that Gano’s character in this song holds true. Following this the second narrator addresses the first narrator with reasonable requests to calm down.

The song’s climax comes when the first narrator, tired of trying to get sexual satisfaction through traditional relationships, decides to hire a sex worker. While never explicitly stated, this much can be inferred from the verse preceding the “Add it up” chorus. This chorus refers to the sex worker adding the money up which was given to her by the first protagonist in return for sex. While I initially thought this was an odd place for the song’s climax, considering the situation from the first protagonist’s perspective, it makes sense as an emotional climax – standing and watching a sex worker count his money, about to finally achieve his goal. The realisation which must come to someone in this situation is emotionally crushing – giving into an illegal institution to receive something you thought you were promised in life, but your social and physical ineptitude has made it so you felt like you could not receive it naturally. I imagine this chorus as the sex worker’s “Wait a minute honey, gonna…add it up” echoing in the narrator’s head, as the situational realization hits him. The full band comes in to sing the add it up chorus very forcefully and emotionally, as the instrumentation reaches its maximum loudness and aggression as well.

After this chorus the song is pretty much over, save for one more repetition of the “day after day” refrain. Add It Up is probably my favorite song on the Violent Femmes s/t (although Good Feeling and Kiss Off certainly come close), its rugged simplicity, angst, and lyrical playfulness making it stand out on an already great album and its 4:44 runtime, quite a long song in terms of the punk genre, never getting boring or repetitive (despite the fact the song is literally 2 chords repeating). In a lot of ways it feels derivative of the Velvet Underground, as can be said of the rest of the album. Like a heroin or sister ray, instead of following traditional song structure, it builds and builds upon a simple chord change, shifting in intensity through dynamic use of rhythm and volume. More so than on Velvet Underground songs, Gordon Gano’s vocals on this Violent Femmes album also contributes to this dynamic, ranging from beautiful pop melodies on Good Feeling, to whispered takes such as the last verse of Blister In The Sun, to aggressive shouting like on the final chorus of Add It Up. His voice is also very comedic, which works well within the primarily vocal-based genre the band works in. The multiple characters on Add It Up, the depressed junkie on Kiss Off listing his reasons for downing pills, the jealous lover losing his temper on Please Do Not Go, the schizophrenic child murderer on Country Death Song (not on Violent Femmes self-titled but rather on their 2nd release Hallowed Ground) – Gano is an incredible vocalist whose ability to embody characters never ceases to entertain and convey emotion.

Add It Up is, in my opinion, the best example of Violent Femmes’ abilities as songwriters and musicians, working on multiple levels (you can listen to the song as just an angsty teen anthem or in the way I described as an interaction between multiple characters and narrators, the song works perfectly in both contexts) and a timelessly fun song to listen to.

As always thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if I got something wrong. Images both sourced from consequenceofsound.net.

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Classic Album Discussion: Slanted & Enchanted

The indie rock juggernaut Pavement’s most challenging album may be their best. The second to last recording made in their original 3-man format (Stephen Malkmus on guitars and vocals, Scott Kannberg aka Spiral Stairs on guitar, bass and vocals, and Gary Young on drums), as well as with characteristic lo-fi recording and unforgiving distortion (preceded by 3 EPs and followed by a single EP in this format), it is a pillar of the Stockton, CA band’s beginnings as a garage rock outfit who worshipped The Replacements and The Fall equally. I love this band so much I named my blog after one of their EPs.

This will always be my favorite pavement album cover. The twisted piano, the scratched red paint, everything is perfect.

Part 1: Slanted & Enchanted (1992): The Album As It Was Released

The LP screams originality (although Mark E. Smith would have you believe otherwise), expanding the bands ambitiously unambitious sonic landscapes, finding them a home on Stephen Malkmus’s (Lead guitar, vocals) best songs. This is evident from the very first song, Summer Babe (Winter Version), an oddball pop rock tune played through unforgivingly distorted guitars, perforated by slacker solos which would be happy on a Neil Young album. Although early EPs showed signs of this type of song (Home on Slay Tracks (1933-1969) and Box Elder on Perfect Sound Forever), Summer Babe is a fully fleshed out song, with surreal imagery of their hometown Stockton telling an incomprehensible story, and building up through its instrumental breaks and verses to an explosive final verse. More than anything it’s a fun song to listen to, something which all of Pavement’s LPs have to offer in droves – listening to Pavement is always enjoyable.

Second track Trigger Cut (Wounded Kite at :17) is, I believe, an example of a perfect rock song. The verse/chorus structure begins with a strange chord transition where Malkmus jumps up a half-step, but falls into this beautiful several-second tuneful segment where a minor chord is used and the Malkmus’s voice suddenly sounds tuneful and expressive rather than the near spoken-word territory it treads in the song’s opening. The chorus is perfectly loud and sing – along – able, featuring the phrase “I’ll be coming / back / one day” over a percussive 3 chord walkdown reminiscent the progression you’d find on Stairway to Heaven of all songs. As Malkmus sings this main line, Spiral comes in with an oddball countermelody which somehow works. Pavement were huge fans of R.E.M. (they even wrote a tribute song to the Athens, GA rock band for the No Alternative compilation in 1993), and seem to have borrowed this vocal quality from R.E.M.’s great choruses of the 80s (think It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)). Lyrically, it is…Malkmus-ian. As someone who’s easily listened to the song 30 times or more, I have no idea what it’s about. And I think that’s what Stephen wants. Come on, not all music has to say something lyrically. Not everyone has to be Leonard Cohen. This is just a great goddamn rock song. Leave it alone, fictional critic I’m arguing with in my head!

No Life Singed Her. I used to skip this song, to be honest. But as a more *cultured* (please kill me) music listener who’s learned how to appreciate the angularity and aggression of songs like this, it has its merits. I certainly think the songs surrounding it are better and more representational of the indie rock sound Pavement would go on to create and perfect, but it’s not a bad song. Again, lyrically, I have no idea what’s going on. If you want to talk about lyrics, talk to me when we get to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. This song represents Pavement’s early sound – it is unforgiving, weird, loud, challenging – something we would expect a younger Stephen to write, as a shameless hipster working at the Whitney museum and listening to CAN’s Ege Bamyasi every night.

Track 4 is a heavy rocker with as abstract lyrics as its title, In The Mouth A Desert. Cultural context is important here – coming into the US music scene in 1992, when grunge and heavy rock were in full swing, this song feels like it could have been a hit, but Pavement’s musical tropes make it too challenging to achieve radio play – lyrics too abstract, purposefully lo-fi production persisting, etc etc. The song resolves with one of the best guitar solos of all time, in my opinion – perfectly emotive and lyrical, a solo you can sing along to (as, in fact, someone does in certain phrases of the solo). A great rock song.

I feel like mentioning the flow of the album at this point. The next song, Conduit For Sale, is more in the vein of No Life than Summer Babe or In The Mouth, and this pattern of alternating angular, challenging tracks in the vein of esoteric influences like The Fall and Swell Maps sandwiched in between more tuneful compositions with pop tendencies makes the album flow quite well, creating a balance at every point (except for maybe the end of side 2). Continuing with this pattern, the beautifully out-of-tune ballad Zurich Is Stained is born and dies in less than 2 minutes. Acoustic and slide guitars (alt-country instrumentation like this would reappear on 1995’s Wowee Zowee) accompany Stephen’s quiet croon on this song, which feels introspective and less abstract than the rest of the album, reflecting on the speaker’s involvement in an unknown event gone wrong.

I could spend time going into each track on the album, but I feel that side 1 is the strongest and has the most important tracks, and you can only say so much about minute-long freakouts like Chelsey’s Little Wrists before you go insane. Next track Loretta’s scars is a solid angular rock song with fuzzy guitar lines which feel like they’re about to break the tape itself. Here is possibly my favorite song of all time. Its lyrics are perhaps the best example of Stephen’s mysteriously introspective songwriting. Such perfect lines which seem tossed-off on the surface, but hold so much personal meaning to Pavement fans such as myself. “And I’m the only one who laughs / at your jokes when they are so bad”. “And all the Spanish candles / Unsold have gone away to this”. The fade-out before the final line ends. Perfection. The perfect song to cry to. Side note, watch this live version of the song if you’re so intrigued – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnHfmnMzPvQ. It was the final song the band played live in 1999, before they broke up. The last song they played in the 90s. Slowed down, out of tune, every band member looking so tired, not making eye contact. Not many things make me feel that sort of melancholia but this video has that power. End of the Slow Century.

Ah, the Spiral song. Spiral’s songs on Pavement records always seem to be the most energetic, even the fuzz pop tune Date With Ikea a break from the jangly lull of 1997’s Brighten the Corners. This specific song is playful in its exploration of the idea of a desire for two states, which could apply to a number of political references. First time I heard it I thought of Israel/Palestine and the “two-state solution”, but it also could apply to Californian politics considering the band’s exploration of this theme on their next album, 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

Fame Throwa and Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era are fall-esque angular post-punk songs which aren’t too exciting for me. Not to say they’re bad, their experimental guitar techniques are fun to listen to sometimes, they just don’t measure up to the rest of the album for me. Last track Our Singer is a sparse ballad with an addictive drum beat and nonsensical lyrics, but the melancholy melody makes it feel like it means something. A decent closer, although I maintain Here would be better.

The band playing around this time. Malkmus and Bassist Mark Ibold are pictured.

Part 2: Slanted & Enchanted – Circa 1992: What Could Have Been

Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe was a 2 disk reissue released in 2002, and is essential for Pavement fans. It includes the album, peel sessions, the watery, domestic EP from laster in 1992, unreleased songs, and a live recording from 1992. Ever since first listening to this reissue I couldn’t help but imagine an alternate version of Slanted & Enchanted, without the weird noisy songs and freakouts, replaced with the fuzzy melodic beauty of certain unreleased songs and EP tracks. I want to say again that I don’t think the noisy songs are bad. I like them. I just feel they represent where the band was coming from, what they did on their first EPs, and not what they would go on to create.

The songs I choose to include to fill out the album were as follows:

Circa 1762 (The namesake of the reconstruction: Slanted & Enchanted – Circa 1992)

Greenlander

Secret Knowledge Of The Backroads

Texas Never Whispers

Frontwards

Lions (Linden)

Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)

I feel these songs represent this era in the band’s history best. Halfway between the challenging angularity of Demolition Plot J-7 and the indie rock gold soundz of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Watery, domestic is an excellent EP with 4 near-perfect songs in this lo-fi fuzzy rock style which often get overlooked since they aren’t on an LP, which is why I included the tracklist on this reconstruction.

Slanted & Enchanted – Circa 1992: Fan Reconstruction

This file contains all tracks as mp3s with artist, album name and tracklist position information, as well as a front and back cover. All music is from the Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe reissue. Cover art is courtesy of
http://thelastjohnyontheleft.blogspot.com/2011/06/album-art-from-memory-slanted-and.html and my own shitty editing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16njeKypjmYymXU4N6C9rMMFs6ZOfMfS2/view?usp=sharing

As always, thanks for reading and leave comments if you want. Peace.

How To Break My Heart With 2 Chords

The subtle genius of Wilco’s 1996 track Misunderstood

Misunderstood was one of the first Wilco songs I heard, and the first song I consciously heard. I’d heard Wilco songs in videos and on podcasts, but the 1996 album Being There was the first Wilco album I sat down with and tried to listen to. This was mostly due to the album’s cover – a lone hand holding the neck of a guitar against a yellow wall. Something about that cover told me the album was going to have a lot of warm, acoustic introspection on it – and this was a correct assumption. There are certainly other Wilco songs I love – the meandering and lonely Ashes of American Flags, the perfect pop of Heavy Metal Drummer and Box Full of Letters, the guitar heroics of Impossible Germany (also my introduction to the subtle genius of guitarist Nels Cline, who joined the band later on) – but Misunderstood stuck with me.

Mistunderstood is a postmodern loser anthem, idiosyncratic heartbreak painted on the canvas of a repeated 2 chords on piano and acoustic guitar mingled with subtle noise segments between verses, comprised of Wilco members playing instruments they were not used to playing. The song tells the story of a loner, living a life of suburban nothingness. This antihero’s life seems to be defined by an unknown rock band, perhaps Wilco itself or Uncle Tupelo (Wilco singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s previous project). I’ll mention this later. Throughout the song the motif “You’re so misunderstood” is repeated, and takes on a double meaning. Yes, the protagonist is misunderstood. He (I’m assuming it’s a “he” due to the line “Momma’s boy” later in the song) feels out of place, alienated, and compensates for this by listening to his favorite records. But the repetition of the line makes it feel somewhat self-satirical. As in, yeah, you’re so “misunderstood”, all of you. Almost as if Tweedy is poking fun at America’s dissolutioned youth obsessed with music who claim to just be “misunderstood” and toss of their failures as a by-product of this. The song really reflects the nature of the relationship between a musician and their fans. On the one hand, fans can find comfort in someone’s music in a world where they are otherwise alienated. But this relationship can become sour when the fan beings to fetishize the musician and hold them above anything else in the world. Take the verse, “It’s only a quarter to three / reflecting off of your CD / you’re looking at a picture of me / you’re staring at a picture of me” – the protagonist is unemployed (as later stated by Tweedy in the line “You’re positively unemployed”) and spending his afternoon listening to records and wallowing in his own self-pity.

Another thing which makes Misunderstood so perfectly introspective, at least on its top layer, is that it was quite a personal song for Tweedy. The “Mama’s Boy” line refers to an incident when the insult was used against Tweedy by a fellow member of his pre-Wilco project Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar. The entire Being There record is very personal, Tweedy exploring the relationship he had with music and his experiences as a musician – an older man (30 years old at the time) who still hadn’t quite broken through. Being There is one of the more introspective Wilco albums, one of the reasons I like it so much. One more fun fact about the track is that one verse – the Take the guitar player for a ride verse – takes lyrics from a Peter Laughner track entitled Amphetamine, an excellent listen if you are unfamiliar with it.

Misunderstood is such a great song because it is a good song to cry to – on the surface, a perfect loser anthem. But its also more intelligent than that – an interesting meta-observation on music considering context. In terms of Wilco’s discography, more songs like Misunderstood would appear on later albums, Tweedy is no stranger to acoustic introspection and noisy instrumental breaks. If you haven’t listened to Wilco, this is certainly a good place to start. Thank you for reading if you got this far.

Beauty Lies in the Eye

Sonic Youth’s 1987 masterpiece Sister

It’s no secret to my friends that I love Sonic Youth. I often have a Sonic Youth avatar online, and I can go on about Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s (and sometimes Jim O’Rourke) experimental guitar techniques, the genius of Steve Shelley and Kim Gordon’s rhythm section, the incredible soundscapes they create, and how goddamn cool it all is. Just the idea of playing a guitar by hitting it, using a drumstick as a makeshift bridge, writing a song by inventing a tuning – I live for that shit. And it all started, at least for me, with Sister. The album was the first Sonic Youth album I listened to, and even now as I’ve listened to most things they’ve put out, from Confusion is Sex to Sonic Nurse, from Washing Machine to A Thousand Leaves, I believe that Sister (1987, SST) was a major milestone in Sonic Youth’s career. More complex and nuanced than the albums which came before it, it served as a template for their next 20+ years of soundscapes, noise and general coolness, as well as preceding and writing the rule-book for Sonic Youth’s most iconic album Daydream Nation.

The album begins with Schizophrenia, one of Sonic Youth’s most melodic songs (I still struggle to call it pop). It opens up with a simple, recognizable beat from Shelley’s kit, and after a few bars, a guitar comes in. Then, the second guitar and bass come in, playing a seemingly simple progression. This first part of the song can be recreated by playing chords in any key in a 1-5-4-1 progression. But Sonic Youth does not choose to perform it this way. Both Lee and Thurston’s guitars are tuned to an open tuning, with strings in pairs tuned to F#, G, and A. The pair play pseudo-chords by pressing down two strings at a time and letting the rest ring out, each guitarist playing a different octave (Lee playing higher). Thurston sings the first verse over this progression, loosely referencing the life of novelist Philip K. Dick, and the story of the death of his twin sister which haunted Dick throughout his life. After Thurston closes the verse with the line Schizophrenia is taking me home, the progression breaks down as both guitarists begin sporadically shifting the positions of their pseudo-chords and incorporating their tremolo bars, a beloved tool of both SY guitarists. Then, the guitarists begin playing harmonic pairs in line with Shelley’s rhythm, a technique enabled by the unconventional tuning to incorporate octave harmonics in a single strum. Over this pattern, Kim Gordon’s verse is sung in her unconventionally beautiful voice, a voice which finds beauty not in complex and nuanced melody but in a unique feminine monotonous whisper. This voice works for Kim’s role in the song, playing the sister who’s voice comes to Dick in a schizophrenic episode. After Kim’s verse, the song is further broken down both melodically and rhythmically, incorporating dissonant feedback from one of the guitarists (most likely Thurston), and resolving in an ominous, slow wall of sound.

This song is incredibly important to understanding how Sonic Youth changed over time as a band. It exemplifies a trend in Sonic Youth’s song structure – as weird as it is to say – progressive songwriting. Straying away from their beginnings playing minimalist Glenn Branca inspired no-wave and noise, Sonic Youth began writing more melodic songs which began to appear on Evol but truly found their home on Sister and Daydream Nation. These songs work in the same way a progressive rock song does – utilizing things like instrumental and vocal sections with different melodic motifs and different tempos while still maintaining the theme of a song. Its just in such a different setting than most progressive rock. Progressive punk, maybe. Side note from the Sister discussion but I believe Sonic Youth’s magnum opus, the 20 minute long The Diamond Sea off of Washing Machine perfects the Schizophrenia formula – it begins with a verse, then slows down and changes in timbre while maintaining its original melody, the verse repeated 7 minutes in at a much slower tempo, finally devolving into pure noise by the end.

Moving further through Sister we arrive at Catholic Block – seemingly a hard-hitting psych-punk track in the beginning, built off a hardcore-inspired angular lick. This first segment begins with Thurston shouting about a Catholic Block inside his head, a rebellious track which seems to attack Catholic values and the negative ways they effect people. After Thurston is done shouting (at least for the moment), another guitar comes in, playing a different angular riff which resolves in noise. This is repeated several times before the song comes to a middle part where both guitars are rhythmically attacked for several seconds as the drums stop. Then, the original riff and verse begin again, equally as hard-hitting as the songs intro, due to the fact the listener’s pallet had been cleansed by the middle segment of the song. As Thurston declares he’s finished with the last line of this verse, Guess I’m out of words, Kim lets out a piercing scream. Her scream is slightly lower in the mix, made even more piercing in live performances where her mic is on the same level as Thurston’s. After this verse is over, the song once again dissolves into noise, until all instruments are cut out and only Thurston’s guitar remains, an incredibly high tremolo-picked note achieved by using a slide. This note is sustained for several seconds, before Lee comes in with a melodic open chord progression in the same key as the rest of the song, but played much slower. As Lee continues this progression Thurson lets the note come down several octaves with the slide to meet Lee’s part, ending abruptly at this point. I truly believe Catholic Block is one of the greatest rock songs of all time – even thought it may not have been planned out, every segment. The way the song disassembles itself not once but twice, taking the listener on an great musical journey.

Track 3, Beauty Lies in the Eye, is decidedly different than much of this album. It features a dreamy wall of distorted chords, with Kim singing abstractly about beauty and image. While different on what we’d see Sonic Youth do on Daydream Nation and much of the rest of this album, this song exemplifies Kim’s ability to write tuneful songs while maintaining artistic merit and punk credibility, something which would be evident on many Sonic Youth tracks throughout the 90s, including Sonic Youth hits such as Kool Thing and Bull in the Heather. A pallet cleanser from the aggression of Catholic Block, the melancholy of Beauty Lies is decidedly short lived, as it is followed by Thurston’s Stereo Sanctity. Stereo is a great noise punk freakout, complete with dissonant feedback and abstract lyrics about god-know-what. Some people say it is about Thurston’s commitment to classic equipment such as tube amps. It certainly contains references to the life of Philip K. Dick. I always thought it was a post-apocalyptic freakout track, probably because of the great line I can’t get laid cause everyone is dead. Whatever this track is about, its a great way to wake up in the morning.

After Stereo Sanctity comes Pipeline/Kill Time. A Lee Ranaldo track, it features his abstract poetry about a failing relationship shouted over he and Thurston’s effect-laden feedback, once again starting out aggressive and fast while later on slowing down and devolving into less comprehensible noise, in that classic Sonic Youth fashion. Eric’s Trip on Daydream Nation repeats this formula, and is equally as powerful if not better.

Tuff Gnarl repeats the aforementioned formula yet again. The track opens up with a somewhat melodic progression, over which Thurston half-sings and half-shouts about the sexual frustration of a young man, until the song breaks down into yet another noise jam. This particular noise jam is important in my opinion, though, as it serves as a great showcase of Steve Shelley’s skills as a drummer, often overshadowed in Sonic Youth as most listeners focus on Lee and Thurston’s guitar techniques. Just as Sonic Youth’s guitarists manipulate their instruments to create different timbre and textures of noise, Shelley is great at getting this effect. Listen to him during the outro of Tuff Gnarl, how he adds different rhythmic patterns to each thing Lee and Thurston do. A great and often underappreciated drummer.

For the sake of word count and my own sanity, I’m not going to cover the rest of the album as intensely as I did the first six tracks. It is certainly worth listening to, I just believe the most valuable songs Sister has to offer are located near its front end. Pacific Coast Highway is a rocker fronted by Kim Gordon’s powerful snarl, similar to Daydream Nation‘s ‘Cross The Breeze. Cotton Crown (Kotton Krown? they like using K’s in the place of C’s sometimes) is a repeat of the Beauty Lies formula, a disjointed set of feedback-driven chords with an unsettling melody, sung by Kim and Thurston in a beautifully out-of-tune harmony (neither are classically trained singers, and the combination of their voices would probably give an opera teacher a heart attack, but it serves its purpose to complement the unsettling instrumental track on Kotton Krown). If I skip a track on Sister it’s final track Master-Dik, a strange track with more lyrical references to sexual aggression and Sonic Youth side project Ciccone Youth. It is still a good song, just doesn’t hold up to the rest of Sister, in my opinion.

A year after Sister came Daydream Nation, another truly great album which, Sonic Youth’s most musically iconic. After this came their departure from SST and signing to Geffen records, on which they would release Goo in 1990 and begin their 15 minutes of fame in the mainstream, touring Europe with Dinosaur Jr and Nirvana in 1991. While not forgotten, Sister‘s influence on Sonic Youth’s best material and the entirety of alternative and experimental rock music is often overlooked in favor of Daydream Nation. This post serves to chronicle the greatness and influence of Sister, as well as track the deterioration of my brain as I analyze recordings of people hitting guitars with things. Thank you for reading if you got this far.

I Hate Music

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Replacements

As you can probably tell by this blog’s avatar, I’m a huge fan of Paul Westerberg. I’ve listened to most of the music he’s put out over the years, from the Replacements raucous punk beginnings in the early 80s to (more) recent Westerberg projects such as the Mono/Stereo double album in 2002. I plan to write more focused posts on Westerberg’s musical endeavors later on, but I wanted to cover why I like him as a singer and songwriter as a whole.

If you didn’t already realize, the title of this post is a joke. I don’t hate music. Neither does Paul (I’d imagine), but he chose this phrase as the title of an early Replacements track, off of their 1981 LP Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. Though this song may not be my favorite, I just love the idea of a song called I Hate Music – the back-of-the-class delinquent humor in that is something that really captures my attention. That kind of apathetic wit defines so much of what is great about the Replacements, and Westerberg’s songwriting, even if it did become more refined as time went on.

This rebellious nature defined the Replacements’ image throughout the 80s – they were famous for appearing drunk when playing live or giving interviews. They were gen-x antiheroes – disillusioned Midwestern kids trying to find their way in the wake of the hippie generation. The song Bastards Of Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl9KQ1Mub6Q on their 1985 LP Tim exemplifies this – an anthem of nothingness, seemingly accepting their title of a lost generation thrust upon them. The verses repeat the line Beats picking cotton, and waiting to be forgotten. The phrase “Waiting to be forgotten” perfectly exemplifies Westerberg’s genius as a songwriter, he has a great way of invoking depressingly mundane views on life with logical contradictions. Waiting for something implies being excited about it, but who would be excited about being forgotten?

Tim is perhaps the best Replacements album, just in terms of Westerberg’s songwriting (although many would argue on the side of 1984’s Let It Be or 1987’s Pleased To Meet Me, also great albums). Later on the album comes the song Left Of The Dial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUmwzgFXfugreferencing where college rock stations were found on radios during the time, often the only way to find alternative music. Westerberg laments the fate of non-mainstream artists, including himself, trying to make a life for themselves in music but finding themselves left of the dial. The line We sounded drunk, never made it on references the Replacements’ alcoholic antics, perhaps admitting that alcoholism was an obstacle for the Replacements’ success as a rock band. Westerberg was an alcoholic at this time (not getting sober until 5 years later in 1990), and was a smart enough guy to realize his alcoholism was sabotaging his career in many respects. Unlike much alternative music at the time (Think Dead Kennedys’ MTV get off the air), Westerberg isn’t blaming the music industry for the lack of attention punk music and music which was derivative of punk was gaining. Left of the dial is in no ways an attack on pop music. It is, again, an anthem of nothingness – not about industry politics, about how industry politics creates a community of loner outcasts trying to make it big.

The album’s closer, a track entitled Here Comes A Regular, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n1E8EgnkIo is a heartbreaking acoustic track, straying from the Replacements’ DIY punk beginnings and reminiscent of the folk-inspired acoustic sound Westerberg would go for on later albums. The song tells the story of an individual, likely a man, who’s sad life consists of self-hatred, boredom, and drinking. Again addressing a Westerberg motif in alcoholism, the song’s protagonist finds his only happiness in going to the local bar every night, but even this becomes hollow and depressing to him. I could honestly choose any lyric of this song to exemplify Westerberg’s skill at invoking heartbreak, but perhaps the greatest example of this is the 1st verse’s closer I used to live at home, now I stay at the house. Again using wordplay, Westerberg plays off the old figure of speech “home is where the heart is”. Logically, “living at home” and “staying at the house’ mean the same thing, but because “home” and “house” generally have different connotations, the line is able to comment on the change in the protagonist’s life when everything begins to lose meaning. Living at home means his home and his life still have meaning to him, but staying at the house means the only thing it means to him is shelter from the outside world. He has become dissolutioned with any memories or love he used to associate with his house, as has become the case with his life as he slips deeper and deeper into alcoholism.

Tim certainly isn’t the only thing Paul Westerberg ever did – in fact I’d like to cover much more about his career. It just happens to be my favorite thing he ever did. Thanks for reading if you got this far. Leave a comment if I got something wrong.