Monday, June 21, 2004
(11:25 AM) | Anonymous:
Our Hero Loses His Mind, pt. 2
For no real reason at all, on Thursday I went on a music-piracy bender far outstripping anything I've done before. Ten CD's burned in the space of two days, with more likely to come. Much of it wasn't especially noteworthy; some Radiohead stuff I hadn't purchased yet (and, in the case of Airbag, am unlikely to do so in the near future), Air's first album, the one Portishead CD I didn't own (I have an odd need to "complete the set" with any artist I find remotely interesting--this has proven ruinously expensive in the case of the Smashing Pumpkins), and some Japanese stuff I'll never find over here. What really got my attention, though, fuelling the little epiphany I'll describe in a moment, were Mogwai's "Young Team" and Sigur Ros' "Von" (which apparently isn't available outside of Iceland). Both of them have tracks that are absolutely fantastic--insanely loud, layered guitars, bizarre noises of all kinds, and vocals, if present at all, either mostly unintelligible or buried miles back in the mix (Mogwai, like Godspeed, also makes great use of weird spoken-word samples in lieu of vocals). On Saturday, as I was listening to the song "Hún Jörð" for about the third time in a row, I realized one of the things I find so appealing about this kind of music is the complete lack of lyrics. Mogwai really has none to speak of (on the album I was listening to, at least) and while I'm aware Sigur Ros does, I'm not convinced they're especially intelligible, even if I did speak Icelandic. And that's fine--it's clear to me now that the only way modern music is going to move forward is by dispensing with lyrics entirely.Now, I'm in no way suggesting that vocals need to go; I like vocals--the human voice is a fine instrument. But I have serious doubts about lyrics--I'm pretty certain they do more harm than good. How many times over the years has a great song been brought down by insipid lyrics? Consider every Smashing Pumpkins song that could do without whatever a cappella rant Billy Corgan decided to throw in there. Consider, well, every song Nine Inch Nails has ever written. I -love- their instrumental stuff; meanwhile, despite turning 40 recently, Trent Reznor's still writing lyrics in the same loneliness/alienation/emptiness vein he's been in for years. This weekend I listened to Muse for the first time--they're an excellent group. But can you really do anything but roll your eyes at a lyric like "everything about you is innate happiness"? I think this partially explains my fascination with Japanese music. Gackt and Malice Mizer both write lyrics, to be sure, and i have a sneaking suspicion they're terrible (lots of stuff about love, tears, murmurs, and oh, yeah, vampires) but my very elementary Japanese allows me to mostly ignore this. And when they do write in English, the pronounciation tends to be poor enough that I have no clue what they're saying there, either.
Of course this whole argument is slightly ridiculous, and I'm aware decent lyrics are still being written--Radiohead's, certainly, tend to be great. But given their last 3 albums, coupled with Thom Yorke's questionable mental state, I think they could still decide to do away with, you know, words, at any time. (Just a few years ago, Adam made the suggestion that they could soon switch over to machine-based vocals delivered in 9th-century Danish--I'm game). So yeah, it's clearly time for a general moratorium on lyric-writing. We can check back in, say, three years to see how the landscape has changed--I'm sure there'll be plenty of worthwhile stuff in the pipeline by then. Until then, nothing but instrumentals, random samples, and unintelligible processed vocals, preferably delivered in foreign languages (I'd suggest Finnish or Basque).
It's a reasonable proposal, I think, one that I figure will be fully implemented by August or so. Meanwhile, I plan on tracking down all the unlistenable noise-rock I can find (any suggestions are welcome). Or maybe the Cocteau Twins--I hear you can't understand a word that girl's saying.
Expect another, equally serious post in the future on why things like melodies, recognizable instruments, and albums divided into actual songs are likewise passe.
