To My Ear Archives - Page 9 of 14

Carole King’s “Tapestry”

For the past week, I’ve been listening to Carole King’s 1971 album “Tapestry” for lessons I can learn as a songwriting musician. I’ve been more than aware of this album for years. From basement sales, I’ve managed to pick up two copies of it based on the feeling that I should appreciate it. And each time I’ve tried it, I would be disappointed.

The songwriting is there, but these feel more like demo recordings to me. The musicians are surely capable, but generally play these songs straight. I feel they could use more playfulness and invention that may’ve come from working and reworking the songs. The vocals are adequate and often expressively intimate, but too frequently they feel thin and lacking in confidence. I know that Carole King had written a great many songs for other performers. Frequently, I feel that her performances here are an example of how the song could be sung rather than actually being a performance.

One of the best songs on the album, “It’s too Late,” has a wonderful vocal performance and accompaniment. I contradict my previous assessment of the album’s weaknesses by then talking about this track. However, I do want to talk about what I liked. On this song, poet Toni Stern wrote the lyrics with Carole King writing the music. King’s piano provides the main rhythm and chords for the song, with bass guitar, drums and congas further filling in the chord progression and rhythm. An electric guitar panned left and an electric piano panned right interact with each other across the centered piano chords. The syncopated rhythms of the melody and upbeat tempo of this minor key ballad seem to encourage King to sing with wonderful energy and confidence.

With “Way Over Yonder,” King provides a soulful track performed with a gospel sentiment. Melody drives the song, carried well by King’s vocals. This is also one of the looser performances on the album; The loose performance, with the piano coming in and out of swing and syncopated time, lends the song a greater human emotional feeling. The slow pace along with three steps leading to each chord change gives the song soul.

The lyrics focus on a life of happiness and sweetness as a goal in life. This vision is presented like a gospel hymn on the promise of heaven. “I know when I get there, the first things I’ll see, is the sun shining golden. Shining right down on me.” Whereas those hymns have an overall optimistic sense of hope; I appreciate that this song has more a sense of longing.

King provides her own take on her song “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” which was originally famously performed by the Shirelles. The Shirelles version, I believe, is featured in one of my favorite movies, “Big Wednesday.” Both versions are performed like a doo-wop ballad. However, the chord progression is not the 50s doo-wop progression, but rather a I-IV-V-I-V-IV♭-IV-iv for the verses. I love the sound of the V-IV♭-IV-iv. The use of the borrowed IV♭ feels like we’re going into a key change, but then we’re brought back to the IV, which gets dropped to a minor at the end of the line. The chord progression is emotionally very effective.

Overall, I’m still not a fan of this album. Martika did a great high-energy pop version of “I Feel the Earth Move” in 1989. Having grown up hearing that cover, I find Carole King’s more straight-forward performance to be a lackluster start of the album. So, the album was actually more enjoyable for me if I skipped the first track. However, most of the songs I would love to hear as performed by other musicians, with the exception of “It’s too late” which I love as is.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Electric Ladyland”

This week, I’ve been listening to the 1968 album “Electric Ladyland” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. About six months ago, I spent time with their first album “Are you Experienced?” That album was released just 17 months before this, their third and final album.

They certainly evolved over this short period of time. While I truly enjoyed their debut album, I absolutely loved this one. The first album was more of a psychedelic blues rock. This album takes that sound and launches into the stratosphere, pushing the experimental psychedelic elements. They’ve also folded in some ingredient of soul and funk.

The album opens with intro track “And the Gods Made Love” which is some slowed down stuff. It’s kind of neat the first couple times and then I found it annoying. I wanted to talk here about the first real song
“Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland),” but I like to include a video link of the songs here and it’s not available on YouTube. Anyway, it is a great track and from the first thirty seconds, I knew I was going to love the album. It’s opens as a rather soulful funk-aware R&B song. Strange things are happening with the rhythms as the song seems to swirl upon itself. Experimental yet immediately accessible.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded a fantastic cover of Bob Dylan‘s song “All Along the Watchtower” for this album. From what I’ve read, Hendrix got ahold of Dylan recording pretty early and liked this song immediately. The Experience worked on their cover for a few months and it was released within a year of Dylan’s original. As great as Dylan’s lyrics are, the incredible soundscape of Hendrix’s version towers above the words. I know many of the words, but don’t really know what the song is about because what’s happening musically is so amazing. The verses serve more as passing narrative between the real action: Jimi’s lead guitar.

A twelve-string acoustic guitar strums the chords throughout the song simply. The lead guitar gives the track much of its psychedelic blues rock flavor. Jimi’s plays his stratocaster through a chorus and fuzz, with expressive filter modulation provided by a wah pedal. This sound of this combination of guitar and effects is all over the album. To see how the wah pedal is used to create these sounds, check out this excellent video by fuzzfaceexp. Some additional use of delay provides depth to the leads as well.

Another great song is “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” towards the end of the album. Again, the track mostly provides a space for Jimi’s chorus-fuzz-wah lead guitar to soar into wildly expressive explorations of sound. This starts with the opening measures, one of the Hendrix’s most famous riffs. One that I, unfortunately must admit, first hear in middle school as sampled in a 2 Live Crew song. The Hendrix track has a marvelously live jam quality to it; Even though it features use of overdubbing additional tracks, it was initially created as a jam.

I continue my complaint about the Jimi Hendrix Experience and overuse of stereo panning as an effect. Sometimes it adds something to a song, but mostly I find it annoying and distracting. Better, I feel to use panning of a delay effect, but that may not have been as readily an option as it is today.

Overall, I loved the album “Electric Ladyland.” There’s more playful experimentation than found on “Are You Experienced?” as well as a greater sense of skill and experience with their direction and recording. Great album.

Leonard Cohen’s “Songs of Leonard Cohen”

This week, I’ve been listening to Leonard Cohen’s debut album “Songs of Leonard Cohen” from 1967. My girlfriend introduced me to Leonard Cohen by giving me a copy of the Phil Spector produced album”Death of a Ladies’ Man.” I slowly grew a deep appreciation for the songs on that album. The production was like something from a dream; The recordings smelled faintly of liquor and cigarettes. “Death of a Ladies’ Man” provided a cool, yet haunting, melancholic atmosphere through lyrics, performance and production.

I’ve been looking forward to this week with “Songs of Leonard Cohen.” At first, I was a bit disappointed by the sound. The vocals were too intimately languid and the atmosphere was much different than the Phil Spector produced album. Known as a poet before starting his music career, Cohen writes amazing lyrics. I loved them from first listen and my appreciation for them developed over the week. The music also grew on me as well. The vocals aren’t quite to my taste, but I appreciate that they suit the songs. There’s quite a bit for a songwriting musician to learn form here, especially the lyrics.

“Sisters of Mercy” got my attention first. The songs of this album are vocal and acoustic guitar based. Any other instrumentation is there to provide support or background. This song features a jangly mixture of instruments in the background that sound like a French street band. This band consists of accordion, glockenspiel, some light percussion. The atmosphere that they provide captured my heart before the lyrics.

Those lyrics tell a simple story of a passing interaction with two young women whom Cohen had given a place to stay. After some conversation and then seeing them sleep, he was inspired to write “Sisters of Mercy.” According to this tale, he was the person that provided charity to them, not the other way around. However, it seems that they left brightened his evening and left a lasting impression.

Having bestowed upon them the title of “sisters of mercy,” he continues with references to religious symbolism throughout the song. In the third of the four stanzas, he elevates their conversation to the point of an awakening or spiritual conversion. The confession he mentions in this verse probably refers to the previous verse where he tells of leaving his family and his own soul. He admits to feeling lonely as a sort of punishment for his actions. “When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.” It’s not clear to me if he says this, or the Sisters do. Like Jesus touched the eyes of the blind, they have given him a new perspective on life and he honors them for it.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

The track “Suzanne” introduces the sound of the album well. Broken chords gently played on acoustic guitar start the track to be joined by Cohen’s reserved vocals. Even the chord progression is a gentle one: I-ii-I-iii-IV-I-ii-I-ii-I for the verses and iii-IV-I-ii-I for the chorus. The verse chord progression rises during the first half across the ii, iii, and IV, to return to ii in the second half. The steps back to the tonic chord keep the progression gently seated. The melody, too, rises and falls.

There are three verses, each followed by a chorus. The verse follow a rhyme scheme of AABB for the first four lines and then the next two or three lines rhyme, but not following a consistent pattern. Most of the rhymes are slant. In the final verse, he rhymes “river” with “forever” and then “harbor” with “flowers” for the first two lines. The last three lines end with “morning” which somewhat ties together the rhyme of final two lines “forever” and “mirror.”

One could potentially class the titular Suzanne as a manic pixie dream girl. This woman that’s “half crazy (that’s why you want to be there)” takes the listener on a journey of discovery. She knows where the heroes are, even in the most unexpected places. This perspective on life is her gift. In the second of the three verses, where I believe the second person is shifted to Suzanne, the focus is on Jesus, whom Cohen describes as broken, forsaken. Even “he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by you can spend the night forever
And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”

This week, I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” to improve my craft as a songwriting musician. Each Bob Dylan album so far has been monstrously impressive from a songwriting perspective. His skill to employ metaphor within narrative songs that utilize rhyme is astounding. For me, this album is right up there with “Blonde on Blonde” and I can’t get enough of it now that I’ve spent a week with it.

Finger-picked blues guitar drives the track “Meet Me in the Morning.” At first, I didn’t care for this song due to its repetitive nature. A twelve bar blues progression (I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I) provides foundation upon which Dylan sings lyrics that follow the twelve-bar blues blues format of one line repeated twice, then a line in response. Like much of the album, the lyrics deal with a struggling relationship.

The first verse opens with the title “Meet me in the morning, 56 and Wabasha. Honey, we could be in Kansas by the time the snow begins to thaw.” I’m not sure why they are meeting to travel, except perhaps as a change of scenery or escape. The next verse tells how some say it’s darkest before the dawn, but the singer is always dark. But, when the morning rooster crows in the third verse, the singer feels mistreated by his lover. He feels persecuted and trapped, and wonders if the love was a curse. “Look at the sun sinking like a ship. Ain’t that just like my heart, babe, When you kissed my lips?”

I loved this catchy song by the end of the week. I like the layers of multiple guitars. In the right channel , a bright acoustic guitar plays rhythm-lead lines. A fuzzy slide guitar soaked in reverb provides some atmosphere in the background. Another acoustic guitar quietly strums the chords. And yet clean electric guitar joins later to pick some lead lines and also gets in conversation with the fuzz guitar during the outro.

Also, I find it impossible to not sing along to the mellow grooving bassline.

On “Shelter From the Storm,” Dylan sings tenderly of a love lost. The jangly acoustic guitar dances nervously between the bass and vocals. We hear the sound of the pick and/or guitar strap ticking and rattling against the guitar. These additional sounds of guitar-playing unintentionally provide the only percussion. This type of natural imperfections lends a sense of authenticity to the recording. The chord progression throughout is a basic I-V-IV-I, with the melody providing a sense of variation through the verses.

These are some tremendous lyrics. The song is about confusion, loss, frustrations and heartache, but he’s telling it through the sweetness and tenderness. That’s how the song manages to be so powerful. Rather than talking so much about pain and loss, he talk about promises and what was lost. However, it’s the middle verse that puts everything in perspective.

Now there’s a wall between us, something there’s been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn
Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm

Of course, there’s layers of ambiguity here as other themes become part of the picture. Images of Christ come into play, which could embarrassingly make a martyr out of the speaker, but I prefer to avoid that interpretation. It’s too mighty a structure of self-pity, and also would be too self-righteous in contrast to other statements in the song.

The brilliant “Tangled Up in Blue” opens the album and remained my favorite song the full week. I rather feel it’s too great of a song to be the first. The opening chords of A and Asus4 play in my head all day. The verses are in a I-VIIb-I-VIIb-I-VIIb-I twice, followed by V-vi-I-IV twice and ends with VIIb-IV-I for the refrain of “Tangled up in blue.”

The first half of each verse is sung in a restrained back-and-forth melody, with the pitch rising for the second half. The percussion and other instruments likewise pick up in energy. This is balanced by the lower-pitched chords of E and F#m. The the refrain anchors the verse back to the tonic on “blue.” It’s interesting the use of chords for this key. The chords are more likely those of a song in the key of G, while the melody is actually in key of A.

As with the whole album, the layering and interplay of instruments is fantastic. Multiple strummed and picked acoustic guitars provide a full atmosphere of sound. Still they are mixed in a way that manages to keep things feeling stripped down.

The lyrics are the most amazing part of the song. A week definitely provides too little time to fully appreciate all he has going on here. At the very basic level, I appreciate the narrative quality of the song. Songs that tell stories, especially about characters and their relationships, get my interest. I especially appreciate tales of that touched on and lost and over-arching tales that narrow in on details. This is especially made poignant by going back to a place while accentuating the distance.

So now I’m going back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives.
Don’t know how it all got started,
I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives.
But me, I’m still on the road
Heading for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.

Pixies’ “Doolittle”

This week, I’ve been listening to the Pixies‘ 1989 album “Doolittle.” My introduction to this alt-rock guitar band probably came through Nirvana and the Breeders. You can definitely hear that Nirvana influence coming from songs like “Tame.” “Doolittle” was nearly a decade old by the time I heard it. Though I know a few of the songs, this week was really my first time getting to know the whole album.

This Pixies album album sounds very 90s, even though it came out before music that typifies the 90s. At the time, it must’ve seemed so strange and new. It’s still unusual today, but definitely sounds dated. Just strange that it sounds dated to a time after it came out. That’s how influential it was.

I fell in love with “Monkey Gone to Heaven” the first time I heard it, whenever that was. The unusual start of the song caught my attention. A series of ascending chords drive out of nowhere, drums begin, then a hit from the bass as if this song is going to rock. Then.. a pause and the vocals calming state “There was a guy.” Instead of rocking, the collected and slightly menacing voice, tells us a story like recalling a legendary news item: “An underwater guy who controlled the sea got killed by ten million pounds of slugs from New York and New Jersey.” That’s the first verse: Nonsense that seems to make sense. The chorus consists of the line “This monkey’s gone to heaven” repeated four times.

“Here Comes Your Man” provides a great example of something I noticed throughout the album. The guitars often play monophonic surf-rock inspired lines. There’s not so much strumming of full chords as usually found in rock music. The album also features a lot more clean, or at least less distorted, guitar than I would’ve expected. When guitars are distorted or fuzzed, they are mixed further back than the clean guitars, providing more of a pad than a heavy drive.

The nearly instrumental “La La Love You” songs also features a lot of surf-rock style lead guitar. Again, this track opens with some rockin’ drums and then takes a mellow turn. It borders on instrumental cheese and surf rock. I love the bright clean electric with dripping reverb sound. The bass rolls along uninterestingly, which is actually in contrast to most of the album where the bass carries much of the instrumentation. The lyrics aren’t much, but that’s really the point. “All I’m sayin’ pretty baby, La la love you, don’t mean maybe.” is repeated several times as the song ends. In a way this song seems to represent much of what the undercurrent of the album: It’s an angular love-affair with rock n roll; it attacks what it loves.

Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You”

I’ve been listening to Aretha Franklin’s 1967 album “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You” for lessons I can learn to improve my craft as a songwriting musician. Unfortunately, the world lost Aretha Franklin the day before I started my week with her album. This was an amazing album and I fell in love with several of the songs almost immediately. Unfortunately, I’ve been struck by a double ear infection that is sapping much of my energy; it’s difficult to concentrate to write as much as I usually do for these albums, but I’ll still talk a little about my favorite tracks. Her singing is tremendous and that remains true on every song.

“Soul Serenade” quickly became my favorite. I especially like the use of horns between the vocals in the chorus. They hit on the 3rd, 4th and 1st of the next measure. It makes that 1st beat feel like a 5th beat.

I also really liked the song “Do Right Woman – Do Right Man” particularly for the smooth extending of syllables during the chorus with backing vocals providing rhythmic repetition. The sparse accompaniment provides a good backing for Aretha’s voice on this slower track. The organ plays extended chords with the piano mostly tinkling occasionally on individual notes, and a basic drum pattern keeps the beat.

As I said this was an amazing album from start to finish. Definitely one that I will return to again and again in the future. I wish I felt better, so that I could do it more justice in writing. So instead, I’ll close with this great video of Aretha Franklin performing the opening track of this album, “Respect.”

Radiohead’s “Kid A”

This week, I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s album “Kid A” from 2000. When this album was released, I had just moved to Asheville a few months prior. “Pablo Honey” was one of my favorite albums and I really enjoyed “OK Computer.” I also liked the singles from “The Bends”. With each album, they were obviously evolving as an experimental band expanding the possibilities of the alt-rock genre. My first reaction to “Kid A” was one of disapproval. From my perspective, they’d gone off into the stratosphere, losing touch with rock music and the audience. It also got dangerously close to ambient music at times. In short, I did not like it.

About fifteen years later, I’m running into people who love this album. Some even consider it Radiohead’s best. So, I give it another chance. I now heard a band casting aside the confines of rock to focus on what had made them unique before. It seems they were rebelling against what people said and expected from them. Perhaps, they finally completely rebelled against the brit-pop Nirvana labelled they’d inexplicably acquired in the early 90s. I never understood that description, but there’s definitely no way anybody could say that about “Kid A.” I still didn’t like it.

Three more years pass and here I’m spending a full week listening to “Kid A” because it’s considered by many to be one of the greatest albums of all time. After devoting all this time to it, I still don’t really like it much. However, some parts of it grew on my a little. Some parts wore on me a lot. Overall, I think the album suffers from too much repetition without enough variation. Each song has some cool stuff going on. However, even the cool stuff becomes boring when it goes on for too long.

BBC recording of “Everything In It’s Right Place” since the album version is not available.

The “Everything In It’s Right Place” is one of the best tracks on the album. The few lyrics are oblique and opaque, which is true for most of the album. The lines capture a feeling of being overwhelmed and in a generally foul mood. Thom repeats lines several times, which makes them memorable and catchy. I almost don’t notice how little description the words give.

The chords follow an unusual pattern of I-II♭7-III♭6 for the intro, and then IV-I-II♭7-III♭6 for the verses. These strange series comes from playing a constant tonic note (C in this case) while playing triadic chords below it. I assume that the use of a constant C puts the song in the key of C, however, it feels like it may actually be in the key of F. The moments of the song that return to that IV chord FEEL like they are returning home to the tonic. This is not a conventionally way to work with chords in rock music and really sounds much more like jazz.

A fan-made video for “The National Anthem” by Radiohead.

“The National Anthem” grabs my interest with its cool driving bassline. Unfortunately, that bass continues without deviation until it is mind-numbingly monotonous. I think of Mancini’s bassline in “Peter Gunn” which holds up to repetition because so much musically interesting happens over top of it that the bassline becomes a groovy background texture. In “The National Anthem” the unchanging bass line stays to prominent; furthermore, the other instrumentation fails to pull the focus away. I don’t like the chaotic brass free-for-all section. With its lack of musical substance, it’s just chaos. It sounds too much like an imitation of the sound of more avant-garde jazz without any direction or purpose. Rather than building on the bassline, they make stylistic noise in spite of it. And again, that pulls my ear to the bass.

The vocals provide the most interesting element of the song. Or, more specifically, the processing of the vocals. There seems to be a combination of doubling-up with a resonant synth, perhaps some ring-modulation, and altered reverb/delay. I’m not sure, but it does wonderful things to my ears. Too bad the lyrics fail to provide much to the song. All they gives us is “Everyone around here, everyone is so near. It’s holding on. Everyone is so near, Everyone has got the fear. It’s holding on.” That’s it. With this bassline and those horns, I feel that more story-telling is in order.

Live performance of “Optimistic” by Radiohead.

Probably my favorite track on “Kid A” was “Optimistic.” Again, the vocals repeat the same lyrics multiple times. The chorus has six lines, which are three lines repeated, the first two of which are the same: “You can try the best you can. You can try the best you can. The best you can is good enough.” It certainly helps the lyrics to be memorable.

I probably prefer this song because it’s a little more rocking than the others. The song features guitar. The clean guitar strums rhythmic chords like the Velvet Underground or Stereolab. Drums trip loosely across the toms, creating a somewhat exotic texture. Unfortunately, the song shares the quality of flatness with the rest of the tracks. From start to finish, there’s a feeling of samess due to the dreamy drift between sections and the lack of solid dynamics.

Overall, I didn’t think this was that great of an album. I appreciate it as serious shift transition from the old Radiohead to the new Radiohead, but I don’t know if I consider that a good thing. My tastes are more for the earlier Radiohead than what came after.

John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”

This week, I’ve been listening to John Coltrane’s 1965 album “A Love Supreme.” I first discovered this album about eight years ago. At the time, I was studying painting at college. Some of my favorite artists, like Willem de Kooning, were fans of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. While I painted, I’d listen to jazz CDs I’d borrowed from the school library. I found that I enjoyed much of it. I can’t say I always understood it. Regardless, jazz became part of my art-making routine.

John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” immediately became one of my favorites. It caught me off-guard as it went into musical territory I’d not yet imagined. The music confused me, yet somehow FELT like it made perfect sense. I even bought a brand new vinyl record of the album when I only had plans to buy a record player. Three years passed before I even had anything to play it on. That’s how much I liked this one.

Here’s the thing though, even after these years of hearing it off and on. Even after spending a full week with the album.. I feel ill-equipped to really write about it. I can tell you that I like it; I can talk about how it’s neat that he plays the 4-note “a love supreme” motif in several keys on the saxophone before chanting the words vocally. And I think that’s neat.

I appreciate that they repeat a melody line several times to establish for the listener what the basis for the next section is. And then they use that as a starting point to go off into other realms; cutting up the melody, flipping it around, filling it with seemingly random flourish and excitement. But then, they fold instruments in and around each other playing variation on themes (especially the love supreme motif) until they come back around. They weren’t just going crazy, but rather intelligently and methodically dissected the song, examined it, displayed it’s variations, and put it back together.

This is what I hear in this album. I’m not confident in saying that’s what it really is, but that’s what it is to me. What I can note with confidence is that the album, with its four tracks, feels like a whole. There are (at least) three similarities that tie them together: the use of motifs, the methods by which motifs are used, and the instruments. I appreciate that it sounds like a single performance. The same instruments are used from start to finish, recorded and mixed in the same way with the same sound to the room. I like that.

So, in breaking with my usual way of writing about these albums, I’m mostly saying that I can’t write about this one as a musician. I’m in awe by what happens. I cannot explain what I’ve heard, nor understand how it was done. All I can say is that it is amazing.