Day 88: Billie Holiday – Love Songs

I posted a couple of days ago about how continuously I find myself realizing how very, very much I don’t know about music. And not just esoteric, obscure things, but like, Music 101. For instance, I’ve never heard the song “Strange Fruit”. I didn’t know about it until a minute ago, when someone brought it up in relation to my listening for the day. “1999, Time magazine called it the song of the century.” Okay. I’ve never even listened to Billie Holiday. I think I’ve heard “God Bless the Child” in the background of a movie or something somewhere, because I can conjure the faintest memory of it, but that’s about it.

And what am I to say about her now? Someone that momentous, that influential. Tasked with an assignment so broad, I’m all the more inclined to shrug it off. Shall I cobble together some words to throw onto the million that have already been written about Lady Day?

Maybe you haven’t listened to Billie Holiday either. Not everyone sits around to listening to this stuff, I remind myself. If you haven’t, you should. Her voice is a powerful instrument, focused, narrow, and forceful. She sings with a fragility that makes her sympathetic, and a sweetness that makes her lovable. On this disc she runs through a bunch of classic love songs, a couple her own compositions, and her talents are on full display. She was a tragic figure, dead of drugs and liquor in her early 40s, by all accounts ravaged by the things she did to herself. On this disc she portrays devotion, an obsession perhaps requited just enough to fall short of a mania. She giggles melodies, her voice flitting around scales effortlessly, channeling that giddy squeal of a woman desperately smitten.

These are great renditions, backed by strong bands, and great recordings. If you want to fall in love with Billie Holiday, give this a listen.

 

Day 73: Joy Division – Closer

Wherein I have the daunting task of saying anything clever about one of the most lavishly praised albums in recording history.

Joy Division is one of those bands that for me, despite never having heard more than two of their songs, is so firmly tied to a feeling that it can be hard to appreciate them from without it. That feeling, of course, is sheer, overwhelming depression. However, I know that impression is influenced by having seen Control and seeing the layers of tragedy Curtis would knead into his life, the terrible things he did to the people who cared about him and to himself.

It’s almost too bad that it’s so hard to see Joy Division beyond Curtis, but it’s hard to imagine them without him. (Note: No, I haven’t really listened to New Order, and that ‘really’ is only because that song of theirs that Orgy covered was on the radio a lot when I was young.) I should listen to them for comparison, because I really do wonder how much of the dismal atmosphere of Closer is due to Curtis’ temperament.

Having listened to Closer quite a bit today, I do finally see more of a nuance to the music than I did previously. Joy Division may have been collectively slung with Curtis’ albatross, but the band reacted as a whole against it: The musicians play from opposing sides of some great schism, the instruments reflecting Curtis far too well in their seeming inability to play in anything but lugubrious tones, yet being inspired to use these tones to try to wrest themselves free of this very sadness. Ultimately, that’s what gave Curtis his appeal, too. He sang of shame in “Isolation” but with a strange enthusiasm about it, carrying off a line like “Mother I tried please believe me/I’m doing the best that I can/I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through/I’m ashamed of the person I am” without sounding self-pitying, instead sounding wearied but fully alive. He continues, “But if you could just see the beauty/These things I could never describe/These pleasures a wayward distraction/This is my one lucky prize.”

I’m really glad to say that this album is awesome and that Curtis is the last reason why. Musically, this thing is just spectacular. Every song sounds different, yet all are consistent. It’s a perfect album, where every song fits like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s refreshing to hear something where there’s not one weak moment, nothing inspiring a Next.

Also, on the “discovering old favorites’ origins” note: Interpol, you guys are fucking shameless. I still love you, though.

Day 67: Rancid – …And Out Come The Wolves

Some music sets a precedent in one’s life. One’s first exposure to something vivid and remarkable can flash so brightly that its afterimage blinks back for the rest of one’s life. For me, Rancid was one such exposure. I remember being a curious, hyper child, sitting cross-legged, inches from the TV, watching Saturday Night Live. Rancid appeared and played “Time Bomb“. I had never heard anything like it, and I can reconstruct it on my mind’s canvas to this day. Consequently, Rancid is still what I think of when I think of punk rock — even though I know by now that they’re probably more ska than anything. But the towering mohawk, the clothes, the sheer enthusiasm forever came to be the template against which I check any punk band I encounter. For better or worse.

Surprisingly I had never heard this whole album then. Unsurprisingly maybe because I generally really don’t like punk, but still an odd oversight. Turns out, unfortunately, I wasn’t missing much. Every song on here is pretty good, and is so distinctly Rancid: Merging the kindest parts of ska and punk into high-energy pop that rebels without making much of a fuss, that focuses lyrically on things of substance without making it obvious that they’re even doing that — it turns out to be the spiritual predecessor to the pop-punk of the late 90s/early 00s. The problem comes in the fact that each some firmly sets this template well enough on its own, but none seeks to contradict or surpass any of its neighbors. Each song sounds so similar that making it through all 19 tracks becomes highly tedious and mostly unrewarding. There are moments of musicianship and surprise but they are seldom enough that it’s hard to have any faith that they’re coming. The end result is, for me, a self-contradictory album. There are enough peaks here for a good album, but there is just so much muddled, rote, assembly-line songwriting obscuring them that it’s easy to lose sight of what makes this good. Put this album on in the background on shuffle and it’ll probably soundtrack a raucous afternoon just fine. Maybe like, driving around a crowded mall parking lot trying to find a parking spot for half an hour — that would be perfect for this album. But to just sit down and listen to, I don’t know.