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songs-dan-likes-blog · 5 years ago

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The Barrel (2019)

I knI’m not good about lyrics. For reasons I can’t fathom, I can barely pay any attention to the lyrics of songs when I listen to them, and if I end up learning the lyrics to things it’s almost always by accident. This isn’t a choice; I’m simply not able. It could be because I was a musician in my youth, but almost certainly it started way before that, and maybe it had something to do with how, for a long time there, I couldn’t read or write. The other kids were on chapter books while I was learning what a period was and how to sound out the word “teeth.”

On the flip side, I can sing a lot more guitar solos note by note than other people can. Lyrics—and more specifically vocals—to me are another element of composition, and primary to meaning, for the most part, are the melody and tone that the vocal instrument provides a song. This hasn’t prevented music from being a Top 5 Important in My Life Thing for me, and I love singing along to songs, it’s just that sometimes I have to mumble a lot more of the words than the other people in the car do.

However, I know I’m not getting the full experience. (I was a terrible song writer back when I was in bands full of other terrible song writers. The eighth grade music teacher was so concerned about my lyric writing during a song project that he called me parents. I think the song was about “smashing you in the face with a crowbar, crowbar, crowbar,” but it’s hard to remember exactly. Likely, they still do and have agreed to never bring it up around me.) I’m not naive. I know I’m losing out especially in the world of indie music, which is what I listen to most these days. Indie, like folk, which I have also loved for most of my life, puts an emphasis on the lyrics, partly as a response to the banal repetition of what’s called “popular music” and partly as a way to show off when shredding would be inappropriate, and like poetry there’s a whole history of one-upsmanship that’s mostly over my head.

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This is long preamble to Aldous Harding’s “The Barrel,” a song I love because of the vocals but not the lyrics, which I’ve now read and are still meaningless to me. I wanted to talk about what I like in relation to the meaning of the words but I can’t. I assume the lyrics are good—she seems like the type—and from a pure aesthetic standpoint I enjoy the juxtaposition of “peaches” and “celebrate” in the pre-chorus, for example, and especially the evocative image of “Show the ferret to the egg.” The word “barrel” has an incredible roundness to it and it sounds like it coats Hannah Sian Topp’s mouth in port wine as she sings it. But there’s a lot of other stuff to like about this song, from the opening guitar lick that sounds like something from your childhood that you just can’t place to the annunciation of the piano to the egg shaker—a party instrument if ever there was one.

Best of all is the chorus. I said in the last post, and I have a feeling that it will be a feature of most of these posts, that surprise is one of the things that most attracts me to a song. This song has two big surprises, and both of them are in a chorus and both of them are singers.

The song does not warn us that anyone but Sian Topp will be singing. Listeners, without knowing it, walk into every new song with a bag of expectations. Indie music in particular likes to surprise you by denying these expectations, usually by changing up the basic song structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus is one example) that’s been burned into our unconscious. This song does surprise differently. It gives us the shifts we expect, the little guitar intro is met by drums and bass and the verse starts, then there’s a pre-chorus that’s a little punchier as the sax (?!) kicks in, and this is all normal. Things are going well, in other words. She’s holding our hand and we are so comfortable, we are so safe and warm.

She carries us like this, in our little papoose, into the chorus. We know a few things can happen here, the biggest two are: things will stay largely the same or they will notch up with added instrumentation/backup vocals/both. She sings the first line of the chorus alone, indicating the former, and we’re good. The tension is released. But then! Then, on the 2nd line of the chorus, a deep, sonorous male voice jumps in out of nowhere, as loud as the main lyrics and singing the same notes rather than harmonizing. The rug has been pulled out from under us. It’s wonderful, and I love it. The next line she sings alone, leaving us scrambling. What did I just hear? Where did that come from? And before we know it, the deep voice is back, singing the rest of the chorus with her, releasing us from this new and unexpected tension, which makes a person feel relieved and good. Queue the soothing piano.

I’m going to try to wrap this post up. The song goes through the paces again. Another verse, another pre-chorus. So far, our expectations are being met, and it’s not the same kind of enjoyment but it’s an equal one, getting exactly what you expected. Then the next chorus arrives, with new and unpredictable surprises. Nothing wild, for that would be too much. Like the last surprises, this one is entirely about the voices singing with her. The male voice has been replaced—immediately, at the very start of the chorus—with a childlike, synthesized female voice, as well as more traditional backing vocals. The male voice, suddenly unexpected again, is back where it was before, starting on the 2nd and 4th lines of the chorus. Queue the guitar solo. The song is just so fun. Especially for a song that seems so simple on the surface. It’s a really clever trick.

But what is it saying? What else is it doing, other than surprise?

For most of pop music history, songs have been told from a single and coherent point of view. That point of view can be serious, ironic, single or a group (we’re not gonna take it), a ghost, etc., etc. Whatever it is, it’s the same all the way through. Even duets make their point of view known; they’re the same as any song but with two POVs talking to each other instead of one.

Does anyone really think that’s how life works? I don’t think my own POV is consistent by the hour. We code switch, we wrestle with and second guess ourselves constantly, we inhabit our past and present personalities at the same time all the time. My work brain is different from my husband brain, and thank god for that. For me, this song creates that feeling in the chorus, and so it seems to be arriving at a truth and an honesty through the logic of its composition, which is neat as hell. The big male voice and the little robot kid are aspects of the singer’s personality, meaning that whatever heartbreak this song is about actually isn’t as simple as the lyrics make them out to be. We can, all of us, take the same sentence or same thought and view it in many different ways simultaneously. Life is so complicated. Life is like this. One voice says, “It’s already dead / I know you have the dove” in a way that signifies acceptance, another in a way that shows sorrow, a third in a way that shows triumph, and a forth in a way that wishes it all wasn’t true. And all four things are feelings that can be held together, and when they’re held together together they don’t clash but are actually in harmony, they are more beautiful as a group than they would be on their own.

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