BREAK/BROKEN: BREAKDOWN

Hmmm, possibly straying to close to the bone with this one, given I am currently "unwell" and away from work. Let's just say the NHS is a tough frontline to be patrolling at present, as we balance the (I wish!) post-plague demand with the ongoing per-plague issues, with much less than pre-plague resources or manpower. I'm OK, no walls hit, being able to recognise the signs and to get the help, but it set me thinking about how popular music tackles this phenomenon. Sure, I need to call it stress and burn-out, but it is, is it not, as much a cipher as was/is nervous breakdown. (And I'm sorta guessing, that the myriad breakdowns in bluegrass are probably a whole different kettle, if a shame, as there are so many good ones.....)

19th Nervous Breakdown/Rolling Stones

Clearly the template was the Stones. Far from number 19 myself, it is a cracking little number, prescient and surprisingly forthright for its day, when Jagger was singing about more than just chicks and whips. Indeed, it was, almost, a subject they stuck with for a while, but I'm eschewing the mother's little helpers for now. But that's enough about me. Where else can we find psych advice?

Breakdown/Grace Jones

I am uncertain if, in the the original Tom Petty version, this was a song that fits this concept/conceit, with the lyric sounding an almost passive aggressive exhortation to a possibly soon to be ex, but I so much like the idea of Grace Jones imparting wellbeing advice. I think she might, too. So, that being sufficient, Dr Jones is yer girl. Mind you, she has form in this arena. And her remedy, is it not, actually half the battle. 

Breakdown/Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Kris Kristofferson strikes me as a fella who knows a demon when he sees one, and he certainly captures the sense of oft accompanying melancholia that can sit alongside anxiousness, shame and guilt. He wrote the above song, arguably better known in the version by the Everly Brothers, but I like this one, the poignant pairing of vocals as evocative as the siblings, maybe, courtesy Oldham/Billy, that little bit more. 

Breakdown/Jack Johnson

I think this is probably allegorical, a characteristically bouncy song from the onetime surf dude. I think he is better than he usually gets credit for, and if he can't say stop, I want to get off, well, who can? It is an insightful lyric, actually, and one that heightens my opinion of him all the more. For perspective, however, i offer the below, a truly ludicrous song that has my tongue as far in my cheek as it goes. If I were ever to worry, ol' Eddie has me convinced I ain't. Which makes this indulgence totally therapeutic, don't it?

Nervous Breakdown/Eddie Cochran

So much better am I now feeling, care of the healing power of rock and roll, here is something that also popped up, something I have on an odd compilation, Beginners Guide to Asian Lounge, which is actually pretty good. The mix of instrumentation and internal rhythms are quite a good representation of the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that congress when the candle has burnt too hard. Unless I am just hearing that as I need, but, either which way, all things being equal, normal service to be returned sooner or later

Emotional Breakdown/Mo Magic

(You liked the Earl Scruggs at the beginning too, did you?)

HOMECOMING: TAKE ME BACK HOME/SOULSAVERS

OK, so it was only when the facebook link to my last post alerted me that I realised Homecoming to be peculiarly and specifically an american concept, relating to (high) schools inviting back past alumni, for a dance to celebrate the existence of the institution in question. And football?! Who knew? Certainly not me, although I suddenly get a whole lot of references from "Romy and Micheles High School Reunion" to the Monkees. Anyway, this piece too, like those of my colleagues, is nothing at all to do with that. (Except, arguably, on a metaphysical level.........)

Soulsavers are a remarkable concept, the idea of Rich Machin and Ian Glover, two british producers who somehow have conjured a knack of getting some of the most distinctive vocalists around to sing on their electronica take on what I would broadly categorise as gospel music, possibly not (but probably) including in any religious sense. Perhaps if a little veiled as to any particular divinity. Sorry, sprawling intro, but it is tricky for modern musicians to overtly ally themselves to any accepted spirituality beyond the vague. Or maybe difficult for me and my generation, avowedly secular, to accept such. I can find little back story as to how these two honed their craft. 2003 saw their first record, 'Tough Guys Don't Dance', the template immediately set out with sombre and dark sounds, sombre and dark imagery and sombre, dark, often lugubrious vocals. Here's 'Love' from that record, a style remaining and in no need of change. The singer is Josh Haden, son of Charlie, and erstwhile lead singer of the short lived 'Spain', well worthy of recommendation in their own right.

Second album, 'It's Not How You Fall, It's How You Land', saw them bring in Mark Lanegan, whose gothic tones have increasingly added a little black, or is it white, magic to any number of artists, as well as building up quite a catalogue of his own. With his back story of gaol and addiction, who better to sing of a curiously old testament redemption and revival?

Third album, 'Broken', again included Lanegan, amongst others including Jason Pierce, whose 'Spiritualised' had been mining, and still do, a similar vein. This took deeper still the atmospheric, exemplified by this version of this Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) track, he also appearing on this and the last record. (And here's Billy's version.)

The song featured in this article comes from number 4, 'The Light the Dead See', which, on the back of the critical breakthrough achieved by 'Broken', had the genius of recruiting Dave Gahan in the Lanegan role. Perhaps as famous for his overdosing near-death experiences as for his fronting of electro-band Depeche Mode, interviews had already revealed his deep melancholic beliefs. When Soulsavers were chosen to support Depeche Mode on a 2012 tour, it was perhaps inevitable he would end up writing and singing with/for them. Not for nothing was the title of his main bands 1993 album 'Songs of Love and Devotion'.

'Take Me Back Home' is one of many highlights from this remarkable album, the references aplenty as to where that home may be. It can move me to impossible places, to states akin to a mystical reverie, almost damascene in intensity. It is only my hard fought for cynicism that enables me to pretend I hear not the beseechments to (a) god. Or to God? As intensity goes it can go little further. And it can't get more overt than the song below.

Gahan has stayed on board a while longer, to the extent of the next release coming under the Dave Gahan & Soulsavers soubriquet, a step backwards for me, experientially, even if the songs, on 'Angels & Ghosts', were nearly as powerful. Strangely, the giving of a name extruded a taste of Mammon. Some of the magic was gone. Perhaps indicatively, the next release was back to the core duo, and instrumental, a film soundtrack, 'Kubrick', no clues in the lyrics, and fewer from the subject matter of the film. But no mistaking the music.

I remain an atheist. I think.

I could just point you toward the named track. Hell, or is that heck, hit the main page.

Songs Called Songs: Ohio River Boat Song

Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Ohio River Boat Song

[purchase]

Ohio River Boat Song by the Palace Brothers was the first musical sign of Will Oldham as a musician, and I´ve been an ardent admirer ever since I bought that lofi 7" on the Drag City label back in ´93. So it was quite a treat to hear a much more upbeat version of this delicate lament for love lost a couple of years later, when Oldham decided to re-record it under the Bonnie "Prince" Billy moniker, this time backed by Nashville´s finest session players.

"And her dance is like the gleam of the sunlight on the stream,

and the screeching bluejays seem to form her name when screaming

But my heart is full of woe for last night she made me go,

and the tears begin to flow as I sing the whole day through..."

Songwriting: Thunder Road (revisited)

Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Tortoise: Thunder Road

[purchase]

(On writing as a process of adaptation, part three: the extreme cover.)

One of the reasons I coverblog is that I love folk music, and many local artists need some sort of boost to be heard. Which is to say: in my experience, cover songs are an especially important vehicle for introducing audiences to new artists -- by using familiar songs, a comfort zone is created which helps us be more willing to try something new; from there, if we like what we hear, we may be more willing to try the original works of the artist. The flip side of this, of course, is that covers confront the singer-songwriter model that typifies most new music today: by changing the way a song is performed, covers generally split original performance -- as modern, post Tin Pan Alley culture experiences it -- from song-as-written, making it easier for an astute listener to consider as discrete product both the song itself and the artistic choices that went into each performance.

But every once in a while, an artistic reimagining of song is so different from the original, rather than creating comfort, it confronts our sense of the original song, calling attention to the vast difference as we strain to hear the original in the cover. I'm not just talking here about acoustic renderings of Ozzy Osborne songs, either -- what I mean to point to is more like the "recasting" Matt traces through the work of The Replacements, or something akin to the "open source" adaptation of melody, lyric, and arrangement which Dean spoke of earlier this week, though in this case, we're taking about cases where at least one of those components stays similar enough that the original is still both attributable and, further, is named by the artist performing the song -- that is the performer believes he is creating a coversong, regardless of what we might read into it. Such extreme covers transcend our usual understanding what it means to cover something, and begin to move -- ever so slightly -- in the direction of rewriting.

One great example of this is the Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Tortoise "cover" of Thunder Road, a song we've already heard evolve in the hands of its author, thanks to Paul's great analysis. (note: unless you grew up in a thrash-metal-only zone or something, you've surely heard Springsteen's original before this week, too). The cover is startlingly different, and much of this is "mere" arrangement: rock drums, pulsing, anthemic keyboards and electric guitar; seventies-era rock breaks and solos; beautiful, haunting harmonies. But there's something else happening here, too. By keeping the lyrics intact, but completely rewriting the composition -- switching it into a minor key, and displacing the melodic line entirely, though it appears again faintly in the harmony part of the chorus -- other than a faint recognition that this is a Springsteen song we know, the way we hear the song has almost no relationship to the way we have always heard the original. If chords matter -- and Brendan made that case convincingly, I think -- this isn't a new setting of a song, it's a total deconstruction of one.

Maybe my coverblogger's ears are oversensitive to such change. But I think what Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billy have done here is to coversong what Jackson Pollock once was to art: by presenting us with something almost but not quite unrecognizable, it confronts our sense of what is and what is not true writing, asking us to consider more fluid the usual lines between the art of performance and song creation and the craft of arranging and interpretation. It may not be true "writing", but it's closer to it than most covers.