Tuesday, May 17, 2011

no tonic?

I heard the song "Jane Says" in the coffee shop this morning, and I remembered thinking about it a few years ago. The song seems to be nothing but IV and V chords, and you never hear a tonic. I thought I would write a post about it. But someone already did a better job than I could have, calling this phenomenon an "absent tonic":

Fragile, Emergent, and Absent Tonics in Pop and Rock Songs/Mark Spicer

Very nice, and great examples. Though I would go further. I would suggest that yes, the song is absolutely in D major, and that the vocals are the tonic I chord. A sort of linear manifestation of the tonic that hangs over the G-A vamp. The song is in D. Trust your ears. Just because the guitar never plays "I" doesn't make it less "in D." I'd even venture to say that there are plenty of authentic cadences in the vocal line alone. Trust your ears. The guitars aren't even harmonic, really. They're a chugging ostinato. Listening this way, the chord progression isn't IV-V over and over. It's a I drone.

All of these interesting conversations aside, I still think the song is pretty awful. The author of the above states "It is refreshing and interesting to our ears, I think, to have a song that constantly plays with our sense of resolution by constantly teasing us with the possibility of an authentic cadence but never actually giving it to us. It is what makes us want to listen to it over and over again."

I'll set the rhetorical weakness of "I think" aside for now.

Possibility of an authentic cadence? There's a whole bunch of them in the vocal line (cadences don't need chords). And it's the childish, sing-songy A-F# minor third that Perry Farrell sings over and over again that ensures that I will NOT listen over and over again. Rather, I find it hard to listen to the entire song. Oh, and those steel drums are profoundly stupid.

Monday, May 16, 2011

I remember when...

What's worse?

1) A band/musician that makes original music that is stylistically derivative and relies heavily on some sort of nostalgia from the intended audience.

or

2) The same, EXCEPT neither the band nor the intended audience lived through the time that one would have said nostalgia for, like the "swing" (read: "ska" bands that missed the "ska" movement) bands of the early-mid nineties.

I don't want to hate this way. It's fine, usually. It can be really good at times. And this "retro-" movement is no movement. It's been around forever. It's a convenient trick; it pushes certain buttons for the listener. And some folks do it well, and I'm not immune to the charm.

But at the same time, it's so fucking lazy. And it's genre blind. Pop, rock, jazz, and contemporary composers perhaps worst of all. Can't we do better than parrot styles and sounds that were new 10, 15, 20, 70, 200 years ago? There must be new sounds, or at the very least new ways of combining ideas across genres and media. I think so, anyway.

But if you were born in 1990 and are trying to channel 60's garage bands, I just...try harder, dude. Because that charm will last about one 45 minute set. Then I'm settling up and leaving the bar.

And if you're a fan of this sort of faux-nostalgia movement? This time warp dress-up game? I don't know what to say. It's true that I'm a pretty detached and cold listener (in terms of being swayed by forces outside of the sounds themselves), and I'm certainly in the minority. But when musicians, bands, and composers think they can pull one over on their audience by playing like 'Trane or sounding like early Pink Floyd or writing big simplistic "Romantic" orchestral music...well...it usually works.

But not on me.