"Modern classical music" has always confounded me as a term. How can it be "classical" (in the adjectival sense) and "modern" at the same time? Alternatives have been proposed — I rather like "art music" myself, but it still has an elitist undertone to it — but I think this is a case where semantics must remain imprecise.
I’ve been listening to some classical music recently. One collection really does qualify as "classical". The others were borne from that tradition.
There’s nothing incredibly impressive to hear the first time you play Dark Light Daybreak by Now It’s Overhead.
There are no flashes of virtuosity, no stretches of intensity, no trickery behind the sound board, no gimmickry in the songwriting. It’s a guy in a studio with a bunch of guitars, a rhythm section and at times a drum machine.
Now It’s Overhead started off as a studio project for sound engineer Andrew LeMaster, but it’s evolved into a full-fledged band. Dark Light Daybreak sounds like the result of such a development.
The only thing that could possibly reel a listener in is the sense there’s more to music than what the surface indicates. It’s catchy if only because it’s not trying to be.
I went on a Temporary Residence buying spree because of Friday Night Lights. It’s one of the best shows on television right now, and the soundtrack employs a lot of music from Explosions in the Sky.
You think a show about a Texas high school football team would use nothing but country music, but the moodiness of Explosions’ music makes it a really nice fit. Once I got a hankering for Explosions in the Sky, I couldn’t stop at just one.
It’s albums such as these that make me consider some crazy New Year’s resolutions.
I participated in National Solo Album Month this year, and I recorded a piano solo album. (Well, I programmed it, really, because I’m not good enough to tackle anything live.)
To get in a frame of mind to work on such a project, I’ve been listening to a lot of piano music. Some of it related directly to what I was writing, and some of it didn’t.
Yes, the sound you hear are crickets chirping in the winter cold. I’m posting a quick entry just to prove there’s still life in this wheezing, dying corner of the Internets. I’ve been doing other projects that’s taken me away from all my web sites, so Musicwhore.org isn’t singled out in that regard.
While I’m doing these other things, I am still listening to some music, if my Last.fm user profile is any indication. Seems like my playlist has more of a classical slant lately. Here, then, are some of things occupying my earspace:
I intentionally ignored Supercar’s albums before Futurama.
Futurama was such a watershed listening experience, I didn’t want to tempt fate by exploring the work that led up to it. Besides, it would be a mighty expensive endeavor to do so.
It wasn’t until the band broke up in 2005 that I felt safe to start exploring the music that came before Futurama. I could live with the expense of a back catalog so long as there were no future catalog to compound it.
Man, have I been missing out.
I decided within the first week of listening to Mindy Smith’s Long Island Shores I was going to give it a lukewarm review.
But real life kept interfering with my writing time, and I kept putting it off. By the time I was ready to set word to pixel, something strange happened — Long Island Shores took root in my subconscious.
I would wake up some mornings with the songs from the album playing in my head.
What happened between that first week of listening till now?
The Killers made me realize something about how I pass judgment on the quality of music I consume. To wit:
Some albums are good, and some albums are good enough.
The albums that are good are ones you take for a spin time and again, and you look forward to that kind of repetition. The albums that are good enough are ones you take for a spin, just because nothing else at the moment appeals to you.
In terms of the Killers, I made the following distinction:
Hot Fuss was good. Sam’s Town is good enough.
I have a hard time perceiving St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley as anything but an indie rock album.
Yes, Danger Mouse comes from the hip-hop underground, and Cee-Lo was a member of Goodie Mob. By virtue of those credentials, St. Elsewhere is a hip-hop album.
But there’s a level of psychological exploration happening in the lyrics that go far beyond the few hip-hop albums I’ve encountered in my largely rockist life.