2009 Wrap #15: Jennifer Jones

Measuring time without a watch: I figure that this must be the main value of all these (decade- and) year-end lists.  We know a year has passed, but these lists give us another coherent way to account for time beyond conventional chronometrics, through a kind of historical-cultural matrix instead.  Of course, we gauge our events and experiences through music all the time anyway: what song was playing when we received some life-changing news, how a certain lilt in a refrain reminds us of a lost loved one.  It seems like an old saw that scent is the sense most strongly connected to memory, but music has to be a close second.  Maybe that’s just because it’s easier to recreate: after all, those aren’t portable perfume machines all the kids are carrying around these days.

When I was looking over my list, time was the main theme that kept recurring to me, in all its various forms: as foundational structure; as developmental marker; as symbolic sign of the times.  I tried not to get too heavy-handed with it—as .38 Special advises, I tried to hold on loosely—but the theme is still woven in a variety of ways throughout the songs and the reviews.  Finally, it often seems like a goal of year-end lists is to also try to find those tunes that are most likely to transcend their time, to outlive the output of the next few years to become cultural staples.  I can’t quite make any such claims here.  The selections are informed but personal, drawn from the sounds that have stuck with me the most throughout the year.  I hope they carry on, but if not, I figure that there’s also value in sounds that stay sutured to their specific time: recovering them feels even more like unearthing a time capsule, retrieving the endurable products that remind us of ephemeral time. 

“Air and Simple Gifts” John Williams, Composer; Yo-Yo Ma (Cello), Anthony McGill (Clarinet), Gabriela Montero (Piano), and Itzhak Perlman (Violin), Performers

President Obama’s inauguration marked the first time a song was composed and performed specifically for the event.  “Air and Simple Gifts” played at noon on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, at the exact moment that Obama officially became president.  From what I remember, the piece should have been played earlier, but was moved back like the rest of the ceremony due to delays, and just so happened to be the premiere cultural contribution of the newly-inducted administration.

I can’t imagine a more fitting introduction.  Despite its brevity—less than five minutes—the piece winds through several distinct parts and is redolent with American themes, in both composition and performance.  Williams, best known for his work on feature film scores, designed the piece to specifically incorporate one of President Obama’s favorite composers, Aaron Copland.  Choosing a riff in Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring allowed Williams to also integrate the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” since the ballet references it.  This creates a mise-en-abyme, a piece within a piece within a piece, that gracefully reveals its intricate layering.  The intentional grouping of top-notch performers from a variety of ethnicities and nationalities—Chinese cellist Yo-Yo Ma, African-American clarinetist Anthony McGill, Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, and Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman—also paints a picture that the election of Obama seemed to promise, that American diversity is the source of its ingenuity.  Whether or not you still believe that or any other campaign promise almost one year later, the piece made for a sweet, savvy overture to the new administration then, and an intriguing addition to the history of American political pomp and circumstance overall.

“First of the Gang,” Zee Avi, from Zee Avi

“Standards” are those songs that have stood the test of time to become foundational to a musical form or culture.  Not simply cover songs, which could just be one-offs, their primary role comes through repetition and reinvention.  They’re an exercise in genre, a testing ground for new performers to put their own stamp on a well-traversed piece.  Think of the “aristocrats” joke in musical form.

If any post-punk icon deserves to have his work placed in the standards category, it could be Morrissey.  Still, “First of the Gang to Die” seems like an odd piece to start with: firstly because of its relatively recent release on Morrissey’s 2004 album You are the Quarry, secondly because of the tremendous backlog of material available from his previous work, and thirdly because of the lyrical content.  Nonetheless, Malaysian singer Zee Avi goes beyond the “cover” to give the song what I consider to be a “standards” treatment, and it fits in a number of ways.  First of all, the revision assumes a simple style that recalls some of the classics from the Great American Songbook, just Avi’s smooth, evocative voice and an acoustic guitar plucked so liltingly and lightly it sounds like a harp.  This austere version reflects the sound of Morrissey’s original but alters it slightly, not only in its simplicity but also in its tone, particularly noticeable on the last notes of the refrain.  Finally, the song’s story may seem like a strange fit for a standard—guns, prison, theft—but the lyrics thread these through the affection and dedication of the gang, so that what’s really going on here are the timeless themes of love and loss.  Basically, this is the stuff of tragedy, from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” works that remains with us as we navigate our own daily little heartbreaks.

“Floor,” Micachu, from Jewellery

“Lions,” Tune-Yards, from Bird-Brains

So it’s been a good year for quirky female musicians with wacky hair.  I just can’t help but think of these two together.  Both received a lot of notice with the release of their first full-length studio albums, Jewellery and Bird-Brains, respectively.  Both are one-woman studio acts who rely on a variety of electronic elements and makeshift instruments, including tattered ukuleles, to produce their provisional pieces.  Both even seem to truck in the same kind of bright geometrical images, in both costuming and cover art.

I first encountered “Floor” through Micachu’s special South by Southwest appearance with NPR’s All Songs Considered.  Mica Levi’s online performance of the song differs considerably from the album version: completely acoustic, slowed down, and spare, compared to the album’s faster-paced layers of instruments and sounds, replete with an unexpected, uneven funk.  I like both versions, not only because they’re both good, interesting pieces on their own, but also because Levi is so expert at showing the range of what can be done with this one simple song, clocking in at less than ninety seconds.

I was a little more ambivalent about the choice of “Lions” for this list.  All of Bird-Brains is terrific, and “Lions” is one of my favorite tracks, but honestly, the album simply doesn’t compare to Merrill Garbus’ live performance.  That’s where the strength of her voice, her inventiveness, and her charisma really grab you.  You can check out a live sampler through 4AD’s “Sessions”; I spent days replaying “Real Live Flesh” from that performance.   Nonetheless, “Lions” is an exemplary track and I eventually decided to add it here for good reason.  I think it hits a lot of Garbus’ trademark notes from the album—snippets of looped sounds, self-created noises, and nonsensical refrains that in their very childishness seem to hit at a subconscious level—as well as an intimacy that’s missing from some of the other tunes.  This enters in right from the start of the song, where the song’s protagonist asks vulnerably, “When can you come over and then when you gotta leave?”  The rest of the song covers sexual territory, immature to be sure, sometimes naïve but other times quite naughty and knowing: the second verse suggests she and her companion might witness as “my brother and all his friends whip out their tiny teenage cocks.”  Altogether, the lions here seem to refer to the dangers surrounding sexual exploration; embracing them is all part of the act.

“Let’s Get Out of Here,” Cut Off Your Hands, from You & I

I realize that one country’s pop music may be another’s alternative, and if Cut Off Your Hands is the example, I’m totally cool with that.  I was born too late to scream for The Beatles, was too cool for NKOTB and too old for The Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC, but in my early middlescence, I’ve completely fallen in love with Cut Off Your Hands.  Although You & I is essentially a compilation of singles released over the previous couple of years in New Zealand, the album was just released in the States in early 2009.  Aside from a few strangely religious-themed songs, the rest of the album trades in poppy croons and romantic calls to arms like “Let’s Get Out of Here.”  Although they may traverse some familiar topical territory, their music is refreshing enough to revive the staler aspects of the hand-holding genre.  (And speaking of revival, the band could be another one to sign up for a set of Morrissey standards based on the lush opening to “Turn Cold.”)  As you can hear on “Let’s Get Out of Here,” the band hits all the right moony romantic notes, lyrically and musically—the impassioned pleas, the driving rhythms—like a more hyper and direct version of The Modern Lovers’ “Modern World.”  Overall, the whole song—and arguably, album—could be a pretty good primer for scoring.

“Muah,” Elektrik Red, from How to Be a Lady: Volume 1

I have been known, from time to time, to shake my ass.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen often enough, but “Muah” sets it off every time, and I have Eric’s Midterm 2009 mixes to thank for that.  While The-Dream produced group has received some attention for its fine Weezy-featured “So Good,” this song seems to have languished.  Maybe it’s the explicit refrain.  But that’s okay: with those three verses of sassy one-sided dialogue, the song works best as a ladies’ night jam at the bar rather than a crowd pleaser on the radio anyway, and I’m happy keeping it as something for just us grown girls.

“Phones Don’t Feud,” Holiday Shores, from Columbus’d the Whim

I decided not to rank my songs this year, but this one gets my vote for “Most Likely to Remind Me of 2009.”  “Phones Don’t Feud” is built for reminiscence.  The lyrics warn you from the beginning: “I will haunt you if you want me to.”  But it’s not just the fractured story of lost time and lost love that conveys that feeling.  It all starts with the music, like the plucking of the lone guitar that evokes ripples across water and fleeting recollections, then builds as the other instruments come in, playing together but spending most of the time on their own dicey staccatos.   Like hazy memories, you sense something’s there but you can’t piece it all together, and that misty feeling continues to draw me back.

“To Clean,” Woods, from Songs of Shame

Songs of Shame was an album that followed me around all summer—it just reels with the soaring, improvisatory feeling of the season—and “To Clean” was the first song that really drew me in.  Woods is inevitably described through the current lo-fi surf-inflected Woodsist canon—and in many ways it fits—but their style in “To Clean” and the rest of the album reveals a wide compendium of influences from the last four decades.  There’s late sixties guitar-based rock in the opening guitar solo, the shambolic structure of any number of garage bands, and the rollicking beat almost, just barely reminiscent of rockabilly.  And then there’s that falsetto, the province of few all-male bands since the sixties, which gives the song an ethereal but playful feeling.  All in all, “To Clean” has a sunny, spirited sound, its singularity based in its synthesis of several sources.

“Trouble, Heartaches & Sadness,” Ann Peebles, from The Complete Ann Peebles on Hi Records – Volume 1: 1969-1973

“You Can Make Me Feel Bad,” Arthur Russell, from Calling Out of Context

Every year I wind up rediscovering some artists that I probably should have already known. This year that distinction belongs to Ann Peebles and Arthur Russell.  I figure you can’t know everything; the best you can do is stay open for whatever comes along and follow what most intrigues you.  All it takes is one unexpected encounter to take you down a new path or revisit an old one.

It’s hard not to know Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” a track that’s been sampled on more than just Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” but I didn’t really know any more about the work of the Memphis-based singer.  I first heard “Trouble, Heartaches & Sadness” late one spring night on WIUX, IU’s student-run radio station, and spent half my waking time over the next week trying to track down as many of Peebles’ tracks as I could.  The lyrics themselves are optimistic, as the song’s protagonist is bidding farewell to her problems thanks to the arrival of a new lover.  But despite ending on a triumphant note, the music is so wistful it makes me wonder if she really thinks they’re actually going away.  Or maybe she realizes that those painful feelings she’s trying to banish are part of what make her newfound love so sweet.

I’d come across Russell’s “A Little Lost” and “I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face” in a number of places, and while I knew of Russell’s stature as a cross-genre pioneer, the first few things I’d heard didn’t entice me enough to explore more.  It took stumbling on “You Can Make Me Feel Bad” for me to get it. Somehow it all suddenly came together: the electrified cello, the flat performance, the layering of sounds.  It’s a thick song, full of a lot of emotion in very few words and a very short time.  But as so much other music has shown—over this year, on this list, and in plenty of other places and times—it’s what you do with those limitations that make all the difference.  And from that, I was hooked.

Jennifer Lynn Jones is a third-year Ph.D. student in Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Most of her research looks at the intersections of media and culture, and her dissertation will be on media, celebrity, and the obesity crisis.  If you’re patient and very lucky, she might also soon update her blog, Jonescene.

Filed under: 2009 Wrap  Ann Peebles  Arthur Russell  Cut Off Your Hands  Electrik Red  Holiday Shores  Jennifer Jones  Micachu & the Shapes  Obama  Tune-Yards  Woods  Zee Avi