Music Mondays: "Pierre" by Ryn Weaver

For this week’s Music Monday, we aren’t moving too far from the subject of the last few columns. I actually first heard of Ryn Weaver through the news that Passion Pit frontman Michael Angelakos would be co-producing her debut album. Upon checking her stuff out, her first single “OctaHate” was enough to hook me.

But while “OctaHate” is a wonderful song (go check it out if you haven’t heard it), I’m not going to be focusing on that one this week. Maybe some other time. Right now, I want to focus on a song that came of her debut album back in June, “Pierre”.

I’ve always had a soft spot for songs with more narrative structures, and by those standards, “Pierre” is a near epic in scope, covering a major string of events of its narrator’s life. Each stanza of the verses comprises a vignette from the singer’s past, all describing the different lovers that she’s found herself with in recent memory. Tying them all together are the choruses, focused on “you”, the second-person one-that-got-away. The disjointedness of the narrative actually took me a little off-guard at first; I was expecting a much more standard love song, and didn’t catch on that they were each their own self-contained stories until the second verse. Also, it’s almost surprising how much Ryn manages to flesh out these supporting characters; each gets just enough detail to make them feel like real people that you can picture.

Musically, the song very closely matches Passion Pit’s style (as you might expect). I have trouble picking my favorite part; there’s the opening, a sparse arrangement that focuses on Ryn’s striking voice with claps and a atmospheric breeze underneath; there’s the big piano chord that rings out at the start of the second stanza; there’s the glassy guitar riff that kicks in halfway through that stanza; and of course, there’s the huge, emotional chorus. The chorus probably deserves its own focus; there’s an incredible forcefulness to it, with Ryn Weaver selling the hell out off its emotion. The words hit on downbeats with the drums, adding punch. Ending each line is a vocal sample that sounds straight out of Sleepyhead.  Finally comes the frantic, crashing end, a rush in and of itself.

And then, the second time through, it just gets bigger and grander, adding a sense of majesty to it all. And just like that, after two cycles, we get a short outro where the song just sort of fades into the sudden nothingness that it burst out of. For as strange a finish as it initially seems for a song of this scale, I have trouble picturing a better conclusion. It’s a perfect bookend to a larger part of a never-ending story.

Music Mondays: "Five Foot Ten (I)" by Passion Pit

Okay, finally, here’s the third part of my Music Monday series covering Passion Pit’s new album Kindred (parts one and two). And this one covers the song that I’ve come to think of as the best song from the album, “Five Foot Ten (I)” (The weird punctuation refers to its matching song “Ten Feet Tall (II)”, with each song closing out a half of the album).

Structurally, it shares a lot with “Until We Can’t (Let’s Go)”, starting with a fade in until and building into synth chords that form the backbone of the song, before swelling into a big chorus. However, where “Until We Can’t” thrives on its large scale, “Five Foot Ten” feels a lot less anthemic and more intimate. “Five Foot Ten” makes up for the lack of huge climax with a much more interesting texture, with it’s synthesizers feelings much more sharp and puncturing than the alternating crashing hits and calm atmosphere of “Until We Can’t”’s. And while I appreciate the relative simplicity of “Until We Can’t”’s arrangement, “Five Foot Ten”’s intricate arrangement feels much more exciting, with puncturing chimes, bells, wood blocks, vocal samples, strings, and all manner of things giving a frantic feeling.

Lyrically, it’s about equals with “Until We Can’t”; both deal with various anxieties singer Michael Angelakos is coping with. “Five Foot Ten” feels a little darker, though, dealing with his simultaneous frustration with and dependence on his wife, needing both his own space and companionship. Like their earlier “Little Secrets”, it’s a very personal song with somewhat dark lyrics behind a very bright façade (although here, the lyrics aren’t quite as dark, but a little more anxious). Unlike “Little Secrets”, this one offers more of a sense of resolution, with Michael reaching out and trying to work through his issues.

While I enjoy the lyrics, I think the music is far and away the highpoint. There’s just so much going on, and it carries on to the choruses. While the verses are sharp synth chords with more sounds as punctuation, the choruses build to the sizes of the choruses in “Until We Can’t” by just layering sound after sound. It’s a big and fitting conclusion to the rest of the song, complete with vocals as catchy and easy to sing along to as the latter without as much grandiosity. After much thought, I’d definitely call it the best song on the album.

What Does Runaways Do Better Than Young Avengers?

I’ve been going through the backlog of comics I’ve been meaning to read lately, and I’ve hit a wealth of good stories in the process. So far, they’ve all been pretty great, but some have definitely been better than others. So, in my never ending quest to pick apart the things I like and figure out why I like them, I’m going to try and do that with two of the stories I’ve been reading.

Runaways and Young Avengers are thankfully two of the easiest comics to compare. The pair share a lot of themes-a group of superpowered teenagers brought together to combat the ills of the older generations-and even crossed over a few times. And as a heads up here, when I talk about the Young Avengers, I’m talking about the original run, written by Allan Heinberg in 2005 (I’m still working through Kieron Gillen’s 2013 run, which I may write about later).

In either case, upon finishing the first volume of Young Avengers, I was left feeling…a little empty, I suppose. It was a fine run, don’t get me wrong. But seeing it crossed-over with Runaways had me hoping that it was as good as the latter series, while it was…not quite. I would actually say that it was about on par with the crossover issues, which I had always found to be a little weaker than the main Runaways stories. Which made me wonder: where did Runaways go right, that took it from “pretty good” to “one of my favorite things that I’ve read”?

Music Mondays: "Until We Can't (Let's Go)" by Passion Pit

After something of a break, I’m coming back to finish up my promised three-part series on Passion Pit’s Kindred. Today’s song: “Until We Can’t (Let’s Go)”.

(Also, this was supposed to actually go up on Monday, but then I fell asleep working on it two nights in a row, so that didn’t happen.)

“Until We Can’t” was the third song revealed from Kindred, and it brought my excitement even higher than “Lifted Up (1985)” or “Where the Sky Hangs” had, which was not an easy task. The song just feels immediately big, with a slow, shimmering build into crashing synth chords. Those chords essentially form the backbone of the song, returning for all of the huge choruses and giving the song a sense of purpose. The contrasts with the relatively restrained verses only serve to emphasize the highs and lows.

The lyrics are their own kind of special. They lack the poetry of “Where the Sky Hangs”, but they do feel like a lot of other Passion Pit works. While they’re a lot more direct than songs like “Little Secrets”, the lyrics do the same great job conveying a sense of unease and anxiety. Frontman Michael Angelakos has publically struggled with a variety of mental health issues, and his songs seem like they have been one of his ways of working through them. He’s great at conveying those emotions lyrically as well. Thankfully, “Until We Can’t” (and really, a lot of Kindred) feels like it finds him in a much better place than he’s been in the past, still confronting those issues but coping with them. There’s a sense of restlessness to it, feeling uncomfortable with where you are and wanting to start over; but also the sense that it’s not really the location causing the problem, but yourself, and you jut don’t want to address it. But through it all, there’s a definite sense of optimism to it-that you will find your way out of it eventually, and not stop trying until you do. This one might be my favorite song on Kindred (well, it’s either this, or the next one that I cover).

The Disappointing Case of Tomorrowland

If I were to boil down Tomorrowland to a single phrase, it would be “Meet the Robinsons’ dumb younger cousin”. I’ve long found Meet the Robinsons to be a solid movie, and an underrated entry in the Disney canon, but it took Tomorrowland for me to appreciate how the former does the concept of “optimism-powered, look how awesome the future is!” right. Spoilers ahead, although I’ll specifically mark big ones.

I think the biggest problem is that Tomorrowland is very self-assured that what it’s saying is intelligent without being able to back it up, instead offering up references to smarter things or pining for better times or attacking strawmen or just straight up not doing anything to cover up its problems. For instance, there’s a character named Hugo Gernsback (played by the extremely underutilized Keegan-Michael Key*). Like many things in Tomorrowland, I at first smiled when I discovered that the owner of the science fiction memorabilia store was named “Hugo”; it’s a cute little throwaway gag. Then it goes deeper and reveals that his last name is Gernsback, immediately becoming straight-up cheesy (and as if daring the audience to pick up on its reference-“are you one of the smart ones who will catch this?”). And then, it reveals that it really doesn’t have anything for Hugo to do, and he becomes a plot device before exiting the movie for good, no real impact on the story so to speak of.

 *Also underutilized is his partner Ursula, played by Kathryn Hahn. Based on the rest of the movie, I'm assuming they just didn't have the space to drop that her character's last name was "Le Guin".

Music Mondays: "Where the Sky Hangs" by Passion Pit

I swear I start these things on Mondays, but I need to get better about actually posting them on Mondays. Anyway, I’m going to try and make up for my lack of Music Mondays posts with (hopefully) three this week, and to keep it feeling like a single post, they’ll all be from a single album: Kindred, Passion Pit’s new album.

I’ve long been a fan of Passion Pit. Manners was an all-time classic album, and Gossamer topped even that (although it admittedly took me a few listens to come to that opinion).  I don’t know if I would call Kindred better than the latter, but I liked it to start with, and it’s grown on me as fast as Gossamer did, possibly faster.

I started getting excited for the album as soon as it was announced, and almost right away, Passion Pit added photos to Facebook of upcoming lyrics. All of the lines were great, and two of them came from one early-release song, “Where the Sky Hangs”. “I put my hands in the air, and my knees to the ground” (in Morse code), and “I get caught up in your heart strings”. I can’t really say why I got as excited for those images as I did; after all, they are just words. There is something beautiful about them, though.

Thankfully, the song itself lives up to the beautiful poetry. I’ve heard it compared to “Constant Conversation”, and I can see the comparison, but I feel like “Where the Sky Hangs” is the mature cousin of “Constant Conversations”, if anything. It feels so much smoother. The opening bass line sets this mood, and is a thing of wonder. Michael Angelakos brings his usual falsetto down a little for verses, which makes the jump up for the chorus feel that much grander. The whole thing is the usual lush and intricate arrangements of a Passion Pit, but at their best, with swirling synths over the funky bass groove and a smooth rhythm guitar. The bridge is broken up with beautiful staccato string sounds.

But still, there’s just something about the chorus that really, really makes the song for me. “I get/Caught up in your heartstrings/Way up/Where another sky hangs” is just such beautiful imagery, and with the sounds gives a soaring sensation.

Man, just writing about it again is making me reconsider my initial ranking of Kindred. There’s more to come from this album later, though.

Music Mondays: "Get It" by Matt & Kim

I’ve been a little busy the last few weeks, explaining my lack of Music Mondays, but I will try and make up for that (this one was actually started on a Monday, at least). To start with, I’m covering “Get It” by Matt and Kim.

I recently got to see Matt and Kim live, and while I’ve liked their music for several years now, seeing them in concert gave me a new appreciation for their music. I honestly have no idea how anyone could keep up that energy night after night of touring.

“Get It” is pretty close to what I would consider a perfect representation of a Matt & Kim song. The duo thrives on its simplicity, with a simple but bouncy and catchy synth riff and drums. For a while, and for some reason I can’t quite articulate, I used to think the simplicity of their music was downside. I can’t see now why I thought that; Matt & Kim’s music doesn’t need anything more than what it is. The keys and drums provide more than enough of a groove to feel lively, and it fits with the lyrics.

The lyrics also gave me that vibe for a while, but like the music, they are exactly what they need to be; super honest and heartfelt odes to happiness, with an infectious catchiness. Again, here “Get It” fills the Matt & Kim idiom, with lyrics about enjoying the night. Matt belts “At 1 AM, oh yeah/goddamn, goddamn/we don’t want to go home”, about making mistakes, and so on.

I suppose that all feels very vague and superficial on paper, but to music, it works. And in concert? Well, that’s part of my new appreciation. For as easy as it may be to assume otherwise, Matt & Kim are totally sincere about all of this. Being able to tour is, to them, quite clearly a rush. This is the pair of them, just making the music they want to, enjoying life and celebrating with other people, putting all of that out there for an audience. Seeing it all together only reinforces how catchy everything about their music really is.