Swedish Pop Gene

There is a new indie sensation called Smoosh, a band consisting of 10 and 12 year old sisters from Seattle who write their own songs and play every note of their music. (Ashlee Simpson, listen up.) They are so ridiculously talented it’s kind of depressing. You would think that just the novelty of them being so young would simultaneously perk people’s interest and at the same time doom the duo to mediocrity, but you really do have to take their music seriously - it’s that good. In fact, it’s a lot more accomplished than 90% of what’s out there today.

Their album She Like Electric runs the gamut from cute hiphop tunes like “Rad” to songs with more serious names like “It’s Cold” and “It’s Not Your Day to Shine”. Asya, the 12 year-old, plays piano, writes the lyrics and sings most of the songs, while, Chloe, the 10 year-old, is quite an accomplished drummer.

There is an interview with them on Free Williamsburg (an awesome Brooklyn-based music website - link in my sidebar.) You know they’re wise beyond their years when, in reply to a question about George W. Bush, Asya says:

“I don't like to be mean but I think that he has some really strange thoughts that are not really good.”

Amen, sister. I would be happy enough to end this article with “Just go buy the damn album already!” but I got to thinking. How is it possible that these girls have such a natural ear for music, and moreover the ability to write incredible hooks that most aspiring adult musicians would love to have thought of? Then I figured it out – their mom is from Sweden.

That’s right, Sweden. Now bear with me here because I’ve had this theory brewing for a while. I think there is something in the makeup of the Swedish national genome that makes them the best writers of pop music, almost in a preternatural way.

Exhibit A: Abba – “Dancing Queen”. The single most perfectly constructed pop song in the history of music. It’s got the hook, but it doesn’t take you there right away. “Friday night and the lights are low…” You’re thinking, what the hell, where am I? Isn’t this is a pop song, shouldn’t I have heard the hook by now? We won’t get there for another 30 seconds, we’re just setting you up. “Looking out for a place to go…” End of that stanza in minor.

In classical music this is called exposition, departure, and return. Just like Mozart, they’ll go away and come back, then go away again. “Then when you get the chance, nah-na-na-na-nah-na-na-na-nah-na-na-you-are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen!” I can’t stand it it’s so perfect.

Exhibit B: Cardigans – “Love Fool”. Same deal, intro starts in a minor key no less. Lah lah lah, singing about stuff, then “Love me, love me, pretend that you love me, fool me, fool me, go on and fool me… I cawn’t care ‘bout anything but you…” then back to minor for the verse. Parenthetically, another adorable thing about Swedish pop singers is that they pronounce certain words like Brits because they typically learn British English. Other times, they just blatantly mispronounce stuff. And it’s always a girl singing, how smart is that?

Exhibit C: Ace of Base – “All That She Want’s (is Another Baby)” Not quite as sterling an example, but the same thing – start somewhere else, then hit them with the hook, then make them wait a seemingly excruciating 20-25 seconds to hear the hook again.

I could go on, but I think I’ve pretty much proven that the eugenics program they had in Sweden after the war worked. It may have guaranteed Swedish pop supremacy well into the next century. Poor Hitler, despite his efforts, the best thing a whole generation of aryan spawn could manage was to idolize David Hasselhoff. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Now just go buy the damn album already!

http://www.pattern25.com/bands/smoosh.shtml

Circus Music

I was listening to an Erik Satie piano piece the other day - Je Te Veux, Valse - and at times it reminded me of circus music. The bouncing support of the left hand and the jaunty melody of the right, beyond evoking imagery of swirling Viennese couples, led me to a sense of life as a charade, an expression of the inherent absurdity of any human action. Though presented within the legitimate form of the waltz, I think this is what Satie intended us to hear.

This got me to thinking about the time signature, which is in three instead of four. There seems to be something about it which admits to a caricature of life. Edith Piaf's bitter verse accompanied by accordion, Jeff Buckley covering an old cabaret tune, or the soundtrack to Amelie - all chiming away in three. Maybe it's just French music and the French are fascinated with the absurd. Or maybe it's dance music and thus necessitates a certain amount of frivolous motion. But somehow I keep coming back to the circus.

Now when I was younger, the circus was fun to me. But as I aged I realized it had become such a hyperbolic event that I couldn't take it seriously. Consider all those oil paintings of a clown crying. Is the clown crying because his life is so sad, or because the painting is such a cliche?

At any rate, it seems that the circus has become a good metaphor for the spectacle of human life. Tamers are attacked by their lions, clowns scare everyone, and the acrobats are modern gypsies - it's great they do a traveling show and all but they'd better be gone by Monday. People even use the term to describe something which has gotten out of hand, e.g. media circus.

So when all of the gloss and serious intent is stripped of an event what is left behind? Melancholy. That is ultimately what the circus has to offer. Melancholy over what could have been, over a reality that has become tragicomic. Couched in the colors and bright lights, it is even more unbearable.

When composing the soundtrack to Boogie Nights, Chris Penn happened across an old electronic musical device that would allow you to play tape loops of pre-recorded sounds only with keys like on a piano (or an accordion.) He brought it to director P.T. Anderson to play some of the sounds for him. He chose a tune in three and Anderson was so taken by it that he decided to use it as the intro to the movie.

You hear it playing solo over a blank screen at the very beginning - this strangely mechanical but seemingly familiar instrument playing a sad waltz. Anderson thought it sounded like circus music and would underscore the conundrum of the character’s lives. It is wonderfully poetic, and I didn’t realize how powerful it was until I went back and watched the movie again. He also uses it at the end just prior to Dirk Diggler’s speech in front of the mirror.

Is this what Satie intended - that we should feel like Dirk Diggler in front of a mirror? Perhaps. I think the Stoics had it right with the concept that too much pleasure brings too much pain. Circus music is both at once, repeating in a cycle which mimics life. Aspiration leads to hope, then to joy, then to hubris, then to defeat and finally acceptance. Still life continues on, in that interminable 3/4 beat.