A Poorly-Sourced Discussion About Meticulousness

by Chris Willie Williams

I may be paraphrasing or misremembering entirely, as I cannot locate any corroborating evidence for this memory, but I recall Tara Key of the fine indie-rock band Antietam discussing what she called “the moment” when recording songs. Essentially, she used that term to describe little details in songs that push them from being good enough to great. Moments where something is added or changed in a song and your lizard brain gets goose bumps, turning you into some sort of hybrid reptile/bird creature. (Again, I do not affirm that this is the exact metaphor Key used when defining “the moment.”)

Think about Kurt Cobain in Nirvana's “Lounge Act,” leaping from a disinterested sneer to a scarifying shriek for the final verse and chorus. (Or when his wife did the same thing at the end of Hole's “Doll Parts.”) 

Or the drum fills in “Fire and Rain” by noted Lothario James Taylor, who I assume but cannot confirm may once have remarked, “I really wanted the drums to subtly up the intensity, like putting nipple clamps on the song.”

Or when David Byrne's voice is suddenly multiplied on Talking Heads' “Animals” as he falls into a paragraph of lunatic railing about how animals “ought to be more careful/They're setting a bad example.”

Or even when nothing particularly different happens but everything suddenly falls into exquisite, blissfully-arranged place, like Boots Riley finding the perfect mix of words and rhythm for his fancypants-accented patter on The Coup's “We Are the Ones” at any number of points (e.g., “The intensity was fortified/As I clutched five digits on the .45/Belly-down at the retail store/I would detail more/But I don't wish these actions to be glorified”).

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, spurred by both positive and negative examples. On the sunny side, I recently spent a few days obsessed with “Lonely Ghosts” by O+S. It starts off as a typically pretty singer-songwriter exercise from Orenda Fink, but in the chorus, she and her piano are joined by the deep harmonies of Remy Zero's Cedric LeMoyne as well as a haunting, backwards noise loop. These elements are mixed at a barely-perceptible level, but they literally give me chills when they ooze in behind Fink as she sings, “Like lonely ghosts at a roadside cross/We stay because we don't know where else to go.” It's like staring at a hidden mother photo, with Fink as the child oblivious to the sepulchral, black void closing in behind her. It's beautiful.

On the crummier side, Sirius XM recently played me a tune by the insufferably-punctuated pop-punk-emo band Plain White T's. This mess consisted solely of their singer and an acoustic guitar spending numerous identical verses and choruses listlessly circling absolutely nothing. I did not time it, but judging by feel alone, the song must have lasted around 9 x 10^26 expansions and contractions of the Universe.

Now, I am on record as liking a lot of drone-rock/ambient artists whose static minimalism is a point of pride for them: Brian Eno, Stereolab, Microstoria, etc. When done right, those artists prove that sometimes “the moment” will come to you if you're patient enough. Hell, during live performances of “You Made Me Realise,” My Bloody Valentine will often provide upwards of a half-hour of nothing but ear-damaging feedback, until they can look out into the audience and tell that the whole swarm is experiencing a sort of sensory-overload transcendence otherwise available only through ill-advised-but-fun medication interactions. But the Plain White T's' motivations were clearly far less admirable on this song. Its lyrics may as well have been, “Let's half-ass a 'sensitive' song/It worked for Green Day with 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)'/And then we'll just sit back and wait to be invited on Good Morning America/I assume they have musical guests sometimes.”

I know studio time is expensive, and I know there are a lot of great songs that don't reach (or even reach for) “the moment,” but to me, much of the joy of making as well as listening to music is messing around until you hit upon something you think is special. Particularly with the recording software and equipment that's available even to the cheapest and ugliest musicians these days. So please remember, my dear Discorders & Rhymers, that there's no excuse for not at least trying to find a facet of each of your songs that could give it the momentum to achieve momentousness.