In Due Time
I feel foolish when incidental events in my life turn me on to an album I had previously decided I wasn't really feeling (this happened with Battles, as well), but we've been listening to lots of 14th/15th century choral music in this class I'm taking this semester and it's opened up a portal in Person Pitch that I had either not explored or decided was bullshit.
As we've been listening to these pieces (or clips of them), I've become kind of enamored with the idea of these women singing these drawn out notes and vowels that then hang around the ceiling of the cathedral and bounce-off the walls and kind of coalesce into this haze or cloud that hangs over everyone until it slowly dissipates with time, and the idea of these words having almost literal weight seems really powerful to me.
And so, I've been able to connect that idea to some songs on Person Pitch. The way that "Bros" grows organically from within itself is not completely unlike what it sounds like when a chorus draws out a two syllable word over thirty seconds so that every change feels inextricably tied to the action before it. I feel the same way about "Bros," which is kinda crazy since it's 12 minutes long, but it feels totally contained within itself now, whereas I always heard it as a pseudo-hippie beach jam that was background noise no different than the last stoned weekend. The key is in the dissipation, I think. Now, the decresendo during the song's outro seems like the final release of pent-up emotion, where I had always previously heard it as being taken with the wind to neither the delight nor displeasure of anyone.
"I'm Not" owes the biggest debt to choral music, even though it's vocals are highly processed clipped samples. It's masterfully arranged though, so it comes closest to the contained cloud of sound waves, which in turn makes it seem like the most powerful song on the album. The way in which one would have to labor to sing like traditional choral singers did is not unlike the way I imagine Noah Lennox labored to get everything on the song to work and fit together.
Since I'm basically hearing Person Pitch as an adapted work of choral music now means that I find the two most traditional songs here (read: the one's with the most vocals), "Comfy in Nautica" and "Take Pills," to be completely inessential and even distracting if the album is to be evaluated as one long, near continous piece (which it basically is).
The parts that I like still aren't sticking all the time, but I find myself becoming increasingly immersed in the album "Bros" onward, whereas I had always felt I was grasping for meaning, feeling, anything. I don't love it just yet, but I'm certainly getting lost in it. And I'm not asking for much else right now.
Labels: bamboo banger
posted by Jordan @ 10:00 AM
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