Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
THE SONG OF TODAY IS
Songs are funny. I just recently found a box full of 90's rock cds packed in a long, forgotten closest-- STP, crap like that. Re-listening to this stuff, you realize each one of these dopes made at least a million bucks for their responsibility off a zany chorus, a wet verse, the environment of a beat that lasted, what?...five, six, seven lame seconds over and over and over again? Me toying with a box full of these suckers was almost another form of mutant roulette, so careful. Within the music and that era, if you were able to survive the target of this excruciating jingo, you'd probably go home alone, but the dj would at least give ya one steady nod through the revolving doors, sailing, hearing the widespread current of rock 'n roll and anything else vanishing into the grace of what would begin like this:
It opens as if interrupted, as if you're unannounced (but come in anyway), clashing from some previous mix, organs winding down, a few hand drums rise into the right ear, silence looms for the awakening of a guitar or muted piano that chimes into a fragmented riff speaking breezes of the desert and the unspoken. Bass over echoing vibes pace the left ear rhythm soon to be let loose by the singer under shaking spells of reverb and delay, rolling through secluded verses like everything you dug about the 60's, patiently, psychedelic. You're all alone, he slowly drags into the sudden slam of the drums; the wah distorted guitar climbing the scale up and down into the transient tomahawk of this now furious song; all right up to when the bar ends, the music pauses for forty seconds of levitating feedback, where the whole earth seems to hurl itself into the amplifier resting for the next vast rinse away. Two minutes sixteen seconds, the song has yet to begin, and Queens Of The Stone Age have just defrosted everything about rock digest in "Better Living Through Chemistry" (a lyric adopted from Bjork's Debut); delirious, apocalyptic, smart, rocking. The rest is a meltdown of archaic and dawning symphony. A dazzling chill of sounds, lyrics, and weightless thunder of beats, disappearing, reappearing, invisible. I am.
And if you ask me (go ahead, ask), if there's been anything quite as dynamic and exuberant in the last five years, my answer's no. Seriously. Everything's been boiled down to a bloody compromise; a teleprompter. Music, a jaded casserole of either pop-paste or throat-slitting vengeance (which go back-to-back), anyone shuffling anywhere in between...die. That's why this song's for you, and for that matter, the entire flashing span of Queens' 2000 Rater R album-- easily the most inventive eleven songs so far of musical valentine and Millennium backlash. "The last pair of rollerskates to exit the disco heard this album," somebody with a brain should say. Whether the band intertwined steel-drums through the colors of heavy-prog incentive, or mocked the rings of sub-culture behind whatever space of ex-Kyruss, Zappa goes Soft Machine sound was available, it was sure to relieve the beast, and brains, from within. Most people weld the album as doper-tunes, but what I discovered three years ago (my quick bio: dropped outta highschool, found this for nine bucks during a crisis of youth, that fall heard the Velvet Underground on my parents' turntable, saw Beethoven in it-- changed my life) are the engrossing creations, the new body and sound, witnessed radically in "Better Living Through Chemistry", the fifth track, that is more imaginative than anything else grooming our new tenor. Today. Bush, Ah-nald, Spears, Puffy-- god help us!!! This song does. A primal rescue of tangible rock 'n roll thrown overboard and swimming. Especially when the drums and guitars fade mid-way into the music and all that's left to dive are the slices of cymbals and a choir of exhaling, whoaing vocals, once again followed by the ruffling music entering the ear (in a total trance at this point), where we're soon injected back into the topsy, hypnotic chorus of acid-rock mirage, sounding twice as heavy this time, and three times as beautiful. Although difficult to understand beneath the gliding layer, Joshua Homme finishes:
And no one's here/and people everywhere/you're all alone...
But we're not! Not anymore. Not with these guys answering our cries, and only in this day would we be influenced by such phrases of despair dubbed by music of such intense wilderness and ignition. And although the verse was initially spoken from the mouth of Bjork some ten years back, the jamming impact that Queens slumbers here, it sounds (and may I speak on behalf of all rock 'n roll lovers?) like a dazzling sandman left to dry. Weirdness, romanticism, wit, fun, attitude, the ecstatic, seclusion, drive-- the premium mix of present rock gone lost, now found. Why? It's a lonely world, I guess. Let these five minutes float ya through the halls and walls where its dream is as though you're watching a windshield gradually fill with rain from the inside, looking out, a cocoon abreast. This has always been the rapture of great songs; rock music; to surround and detach the listener to the other alternative nature of hearing and believing (as it continues for me). Myself? I'm here smack in the middle of Queens' fueled tonic, raving its snakedance; a scattering puzzle! There is not a limp moment in the song, nor the record, that doesn't fail to embrace our crave and guide our hunger. The belly of rock is alive! (say it with me): THE BELLY OF ROCK IS ALIVE!! Feels good, don't it? Just like this song. Where music and youth appears corked over in certain realms, "Better Living Through Chemistry" seduces every extreme it all should be combing, all should be living. Windy. Experienced. Charged. Jamming. Searching for the faces this song just spoke.
--Carson Arnold - October 6th, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews and articles written by Carson Arnold. As an independent writer and musician living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
Thanks and enjoy!
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