by chicken » Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:11 pm
alabaster:
a lot of the music you have talked about on this forum is not familiar to me; thus, there's few comparisons i can make that i think will communicate NMH's music.
a lot of it is acoustic, then agian, a lot of it isn't. it definitely does not have the usual musical construction of your typical pop song that is predictable and so droll anymore. sometimes they have horns come in. sometimes it's quiet acoustic guitars, an harmonium, and gentle reedy percussion.....that slowly builds and then breaks into frantic maniacal music--sometimes the precussion gets so vigorous and intense you want to tell the guy to take a breath.
there's a share of hypnotic patterns, easy to hear stuff.
i just turned on song against sex....one of my all time favs.
it's almost agressive playing for NMH....strong and driving percussion, plenty of layers of guitar, and horns that come in so succintly it should be illegal in civilized nations.
like virutally all music though, there's a vast difference between reading the lyrics versus hearing them sung by the songwrite. jeff mangum has this voice...it floats between mourning and utter despair...and then breaks into this strange exhuberant joy, this celebration of life. and he can hold a note--can he ever hold a note!! i swear he has had the lungs of a whale transplanted into his chest cavity. and it's not just holding a note, it's being able to rattle off line after line after line after line...and i try to hear where he takes a breath, but usually can't pick it up.
"you've passed" just came on. this --almost syrupy-- electric guitar with fuzz. steady simple percussion. and it's all about jeff finding out about his grandmothers death, he wrote it in a closet, weeping his poor eyes out.
you know, you can always buy it, and if you don't like it, pawn it off onto someone else. seriously, music like this should not be buried. and i promise to respect your opinion if you can't stand the stuff, because i've met people who despise the music.
<<time to turn it down, i'm at work and students are curiously peering into my office>>
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