Online Notebook

March 18, 2010

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This old track isn’t a very good example of what shoegazer bands are like — not unless you turn it up really, really loud — but it’s a good route to talking about something that’s been on my mind. The world of blurred-out, noise-cloaked, shoegazing indie rock is something I’ve always been partial to. These days it feels more and more like a style I mostly enjoyed Back Then, but I’m still a sucker for dashes of it. So: what’s the point of it, what’s the appeal?

As far as I can tell, it has something to do with mixed feelings. The sounds themselves are mixed up, really — that’s how some bands in this area can seem aggressive and sleepy-narcotized at the same time. (See: My Bloody Valentine.) The core image of a shoegazer, at least guitar-wise, is of someone making a huge, fuzzy, relentless sound while standing mostly still and staring glumly down. In other words, the musician doesn’t have to project personal size or power, doesn’t have to stomp around making grand moves, doesn’t have to control or master everything. (A lot of singers in this world trend toward the meek, pretty, innocent, or frail.) The musician’s being bathed in the same wash of sound as you, really, which sets up an interesting contrast: this is a style of music that’s both passive and active, full of big head-scrubbing noises but also maybe a little helpless in the face of them.

That’s my idea, anyway, and for me it does a decent job of explaining a lot of the emotional states that feel really particular to this kind of music.* It explains these specific varieties of bitterness and frustration you can get out of them — one where someone makes confused sheets of noise with the instrument, getting all kind of catharsis out of that buzz … without trying to make that catharsis about personal power. On the other end of the spectrum, it explains this particular vision of beauty and joy — songs where the guitars are this grand, overwhelming rush that the singers can barely penetrate, where everything’s breathless and relentless and people are very small within it. It explains why some of this music is really good at capturing shades of confusion, resignation, exhaustion, or being overwhelmed. It’s sort of the opposite of someone like Karen O saying she’s “bigger than the sound” — in this world the sound’s always bigger. It wants to be this vast environment that you and the singer’s voice can both wander around in.

The sound on this particular track is relatively soft and contained, of course. The song’s by the Boo Radleys and it’s called “Does This Hurt?” It’s from 1992. But it seems relevant because its emotions feel infinitely mixed. There’s this kind of exploding joy to it — music racing upward and upward, all heart-bursting — but also an ache and confusion in there, like the joy is too much, overwhelming and maybe a little sad. There are shades of pleading and longing. And the lyrics are clearly pretty angry with this Caroline, but they’re delivered in a relieved, sighing way — as if he’s just now come to peace with whatever’s going on. I liked this one a lot when I was younger.

* The fact that some of these states are passive, resigned, or introspective — hell, sometimes even solipsistic — isn’t a big problem for me; those are meaningful states too, after all, and they’re a natural match for hazy headphone listening.

I fucking love the Boo Radleys, especially the album from which this song is taken, Everything’s Alright Forever. But though I’ve written about it in multiple places (here, sorta; definitely here), I’ve never discussed my own take on its emotional content. Which seems odd, in hindsight; as longtime readers are no doubt aware, the emotional content of the music I love is usually my first priority. Maybe it’s something I wouldn’t have known how to put into words. After all, what Nitsuh is saying here makes a ton of sense to me, though I never would have come up with it on my own. And the combination of melody and noise that he finds so interesting is a big part of what I love about this Boo Radleys LP, as I explained five years ago:

I think this is what I like the most about it: it expands on the “melodic vocals and lead guitar overtop extreme volume and scorching distortion” formula that Dinosaur Jr perfected on “You’re Living All Over Me” (another one of my short-list candidates for favorite album ever). Instead of making the division between melody and heavy noise so clearcut between parts and instruments, The Boo Radleys find ways to do all of those things at once, with the same instruments at the same time. The best sections of “Everything’s Alright Forever” are quiet and heavy, loud and melodic, noisy and poppy, all at the same time.

I think ultimately what the “shoegaze” sound represents to me is a simultaneous basking in warmth and beauty and recognition that that warmth and beauty is extremely ephemeral, will be gone before you know it, and that maybe it’s best to just resign yourself now, even while it’s still there, to the fact that it will soon be gone and will leave you feeling empty and alone. Maybe this is romantic music for people who have trouble believing in their own worth, for people who expect that, any day now, their partner will realize their mistake and leave them. This is me all over: I used to put unrequited love songs on mixtapes for girls I was dating. I remember once making a mixtape for a girl and having her call me going, “What do these songs mean? Why does this tape sound like something you’d give someone that just dumped you?” It had never occurred to me that she might hear it that way, but once she said it, it made perfect sense. I could never relax in any relationship. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I could not believe that anyone whose company I enjoyed would actually want to be with me. And I don’t say that in the colloquial “OMG I can’t beLIEVE it!!” sense—I literally did not believe in it. I kept waiting to notice the kick-me sign on my back. The fact that I felt this way led me to outsized fears of abandonment, which affected my behavior in a way that pushed people away. And I always ended up alone—just as I am now. Go figure. It’s no wonder Everything’s Alright Forever, not to mention Nowhere, Raise, and You’re Living All Over Me, have been post-breakup staples. Even when things are going well, I’m waiting for them to fall apart.

11:44pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z-FUayRJNdv

(Notes: 18)