Note: My brother just got married, and all I’ve been doing over the last few days is eating delicious food and wearing suits. So, prepare for a lot of food analogies. I’ll save the tie-tying analogy for next week.
Writing pop songs is a lot like baking desserts (bear with me). A novice would assume that the thing to do is to go heavy on the sugar and just make the damn thing as sweet as humanly possible. I mean, that’s what people go to desserts for, right? Sweetness and excess. However, an expert knows that the touch of salt or mint or basil is what makes for a truly superlative pastry experience. To really appreciate the sweetness of a dish, one needs a hint of something savory and unexpected. The same goes for pop music. Yes, of course, you can’t have a pop song without hooks, just the way you can’t make dessert without something sweet. But great pop songs are always garnished with just enough spice to keep you coming back over and over again. (Two examples off the top of my head: 1. The way the melody in Phosphorescent’s “Pictures of Our Torn Up Praise” pulls back so hard against the tempo that it almost doesn’t keep up with the chord changes. 2. The way Van Morrison sings the entirety of “Who Was That Masked Man?” in falsetto.) Large doses of refined and unmodulated white sugar are what get you factory pop music, and if that’s your bag, you are probably not here on this website reading this essay.
Now, I don’t know if Boston indie pop quartet Hands and Knees can bake a cake (for some reason I want to say no, but there’s no relevant information in their bio. I’ll have to tell them to update it), but I do know that they can write a bouncy power pop song that doesn’t cloy even after you’ve listened to it about 20 times in a row. Their Ampeater A-side “Dancing On Your Tears” is a perfect example, building catchy pop music out of unusual six and nine bar phrases, which phrases consist of brief guitar stabs, counterweight bass syncopation, playful drum fills, and the slurred twin vocals of Carina Kelly & Joe O’Brien (when they’ve been in a band long enough, two people can adopt the exact same vocal ticks to the point where they can double vocal lines that seem undoubleable). Some pop songs are weighed down by their artistic ambitions, but here the two are perfectly in sync. “Dancing” bounds and cascades along with so much enthusiasm precisely because it’s so formally off-kilter. The six bar verse phrase always ends just before you expect it to, crashing headlong into the beginning of the next phrase before you even know what’s happening. Then, in the chorus, the elongation of the lyrics bread and butter (buh-huh-ter) during the break stalls the bands re-entry just enough to make you feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under you, only to fly back into another rambunctious verse. Even the simplest part of the song, the lyric-less bridge, runs out two bars earlier than you’d expect, only multiplying the momentum. All this form-play might sound complicated, but the song leaps along with the boundless energy of a new puppy, and you’d never notice a thing unusual about it until you’d already heard it countless times.
B-side “The Moonlight Is Wicked” is simpler formal fare for the most part, but devastatingly catchy and dotted with major two and three chords that spice up the tonality nicely. It also features some lovely jangle-twang lead guitar over the tagged ends of the choruses and the couplet you like simple fun / I like depression, the brilliance of which speaks for itself. The rolling rim-click percussion in the verses lets the song breathe and hang back until the repeated, saucy you’s bring it to a boil and shove us on into the blissful chorus. It’s a song that’s full of indie pop touchstones: the duel boy-girl vocals, the guitar hook answering the chorus melody, the silly humor of the verse lyrics. Even the verse progression is tried and true. If I wanted to bust out a second totally unnecessary culinary analogy, I’d liken a song like “Moonlight” to a perfect pasta sauce. It’s nothing you’ve never seen before, yet when it’s put together with enough time and care, it can be the most satisfying meal you ever ate. Seriously, be careful with this one, folks. Once you pipe it into your head, it will not want to leave.
Both of these jams come courtesy of Hands and Knees’ new, as-yet-untitled full length, generously made available by the band for free perusal on their Bandcamp page. The whole record is full of gangly energy, popping snare drums and tasty guitar hooks. But not only that. Something about the album makes you feel like you are listening to your friend’s band, if they suddenly got their shit together and started writing really great songs. Hands and Knees call themselves unfussy, and it’s true. There’s something selfless and eager about these songs. They want to tag along and make your walk to work a little easier. They want to give you something to whistle while you’re making coffee. There’s no frills and no needless obscurity, just fantastic pop music with a dash of the unexpected. Heat and serve.
| Side A – Dancing On Your Tears
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Side B – The Moonlight Is Wicked
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If you’ve seen Bela Fleck in concert more than once, either by choice or by force of family who believe this singular artist to be the only point of overlap in your respective muscal interests, then you’ll begin to notice that parts of his concert routine resurface across shows. To the extent that a musical exchange can be scripted, these are, with the most notable example being that of the “virtuoso duel,” in which Fleck’s pitted against a fellow musician in an epic bluegrass shred battle. This alone would be enough to capture the interest of most audience members, and is the point at which I usually start checking Twitter on my phone, but he usually adds in a cute little twist to boot–the challenger is presented as a college educated, formally trained product of the system, while Fleck boasts a mere high school diploma to his name (nevermind that it was from a prestigious performing arts school). Inevitably, Fleck defeats his nemesis, demonstrating the superiority of good old fashioned street smarts and personal discovery over the rigid discipline of the conservatory method. While Bela Fleck’s not exactly your average front porch banjoist, his broad point is a decent one–education is no substitute for true vision and creative inspiration. Keith Hampson dropped out of high school when he was 16, and soon every class on his imaginary schedule read “music.”
“Our sound has been called tweegrunge by some, awkpop by ourselves, and indie rock by others,” explained guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Candace Clement when asked to describe Bunny’s a Swine. While the distinction may be largely semantic, I concur with Clement that awkpop is the most suitable and certainly the most telling classification for this unconventional trio from North Hampton, MA. Those other labels might still apply, but they fail to capture the essence of Bunny’s a Swine. What separates these guys from other indie rockers out there is that they’re so fucking awkward. It hit me the first time I heard A-side “I Should Have Left the Bushes Hours Ago” and numerous spins later, I still can’t get over it. Even if you haven’t heard the music, take one look at the press photo accompanying this review and you’ll probably be nodding enthusiastically in agreement. What could be more awkward than some scruffy hipsters standing in front of a faux-dramatic nautical backdrop striking convoluted poses? Even the name “Bunny’s a Swine” seems pretty awkward. I asked the band for the story behind it and their answer only confirmed my suspicions. “We really liked referring to things using ‘bunny’s a…’,” they explained, “like ‘bunny’s a tour’ or ‘bunny’s a show’ or ‘bunny’s a swingle,’ a reference to a 3 song single CD we made for a weekend tour in Vermont. Its really infectious after a while.” Major-league awkward.
There’s a moment-a bunch of moments, actually-in Jay-Z’s 2009 monster-jam “Empire State of Mind” where, hidden underneath the real-estate shout outs and bends-inducing compression like a C-section scar on a TV actress, you can pick out something wrong, jarring, fucked-up. Tune in at around 21 seconds and you can hear it: this high-pitched clip, like a CD skipping or a steak knife striking a glass table. It’s a strange little imperfection to find in a more or less immaculately constructed pop song, something ostensibly unrelated to musicianship or writing, but still too much there to be considered an oversight. Every ten seconds or so it pops up out of nowhere, grinding at the gears of the chorus, tearing the whole jam apart from the inside out like an armful of bot fly babies.
