More vs. less?

Early curiosity in art forms for me meant attraction to the largest. I was transfixed by the shelf full of James Michener books my parents had. Hawaii, The Source, Chesapeake all loomed on the very top shelf of our living room, daring me to dive in.

But surprisingly, to me anyway, my dad spoke of those giant novels with nothing but contempt. Hawaii, he said, contained “50 pages on how to make poi.” The rest was “dreck,” “boring,” and worse words. So why did he have them again? Maybe my mom liked them?

That was the opening gambit in a lifelong attempt to determine whether length – in words and music especially – was a virtue or a vice. This attempt is ongoing and probably will never reach a satisfactory conclusion. The best I can do at this point is attempt to determine whether length played a meaningful part in helping the artist express his or her desired intent. But I have no intention of ever asking an artist whether or not that was the idea – to go long for a particular reason or to go short. No, I’d much rather speculate. It’s a lot less work and a lot more fun.

This will be the first in an ongoing series of posts where I try to determine the motivation behind length of songs or pieces of music, whether or not there are any clues left behind by the artist. I start this week’s installment with

No one packs 2:15 like Britt Daniel. This is the entire scope of a relationship in less time than it takes me to make toast. Why so short? Clues are elusive; I’m not sure that the melodic elements need more expansion, and the lyrics certainly don’t. But perhaps – just speculative – there’s the notion of the long and the short of this relationship captured in this song.

Because the major key and the first line “If there’s anything you want…” have you hoping and believing a happy song is in store. Yet “come on back ‘cuz it’s all still here” deflates that hope – but not quickly. Notice the extensive pause between lyrics. Sure, it allows the guitar to build momentum, but it does much more than that. The pause allows the hope to build – just enough so that when the balloon bursts, it’s even more devastating. And the resigned tone he uses to deliver most lines really pays off this time. Another long pause, then “I’ll be in the back room drinking my half of the beer” – this relationship’s equivalent of a custody agreement? In any case, the picture unfolds slowly, but in incredibly vivid snippets.

In my mind, this is exactly what Britt Daniel had in mind. Tell a big story – a long story – in a short amount of time. And don’t tell it all at once. Peel the onion, don’t rip everything apart in the first few lines. Play with pacing to the point where the song basically bursts out of the other end – when suddenly the chorus becomes half its previous length and the lyrics burst forth one right after the other until they stumble to a rambling halt. The whole teeny tiny package leaves your head spinning. And I can’t help but think that keeping the song short was part of the thought process. Why? what statement does that make? Is a relationship too short once it’s over but slow to blossom and unravel when you’re in it?

Next, we consider the opposite end of the spectrum:

So who in their right mind starts an album with a nine-and-a-half-minute song? Insouciant Canadians do. So let’s look for clues – why? Here’s Dan Bejar in a 2006 interview with Matt LeMay at Pitchfork:

There was a lot of shit I wanted to say in “Rubies”, and I wanted to say it as close to all at once as possible. I don’t really see it as one of the key songs on the record, though I like it, and I actually get a kick out of playing it live, which I didn’t think would even happen.

So, uh, yeah, basically no reason. Lot of shit to say. From a musical standpoint, there isn’t a great deal of stretch here, though what is here has grand charms in the overdriven melodies backed by chiming keyboards and a driving shuffle. Set pieces emerge, a verse, a wordless chorus, a break, all accompanied by stabbing drum fills that seem to pound the inside of your skull. About the 4:35 mark it settles into an airy groove, which eventually breaks down a bit with the reintroduction of the fills, and then at 6:30, we begin the 3-minute intimate coda with Bejar and his acoustic guitar, strummed only mildly competently. None of this ranges far outside the basic 1-4-5 chords (the occasional 6).

I have been casting about since buying this album to determine exactly what the purpose of the thrown-together lyrics is. I see a number of musical references and a number of themes intertwined – themes that appeared in earlier works by Destroyer and that appear later in this album. There’s some obsession with late 60s R&B; could this be a shot at the American Underground he seems to love to poke at on this album? What makes these themes work as a nearly-10-minute mishmash.

I couldn’t tell you 100%. Which is why I’m inclined to say that this song overstays its welcome. Not by a tremendous amount – mind you, the ability to invert the typical acoustic-to-electric song format used by many other rockers, allows this song to go on a bit longer than others without losing its edge. However, there is a stretch – the groove stretch – where the sidelong rapidfire thoughts out of Bejar’s mouth are missing and the result is significant boredom. There’s not a particular thematic element to that section, just a settling in, and I’m not sure that serves this song well.

So consider that a work in progress. And with that said, I want to move back a few years to the music that really got me started thinking about what length means in a particular piece:

On a long-forgotten-but-recently-recalled trip to Colorado back in ’87, I brought a recently purchased cassette of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, in part because I knew my parents didn’t approve of any art music written after 1900. This one, in the research I had done at the time (before the Internet), had been described most often as violent and tragic. Primarily composed and first performed at the end of 1953 after the death of Joseph Stalin, who twice renounced Shostakovich and his work as a formalist, it is frequently interpreted as the cathartic moment when the composer determined that he was free to compose, to really unleash himself. I think all this is evident in these, the first two movements of the symphony, and both have the additional feature of being jaw-droppingly different in length from each other. Surely there’s something to that, right?

Let’s take the traditional interpretation of these two movements. The first is a tension-filled epic that clocks in at 25 minutes in some interpretations (this is what I love about classical music; the piece length is in no way fixed other than by an individual artist or a symphony recording it at that particular moment). It makes a slow climb from a primordial low-string ooze into a variety of sweeping, buffeting runs and finally to a full climax at the 13-15 minute mark (depending on the recording). The ups and downs seem fairly reminiscent of Shostakovich’s experience with the brutal Stalin regime, perhaps a nod to everyone’s experience. It is no doubt an emotional roller coaster.

But why so long? What strikes me about this movement is how the length flattens the edges of the structure. In what appears to be a narrative piece about the regime, Shostakovich stretches the lines that might otherwise provide some form (the form in formalism) until they are almost unrecognizable. He renders a picture of an abjectly tortured citizenry while only hinting at the classical structures that did in fact inform much of his work. Dragged out to 25 minutes and therefore hard to track and understand in the same way as in a more compact movement, is it possible that these structures are no longer the central point of the work but yield that ground to the emotional connection this music seeks with the victims of Stalin’s rule (Shostakovich being among the primary victims)? Perhaps also, in the arbitrary and capricious judgment of Stalin and those in the regime who called him a composer overly concerned with music form at the expense of mass appeal, he saw an opportunity to turn out an intensely personal work for himself and the masses.

And how to interpret the much shorter second movement? Generally, interpretations are that Shostakovich is portraying the Stalin regime in short form. In my mind, it’s Shostakovich dancing on Stalin’s grave. In anger. That’s the sort of thing you cannot stretch over 20 or even 10 minutes. A short violent burst of energy and movement exorcises the demons quickly. He meets brutality with brutality and has the last word. In fact, horns that enter at about the 2:45 mark (again, depending on interpretation) to me mock the former regime. Again, no need to draw it out. This should have as many rough peaks as the first movement had smoothed-out curves. The best way to achieve that is to compress it, which Shostakovich does masterfully.

Granted, interpreting works like this is far from science, exact or inexact. So consider this the opening of an ongoing discussion about composer/songwriter motives and techniques concerning song and piece length. I began the evening hoping to provide a coherent post with an answer and eventually (with some help from a good friend) realized I wasn’t going to get there. But the seeking of that answer – whether we find it or not – is far more fascinating.

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Further note: I have to issue a correction. Over the past several days, I have had the chance to revisit, on repeated occasions, Lisztomania by French fancy boys Phoenix. I was lukewarm to it on my Jersey ride a couple of weeks ago, but having invested it with the power of decent headphones and a good quiet space in which to listen to it, I have in fact been won over by the charms of Phoenix’s meticulous, fastidious arrangements. The point-counterpoint here is bouncy rhythm-esque guitars gliding along on a conveyor belt of synth sound. Once I really heard them together, I was hooked. Perhaps it’s not the most original music, but no matter. I declare it witty and addictive on its own merits.

The title of the album it’s on? Not as witty.