The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Known Associates, the latest album from the Paranoid Style, is most likely to be a hit with people who definitely think too much about pop culture and probably overanalyze everything else.1 It has enough evident charms to win over others, too.
The Washington, D.C., rockers are led by Elizabeth Nelson, an accomplished multihyphenate who’s contributed excellent writing to just about every outlet that could reasonably be considered a heavyweight in modern pop culture analysis. The Paranoid Style’s songs feature exactly the sort of wry, erudite and allusion-peppered lyrics one would expect from someone with past bylines in the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Pitchfork. However, the music is nowhere near as bloodless, high-minded or masturbatory as that description could imply. Known Associates is a fun, if not quite thrilling, album.
The Paranoid Style does take its name from the sort of political essay that spawns a lengthy Wikipedia page, and Known Associates‘ lyrics do include semi- and fully obscure references,2 but the album has a broad accessible streak thanks to the decision to largely use a classic Rock’n’Roll palette to paint the LP’s pictures. Its music is immediate and lively, songs are bite-sized 3-minute-or-so morsels with easy-to-appreciate melodies, and interplay between guitar and saxophone, handclaps as percussion and sporadic background harmonies are prominent sonic features. “White Wine Whatever,” a rollick through present-day ennui, is the apex of this form. It’s a hard-edged boogie with SNL-approved quantities of cowbell and gets a major jolt from Eugene Edwards, Dwight Yoakam’s lead guitarist, and Matt Douglas of the Mountain Goats channeling Clarence Clemons. It’s simultaneously droll, an effective homage to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers-era output and a ton of fun.
This ultra-approachable and referential sensibility is often reflected in the lyrics, which Nelson usually delivers in a delightfully inconsistent cadence. Nelson plays with meter like an accordion, sometimes stretching syllables a long way and othertimes condensing words into a rapid, staccato burst to preserve rhyme scheme.3 That potentially polarizing style makes it easy to clock the crowd-pleasing references to Bruce Springsteen, Talk Talk and Joni Mitchell when they pop up. The blasts from the past can also be more opaque and belabored. Two entire songs — “It’s a Dog’s Breakfast (for LR)” and “Elegant Bachelors” — take their inspiration from wildly popular Baby Boomer icons Linda Ronstadt and Don Henley. These tracks seem to draw their sounds from their respective subjects’ oeuvres, which makes for fun listens. The latter lionizes Henley the songwriter while puncturing any sense of grandeur surrounding Henley the man.4
The former is a romp from one chaotic scene to another that punctuates each verse and chorus with “It’s a dog’s breakfast,” an idiom used in the non-U.S. portions of the English-speaking world to describe a complete mess “A Barrier to Entry” reaches back even further into pop music’s past for a vocals-guitar call-and-response extremely reminiscent of “California Sun.”
That the breezy, instantly familiar tune also features a Sonic Youth reference is completely in character for the album.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Five, Episode Five
“He’s doing, uh, what do they call it… Cruising you there.”
“You’re staring at my stumps, aren’t you?”
“No! Nonononononono.”
“Well, I was.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I prefer honesty to cowardice.”
“Once I was Eric, the waiter with hands for hands.”
“What act are both actors in these scenes performing?”
“The anal sex is pretty incidental!”
“Are you a crook coz you didn’t eat your vegetables?”
“Why are you telling us?”
“Coz I told a fireman and he didn’t care.”
“A couple of hours? That gives me just enough time to explain how insects work.”
“Butchie and I are reclaiming our self-loathing.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Smitty. I just blew up the Bridge of the River Queer.”
“I’m from a race of immortals.”
“Well, it’s good to see they’re overcoming their lookism.”
These skits are endearing for showing things really have not changed at all.
“I had a friend named Don once. I saved his life.”
“Thank you?”
“Are you on death row?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t get the discount.”
“When you go to a restaurant, do you order slightly used food?”
On the purely anecdotal basis of “how much do I want to start using these on a regular basis even just from reading them as a disconnected series of quotes without context,” I feel like this must have been an especially good episode.
Film buff!
Small Prophets, first two episodes – new series from Mackenzie Crook, and it’s definitely in the same melancholy, witty register as Detectorists, but with a fantastical twist that is only just starting to really kick in by the end of the second episode. For the most part this is great, feels like a familiar vibe but interestingly different subject material. I’m not sure the supporting characters are quite as well observed though, there are a couple of extremely broad performances that are just bouncing off me a little bit. But I trust Mackenzie Crook, and everything else seems perfectly calibrated, so I’m giving the benefit of the doubt for now.
Countdown – NASA, desperate to beat the Soviets to the Moon when it looks like the Reds are about to get there, rolls out its emergency plan: land a Gemini capsule on a one way trip and have the astronaut stay in a shelter till Apollo can get him. I had this on my list already, but it jumped to the front of the line as Robert Duvall plays not the astronaut who is send out there but the one was trained for the job, only to be bumped because NASA wants a civilian (James Caan). Duvall and Caan are pretty good, but nothing here is particularly high energy, which is shocking since the director is Robert Altman. (I have my issues with Altman’s storytelling choices, but not his ability to direct.) Fair to say that Jack Warner and producer William Conrad wanted a far more conventional movie than Altman did, to the degree that most overlapping dialogue, even in Mission Control, was edited away, plus there is a seemingly happy ending Altman did not intend. But every so often there are some great shots, such as how the light shines off Caan’s visor. RIP Robert Duvall.
The Practice, “This Pud’s for You” – Lindsay is arrested for murdering her stalker, and acts increasingly irrationally. Everything about this plot is badly conceived, especially when compared to when Bobby was arrested (and dear lord, why are we doing this again?). And hard not to feel some sexism in Kelley writing Bobby on trial as agitated but calm and Lindsay as having a breakdown. Meanwhile, Rebecca defends someone in a murder trial, one without a body, only it turns out the seeming victim was kidnapped instead. Oh, and for no good reason the suspect is obsessed with having people touch his “puddy.” The sharks are circling.
MASH, “The Interview” – It’s Clete Roberts Day, as the longtime LA anchorman had a bit part as himself in Countdown, and a big role here as a reporter who is at the 4077th to interview the principals about their work and lives. While there are some laughs here, this one is quite serious as we get a little inside the minds of everyone (except Margaret, as Loretta Swit is still on Broadway). Larry Gelbart did something risky that pays off: he interviewed each actor and had them answer the questions in character, in essence letting them write the show with him. It really worked, and I think both shows how well the cast got their characters and sets a further baseline for who they are. Especially Hawkeye, who is even now on the knife’s edge. This ends Gelbart’s run on the show., There are still some great years ahead, but no one was as good at putting the right words in folks’ mouths.
Oh, “The Interview,” such an incredible episode. I may have to rewatch this tonight.
Primal, “Cavern of Horrors”
The giant boar’s dangling breasts sloshing back and forth, heavy with milk, is surely one of genre’s most visceral images of monstrous motherhood.
This is an especially good Mira episode, as she gets to be especially capable and drive the action while making use of her particular skills, especially her facility for communication (she does indeed successfully manage to explain to Fang that he can’t come along on the rescue because his rotting scent will alert the boars)–only to get foiled by the fact that not everyone has those gifts, even if they have the technical capability. Everyone in the pit can probably speak, but language doesn’t mean much in the face of the, ahem, primal need to get away from being eaten, so they quickly overwhelm the rope Mira’s thrown down and accidentally sabotage their own rescue attempt, at least at first. There’s a genuine punch to the way all these people are waking up and immediately going for the rope, not pausing at all to even alert their companions. In a way, it’s more powerful an example of primal urges than we saw in the Charles Darwin episode.
Fang’s ongoing inability to reconcile with the resurrected Spear is hurting my heart, but Spear is becoming more and more himself, and recovering more and more memories, in his attempts to reach her.
Fang’s kids continue to be the best. Them lapping water out of Spear’s hands!
Inside No. 9, “Misdirection”
A tight, fun, twisty example of all the show’s traditional strengths. Shearsmith plays an up-and-coming magician who, at the episode’s start, murders a more experienced but less ambitious colleague (Pemberton) for the secret behind his new and incredible floating chair trick; years later, when that illusion has propelled him to the top of his career, a young interviewer with a few tricks up his sleeve (Fionn Whitehead) comes asking questions. The plotting in this in so satisfying in that dazzling magic trick way. (“Yes. I see now.”) The episode also introduced me to the term “mountweazel,” which I’m going to use at every available opportunity. Still feeling very delighted whenever I think about this.
The Pitt S2E3 had me crying a lot even when it’s indulging in some fine cheese. I wonder if the cheese works because these kinds of incidents happen in real life, like the husband and wife having argued before something terrible happens to them both. The actors playing the patient with the tumor and his ex-wife were heart wrenching too, a lot of this is gravitas and a sense of history. At least the race car family are extremely funny, I happen to know taking too much of that cholesterol medicine is a bad idea.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – GET UP, SER! Great television with a rousing climax and more heartbreak for poor Dunk, forced to lose another good person in a world that is hard on honorable people (and more crying on my part).
What did we listen to?
”Nobody Like You”, Lou Reed and John Cale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR58NaOHMnI&list=RDKR58NaOHMnI&start_radio=1
Style and Form
Like the majority of Songs for Drella, this is stripped down, even by Lou Reed’s standards – not just in the literal instruments, but in the emotion. The steadiness and plodding would be tedious if it weren’t a sincere expression of grief, and the point where you’ve processed it enough to simply say it without being lost in it. It fascinates me that this has fewer chords and an even simpler structure than, say, “Sugar, Sugar” and yet hits so much more profoundly – helped, of course, by the story of Andy Warhol, which this song picks apart.
Melody and Harmony
The chord structure is the exact same four chords – A, D, E, then A again – over which Reed has fun playing with a melody that comes and goes faster than you’d anticipate (he wisely saves switching to spoken word until the very last line of the very last verse). A is a very determined key; not quite heroic, like G, but more cheerful than D. I like that the melody very slowly climbs up and then back down, like the rising of effort and tension is slow but steady – like when you turn back and realise you’ve walked much further than you thought.
Arrangement
This is just an acoustic guitar, a bass, an unexpected electric guitar in the bridges, and Reed’s completely vulnerable voice. I think he’s actually put his mouth closer to the mic than normal to really have you feel everything he’s feeling. I’m intrigued by how the bass riff is carrying so much of the sound; like a ticking clock that climbs and falls with the melody.
Intro
This almost begins in media res, with the entire chord progression we’re going to be playing with.
Verse
The simple, repetitive nature of the chord progression and music really allows Reed to play around with the melody here; very Dylanesque in how he sometimes comes in before the chord progression has started. There’s a sense to this song that Reed is letting his thoughts wander, which is amusing and sad in contrast to how clear-eyed and certain the lyrics are.
Chorus
This is the exact same music as the verses, but with a different melody and a refrain, and of course being half the length, allowing the listener to speed through it without it feeling tedious.
Bridge
This guitar sounds incredibly, unbelievably sad, especially compared to the vocals. I struggle to articulate the sound and feeling here: it feels as if Reed is plucking at the strings hard enough to make it feel like a percussion instrument. The solo is just playing the melody, but it sounds like it’s begging and barely holding together in the process.
Outro
A repetition of the chorus, but with all the instruments dropping just before the final line, making it sound like the song has evaporated.
Final Thoughts
The interesting thing about this song is how it’s so specific to Warhol and his legend – it’s a look at Warhol under the ironic pose he put up and a rejection of it (“I really care a lot, although I look like I do not”), but one that still depends on the legend of that pose for its full power. Just from the sense of conveying as much detail in as few words as possible, this is a masterwork; it makes Warhol sound like someone who was just playing all the time. At the same time, this hits at something universal about grief; knowing someone well enough to see the motivations behind what they’re doing, and to have picked up on details that a less close observer might miss (“At dinner, I’m the one who pays”). To love someone is to notice them.
And even beyond the meaning and even emotion behind the verses is the emotion behind the music – I couldn’t imagine anyone less like Andy Warhol than my dad, but somehow this sounds like how I feel about him. “I’m still not sure I didn’t die”, coming in the final verse, is the line that hits the hardest – obviously, referring to Warhol surviving the gunshot, and in fact I’d bet money on it being something he said in life, but it also sounds like something Warhol is posthumously considering. When a person dies, it feels like they’re still around somewhere, just around the corner – especially in how you constantly dream about them once they go.
Most notable podcast of the week was an episode of Hoax! about how PT Barnum “leased” an elderly enslaved woman from another showman to put on display and claim she was 161 years old and George Washington’s wet nurse. Barnum was such a wonderful person.
Truly the Greatest Showman (2017)!
They touch on the movie (which neither likes in the first place), and really wish it had been totally fiction instead of a hyper-whitewashed account of a real person’s life. And also suggest s serious movie about the real con man, racist, and general asshat is overdue.
I was mildly stunned when the movie originally came out because I thought most people knew Barnum was a piece of shit.
I was stunned there was a second musical about Barnum.
Mostly been listening to my pals who are also taking part in February Album Writing Month, although my own output has been way down this year. Everything is exhausting.
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Critical Darlings, Frankenstein – interesting discussion of the technical / craft categories and Guillermo del Toro’s current status as a regular Oscar darling even when his films get a mixed reception. I’m generally in line with the consensus on this one, Elordi is good but there’s not much else in it that really delivers and it feels like there are plenty of other more deserving films in any category where this is eligible.
Blank Check, You Were Never Really Here – of the three Lynne Ramsay films I’ve seen, this is the one I got closest to enjoying (if that’s the right word). The film they’re talking about definitely sounds better than the one I saw though! I think this just isn’t my kind of filmmaking.
Live Music
I was able to make it to Seattle to catch the last show in Sprints’ North American tour. They sounded fantastic, played with contagious energy and brought the sold-out house down.
Um, Jennifer? opened and were cheeky, chaotic fun.
Podcasts: Double dose of Blank Check that was really fun, Send Help and You Were Never Really Here. Now I want to rewatch the latter which I loved at the time. Been deep into Spectrevision Radio’s fare as well, which includes the slightly by the numbers We’re Not Meant To Know, a horror fiction podcast, and Lodge Tales, which is unique as these things go. A member of the Blackfoot tribe interviews other indigenous guests about their supernatural encounters.
Music: The guy who wrote A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Steven Lutvak, also made albums! Two melodies from the musical are used in his 2011 album Ahead of My Heart and in some ways this is what I expected – Cole Porteresque, witty, queer piano pop – but is also sweetly vulnerable and romantic. Highlights include the title song, the acidic “Exit Right”, and “Museums”, a portrait of his childhood touring museums with his father.
Nobody Lives Here Anymore by Cut Worms, a mix of Flaming Lips and fried alt-country, I’m digging it a lot. Friend sent it to me as they’re playing Philly in April. Tav Falco and Panther Burns’ Behind The Magnolia Curtain is good but I might need to be firmly in the mood for it.
Cut Worms sound interesting! Will give them a listen for sure.
I’ll second the Cut Worms recommendation! I really liked their 2023 self-titled.
There’s both Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Buddy Holly influence on that one, but it never sounds overly derivative or tired.
Year of the Month update!
This February, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
This March, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, TV, etc. from 1980.
March 5th: Cori Domschot: The Music Man
Mar. 23rd: Bridgett Taylor: Magnum PI
I’ll take Gaucho for Mar. 19th.
Oh hey, I was under the impression that I’d booked Raging Bull for March 2nd. I’ll also take 9 to 5 for March 16th please.
Hell yeah Paranoid Style! I need to pick this up, Nelson is the only person I can imagine writing and singing a sympathetic Don Henley song (well, Warren Zevon is out of the running at this point). Great description of her singing style. I’m a huge Mendoza Line fan and I think Timothy Bracy tried for this, and hit it a lot, but without Nelson’s enunciation and bite, but he can stil play a solid guitar in the backing band.