Leaking Pure White Noise

Liz Phair “Nashville” – Maybe I’ve been reading the wrong writers or speaking to the wrong people since the early 90s, but it seems that almost no one ever mentions that the guitar parts on Liz Phair’s first two albums are more often than not as poetic as her words. The tone in “Nashville” is drowsy and nearly serene, but its churning rhythm is nervous and unsteady in a way particular to feeling terrified about losing something in which you’ve invested too much. It’s an interesting subtext for a song that depicts a relationship in its most uneventful yet most emotionally loaded moments, and proclaims “I won’t decorate my love” at the end like a mantra, a promise, and a manifesto.

Of course, when she sings those words, the arrangement contradicts the notion with some sentimental adornment in the form of a few faded saxophone notes and some distant twinkling sounds, presumably an echo of the sweetest thing that Phair sings in this, or possibly any other, song: “They don’t know what they like so much about it / they just go for any shiny old bauble / and nobody sparkles like you.” It’s a genuinely beautiful thing to say, but it’s grounded in an elitism that I find to be human and true, and it speaks to the reality that who you fall in love with is a matter of taste, and some people have better taste than others. Ultimately, this is a song about pride, and the way that it makes love both more difficult in that it keeps you from opening up to just anyone, and more rewarding when you find someone with whom you can feel safe enough to drop your defenses. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

The Breeders “London Song” – The song moves along in fits and starts without ever stopping in place. Sure, there are moments of dramatic silence, but those are there to indicate that the music has hit a peak and is about to roll backwards or drop suddenly in mid-air, rendering its lyrical themes of depression and lapsed sobriety as Sisyphean slapstick. Kim Deal has done many, many rad things in her career, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that the bridge of this song ranks among her top five all-time best moments — “I thought I’d know better….I thought I would knoooooooow!” And right then, on cue, she tumbles back into the chorus like it’s a bad habit. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: Pageblank on work, Bjork, and Matthew Barney, Indexed makes some sense of the world with little hand-drawn charts, and Random Panels presents the four types of Bat-conflict.