Sunday Songs: 4/14/24

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: only one question remains…can you dig it?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/14/24

“What’ll I Do” – Lisa Hannigan

A small but vibrant joy of life: songs coming back to you when you least expect them to. Not long ago, I just had a fleeting memory of the chorus, and so I went back through Passenger to try and find the exact song (because I was not about to google “Lisa Hannigan song that goes oh oh oh oh eh eh ah ah ah eh eh”). Luckily, it didn’t take much digging, and now I have this parcel of dancing happiness.

One of the top YouTube comments on the music video for “What’ll I Do” calls this song “the happiest sad song ever,” and there’s really no other way to describe it. Lisa Hannigan does have a penchant for belting out her melancholy, but this one somehow feels happy, even though it’s about a breakup; the lyrics are like watching an slapstick comedy where miserable event after comically miserable event starts crashing down on the protagonist (“What’ll I do now that you’re gone?/My boat won’t row, my bus doesn’t come/And I have the fingers, you’ve got the thumb”), but somehow, they’re smiling through the pain, and clicking their heels for the heck of it. “What’ll I Do” sits squarely at the point where so many bad things have happened to you that you just have to laugh—there’s no use in being miserable anymore, so why not just have a laugh at yourself and do a silly little dance? And Hannigan has juiced that emotion out in barrels, making this circus of bad luck into a full-on show, a folksy singalong that’s begging for a line of cheerful dancers. I wouldn’t complain about that for the music video, but the one that we do have is hilariously fitting as well—seemingly filmed from a phone, the whole video is Hannigan singing the song while on a rollercoaster; the camera shakes incessantly, and she has to break the lip sync at least twice just so she can grab her hat before it flies away. (I get it. We’ve all been there. Currently thinking about this Hello Kitty baseball cap that fell off while I went to Legoland that one time. I never forgot about you…) Like the lyrics, it’s a rollercoaster that’s already dragged you around and thrown you up in the air, making you want to puke, but there’s nothing left to do but have a laugh until the ordeal is over.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Dust Bunny” – Crumb

Crumb? Making somewhat uptempo music? It’s more likely than you think.

…I actually mean that seriously, for once. Other than a handful of songs off of their last album, Ice Melt, Crumb has been known for their calm—gentle, electronic dream-pop melodies that drifted along like the bubbles in a can of soda, and tasted of that same sweetness. At least, that’s how I think of their music—in the past few years, they’ve been the band that my mom puts on when she needs to focus on her (incredible!) art, or just do some cleaning—any task that necessitates some calming of the brain. Crumb have recently announced the release of their third album, AMAMA, which is set to release just over a month from now (!!)—May 17. I initially missed “Dust Bunny” when it was released as a single last year, but now that I’ve listened to it alongside “AMAMA” and “Crushxd,” it seems like some sort of shift is on the way for the band…even if it is just the tempo. “Dust Bunny” has picked up the pace, letting the drums take the wheel as the frantic energy blossoms from the (always plentiful) synths. As evidenced by the underwater-sounding effects on both the instrumentation and Lila Ramani’s voice, they’ve never lost that wooziness that coated their earlier songs like syrup (see “Locket”), but the molasses has melted enough to allow for their constant wiggling to speed up. The lyrics, too, feel like a far cry from “I don’t have class/Got a lot of time on my hands/To sit, wait around…”; just as with the music, Ramani recalls a vignette of panic and guilt: “You’re seeing a ghost/Can’t undo what’s been done/Forever no more/Stacks of clothing fill your room, you/Can’t find one thing to return.” Despite the spaciness of the synths, there’s no doubt that it’s morphed from danceable upbeat to the kind of upbeat that’s only so because it soundtracks the search for your sprinting around the house to try and find your keys 5 minutes after you were supposed to leave for work; or, if we’re sticking to the metaphor, trying to get that one dust bunny out of your dorm before your RA comes to do a room inspection so that they don’t think you’ve been living in a pigsty this whole time. But that panic never overwhelms the music—being so cloaked in color-changing mist and melting shapes as it is, it’s still the same ol’ Crumb deep down.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Can U Dig It?” – Pop Will Eat Itself

Yet another infectious earworm that I have my dad to thank for, and also, I can definitively say that I’ve found it: my favorite band name. I mean, come on. Pop Will Eat Itself? How true is that? And doesn’t it just sound so cool as a name?

If you’re expecting their songs to be a meditation on the nature of pop, as their band name is, I’m not entirely sure if you’d be satisfied. Granted, I’ve only heard two of their songs (including this one—check out “X, Y, & Zee” for more), and neither of them concern their lyrics with such things. What they’ve got is something far superior: four and a half minutes of listing off comics, movies, TV shows, and bands that they like—sorry, dig. And it’s a blast. Aside from the fact that I never anticipated Alan Moore ever being directly referenced in a song, it’s just a catchy, synthy, fandom-fest—I’m surprised that this hasn’t been accepted as some kind of comic con anthem. Plus, there’s the enhancement of the music video, in all of its terrible ’80s CGI glory—lots of old TV sets floating around in the ether and the band members superimposed over panels from Watchmen and The Killing Joke. It’s the nerdiest club banger I’ve ever heard. What else is there to say? It slaps. Glad we can formally acknowledge that Alan Moore knows the score.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

…well, pretty much anything that they mention in this song: The song is basically a reading list in and of itself, so…

“Poo Pants” – Cyriak

It’s a metaphor for capitalism.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The YouTube description: Marx who?

“Somebody Up There Likes Me” – David Bowie

And that’s another Bowie album for the books! As…incapacitated as he was during that period, Young Americans feels like the first album of proof of how easily it came to Bowie to slither in and out of genres as easily as most people stroll through an open door. It oozes with slickness—somewhere in my mental periphery, this album exists solely in a smoky nightclub as midnight ticks by, clammy with warmth and blasting with saxophones. Personally, sometimes the sax went on a little too long for my liking (see “Win”), but for the most part, Bowie knew exactly how much to smear about—and make it sound deliciously raw and sultry.

But sultry isn’t all that the album boasts—Bowie always has something clever and meditative up his sleeve. Fresh off of Diamond Dogs, which was full of the proposed contents for a musical version of George Orwell’s 1984 which he never got to make, Bowie had Big Brother on the brain; the kind of theatricality that what I’ve listened to of Diamond Dogs suits a musical well, but as he turned his genre gaze to soul, it almost feels like he had that sultry quality in mind and turned it into deliberate deception. The subject of “Somebody Up There Likes Me” is the sleaziest of the sleazy—a politician who seems to float amongst his subjects without any fear of retribution: “He’s everybody’s token, on everybody’s wall/Blessing all the papers, thanking one and all/Hugging all the babies, kissing all the ladies/Knowing all that you think about from writing on the wall.” As the saxophone howls, Bowie’s fictional figure struts through the street, stopping once in a while to sweep a woman up into his arms and plant a kiss on her cheek. But every act of generosity is an empty one—this is someone grooming the public along with his own image, putting on a show of authenticity just to get them to cough up the spare change from their pockets. Bowie sums it up in the bridge: “Was a way when we were young, that/Any man was judged by what he’d done, but/Now you’ve pick them on the screen (What they look like).” Fresh off the heels of Nixon, I’m sure this was already closer to the political climate than most people wanted to admit, but I can’t help but think of how this has only been exacerbated—and not just in the 21st century. We got Reagan only a handful of years after Young Americans was released (there’s a “savage son of the TV tube” for you), and the cycle has only repeated itself in the years since. But for me, the genius in this song isn’t necessarily about the message, timely as it continues to be; this song could have been put in any of his albums, but having it on Young Americans makes the sleaze glow like neon. Setting this politician against the backdrop of a distinctly American sound, something that comes off so howling and genuine, encapsulates that political climate disturbingly well—a façade of a clean-cut, American man of the people with charm and sex appeal, but with all manner of evils stowed just out of reach of the cameras. The soundscape of Young Americans begs for some kind of old Hollywood love story, and Bowie knew it—and he took that atmosphere to its most perverse extreme just to make it ring true.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!