I apologize for having been away for a while. Tonight I offer a picture:
For some reason, Dr. Strangelove has been on my mind. (Well, to be honest, Peter Sellers’ unsettling and funny performance is seldom far from my mind.) So I thought I’d try and capture some of his malicious glee. I added a little bit of mazery behind him, to portray the twisted dead-end-edness of his mad logic. (By the way, an amateur lexicographer today was surprised to learn that “ratiocination” is a word. Perhaps it’s the time I spent studying the epistemology of Thomas Aquinas, but I thought that was a somewhat common word. Common or not, it’s a fun word, and it sounds like a little maze.)
So I’m just going to do a short review today; it’s for “Take Me to Church” by the Irish singer-songwriter Hozier.
Take Me to (Noisy) Church
First off, I really like this song. The guy’s got an excellent voice, and brings a sort of wicked worldly charm. And this song is a knowing and sexy sort of male torch song; mired irredeemably in minor chords, it seeks “no absolution” for its brazen sensuality.
If the Heavens Ever Did Speak
Something that this song really gets right, though, is the instrumentation. It opens with lazy chords on a piano, accompanied by those throaty vocals. Then, about 30 seconds in, we get the buzzsaw rasp of the electric guitar, plucking out a counterpoint in the bass register. The drums come in, echoey and distant; joined as well by a hushed and far-off choir. Then, all but the piano drops out as Hozier sings (wryly) several Amens, leading into the chorus:
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life.
So he’s cleverly inverting several keystones of Christianity in this hymn to his woman, his church. There is definitely something astute in his association of Christian worship with sexuality; Christianity is a decidedly corporal faith, having been instituted by a god who wanted a body. Not only that, after having been put to death, he chose to take that body back up again, promising his followers a similar resurrection. He left a mandate that he should be remembered in a meal; as if that weren’t physical enough, he then told his followers that when they ate those memorial meals, their bread would be his body, their wine, his blood. One would think that, given such a foundation, the resulting church would exult in the bodies of its constituents; as Hozier manages to point out, that has seldom been the case.
In any case, he’s not terribly interested in the chastity of Christendom. He’s drunk on the sex of his lover, and uses some evocative images:
That’s a fine looking high horse
What you got in the stable.
It’s not Shakespeare, but it gets the point across. So, lyrically, there’s a lot of cleverness here. And, as I’ve said, the music is strong, instrumentation is interesting, and I really, really like the fuzz on the rumbling guitar.
Something Meaty for the Main Course?
But is it a great song? I really don’t think it is. I’m not even going to touch on the places where I think he’s skewering not actual Christian doctrine but only a parody thereof; nor will I dwell on the utter lack of nuance in his own expression of sexuality. No, I think the music itself is flawed.
The first flaw that I noticed is the lack of silence; I’ve heard rap songs that leave longer breaks between the verse and the chorus. The guy hardly takes a breath in this song. I don’t know if that’s because he’s infatuated with his voice, or he simply hasn’t learned how to share the song with the instruments, and a bit of silence.
For contrast, I’ll offer up an older song; one of my all-time favorite guitar pieces. Every time I hear a guitar playing with some really well-balanced distortion, I think of Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival.” (The video that that links to was somewhat edited, so you’ll be missing a bit of the breathing room I’m referring to, but that’s how the music industry works sometimes. Who wants to sit through 6 minutes of gorgeous guitar and layered vocals?)
This song is great. It starts out with some bongo drums, eventually joined by a guitar line that is sparse, with long gaps between the riffs; in between, a great bass line ambles around the song. The two string instruments give each other space. Heck, the organ doesn’t even begin until after the 30 second mark. It’s nearly a minute before Merchant starts singing. Not only that, but she leaves spaces between phrases, letting the drums and the guitar shine through.
Even the guitar solo isn’t crammed full of notes; the bongo riffs are spare, popping gently in between guitar phrases. And the persistent bass only really asserts itself in the spaces, although the song is mixed well enough that you can hear the bass throughout.
(Incidentally, I really like the bass guitar, and it galls me no end that that instrument is generally relegated to such low volume that you can barely hear it. If you know of any albums or songs with great bass that you can actually hear, leave a comment!)
The Final Countdown
So, the final balance is this: Hozier, you’ve got some real talent. Keep at it, keep practicing the guitar, but give the other instruments a chance to shine. As sensual as your song tries to be, there’s nothing sexy about someone who refuses to share the spotlight.