tim. (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} o_song) wrote,@ 2007-01-20 22:50:00 |
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Top 10 of 2006. #01. Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
EMI Records
"Dead Meat"
(3:38, 4.84mb)
Track 1.
"Parachute"
(3:19, 4.42mb)
Track 3.
This album got so-so reviews, mostly because people didn't dig much deeper than the surface. He's someone's son apparently. And as a result rich and famous. He looks a lot like both of his parents. Join dots. Dismiss.
The thing is, the deeps of "Friendly Fire" are where it hits. Lennon's singing initially seems kind of emotionally flat, but with repeated listens it becomes obvious that it's not emotional flatness, but, instead, understatement. The songs on Friendly Fire are full of very strong emotions - bitterness, anger, fear, dread, sadness, regret - but Lennon understates it all, lets the emotions show through the cracks in his voice. The songs aren't immediately catchy, but after a few listens they've dig in under your skin, and you can't get rid of them. It becomes clear that Lennon is a first class songwriter, along the lines of Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, or Jon Brion.
As I said earlier:
When I first downloaded Friendly Fire, I immediately assumed that Jon Brion produced it. It has that Jon Brion sound; think of the lush orchestration and production style combined with the quirky carnivalesque instrumentation that you hear on records by Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, and Brion himself, or the soundtracks to movies like Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine. The songs are the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on a record produced by Brion - it has the clever Beatlesque chord progressions, the surprising leaps in the melodies, the personal, confessional lyrics. It's actually not produced by Brion. He plays a couple of instruments here and there, though.
Lennon seemed like he had a surprisingly weak voice (especially considering that his father has one of the most powerful voices in Western music) on what I heard from his first album, Into The Sun - you heard him singing flat a little too often. He didn't have the confidence to sell the songs, to harness his voice to the emotions he was singing. His singing on Friendly Fire, in contrast, is affecting. It feels pure. Anyway, I downloaded it and listened a couple of times, and dismissed it mentally as "eh, heard it before". It crept back up on me, though. The melodies insinuated their ways into your life; at first they're unobtrusive, and then they hit you like a sack of bricks.
"Dead Meat" sounds like resignation. It's reminiscent of late-period Elliott Smith, a song like "Happiness" or "Fond Farewell", musically - luscious chords, sophisticated harmonies, complex but understated rhythms (drummer Matt Chamberlain's specialty - listen to the drumming on Fiona Apple's albums). It contrasts with the incredible violence of the lyrics, though, which promise furious vengeance in no uncertain terms. When Lennon sings "you're gonna get what you deserve", he means it. But, in the context of the music, the lyrics take on a different character; Lennon sounds resigned to having to carry out the vengeance. He doesn't really want to, but he knows he should.
"Parachute", on the other hand, is restless, with something underneath the surface that seems profoundly uneasy. A meditation on love, it speaks of the illogicality of emotions, that we have to blindly follow our feelings despite knowing where they might lead us. Lennon seems to believe that we're fated to follow the paths we follow, and can only blindly watch as the path goes in dangerous territory. So thus, "if life is just a stage, let's put on the best show." There's a name for this kind of philosophical viewpoint, but the point isn't really philosophical - the point is more to portray the feeling of knowing you're going to make a big mistake, but knowing you have no choice.
There's a deep core of emotionality on this album that I can hear, that I can't really hear on too many albums from 2006. Maybe other worthy albums were speaking deeper in languages I don't know or didn't hear, but this was the album that moved me the most.
tim.
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
EMI Records
"Dead Meat"
(3:38, 4.84mb)
Track 1.
"Parachute"
(3:19, 4.42mb)
Track 3.
This album got so-so reviews, mostly because people didn't dig much deeper than the surface. He's someone's son apparently. And as a result rich and famous. He looks a lot like both of his parents. Join dots. Dismiss.
The thing is, the deeps of "Friendly Fire" are where it hits. Lennon's singing initially seems kind of emotionally flat, but with repeated listens it becomes obvious that it's not emotional flatness, but, instead, understatement. The songs on Friendly Fire are full of very strong emotions - bitterness, anger, fear, dread, sadness, regret - but Lennon understates it all, lets the emotions show through the cracks in his voice. The songs aren't immediately catchy, but after a few listens they've dig in under your skin, and you can't get rid of them. It becomes clear that Lennon is a first class songwriter, along the lines of Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, or Jon Brion.
As I said earlier:
When I first downloaded Friendly Fire, I immediately assumed that Jon Brion produced it. It has that Jon Brion sound; think of the lush orchestration and production style combined with the quirky carnivalesque instrumentation that you hear on records by Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, and Brion himself, or the soundtracks to movies like Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine. The songs are the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on a record produced by Brion - it has the clever Beatlesque chord progressions, the surprising leaps in the melodies, the personal, confessional lyrics. It's actually not produced by Brion. He plays a couple of instruments here and there, though.
Lennon seemed like he had a surprisingly weak voice (especially considering that his father has one of the most powerful voices in Western music) on what I heard from his first album, Into The Sun - you heard him singing flat a little too often. He didn't have the confidence to sell the songs, to harness his voice to the emotions he was singing. His singing on Friendly Fire, in contrast, is affecting. It feels pure. Anyway, I downloaded it and listened a couple of times, and dismissed it mentally as "eh, heard it before". It crept back up on me, though. The melodies insinuated their ways into your life; at first they're unobtrusive, and then they hit you like a sack of bricks.
"Dead Meat" sounds like resignation. It's reminiscent of late-period Elliott Smith, a song like "Happiness" or "Fond Farewell", musically - luscious chords, sophisticated harmonies, complex but understated rhythms (drummer Matt Chamberlain's specialty - listen to the drumming on Fiona Apple's albums). It contrasts with the incredible violence of the lyrics, though, which promise furious vengeance in no uncertain terms. When Lennon sings "you're gonna get what you deserve", he means it. But, in the context of the music, the lyrics take on a different character; Lennon sounds resigned to having to carry out the vengeance. He doesn't really want to, but he knows he should.
"Parachute", on the other hand, is restless, with something underneath the surface that seems profoundly uneasy. A meditation on love, it speaks of the illogicality of emotions, that we have to blindly follow our feelings despite knowing where they might lead us. Lennon seems to believe that we're fated to follow the paths we follow, and can only blindly watch as the path goes in dangerous territory. So thus, "if life is just a stage, let's put on the best show." There's a name for this kind of philosophical viewpoint, but the point isn't really philosophical - the point is more to portray the feeling of knowing you're going to make a big mistake, but knowing you have no choice.
There's a deep core of emotionality on this album that I can hear, that I can't really hear on too many albums from 2006. Maybe other worthy albums were speaking deeper in languages I don't know or didn't hear, but this was the album that moved me the most.
tim.
