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Words and Music by Saint Etienne — Saint Etienne

Here’s an album that perfectly expresses the joys of being a music fan. Saint Etienne, whom I’ve written about before, have always captured my attention, my heart, my feet with their sublime and airy pop goodness. Now they’ve created a love letter to pop music—a wonderful musical distillation of how music can shape our lives. Not every song is about music, but that is the keynote throughout the album.

“When I was 10 I wanted to explore the world.” So begins this album. On opening track “Over the Border,” a part spoken word, part melodic gem, Sarah Cracknell, in her breathy Britishness, explains how she used “Top of the Pops as [her] world atlas.” She goes through a personal history of discovering music, from “the strange and important sound of the synthesizer,” to parties where self-discovery and musical discovery went hand in hand, to new releases from Factory Records and Mute. In the end, as the narrator grows older, she wonders, “When I was married and when I had kids, would Marc Bolan still be as important?”

The amazing aspect of this song, as the narrator goes through her personal musical evolution, is that it makes the personal universal. No one listening, especially in the U.S., has exactly the same history. But all music fans have a history, and while I listen to this song, I am really thinking of my history. Instead of Top of the Pops, I had MTV and 120 Minutes. Instead of Marc Bolan, I had Morrissey and Michael Stipe. We both had Mute and Factory, and we both had New Order. But “Over the Border” is everyone’s song—every music lover, that is. A brilliant start to this album.

The album continues with “I’ve Got Your Music,” a simple, poppy dance song about the little joy that we can bring to our lives through portable music. Sarah sings, “When I’m alone in my ‘phones, I feel love in digital stereo,” and the song expresses how music, even when we are alone, can connect us to someone else. I want to bounce down the street listening to this song.

“Heading for the Fair” is vintage Saint Etienne, with Bob and Pete adding layers of synthesizers and mid-tempo beats to a sonic layer cake. Lovely, dreamy — and those other words I use to describe Saint Etienne. Following on those heels comes another mid-tempo confection, “Last Days of Disco,” which seems to tell the story of getting to know a romantic interest during a night out on the town. And the song has just enough strings and blips to allude to disco without being a disco song—not that there’d be anything wrong with that.

A highlight of the album arrives with “Tonight,” a wonderful club song about the excitement of getting ready to go to a concert. This seems like a mundane subject, and the chorus reflects those mundane thoughts we used to have before a show: “Maybe they’ll open with an album track, or a Top 5 hit, no turning back.” But as they often do, Saint Etienne makes the worldly ethereal. This song touches on the naïveté of youth, on the importance we placed on our favorite bands. After all, after this show, “life will never be the same,” and “there’s a part of me only they can see.” Those artists on stage get me. And yes, “this could save my life.”

See the video for “Tonight”

Another early favorite of mine, the downtempo “Answer Song,” just piles on the Saint Etienne layers, resulting in a synth version of a 70s AM radio song. I love listening to this on headphones so I can listen to different layers each time. It’s just a beautiful song.

The album moves on with a variety of dance and mid-tempo songs. Some are straight-on dance pop (“Popular,” “DJ”), but Saint Etienne does pop better than anyone who’s actually on pop radio. Some are more solemn reflections on aging and change (“Twenty Five Years,” “When I Was Seventeen,” “I Threw It All Away”).

Words and Music … closes with “Haunted Jukebok,” another nostalgic reminiscence about music, this time about the peronal connections we make with certain songs.

Saint Etienne has always been a pop band for music fans. With this new album, they celebrate all that music can do in our lives, and they do it in a floaty, dancey, sonically wonderful way. Words and Music by Saint Etienne is music for a beautiful spring day; it’s music for a stargazing night; it’s music for a music-filled life.

I’m going to try this blog thing again.  I’ve started and stopped so many times, but we’ll see how it goes.  The desire to give it another go has been growing.

For this new reboot, I need to say something about the death of Robin Gibb.

My love affair with music began at an early age.  At first I simply listened along to the radio while my dad drove the car or when he played his reel-to-reel at home.  There I was, a five-year-old kid trying to sing along to Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”  Soon, I began picking out records from my parents’ collection for my own listening enjoyment.  Early on—still five years old—I listened to the greatest hits of Elvis, and then I moved on to the Beach Boys.  I knew all the lyrics to “Surfin’ Safari” and would sing along in our newly finished basement.  But I was still just listening to my parents’ music; I had no music to call my own.

But then the Bee Gees came into my life.  Many may scoff, but I am not embarrassed to admit my love for the Bee Gees, especially since they helped make me the music fanatic I am today.  From the immensely recognizable opening beats of “Stayin’ Alive” to the bass and guitar strum of “Jive Talkin’,” I was immediately hooked when I heard the Bee Gees on the radio.  And very importantly, the Bee Gees was my music.  My parents did not listen to the Bee Gees since the disco sound did not seem to mesh well with their current Harry Chapin vibe. So at the age of six, I joined my first fan club, proud that I had something to call my own. 

My most memorable Bee Gees moment came on a family trip to the Cayman Islands, where my grandparents had just bought a home.  My parents, aunt, and uncle wanted to go out for a fun night at the local bar, The Hideaway, and they decided the kids could come along.  My cousin and I decided that this would be Disco Night, since the jukebox at the Hideaway was full of Bee Gees and Donna Summer songs. So we went out on the town, six year-olds dressed to the nines.  The Hideaway was a “locals” bar, so the crowd consisted mostly of native Caymanians and us. 

And my cousin and I were the big hit of the night.  We danced all over the room, swinging around poles, hopping on chairs, spinning each other around, all to the driving beats of “Tragedy” and “Night Fever.” 

As I think about my musical life today, including my passion for electronic dance music and the fact that I worked for years as a DJ at a dance club, it is hard not to feel the omnipresent rhythm of the Bee Gees pounding faintly in my heart.

So rest in peace, Robin, and thank you for helping to give me something to call my own.

When I was in fourth grade, my family bought our first computer, an Apple II +.  It looked liked this:

I don’t remember the exact specs of our computer, but I know that it one could get up to 48K of RAM.

But this computer changed our lives.  My dad used it for word processing, and my brother and I started learning some very basic (BASIC) programming.  My first bit of programming code involved creating a random number generator, and I was very proud.

My cousin and I also created spreadsheets to inventory our stuffed animals.

And my brother and I discovered the first adventure games, and we had one called, I think, “Apple Adventure.”  This game was a text-only, graphics-free experience, and we loved it.  It played a little like this:

Anyway, we continued on with our Apples, sometimes upgrading.  I learned to be comfortable with computers.  Almost none of our friends had computers so early, so we thought we were pretty cutting edge.

Later on, in high school, I learned how to use Macs, as my high school actually had some pretty cutting edge computers for the newspaper and yearbook.  The students on the staff just had to sort of feel our way around these new machines, teaching ourselves the ins and outs of the user-friendliness.

Because of the computers at college, I made the switch to PCs, and that lasted for my 20s and much of my 30s, but I’ve made my way back.  The day I bought my iMac a couple of years ago, I felt a little like I was coming home.

President Obama said that one of the great tributes to what Steve Jobs accomplished is that so many people heard about his death on an Apple product.  I have an iPhone, an iPad, an iMac, and an iPod, and I know I’m a devotee for life.

Since I was in fourth grade, Steve Jobs has made my life better.  This seems like a small tribute, but it’s not, because so many people can say the same thing.

(And I now see that my dad has blogged about the very same thing … )

Some brief thoughts on movies … 

Moneyball

Baseball is pretty much the only sport I really care anything about.  Add a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and throw in the director of Capote (Bennett Miller), and I knew going in that I would like this movie.

Brad Pitt gives a great performance as Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A’s, in this true story of the unorthodox rebuilding of the 2002 A’s team.  (I suspect that Pitt will be nominated for his role here.) To say that Beane and his partners helped change baseball is an understatement—by seeing players as statistics, teams can achieve more success.  But the movie also shows a very human side to these characters.  The best movies about real life events can build tension and intrigue, even when the audience knows the outcome, and Moneyball does that. 

I was also very impressed by Jonah Hill, who gives a nuanced performance here.

Moneyball is interesting, well shot, well acted, and funny. 

I also recently saw a couple of movies that came out earlier in the year.  Source Code is basically a good time.  It has some trippy sci-fi stuff going on, it’s filmed in Chicago, it is well acted and directed — What can I say? I liked it.

Another highly entertaining movie is Hanna.  I wanted to see this in the theater but never got around to it.  Saoirse Ronan give a fantastic performance as a teenage girl raised to be a kind of ultimate warrior.  The film is wonderfully directed by Joe Wright, who makes interesting and beautiful decisions throughout.  I enjoyed seeing Cate Blanchett play a ice cold bitch as well.  Finally, the Chemical Brothers provide the score, which is one of the best scores in years.  I have actually been listening to it for months, and now I can place the songs in their proper filmic context.  Hanna is fun stuff.

People who know me well know that R.E.M. is my favorite band.  I’ve written a lot about R.E.M. before, including one of my “band posts,” which you can read in full here.  I don’t need to repeat what I wrote in that post, but I do need to say a few things.

R.E.M. broke up this week.  After 31 years and 15 studio albums, the band that helped invent alternative music called it quits.  And they did so on their own terms, and with much humility.  They simply posted the following on their website:

“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”

The announcement surprised me, and it saddened me.  In my review of their most recent (and final) album, Collapse into Now, I wrote, “I think that Collapse into Now is a great album filled with some great songs, and yes, of course it sounds like R.E.M. It is R.E.M.”  Listening to the album now, I wonder if the guys knew this was it.  It makes a good capstone.

My life has been filled with music memories.  Even people who know me casually know how important music is to me, and how much it has formed the backdrop for many of my life stories.  R.E.M. will always be an essential part of this collage.  Of course the music of R.E.M. moves me like few other things can.  But eternally linked to the music is a vast collection of memories.  I cannot help but think of wonderful times (and some hard ones) in my life when I listen to certain R.E.M. songs and albums.  

I think about high school, about running out to Musicland to buy the back catalog, one album at a time, and with each early album, I fell more in love with the music.  My first favorite “old” R.E.M. album was Life’s Rich Pageant, as I was drawn in by the political aspects of the music, as well as the rollicking guitars.

I think about going to the Marion Public Library, in the days before the internet, to go through old back issues of Rolling Stone, reading about R.E.M., and perhaps occasionally accidentally ripping pages from the library property.

I think about the joy of seeing my first R.E.M. concert (the Green World Tour) with my friends in Indiana, ecstatic to hear “King of Birds” and “I Believe” alongside the more well-known songs.  

I think about driving on the abandoned farmland roads with friends, singing along to “You Are the Everything” and “Belong,” far away from whatever we thought other high school kids were doing.  Our music, of which R.E.M. was a central part, helped us not be from our hometown, even though we were.

I think about my sophomore year in college, listening nonstop to Automatic for the People, my favorite album of all time.  Our dorm floor in Main Hall did not have its own floor lounge, so we made a makeshift lounge in the hallway.  Our “lounge” was right by my room, so my door was always open, and “Nightswimming” and “Find the River” and “Drive” were essential components of our soundtrack.

I think about being a DJ at college parties and frequently ending the night with “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”

I think about the days when MTV played music videos and seeing the extraordinary video for “Everybody Hurts.” Then I think of my Austrian flatmates in Scotland, who were as moved by R.E.M. as I was. 

I think about unrequited love and college angst whenever I hear “Half a World Away,” because when I was in Scotland, a friend I wanted to be more than friends with was back in Iowa. “I’ve had to much to drink, and I didn’t think, I didn’t think of you. I guess that’s all I needed.”

I think about the first time I realized that in the strange and glorious song “Star Me Kitten,” Michael Stipe is actually singing, “Fuck me, kitten.” And being thrilled at this discovery.

I think about my best friends in college and going on mini road trips to Des Moines or Iowa City (and full-blown road trips to Washington, DC and San Diego), blasting the car stereo wherever we went.  Sing-alongs to “Radio Song” and “Stand” and “Pop Song 89” and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.”  And every time I hear “Catapult” I hear my friend Kathy singing “Cattle poop.”

I think about senior year in high school and hearing Monster for the first time, and being blown away by the rock and the sexiness.  I think about trying to figure out the lyrics to “Star 69” and being sure that Michael Stipe was singing about “squirrelies” chewing the wire.  (He was.)  And joking that “Bang and Blame” was really about making loud noises, not about sex.

I think about playing “Strange Currencies” on the jukebox at State Street Station, the local bar in Grinnell, and my table full of friends singing along at full volume.

I think about getting a 7:00 AM call from our friend Erin in Japan. She wanted to tell us that she had seen R.E.M. in concert in Tokyo and had hung out with Mike Mills all night.  ”OK—I gotta catch a train.  I’ll write with more details!”

I think about driving to Chicago twice to see R.E.M. on the Monster Tour (once with Radiohead opening), and having my mind blown by the shows.  The second time they came through, Bill Berry had recently almost died from an aneurysm, the band had almost broken up because of the near-death experience, and Michael Stipe had just had a hernia operation.  But they still rocked.

I think about falling in love with each song on “New Adventures in Hi-Fi,” and for the first time using the internet to look up lyrics.

I think about moving to Minnesota without knowing anyone there, and then bonding with new friends over our mutual love of R.E.M.

I think about the biggest rainstorm I’ve ever been in the middle of.  It started at the end of the R.E.M. concert at Midway Field in St. Paul, and my friends and I were drenched to the bone.  It poured for hours as we tried to make our way home, miserably wet but happy about the show.

I think about seeing the greatest hits tour with my friend Bob, and holding up the phone for our friends David and Erika when the band played “Nightswimming.” 

I think about taking a giant leap and moving away from Minnesota to go to grad school.  I listened to Automatic for the People as I pulled out of town after saying goodbye to some of the best friends ever.

I think about ending my first year teaching at my new job by going to see R.E.M. at the United Center on the last day of the school year.  I thought to myself how lucky I was: I had a great job, I was in the city where I wanted to be, and I was watching R.E.M.

And I think about finding out that R.E.M. had broken up, and spending the days since then listening to old albums and remembering why this band is so important to me.

In my band post from a few years ago, I wrote, “R.E.M. is my go-to group. I know that if I play one of their cds, all will be well in the world.”  I imagine that this statement will be true forever.