The case for "hypnotic" indie pop (or not)
feat. Weird-Al, Rage Rap, and Dry Cleaning
Let’s start this week by pulling the curtain back. We’re only on the third song of this list, and I am grasping for intros to track discussions. Regardless, I gain access to Ethan’s portion of the article simultaneously as any other audience member. I send him my write-up; he pulls together pictures to accompany my opinions and aligns everything to be sent out. Usually, I am excited to see how our takes on the songs clash and overlap and intrigued to know how he feels about the music. Imagine my surprise, to see one of my favorite albums of all time, by an artist I routinely gush about, being taken to task.
Imploding The Mirage by The Killers is an extremely consistent, well-produced, and enchanting collection of songs that have never failed to call me to the happiest corners of my soul. I found myself feeling betrayed, not because I didn’t already know Ethan’s opinions on the album—as he and I previously used to review albums as part of a weekly creative challenge—but because he attempted to publicly sully the name of the record by drawing direct comparisons between it and All Mankind’s Break the Spell. I'm afraid I must disagree with any comparisons Ethan made between the vocal stylings of Brandon Flowers and the vocalist from All Mankind. I also wholeheartedly believe the lowest lows of Imploding the Mirage are nowhere near as bland and underwhelming as the highest highs of Break the Spell.
To be fair to Ethan and myself, I really shouldn’t have expected anything revolutionary or ground-breaking from someone of his preferred music taste. I can only describe the music you regularly find him listening to as the incessant wails of a battered fax machine. Screeching in fear as though in its final moments before it enters obsolescence, gaining sentience, dreading the desolate wasteland, it will be forced to call home. This high-pitched battery is placed over a programmed drum beat that is as creative as it is bearable.
I’d much rather crawl into Oscar the Grouch’s tin trash can, have the lid placed on, and the outside beat with baseball bats while being rotated over an open flame than be forced to listen to the blown-out drum tracks anymore.
Frankly, that may be more rhythmically exciting and enjoyable overall. If you are not familiar with the genre of music I am referring to, it is known as “Rage Rap.” A proper subtitle would be ‘The perfect soundtrack for any man who is called to the downfalls of toxic masculinity but is too afraid of exposure in the modern world.’ It is safe to say I am not a fan of this ‘music.’
*A required side note: Rage Against the Machine is not classified under the Rage Rap umbrella, on the grounds that they make good music.
Onto this week’s song, Escapee by Architecture in Helsinki. Another song I have not heard before, but Ethan has been quite insistent that this is a mainstay example of why he loves this soundtrack so much. We will see…
I, uh–woof… that was a rough listen. Usually, in a three-minute song, by the one-minute thirty-second mark, you know if you’ll like a song; that is certainly not the case here. I started lukewarm on this track, but once the big “go for it” moment occurred at the halfway point, this song fell so far that I might as well have watched it kick a three-legged puppy. Even after multiple listens, I’m not convinced there isn’t some joke here that I’m just not in on. Listen to the song and tell me you don’t feel like this was the karaoke or Weird Al-esque cover version of a much better song. The potential for this song to scrape to be middling was squandered by laughable production and songwriting choices. Let’s break it down a little, God help me.
The song opens immediately with a little piano riff that continues to resurface numerous times throughout the runtime; I may be alone in this thought, but John Carpenter’s theme from Halloween, only happier, came to mind quite quickly.
Interestingly, the next layer to be added to the arrangement seems to be on the four-count of the measure, which was kind of cool to hear in this song. I believe it is a bass, but I cannot tell because it is difficult to discern whether many instruments are synthesized or heavily processed. Next, the drums are introduced and have an extremely bit-crushed sound, akin to something you’d hear in a video game from the ‘80s. The bass drum takes up a lot of space sonically, but the snare has almost no power or punch behind it.
At this point, a glassy-sounding guitar, with a liberal use of delay, enters and provides a syncopated rhythm line that is a welcome addition to the song, but unfortunately, it cannot save it. The last instrument to join before the vocals is a layer of highly artificial horns, mainly mimicking a trombone. I was caught off-guard by the vocals; they were much more emo-vein and thinner than I was expecting, given the instrumentation.
The vocal melody is flat, with a rapid-succession delivery where every phrase ends by raising the inflections, making the lines sound like questions. As I previously mentioned, the vocal timbre is relatively thin, so gang vocals are introduced to make things a little more bearable, but they fail to fill out the lower range that the mix is begging for. A smooth, baritone voice would do wonders for this song, but instead, it is an onslaught of high-pitched, treble-range singing. Forgive me, as this reference may be lost on many of you, but the singer’s tone reminds me of the two antagonistic unicorns from the “Charlie the Unicorn Goes to Candy Mountain” video. There’s a certain nasal quality that makes me think about the nuisances of the pink and blue characters from it.
One note about the production and arrangement, many of the instruments are doubled or even tripled by other instruments. This made me curious about the number of members in the band during the time of this song’s recording—I wanted to know if this was perhaps going to be attempted live or just something done in the DAW (Digital Audio Workspace) to add to the texture. Five members were in the band in the 2008-2012 era, but given the synthetic nature of all the instruments, I’m not sure what they would be playing. Five keyboards on stage at once?
My exact note when the song reached the halfway point was, “Oh no.. Oh God…,” and I stand by that. At that point, I lost any semblance of taking the track seriously. I really wanted to like it, for Ethan’s sake, but once I start laughing at a song in that manner, there’s no going back. All I could think about at that point was how similar the vocalist’s delivery was to Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling)’s pseudo-duet of Closer to Fine in the recent Barbie film. I imagine the song is likely cleaned up to sound better, but it almost feels like the note is missed because the singer’s voice isn’t full enough, similar to how the lousy singing is played for laughs in the movie.
Overall, I would say this still is not unlistenable like Open Your Eyes, but it sure isn’t something I’d ever want to listen to again. I am confident my feelings toward this soundtrack will be changed by songs I enjoy later in this series. Fingers crossed that optimism isn’t misplaced.
Now, over to Ethan…
You know, that Patrick guy sure knows how to whittle some clever similies and metaphors outta thin air. Where he shines in terms of an almost Chandler-from-Friends level of actual substance, wit, and humorous zingers, he lacks in actual long-term ability to be taken seriously (because of HIS music taste, let’s discuss)…
Having my music taste criticized by Patrick is akin to if Ndamukong Suh were to ever go on a rant about James Harrison being a dirty player. Projection, much?
I applaud his attempt to criticize my love of trap music. Seriously thought, Patrick, is referring to it in such an MLA-format way—with the goofy namesake of “Rage Rap” applied—the best attack you could come up with?
Patrick is one of those people who has a superiority complex (ONLY when it comes to his music taste), but not in a stereotypical ‘cool kid’ way—it’s much worse than that. If I had to make the most grounded, relatable comparison to the average reader…Patrick’s music taste is like someone in a high school robotics club. Self-aware about their own Robert-Pattinson-as-Bruce-Wayne-in-The-Batman levels of nonchalant, avant-garde, dreary independence. Yet, at the end of the day, Bruce Wayne is still Bruce Wayne, no matter how much he wants to pretend he’s not. Self-effacing in a stuck-up way, privileged, and without many others that’ll be able to relate (*Obama voice* Let me be clear, I am talking about his MUSIC TASTE). Now—do I frequently spin tracks of otherworldly 808s and coarse, screeching vocal inflections sprinkled with auto-tune? Oh hell yeah.
Here’s a taste…
Would you rather listen to (very daft) post-punk, spoken-word trash (with a dash of alien invasion)?
Well, just know that if you ever have the privilege of becoming acquainted with Mr. Patrick, he’ll play Dry Cleaning’s entire discography until your ears run out of blood to drain. Extremely unsettling. I mean, give the track below a brief whirl. I, uh—woof. We’ll save mentioning M*se for another time, how about that?
Now—onto Escapee. I. Adore. This. Song. One of the catchiest FIFA tunes that comes to mind. It’s layered to near perfection, to be quite honest. The sprinkling, gentle high octave keyboard riff introduces the beginning of the song so perfectly, enticing your ears for what’s to come. Then, we’ve got some retro-sounding crushed drums providing an alluring “boots and cats” sound to the cut. The rhythm guitar adds an infectious melodic riff into the fray, and then the cherry on top makes its arrival: Horns so incredibly infectious—even a Hoenn resident would shiver listening to them.
Cameron Bird, lead vocalist of Architecture in Helsinki, delivers a quite performative, goofy, upbeat, caricature-sounding vocal performance across this cut. I say that with utmost love for the song—his somewhat theatrical, parodic vibe contrasts beautifully with the 8-bit drums, and the paired keyboard synths that make an appearance as Bird hits a higher register along the chorus, taking you for a “riiiiiiiiiiide.”
Another detail I gotta give flowers to: The backing gang vocals on the hook that appear in a somewhat improvised, adlib/call-and-response fashion. After Bird sings, “I won’t delete it,” we’re met with a corresponding “He won’t delete it, whoa, ho, ho…” and it’s amazing. The hooks on this song act as vessels for #1—to split the opening verse into two, steller halves, and #2—riding us into the bridge. The rhythm guitar sounds rather glassy across these sections, but it works, in a stripped-down kind of way.
Bird croons, “I’m escaping…you’re escaping,” as the rhythm guitar and drums quickly fade out for a split second, around 2:12 in the track’s runtime, almost sounding as if they were whisked away to another dimension.
Then, a brief, somewhat-muted effect akin to a pipe from Super Mario World sounds at 2:14, and the full backing instrumental makes its return, as Bird belts out perhaps the most entrancing chorus known to (FIFA) man, one final time…
Escapee is kind of like a trance. It’s almost hypnotic, on a sonic level, and perhaps it does take months of having to listen to it before you develop an appreciation (or, in this context, a hypnotic addiction). Either way, I’m glad I fell under Architecture in Helsinki’s spell—this, folks, is an Aussie indie pop banger.
Next up—we’re off to Brazil to check out Bloco Bleque and Gabriel O Pensador, with the self-proclaimed carnival anthem Só Tem Jogador—listen below!