Pigs They Tend to Wiggle When They Walk

Reading an old New Yorker piece by Alex Ross about Pavement just after Brighten the Corners came out:

At least one long and winding road to hell is paved with interpretations of rock lyrics. Writing on the subject tends to fall apart because lyrics make less sense to the eye than to the ear. Words are blurred and bent by the music that swirls around them. “A song doesn’t exist to convey the meaning of the words,” the critic Simon Frith has written. “Rather, the words exist to convey the meaning of the song.” (here)

I’d like to think about this more and return to this though. I really don’t want to get mired in a discussion about meaning, but would very much like to discuss process, as I’m having interesting real life conversations about writing music or lyrics first, whether or not The Stand Ins (Okkervil’s seeming Stage Names overflow/accompanying piece) is too crammed with words to be meaningful, and whether or not there is any parallel between lyrically overwrought albums an albums which cram in unnecessary instruments for the sake of an assumed legitimacy.

This makes no sense now, I hope to sort it out later.

my own unsolicited take - I almost always write the lyrics after the music… if at all. I’m a much better guitarist and arranger than singer or lyric writer. As a musician, I’m personally glad to see more instrumental groups gaining popularity - like Explosions in the Sky.
Those guys are huge and have no lyrics.

it’s intersting how many people don’t pay attention to or care about the lyrics to songs. I’ve found that usually true of musicians, though, not usually of non-musician listeners.

I’m curious … so you think The Stand Ins is too wordy, but NOT The Stage Names? It seems the exact opposite way to me—I think The Stand Ins lets the songs ‘breathe’ significantly more than the other album, and in a way that seems far more natural to Okkervil River in particular.

There are certain songs on The Stage Names that I can’t help but roll my eyes at when listening to Sheff trying to shoehorn in as many words as he can (”Title Track,” “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene”), but nothing on The Stand Ins (except maybe the bridge of “Pop Lie”) has that same exasperating quality.

@ Sara: Oh, I’m still digesting The Stand Ins so I’m not entirely sure, but I agree about Stage Names completely. It’s been this sort of reoccurring problem I’ve had with Sheff for years — sometimes it’s more invasive than others. I’ve noticed some extra breathing room at moments on both records, but I am interested in that too, mostly because it hasn’t ever really seemed like a concern of Sheff’s to let songs have any space in them. In other words, it seems to me like he’s more interested in writing music to accompany all these words than he is interested in writing songs for their own sake. I got into this argument recently with a friend who said, “Yeah, well go listen to Highway 61 or any of the first three or four REM albums and get back to me on whether or not you think this is a Will Sheff problem.”

Which means I’m going to need to address word-crammed songs in some bigger context, but dang.

@Josh: I think non-musicians probably do pay more attention to lyrics, but the listener as “fan” has a vested interest in those words, musician or not. Or so it seems. I tend to pay attention to lyrics when it seems as though their shape or existence is really an effort to be a major part of the arrangement. This is particularly true for a band like Silver Jews, probably not as important for a band like, say, Bloc Party. Sure, Bloc Party has lyrics, and some of them even borderline political, but I don’t get the feeling that if those words were different, or completely meaningless, the general experience of the song itself would be much different. Whereas if Berman suddenly started writing instrumental pieces, I’d be really confused and probably bored out of my mind. Hopefully this makes some sort of sense.

But I do want to stress the difference between the process of writing lyrics and their place within a larger piece, and what the words themselves mean. I am pretty sure I rarely understand what the hell Will Sheff is talking about, but mostly because his lyrics seem overwrought and too “inside.” I feel as though there are metaphors I’d never be able to detangle unless I knew him or asked him about them. They aren’t always inclusive, no matter how pretty they sound. I’m more interested in the process there, and whether or not the songs exist to express a collection of words, or the other way around.

I love instrumental music too, but if I was making this argument to someone who needed to understand that instrumental music was just as relevant or important as songs that you can sing along to, I’d start with Vince Guaraldi, Ed Thigpen or even Four Tet before I’d push ‘em towards Explosions. But that’s my personal bias — I find their music kind of boring. HOWEVER I do agree, it’s nice to see them getting huge crowds without ever dipping into cheesy love lyrics or political banter or “Now is the time when we dance” crap.

[…] still have some unfinished business to write about, but I’ll need to feel inspired to return to The Stand-Ins before I can do […]