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Perhaps modern music’s biggest fault is the way that most
choose to abuse sound. The atrocious decision to crank without,
as they for some reason say, rhyme or reason is come to again
and again.
A handful of hours ago, after a particularly taxing stint in
rush hour traffic, I came home to a parcel that contained a
CD I had excitedly mail-ordered three days prior. To shrug off
the working day with song is one of life’s greatest joys,
in addition, of course, to bottles of Rioja, books by Salter,
and catching wafts of food cooking on grills as dusk reluctantly
falls some weeks before the true advent of summer. In that package
was the enticingly titled Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique
cdep by a sextet from Montreal called The Dears.
The portabella had soaked in a beautiful marinade quite a while
before I sunk in, tore apart, swallowed. The stereo is in the
next room, just far enough away to make The Dears, on first
listen, come off as completely nuance-less; all was a heap of
directionless noise, to which I, at the kitchen table with full
mouth, just kind of ick-ed.
The dishes had been done and I was in my upstairs room, where
sound is unable to stray either under or through the shut door.
Again, I let the record play. Second impression scarcely better
than the first--it was a bit dizzying, to tell the truth. Repeat,
repeat, replete with cups of tea, experimentation with silence,
skipping tracks, taking a nap. After a bit, though, it all soaked
in and came together.
Sure, the record isn’t loud in the tradition sense, but
it is by no means a breezy beauty (save the last track "Acoustic
Guitar Phase," but for the sake of argument, I’ll
deem that to be an anomaly). It isn’t outwardly wistful,
doesn’t immediately evoke, like so many great pop songs
do, abandoned roads or train routes or small towns that seem
impossibly vapid. It doesn’t embody that feeling you get
while pining for a love you’ve lost or are losing or never
had to begin with. It grabs you by the gruff with a gentle forcefulness
and reminds you of the darker, lonelier aspects of your real
life. It’s the stuff of the everyday, not of film or novels
or any other transmitter of quixotic cliche. And the everyday
is where the truest sadness is--it outlines every object and
action and yet goes largely unnoticed.
Sometimes you just need a bit of gorgeous thudding sound to
startle you back into appreciation for (real) life. This time
around, I have The Dears to thank.
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