...in talking to my favorite boy.

MENTAL NOTES:
-laughs like a slower Pee Wee Herman. In a very distinct staccato tone, literally like: "Ha. Ha. Ha."
-mentions people with descriptions, in case you don't remember them or don't know who they are.
-snickers at himself in-between sentences in the aforementioned way.
-stutters when he is trying to be really descriptive. It makes you feel like he's really thinking about giving an honest, unrehearsed answer.
-generally talks as if he's aloof. Even though you know he's telling you the most important thing in the world right now, his voice has a tinge of melody to it which gives it that non-chalant manner.

All of which endears me even more to him in a sickly sweet way. It's an addiction, my musical love affair with his musical love affairs. He writes lyrics about love. All the different types: falling in, falling out, bitter, unrequited, young, innocent, new, re-love, unhealthy love, and my favorite - tragic love... He's non-discriminatory about the classifications of l'amour. And oh the music! He can hold notes from a low G to a high C, and probably places unnoticed in-between. He writes these arrangements that are trying so hard to be in that pop-formula yet you know the songs are yearning to lean more towards the opera/classical end of the music spectrum. I take it back. Not just about the lyrcial content being utterly romantic... the musicality of the songs are as well... the swooning and swaying of the pianos and guitars, timpany and bass - the sonic layers making love to one another only to conceive of a musical baby. Little musical babies (known as songs) that I've adopted into my home, into my everyday - much to the annoyance of my neighbors, I'm sure.

Reading between the lines with The Books

Reading between the lines with The Books
By Celeste Tabora
(for Chord Magazine)

At home, listening to nothing but the hum of the computer and The Books’ latest album, Lost and Safe, I’m filled with a certain type of peace. I notice the details I would normally miss: the light’s reflection off my pendant moving on the wall as I breathe, the small dust bunny in the corner I might have missed when I swept this morning. When concentrating on the many layers of music that make up a Books song, I wonder how Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto determine that a track is finished. This thought only induces a landslide of other questions, which eventually leads me to calling the duo at their new North Adams, Mass. home-slash-studio.

“We moved locations once again, to a bigger bedroom basically. Our studio is slightly larger and much warmer – more conducive to playing our instruments. The sound library has grown immensely. We have a lot more to draw from,” describes Zammuto of the new digs.

The duo now works in an attic in a Victorian home, a huge improvement in spaces compared to their last room, which was in a freezing pantry across town. He describes the way in which they file their sound library by phrases. Between moving, establishing this new way of storing sound files, and recording the latest album, it’s hard to believe The Books have time to do little else, considering that de Jong lives in New York and even took a trip to his homeland of Holland recently.

“We went for about ten months straight on the record full-time. It’s a long, slow process. It’s very tedious at times. Since there’s two of us, we take on different roles; there’s no particular role that either of us has. When one of us is in the studio, the other one is working on a different track somewhere else. It breaks up in a natural way. It takes a lot of concentration … that’s kind of why I live where I live. There’s no chance for a real social life around here,” laughs Zammuto, speaking humbly as if trying to not disrupt some other discussion happening in the room. “I live in this bizarre world of sounds for months at a time. Over time you get all these sounds that resonate in different ways. I did a lot more lyric writing this time around.”

It’s true. You’ll find a lot of shoegazer-like singing on this album. In addition to their regular instrumentation (stringed instruments like mandolin, cello, and banjo), they’ve incorporated plastic drainpipes and a vintage Hohner clavinet. Preparing for their first live tour this May, The Books have also collected a great number of fonts to display at their shows as well as friends to help orchestrate their full-band feel.

“We’ve been synching video to a lot of our tracks. Working with text as an image is a wonderful thing. Visual word play. We’re very wordy people; we read a lot, write a lot,” Zammuto’s southern accent trails off and he pauses for a moment. “I studied the visual art and have always been interested in text as an image. Like, trying to see a word for what it looks like rather than what it means. Oftentimes what it looks like fights, or resonates, what it means – it’s an idiosyncratic thing that we have in our daily lives and it’s funky to explore.”

I inquire about the medium they use in which to record these songs. Zammuto describes it as being nothing extraordinary: your typical consumer digital recording process. With infinite possibilities for layers within that medium, and infinite time in your own studio, added onto small-town Massachusetts – when do The Books say when?

“It reaches a point where it just feels done,” Zammuto explains. “We’re two sets of ears, we hear totally different things – so we communicate a lot on how we’re doing things. There comes a point where you get exhausted and you step away from it. So you take a couple weeks off from the track and you listen to it with fresh ears and you can tell what needs to be done. But then again, if you listen to it two weeks later and you’re like ‘That’s pretty good,’ then you leave it the way it is.”

Getting the answer to my initial question, I said my goodbyes and happily returned to being hypnotized somewhere between that heart shaped pendant reflection on the wall and "Lost and Safe" in my ears.

CURRENTLY, THE 10 SONGS THAT OWN MY iPOD

1. “Stay” – Oingo Boingo [off of Dead Man’s Party – 1985]
Once upon a time called 1989, my English teacher took 12-year-old me to one of Boingo’s famous Halloween gigs. (No Doubt opened.) It was my first concert sans parents and, due to Ms. English Teacher having known the band, I had my arms signed in permanent marker. I didn’t wash them for a week. I was in heaven; I was in love. This was a turning point. My love for literature expanded because of Ms. English Teacher & music was presented in a less glamorous—yet still alluring—light. I recently re-discovered this song after looking up the lyrics for one of their other hits, “Weird Science.” Unlike other Boingo songs, it is more pop than quirk and absolutely romantic, in the way that it is performed rather than its lyrical content. How did my memory possibly lose this song, even for a moment?

2. “16 Military Wives” – The Decemberists [off of Picaresque – 2005]
I just got this album, and this was the track that reached out and hooked me. (Read: I can’t stop hitting repeat!) It’s gotta be the “la de da de da” at the end of the chorus. The song’s use of numbers is fun to sing along to in that “bottles of beer on the wall” or “golden rings + maids a-milking + partridges in pear trees” kind-of-way. It’s the feel good hit of this spring.

3. “Parenthetically” – Gastr Del Sol [off of Crookt, Crackt, Or Fly – 1994]
For a 52 second song, it’s great. A la the Peanuts gang theme, it’s a playful little ditty: minimal tinkling of the piano mingles with half-sung/half-spoken lyrics recorded with a microphone that allows for white noise. It’s very much like a beat-generation poem. A simple track, but whole enough to make me hit repeat repeatedly. Though this band has pounds of great hits (I really should connect with one of their intricately layered guitar songs), this one is tops in my book.

4. “Tras” – Battles [off of Tras EP – 2004]
They have alternate versions of the song, Tras 2 & Tras 3… all of which I love (and love to listen to back to back) but this is the cut. Battles is so clever and progressive, musically fashionable, and deliciously inventive. Remember the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Their band, Wyld Stalyns? The motioning air guitar instead of a thumbs-up or a hang loose? Well, Battles makes me feel like doing so. (The band has grimaced when I told them of this comparison.) However uncool the movie—with the whole premise being that their music will save the world & bring peace someday, so they had to go pass their history exam, etc? Well, this band makes me feel like they can save the world.

5. “Think About You” – Guns ‘N Roses [off of Appetite For Destruction – 1987]
Most people think that “Sweet Child of Mine” is the most romantic G’NR song. I beg to differ: While that song talks about his woman affectionately, “Think About You” features Axl directly speaking to the object of his affection. Instead of a ballad, this song is a celebratory, balls-out rock n’ f’n rollin’ confession, revealing (admitting?) that these are memories he won’t soon forget, that she revived his almost-empty heart, and that he feels this ‘is lovin’ that’ll last forever.’ Brilliant! And that, my friends, is going to be my wedding song.

6. “I Can’t Wait” - Nu Shooz [off of Poolside – 1986]
This song has programmed voice bits played on a synthesizer, a slightly catchy bass-line, simple-and-steady electronic beats, and atop it all is a coy candy-sweet not good/not bad female voice. Every single element about this song, when taken apart, is mediocre. However, when mixed together it’s a 3 minute and 43 second slice of genius. A number 2 Billboard hit from the 80s, this song is like a perfectly baked chocolate chip cookie: taken apart, it’s just a bowl of ingredients; all together, it’s a recipe for addiction. You can’t just eat the sugar, flour, and butter autonomously – that would be sickening!

7. “Stay With Me” – The Faces [off of A Nod is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse – 1971]
The Faces had a reputation of being wild, reckless and nonchalant party boys. This, their only real hit, displays just that. Musically, they were all over the map: consistent only in their inconsistency; a rock & roll train about to crash at any second. You don’t know whether to reach your arms out to catch + save or to run for your life! (Indeed influencing hundreds of musicians to this day, both musically and not.)This song also marks where I begin, and end, my love affair with Rod Stewart. It’s an up-front and open statement saying, ‘Babe I’ll be into you tonight, but in the morning you’re getting the boot.’ You gotta love the honesty.

8. “Ty Versus Detchibe” – Prefuse 73 [off of Surrounded By Silence – 2005]
Ever been to a new city where every single corner is foreign and you have that I’m-in-a-new-city high? This song is like that. There’s so much to experience that you’re in a blissful state, with glazed over eyes and a shit-eating grin, experiencing sensory overload. You have no idea what direction you want to go in first or second, fifth or third. There’s a beat to your surroundings, and you’re swaying… it’s your very own iPod commercial with a better soundtrack. You are lost in the music. You have no idea where you came from anymore, and you don’t care. You may never come home again.

9. “I Wonder If I Take You Home” – Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam [off of With Full Force – 1985]
I had a cousin that I looked up to when I was in 2nd grade. She was a DJ at her college radio station. (It was the 80s but she was more influenced by Prince’s fashion than Madonna’s.) This was one of the first songs I really connected with, due to her. I not only learned how to correctly dance to this song, but it taught me a moral lesson about relationships. (I was 8 years old, so I saved that lesson in my pocket for a few more years.) This song had everything: Great beats, an interlude where two characters talk to each other and build the story (before Janet told anyone she was Ms. Jackson, if you’re nasty), that classic 80s Minnie Mouse voice (later perfected by Paula Abdul), a great melody around a catchy chorus, and feminine strength (this was years before Salt ‘N Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex”). I haven’t gotten sick of it yet, and it came out 20 years ago…

10. “Oh What A World” – Rufus Wainwright [off of Want One – 2003]
My mother always played music around the house. She had good taste & was a good influence about that. Though, as I became older, our musical tastes grew in waves. Those places where we could meet in the middle about a song will forever be dear to my heart. The X-mas after this record came out I brought it home for the holidays. My mother, who could play any song on a piano (by ear) after hearing it just once, started to play & sing this song. Soon she and I were interchanging verses, hums and harmonies, and making up our own lyrics. Rufus performing a song that is very reminiscent of Ravel's "Bolero" is the perfect mix of past and present; mother and daughter.

Link: www.2020proof.org

into intuition

I have felt this way for a long time, but it’s slowly materializing in my crazy head. I’m going to try to convey this idea to you, but bear in mind it’s only coming to fruition to me now and explaining it might be really muddy for this first draft. Here goes.

The idea. I really believe that our gut feelings are worth listening to/deserve more credit. I mean, intuition is a largely disregarded emotion. (Emotion?) But like, as humans we just * know * things. We live in this age where technology and science, even education (in the way that we are taught to get the facts) sway us from this kind of thinking. I don’t know about you, but my trust in the information age sometimes overtakes my trust in my own thought. However, I feel like deep down inside, we know things about situations, circumstance, and ourselves.

Self-psychics. As an example, I have said before to friends that you just know if someone is interested in you romantically. You get this vibe. That’s exactly what it is, a vibe. And these “vibes” are different for everyone. Even in friendships... You meet someone and they either remain indifferent, or you’re really into them, or you get a bad vibe from them. Don’t we listen to our gut then? Or when walking into a job interview, I think we can feel out whether or not we will succeed in the acquisition of said position. Sure, sometimes at first it’s muddy – but eventually it becomes clear, claro. Sometimes it takes time but the answer presents itself in due time.

Ask now. Have we lost our innate process of deciphering a good situation from a bad one? Have you ever felt like you really shouldn’t go somewhere because you just feel like it’s a bad idea? Or the opposite: Have you felt like if you went to a certain place, good things await you? How often do we go with these reactions? Without formulating this thought as clearly as I have here with you, I have found myself more and more relying/trusting in my sixth sense. Not always following it, mind you – but being aware of this internal awareness.

Organic. I’m not on my way to giving up my shoes for walking barefoot in mud, nor will I start partaking in any granola/hippie fashion. But I’m just saying, I don’t want to lose too much in relying on science and technology. There are still things in life that can’t be explained that happen every day to all of us, not just on Unsolved Mysteries. Maybe I’m listening to too much Bjork, but I feel like I’ve remembered something important. As children, we are more open to intuition because we really had nothing more to go on. We saw the world with open eyes and well, felt more. Maybe I’m nutso, but on the other hand, maybe I’m onto something?

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