A Guided Tour of Lightning Bolt: Infallible

[LoathedVermin72]

Actually wait it was Harry Lime who felt bullied. Harmless was angrier and got sick of everyone's attitudes toward him.

[Lament]

Way to bottom page me, bro.

[darth_vedder]

Haha, I'm even more confused now

Whatever, I probably won't remember even if I did find out. I'm also definitely too lazy to read through old post.

[darth_vedder]

Way to bottom page me, bro.

That's the worst. What an asshole!

[Lament]

As a side-note, I'm still waiting for the multiple posters from that thread who referenced Jay Z's supposed "anti-white" lyrics to provide a few examples of them. It's been over a year, and no one has come up with any yet.

[bada]

White people suck....trying to steal all my bucks...but they out of luck....cause I'm dope...


-Jay Z

[Lament]

I heard Jay Z and Beyonce are buying the rights to the Confederate Flag so they can stop people from using it.

[Birds in Hell]

Did they ever do this at Bridge School or something?

[Kevin Davis]

Guys, think like Momentary Lapse of Reason Pink Floyd. I'm not sure how people don't hear it. Just ignore Ed.

"On the Turning Away" is probably the closest thing "Sirens" has to a Floydian ancestor, though why it would be more closely linked to that song than to dozens of other similar '80's ballads I'm not sure. It recalls a generalized form more than any one artist or song -- a strange form to resurrect in 2013, to be sure (unless you're Carrie Underwood or something), but as someone who grew up around this stuff and is sensitive to its virtues, I've come to begrudgingly accept my fondness for it. Like most forms of pop music, from Tin Pan Alley-era standards up through R&B slo-jams, power ballads come from their own particular school of craft, meaning that while you can object to their very existence on principle (which is a fair position to take but not one that necessarily affords you a lot of credibility when assessing an individual work within its parameters), there is a way to do them right, and reasons why the good ones work.

"Sirens" has its blemishes -- Stip is spot on about the guitar solo, and Eddie's falsetto makes Chris Martin's sound like Smokey Robinson's. But the song hits enough melodic and emotional sweet spots -- emphasizing the right accents and turns of phrase and whatnot -- to waylay these gripes. Joey is right that the song doesn't call for deep reflection; what it does (and frankly, what a lot of songs of this ilk do) is attempt to bring a deep sentiment to the surface and present it in a way that is going to strike you instantly, to take feelings that are complex and ambiguous and sum them up within the span of a sentence (country music has really run with this element of the form, with an infuriating emphasis on cleverness and gimmick), which is the specific opposite of a song that requires you to plumb the depths of your soul to understand it. I can understand the song leaving a bad taste in anyone's mouth, but I do think it's a relatively successful exercise in the style, well-crafted and undoubtedly heartfelt. Weirdly enough, the song it puts me most in mind of is "High Enough" by Damn Yankees, which cred be damned I pump every time I hear.

[McParadigm]

I can appreciate a lot of what you're saying about the power ballad design, KD, but I do disagree on most of it.

The power ballad is probably the most prevalent and notable of the 'rock as product' stadium-minded templates to have emerged in the post-Zeppelin era. And they're perfect for what they do...which is to take everything about pop music dynamics, emotions, and melodies and blow them up to cartoonishly exaggerated proportions, doing so much of the reacting for you that you literally don't even have to pay attention to them while they're on. But with the exception of the rare song that manages to introduce some other qualities which allow it to transcend the form, or uses it to capture a mood or feeling in a way that feels like insight (not even 'is'...just 'feels like')...they're basically all junk food.

Outside of the aforementioned songs that find some interesting change or twist to put on the format, I don't think most of these songs are worth much more than dentist office radio fodder. And I don't think Sirens delivers anything that sets it apart from those masses, or even allows it to do the format particularly well.

[Kevin Davis]

I don't really disagree with any of that, McP, except for perhaps your very last half-sentence. I just think junk food has its place within the context of a well-balanced diet is all, and that -- like all things which can be reasonably labeled "product" -- some junk food is savory, imported chocolate worth every cent of $20 per pound, and some is molar-cracking sugar-poison that tastes like chalk and is barely worth its shelf space at the dollar store. On this scale I would probably classify "Sirens" as one of those limited-time-only "new flavor" packs of Skittles that the Mars Corporation rolls out into test markets from time to time -- novel, halfway decent even, but something that only ever needed to exist once.

At base, music for me is melody, harmony, and rhythm (and words when they're there); the other stuff can add or subtract geometrically of course but chances are, if some effective combination of those other things is in place, I will forgive all else. Granted, being a fan of Dylan, Costello, Springsteen, etc. -- artists whose discographies span decades and touch on numerous long-outdated production fads -- has given me a lot of practice at this. But while I would agree that stupid mistakes ultimately sting worse when they're made by the ones we love, my experience has also been that, when I know an artist's work intimately, it becomes easier to squint through the superficial stuff and hear a song like "Sirens" as just another combination of words and music by a bunch of dudes who've already written a bunch of other words and music that I really like -- no different than "Cover Me" or "Everyday I Write the Book" or, if you're so inclined, "Tight Connection To My Heart." Of course, if you get to that base level and find nothing, that's another story. But ultimately I think you can find good songs anywhere, and over my life I've found styles of production to be too fleeting to harbor any ill will towards an artist who commits the minor sin of making a good song sound dumb. The shock of it usually passes.

[Kevin Davis]

And Stip -- we have a tendency to get caught up in our responses but I just wanted to say thanks for another great essay. Beautifully written and on point. I would agree with you that thematically this song is probably the centerpiece of "LB."

[daft twat]

I remember seeing this song on the track list and being excited that it was going to further explore Ed's seemingly newfound discovery of Greek mythology alluded to in Force of Nature. Then it turned out to be about sitting in a hotel room in L.A. and hearing an ambulance drive by.

[stip]

And Stip -- we have a tendency to get caught up in our responses but I just wanted to say thanks for another great essay. Beautifully written and on point. I would agree with you that thematically this song is probably the centerpiece of "LB."

Thanks

[epilogue]

Yeah, sorry, KD, I really appreciate your insights. But I still hear more "Water-ed down" (hahaha get it! I'm referring to Pink Floyd without Roger Waters! Golly-Gee, I'm a clever SOB!!!) Pink Floyd lite in Sirens than I hear "power ballad."

Still, good argument and I enjoyed reading your thoughts, as always.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[EJ]

I'm not sure there's a song I'm more conflicted with in their catalog than Sirens. I'm still not sure where I stand on it.

On the one hand, I hate that they made a song like this - and almost wish they just sold the rights to it to another band. It does make me feel old listening to it.

Then, I listen to the video version of this song and my attitude makes a 180 degree turn. The bombast of the studio version is gone, the interplay of the guitars is really nice, Mike's solo is miles better, and Ed doesn't feel like he's rammed front and center like in the studio version.

[EJ]

To be fair, I don't hear a whole lot of 80s power ballad here besides the solo, either; to me it's more reminiscent of modern Nashville pop/country with Ed singing.

Good call, that's what I hear in this song too.

So, this one should have been sold to Carrie Underwood and Infallible should have been sold back to Christina Aguilera.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[McParadigm]

immediately makes me think of Bon Jovi

That's another comparison that I registered almost immediately on first listen, and has never left my mind.

It basically just sounds like a lot of artists whose willingness to create so many unremarkable and personality-absent tracks used to astound me.