The Benja-man Is Verbose

There are different ways of listening to music with various levels of attention.   Personally I can’t be doing anything else involving reading or else it completely fails to register.   Although I do listen to music in the car, I always wonder whether I’m not doing it justice because the car speakers don’t always capture the nuances.   I do best if my headphones are in, and try to avoid dismissing something out of hand if I haven’t given it at least one listen with headphones.   So, walking, working out at the gym, and chores like laundry are ideal music time.   And further I’ve had enough distractions at the gym that I really try extra hard to not pull the “this doesn’t deserve a second listen” trigger if I’ve only heard it at the gym.   Being a music nerd takes effort , man. My first listen to High Violet was in the gym not knowing any songs going in.   So of course it’s going to be an incomplete take.   I’ll talk through the three main phases of listening.   The first was the “eng

What’s the anatomy of a song that really gets me excited?  That’s the sort of question that it’s a challenge to answer given that I’m trying to talking about music through a non-musical medium.  But I’ll make an attempt to use my words to explain why “Mistaken For Strangers” is so great.  The open chord that forms the main riff is the first thing you hear, and it’s both driving with that nervous tension I like in National songs (especially after Bryan comes in) and hauntingly dissonant.  They keep hammering that riff for awhile because they know how good it is.  Matt’s run-on-sentence delivery is perfect for the verses leading into the record’s best hook on the chorus.  I want to sing along but also feel dread about the premise of being filled with quarters, whatever that means, or being mistaken for strangers.  Lyrics throughout the track have a splash of the usual bullshit word salad, but they also convey a few images that speak to me.  For reasons beyond the scope of this blog, the

Everything Remains (As It Never Was) sits in a central place in the Eluveitie discography wherein the so-called discourse online seems to be even more sharply divided than it is about everything else.  Either this is a real low point and a clear sign that the band had temporarily or permanently lost the plot, or it's the best thing they ever produced, a pinnacle to which they'll never be able to live up.  As always, my opinion is my own, so here's one man's experience with it. Track One:  "Otherworld" Well, it's an intro track.  It has a nice gurdy melody.  It has some spoken-word stuff that straddles the line between cheesy and appropriately foreboding.  "Nothing shall last," indeed.  Obviously, main role is as a lead-in to... Track Two:  "Everything Remains As It Never Was" And we're back to the trademark brand of metal/FUCKING FOLK MUSIC.  Some new wrinkles here and there, like the distorted effect on the vocals at