We Carry on, Portishead, from, Third, 2008
Opening dramatically with an alarm tone, a gong, and then a rather tribal beat on the toms and hi-hat, We Carry on quickly reaches cruising speed. The most up-tempo track on Third - and maybe on any of their previous albums - We Carry on easily stands out (compare preceding and following tracks, e.g.). The near relentless drum rhythm and synth-riff, the two-tone alarm (evoking the 'locked-in' signal of a fighter jet), and the harried vocals all give the impression of very urgent anxiety, and of pursuit. The effect of the trance-like drum beat is that of an adrenaline fueled, entranced flight - during the verses the focus is very narrow, and tight; this opens up with the 'bridge' part - "Oh can't you see...I bleed the taste of life" - at the very point the lyrics address us and the martial snare enters. Instrumentally, the song almost seems to be an extended war cry - lyrically, however, the song is about surrender: 'can't' seems to be the most frequent word; the song is about ineffability, indecision, doubt, and, above all, begrudgingly 'going on'.
This track, like everyone on this masterful album, demands close listening, in a way that their early work didn't. There are some interesting details amidst the other wise rather monotonous song. Of course, the drum beat during the chorus breaks the spell; notice too the recurrence of the 'alarm' tone during the chorus ("On....and On...) and grating, cloying guitar; the backing vocals during what I've here called the bridge, haunting, and not giving the impression of company (indeed it is Gibbons herself) but just more solitude; also notice the stunted bass part that comes out from under the drum beat in the bridge; finally, notice the slight, almost wryly humorous pitch-bend in the main synth-riff just before it fades out completely. Even this fade out just adds to this feeling of the burdensome nature of going on in the face of something like an eternal recurrence of the same: it says, to quote Beckett, I can't go on. I'll go on.
Afterburner, Panda Bear, from Tomboy, 2011
Speaking of flight, Panda Bear's Afterburner seemed an obvious choice for juxtaposition. It is built around a similar driving one-and-two-and beat, gaining early and retaining this momentum throughout, and developing through the addition of layers. The lyrical content is also similar, expressing an anxiety about attaining, about slipping up, of weariness and skepticism. Especially interesting sonically, I found, are the strummed electric guitar, which enters soon, and the engine-like noise that opens the track and reappears several times. Like in the Portishead, one seems to get a breath of fresh air periodically, here with the vocal heights reached by "I don't buy, I don't buy it". Many of the lyrics are stuttered, and though he is constantly talking, he actually utters few complete thoughts. After the vocals exit, we come upon a nice expanse of Reich-like shifting rhythmic layers (there's at least one xylophone in there!). Both of these tracks - the Portishead and the Panda Bear - create what is commonly the effect of rhythmic layering - the impression of a sonic space, a landscape. What they also do in these cases is create the impression that we are traveling through them. Despite the reluctance these songs express to the pace that drives them, despite the fact that it is not we who initiated this ceaseless motion but rather we were thrown into existence, still, "it moves forwards"; "We carry on."
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