I've written ten of these this year, so I'm not going to falter this late in the game. Hopefully writing this will distract me from checking my email neurotically/growing increasingly hateful. So, with one month to go(!), here are the sounds to my November:
1. Bright Eyes - "Time Code." I went jogging one night to clear my head and escape my research paper, and listening to Digital Ash in a Digital Urn--Bright Eyes's audacious, experimental electronica album--really helped me escape myself for a little bit. I always appreciated the album's opener, "Time Code," but I was especially struck this time by Oberst's sung/whispered line: "sh-- don't talk, don't talk." I think it's interesting how the song becomes instrumental after that, as Oberst silently hovers over the world his album will subsequently explore: we hear the screaming baby from "Ship in a Bottle," murmurs from the crowds from which Oberst withdraws, and the bells from "Gold Mine Gutted." While the intro could be foreshadowing or previewing the album's songs, I think it's more about picking up transmissions of "noise." (Note: thinking about Don DeLillo's White Noise completely changed my interpretation of this song).DeLillo shows how our consumerist, media-saturated society worships commodities and replaces religion with shopping. Compare, for instance, the everyday activities of people living in a Puritan versus a postmodern culture: the former observed God everywhere and in everything, while the latter observes the hyper-saturation of advertisements and media. Because we are incessantly bombarded with TV, ads, radio, media, etc., we begin to speak unconsciously its language of consumerism: the media has altered our consciousness. I think Oberst sees this, and his opening song is a fantasy about escaping the world's noise (ironically on his noisiest album to date). Thus, on "Time Code," we can only hear bells, screams, or murmurs, not the tainted language of postmodern culture. This retreat from spoken language is intriguing since Oberst is so renowned for his songwriting -- maybe he's trying to escape himself, too. But then the alarm clock rings and it's back to reality; he must speak. And probably not coincidentally, his next words are: "It was Don DeLillo."
