2 posts tagged “pitchfork”
Audio: Share one of your favorite songs from 2006.
MH: I'm not. I'm really not. I know I have patterns and I've always
tried hard to avoid them. There are definitely certain things in my
music, if I'm looking back, "Well, that was a period where I was
experimenting with a certain kind of chord structure or a certain kind
of sound." I've tried really hard, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you
what that sound, what that tangible sound of "me" is. I think rhythm
is, when you talk about rhythmic sensibility, quite perceptive in that
I like to have at least one thing that is at least common or familiar
to the audience. Other than rhythm, the only thing I could say is that
I take a great deal of pride in every single sound I use. I'm always
making sure that I'm not using a pre-set or something that everyone
else has done. I try to be original in every piece of music I do, and
of course I probably fail every time.
Pitchfork: Let me ask you-- that moment in "Something Isn't Right" where he sings, "Do you re-mem-ber?" First time I heard that it reminded me of "September" by Earth Wind & Fire. I was sitting with my wife and I asked her, Do you think that's a direct reference to that song, or is it just a few notes that sound similar?
MH: There is a very slight reference there. It's a reference to the 11th of September because that's what the Earth Wind & Fire tune was called. I almost had it "Do you remember? The 11th of September?" But there was no way I could possibly put that in.
Pitchfork: So that's the kind of reference you're talking about, where you embed those kinds of things in the music.
MH: Exactly. And the record's full of them in different places. It's kind of like, trying to use every weapon in your arsenal to point people in a certain direction.[...] Time changes when you listen to Steve's music. It is, or rather was, so unorthodox, that the pulse and rate of breathing, thinking, and being, changes. It's like someone invented an alternative way of keeping time. A more human way - reflective of the ominous pain inherent in modernity and the future - whatever it may hold for us. So debased and insulted by the abomination that is the modern pop single, humans have forgotten how to actually listen to music - music that shows us something other than which clothes to buy, or how much to spend on that Sweet Sixteen Party, or which ride to pimp. Steve shows us that there is a different way. Would that we could all listen to him. [...]
Sam Gustin, Huffington Post, "Steve Reich Rocks New York"
[...] If lyric poetry is, as Czech novelist Milan Kundera recently wrote, "the most exemplary incarnation of man dazzled by his own soul and the desire to make it heard," surely the pop song is the highest incarnation of all-consuming love and its fundamental need to be shared. [...]
Marc Hogan, Pitchfork, "Peter Bjorn and John, Writer's Block"
