Before I start writing about a song, I ask a more-or-less fixed set of questions to figure out what it’s
all about. Questions like: what kind of attitude is
the band posing to its audience? The aim being to
figure out what kind of experience the song is putting up. In St. Vincent’s Surgeon for instance, something tells me that, St. Vincent had the impact on her audience
in mind during production. In contrast, I get almost
nothing from Joe Lally’s Why Should I Get Used To It?
There’s no keeping the audience in mind to
create a specific experience. There’s no sense of
emotional release on the part of the band. Instead,
this is as meat and potatoes as rock and roll gets. Take the bass line for instance. It could
not be a better hook, but no special effort is being made to reach the listener
or please the musician. Same regarding the drumming
and vocals. Each element of the song inhabits itself
so to speak, competent but not pushing to reach an emotional or intellectual
level. I can imagine the musicians sitting around,
not thinking about what the song was going to
accomplish but feeling it out. Of course, this doesn’t
have to mean it’s a bad song. Like I mentioned, the
bass line could not be a better hook, and the disaffected vocals recall
Generation X to great effect (notwithstanding that the singer is pushing 50.)
Furthermore, it’s refreshing that a band might put a song to tape without
spending months in post-production. The present-day emphasis on grabbing the
listener at whatever cost can mean songwriting gets lost in the process. That’s
not the case here.
